Forum; No. 2; Race, Class, and Diversity: Religion and Diversity; Part 3

And the best of you in the sight of God is the one who was most righteous, most pious in his service toward God and humanity, also in Islamic tradition, who says the best of you is the one who's most useful to society? So we have the idea of service that's tied to our religious belief that we have to be of service. We have to be of assistance. We have to help the the way fair, the one who's lost in the road, the one who's needy, the one who asks, we have a responsibility toward them as well as towards our neighbors. And he didn't say your Muslim neighbor said your neighbor. What about this association or that that particular Americans have? And I make the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslim because it's an important one. But I suppose it's particularly associated with the Shiite Muslims that there are holy wars, that the Koran somehow speaks about the the holiness of any member who or any person of another faith. There's a sense that Christians, Jews, others are infidels and not seen as blessed by God or by Allah. That idea has been perpetuated, I believe, by individuals who benefit

from the rift. But the actual teachings of the Koran is that the people of other religious faith traditions are referred to as people of the book. A little Kitab people of the book and the people of the book are held in reverence by Muslims. We rever the prophets of those books. Moses, Jesus. We have great respect for them. Matter of fact, if any of us reject the belief in any of the prophets, we find ourself outside the fold of Islam because one of the beliefs of Muslims is we believe in all of the prophets and not just in Muhammad. We believe that Muhammad peace be upon him was Hatami or the seal of the prophets of the last prophets. But he came in the tradition of all of the other prophets. So we don't believe in any exclusive. We have no exclusive right over truth and that God is the one who's going to judge us in the end. But we are encouraged to compete with each other in righteousness.

Reverend Nakasone, who is a Buddhist priest who seemed like he wanted a word in here. Let me bring you into this. I just want to say something about the interfaith cooperation. Several years ago, we had an interfaith workshop over an Alameda island of Alameda. And at that time, there were some 30 somewhat interfaith groups or committees that had come out. And it was astounding to me. But anyway, the reasons why these there were so many of these groups within the immediate Bay Area, there was some community, there was some problem within the community which they all the religious people had to decide. They had to come together to respond to racism, hunger. And one fellow made one minister made are telling me, Malarky says, as long as we didn't talk about doctrine, we were OK. So that's maybe in a way to go avoid the doctrine I the doctrine. Is there a problem, though, Reverend, in watering down your religion when you avoid doctrine or.

Well, this was this was a story that diluting it somehow. Well, that's a difficult question to answer. But the response to to respond to a problem within the community, I don't think it really has to do with doctrine. But the idea of, you know, immediately resolving the problem at hand. Now, doctrinal issues are very difficult. I mean, that I'm also a scholar, so they'll take us, you know, the rest of the afternoon. I don't think I should do that getting to that. Yeah, well, we'll follow your wisdom on that and we'll go to our audience. Paul Chafey, actually, who is here at the Interfaith Center, is stepped up to the microphone. Paul, thank you so much, Michael, for coming in and bringing this wonderful discussion. I'm delighted that you got to the heaven and hell question and the common ground question, because there's a lot of buzz around those. And but that's not the heart of the matter. I don't think at this center or in most interfaith activities, the the thing that we in the religious community really care about is building bridges between people that used to hurt each other.

We in you, we can talk about doctrine. You can talk about, you know, if this than that. And but the sad history is in the name of God. We've killed each other. And I think there's a passion among those of us who want to talk to the stranger and become the friend in building bridges and finding with the imam told us, which is that by and large, we have all sorts of common interests, common values, common goals. The I'm paying to hear our Muslim brother not really get a very good answer. I don't think from our from our panel yet about really being on the outside, in the media, in the culture we need. I think that the Muslim. Other religions relationship needs more work than most of them these days because of the kind of prejudice that we have around us. And I think that I'd like to I'd like to hear from our panelists how they and their traditions are involved in disarming the stereotypes

and then taking the proactive step, which is really to say, hey, we both agree that hunger is a terrible thing, so we're going to organize around it. Reverend Scott Peterson, let me go to you on this, if I may. Ways to, as Paul Shafeek suggests, really break down the kinds of barriers and stereotypes and things that are traditionally separated. What are you doing here? Well, I think we're doing that. And and fortunately, I think we're starting with our own. I don't think that we can go outside the the doors of our own movement or our own churches without first having to deal with our own history. And so I feel like that's what we're trying to do in look at what has been the history of Pentecostalism in the 20th century. How have we treated blacks, how we treated women and really owning some of the problems and celebrating what has been good and then saying we're going to make changes and head into the new millennium in a direction that we feel has been dealt with and is complete. And until that happens, I really don't have personally, I don't have time, unfortunately,

to be involved with a lot of other things. And I don't think that it's proper for us to really step outside of that because we don't have anything to offer until we have reconcile within our own. All right. And if you don't have if the religions don't get this world together, we may not be clear enough about how big a problem there is that we the values. But as soon as the culture are in the faiths and if we can't share them together, then we're not going to be much help to the planet. Yeah, but what I see is that as soon as we step outside our own boundaries, if you will, we're going to be accused of not dealing with what's in our own in our own house. And so how can you do that? You can't be then you're split. And so what we're trying to do, in my opinion, is focus and focus and say this is the problem. Let's seek a resolution so others at least can look and say, well, if they're if they do it for themselves, maybe they can come outside and help others as well and talking. And that's terrific. And I think to that, we're as concerned about hunger and homelessness and things like that, prisons and all the rest as anyone else.

And we are involved. But there is a problem. When you try to universalize and embrace all faiths, you do run the risk of diluting and reducing the commitment with your own faith. I think it's an either or thing, though, in terms of the Islamic faith in particular. I think within our own tradition and Unitarian Universalist Church, part of part of what we do have is part of our Sunday school is that, you know, all the fourth and fifth graders this semester, they're all going out and visiting other faith congregations and they're visiting the Buddhist, you know, temple and they're visiting the Islamic center and and our adult education program in the middle of the Middle East war, you know, brought in people to talk about Islam and to help break down the stereotypes. We still have issues within our own tradition that we have to address. No, no tradition is pure. We all are made up of human beings that need to continue to progress in getting past our own prejudices and stereotypes within our own communities. But I think it's not an either or thing. You can be looking outside and working inside and they help to inform each other when the Islamic center down the street from us was

threatened to be moved from the neighborhood. You know, our congregation where we have, you know, many values that are different from the Islamic center, particularly around a gay and lesbian issue, our congregation was the congregation advocating for them to be able to stay in the neighborhood. Those kind of ties are important and they create goodwill in the community. Hey, Mom, you want a word in here, please? Oh, yes. I think by cooperating with people of other faiths, that does in any way dilute your faith tradition, at least mine. Because when I come and participate with people of other faiths, I'm not coming there to trade my religion. I'm not threatened by other people's beliefs. And I'm not coming near proselytizing because there are some areas in our in the way we live where we have to cooperate and work with one another. That's a reality. We're here together and we have to learn from each other as a lot of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. I know he mentioned the individual, made the comment, mentioned aggressive Muslims. This is a third stereotype.

And he also mentioned that other religions have killed people. And I'm here as a result of affirmative action program that took place 1500 in the 1400's. They affirmed that they needed a certain type of worker. And I'm here because of that. Now, that need no longer exists, but I'm still here. And the racial color consciousness that exists in our society, some of that racial color consciousness is tied to religious ideas that have. To be reconciled and they have to be looked at the idea of black and white, one being demonized and one being given a divine status and then to use these labels to classify human beings perpetuates the device, divisiveness among the races, and especially when this color code, identification of human beings also has a value system that's attached to it. And I believe the religious communities need to sit down.

The scholars need to sit down to respective leaders, need to sit down and talk about that. And then I believe we'll have greater cooperation. And some of the problems that exist that divide us along racial lines and also on religious lines can diminish. So difficult, though, when you when you think about, for example, those who and I think I'm speaking in the spirit of what you said before, Imam, those who misuse the Koran, who abuse it, who use it for the Bible, not only the Bible, the Bible, certainly maybe more than the fact, you know, it me, for example. Well, I don't know. I get it about urinating match over here who's been more misused. But, you know, it strikes me that when I think about, let's say, a movement like the Christian Identity Movement, a call they call themselves the Christian Identity Movement, this is an abuse of Christianity in the name of God and in the name of Jesus. It's essentially based on on racist and Nazi notions. I mean, you can take any doctrine and you can twist it and you can misuse it to an extent that really doesn't answer what the doctrine is supposedly

based on in the best sense and the most godly sense. Let's say I want to go back to our college age six, three to four, seven, six. Keesha Mohammed, good morning from San Jose. Good morning. Hello. Please join us. Yes. How are you? OK, good. I have a question directed to the gentleman says Mr. Duncan was the first name mentioned qualified the faces of Islam. Why was it not representative of the Nation of Islam to represent our position? Also, what qualification was? What qualifications does this have to the state that Mr. Farrakhan's position on Islam says Minister Farrakhan was received from broader international interfaith circle as the World Parliament of Religions on September 2nd, 1993, of his presentation of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I'll take my answer off the air. Thank you.

Thank you for the call. I think the question really is to you, Imam, again, certainly myself, I'm a outgrowth of the Nation of Islam that was led by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I have accepted the direction of the successor to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his son, Imam Muhammad, who became the leader of what was then a nation of Islam in 1975. He introduced to the Muslim community at that time that was under his father's leadership, the teachings of the Holy Koran and the example of Muhammad the prophet peace be upon him. And he clarified that though many of the values that we acquired in the Nation of Islam were admirable, we were a very effective social reform movement. We had the best interests of our people at heart, but we didn't really qualify as Muslims according to the teaching of the Koran, having not smoking cigarets, not drinking alcohol, not fornicating, having a strong work ethic. Millions of people have these values and are not Muslims. The thing that makes us Muslims is accepting the teachings of the Koran,

believing in Allah, believing in Muhammad, the prophet who received the Koran 4500 years ago, praying five times a day, giving charity fasting during the month of Ramadan, all making pilgrimage. The Minister Farrakhan could claim as part of their religious. They don't do it. They they conceptually address it, but they believe in a man as God, which is totally against the teachings of Islam. We believe that man cannot be God. There's a chapter in our book that says, say he God is one eternal, absolute. He never had a child, never was a child. And there is nothing in creation that is like him. And if you take and you embody a human being and make that human being God, that idea. And our religion is called shirk and it puts you outside the fold of Islam and it's the most serious infraction. We are talking today at the interfaith center here at the Presidio about we're having an

interfaith dialog and a gentleman in the back, please. Hi, my name is John Ense and I'm with a nonprofit organization called OneWorld Inc. And I'd like to follow up Paul's question about how we can bring the different religions together. One of the themes of the panel so far seems to have been that one of the most formidable barriers are the limitations of language. And it strikes me that we do indeed have a universal language, the language of music and the language of rituals and arts. And I'm just wondering whether anybody on the panel might talk to the issue of perhaps how music and arts and ritual can be used in a way to try and bring the different religions together. All right. Who would like to can I can I go to you on this Parshall's? Sure. You talked before about ceremony, about Native American ceremony, bringing in all kinds of faiths.

Yes. And we have found that to be one of the vehicles that that is really brought a lot of healing, not only, first of all, for our community, because we have a lot of things to heal from, because we feel many of our people have suffered greatly from the internalization of self-hatred. And we find that the ceremonies and reconnecting with that which was originally given to the people, is something that becomes a powerful vehicle for healing from these deep wounds of the soul. We have also had a number of other people who are not from the Indian communities come in and find the same kind of experience to be true to them. Yet I have to be careful of that because all of my colleagues who are out there doing, you know, providing ceremony primarily for the Indian community, sometimes after an event like this, we get a run on the ceremonies where so many people want to come and be participant. And we have to encourage those who are merely curious to just simply sort of hold the line where they're out.

We don't come from. Something that is evangelical, you know, we never really felt a need to to do that, we felt the gifts were given to each community, but ceremony, ceremony and dance ceremony and artistic expression have been a very, very vital part of the traditions of most tribes that I know of. And while I certainly cannot speak for all, I would say, there's been a rich tradition in combining those things. But one of the things that the tribes also had that somehow puts us at a disadvantage to many times is so much of what we held sacred was transmitted through the oral tradition. And that's difficult when you come up against the Western civilization, where everything seems to be sort of evaluated on its written context, and that if you don't if you don't not only have it written, but within a certain kind of style that you're ill legitimated and essentially just sort of washed out. And the oral tradition still stands among the

people today as a powerful way to transmit our teachings. And what it does more than the written word we would contend, is that it really works to involve people in an active participation in their spirituality question. I would have no apologies to use Lindy's metaphor, somebody who's been raised with a kind of moderate sensibility, you know, who comes to you and wants to participate in this and experiences a sacred and visceral way. In many ways, Western culture has closed that off. The traditions of Western culture have made it very difficult to suddenly become a participant. I mean, there has to be a process, doesn't it? Yes, there is. And I'm not suggesting that we just sort of categorically closed doors. We try to take each request responsibly and to talk with people about what it is they're bringing, as well as what is the experience that come out of what we have found as time and time again. We have been able to help people go back to their central faith that they were raised in with new questions and with a new sense of their own integrity,

being able to go back to that to rediscover what is truly there for them. Reverend Robertson, can you talk about how this works? Ceremony, ritual, the arts with respect to the Unitarian churches reaching out in the more universal way? Well, I think in our own tradition, you know, we have certain rituals that are part of our ongoing liturgical life and it's very, you know, somewhat diverse in terms of music and culture. But I think the thing that's, you know, as a tradition, it's similar to Baha'i in the sense of welcoming the wisdom from a variety of religious traditions. Perhaps I have seen more experience of the shadow side of that, which is that you need to be careful not to engage in spiritual tourism, that you need to be careful that as you engage with a variety of faiths and as you engage with the art and the music and the ritual of a variety of traditions, that it's done in a way that is respectful and that moves you to a deeper place in yourself. I've seen people that are in kind of the shopping mall mentality with

religions as well. You know, I'll go here for a while until it makes me a little uncomfortable about how I'm living my life. And then I'm going to jump over here. You know, they say that one of the purposes of religion is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And I think that all of us perhaps have different places in our lives where we are part of the afflicted and part of the comfortable. And it's important to not just use dabbling in a religious life as a way to avoid confronting the hard questions inside ourselves. Reverend Nakasone. Yeah, the question that prompted all the discussion, as I understand that was, is there are something universal music or ritual that can be developed for all of us? And I think I have one. You know, we are very serious people, all of us. So the best thing is that we wish all break bread together and have dinner together. And this is a kind of ritual which is very important. I think it makes me hungry. Are you taking us to lunch? Do we have lunch?

I wish I wish you the whole lunch KQED and they will be with us again. Yes, ma'am. You are one of our audience up at the microphone. Thank you. I'm Margaret and I work with Action Coalition for Global Change. And this is a coalition of social action, social justice, religious groups, people who are also interested in the global scene. And I guess my question is, I very much relate with, say, the universal values here that we've all been talking about in some sense. We've even been talking about identity. And as we realize that we're citizens not only in this country but of the globe, we begin to realize how important it is that we've had an. It's an imperfect as it is like the United Nations, which has been in place since 1945, where at least the government representatives could gather and try

to, I would say, harmonize the very same things that Father Jerry O'Rourke mentioned harmony, peace and respect for all people. And our identity is as a human being. And so I guess my question is, is there a role for believing religious people to express a kind of a unified support for a system of that exists now known as the United Nations? And most Americans do support the United Nations. Is there something we could do to promote unity in diversity on the planet? All right. Let me go to Rabbi Friedman on this very firm about, you know, if I can backtrack for a moment back to the issue of doctrine, you know, religion,

particularly the Jewish religion. But I think all religions are a way of life. It's not just something that we do on Shabbat, on the Sabbath, at a certain time when there was mention of breaking bread together. I mean, for me, I'm I'm a practicing Jew in the shower. And when I'm breaking bread and when I'm folding the laundry, when I'm educating my children all aspects of my life. And I think that there's room for everything. I think that there is a need for doctrine. I think that there is a need for basic precepts which we call mitzvot in our faith, both particular precepts that bring us into the practice of our faith, and then the more universal precepts that bring us to help others to reach out to those in need to reach out to one another. And I think that in the context of that, there's room for what you were asking. I think that as members of the faith community, that there has

to be room for us to both define ourselves particularly and to declare our oneness with all of humanity and to support all of those institutions that foster understanding and foster universal development. And excuse me, Michael, but just one thing. The name of my congregation is or Shalom Jewish community, The Ormond's Light. Light of Peace. OK, thank you. So I'm sorry, the sense, for example, in Judaism, there's a strong sense in God's divinity, in humanity and therefore humanity reflects the divinity and all things, therefore human are divine. And I think all religions teach the sense of the divinity, the spiritual, the light, the transcendent in all human beings. And I'm sorry to say it prompts me to ask at this juncture because I need to ask a very difficult and probably doctrine type question. And that is once you accept and embrace the idea of teaching and trying to to to be a catalyst toward universal good, universal virtue, universal love.

And what do you do about evil? Because it's real. It's out there. It's palpable. It's part of the world. Right. I mean, if you see human beings as divine and what do you do about human beings who are who are evil? What do our fates teach us? How do we embrace them or do we embrace them? In Islam, we were taught that we should call or invite people to the path of our lord who created us. We should be enjoying what is right and we should forbid what is wrong and we should strive and in virtue. So in instances where there's evil, if we have the ability to stop the evil, we should prevent the evil. And if we can't prevent the evil by stopping it with our physical ability or our mobilizing of people to correct the neighborhood problem, what have you, then we should speak out against it. And then if we are not able to speak out against it, at least we should be against it in our heart. And we are told that's the weakest of faith. So when we see wrong, we should correct the wrong. We should remove the harmful things that can affect other people in the society.

And that's a responsibility. That's a religious responsibility in Islam. Are we all in agreement on that? The religious responsibility of fighting evil? I mean, even if it needs to be done by force, not Ronald Nakasone, a reverend. Yes, well, they both have a slightly different view in the Mahayana tradition, which I belong to. We believe that the universe is compassionate self and people who are not in tune. So this compassion and rhythm of reality are ignorant of the facts and need to be enlightened. That is the ignorance to this fact and. To be destroyed, that is done away with and essentially that's the evil is the wrong view. We go to the back of the chapel. Yes, ma'am, I'm Celine Vega and I'm here with the Spiritual Emergence Network.

My question is that we've been looking at diversity and demonizing of other religions within this group and even within this group of fairly I called mainstream religious traditions. There's a lot of that that goes on. But I'd like to bring into the room as well some of those religious traditions or spiritual traditions that are more on the fringe, I'm thinking in particular of neo paganism or paganism, which is actually finding its way into the interfaith community in a very wonderful way, I think, in the last few years. But is not here in this room right now and I know is often one of the ones that, for example, doesn't get the candle lighted to it when we're lighting candles to all the other faiths and how wonderful they are. And it does often get demonized. And it's not the only one. I'd like to ask that question. What about those traditions or even non traditions, people's own spiritual connections that don't that aren't included in what we've been talking about? Well, the word pagan came up before Paul Schultz mentioned it. In fact, it's been used against certainly Native American people. Reverend Lindy Ramsey and Unitarians have pagan study groups, right?

Yeah. Part of the Unitarian tradition is inclusive of Earth based spirituality. And there's there's a subgroup within Unitarian church is a covenant of Unitarian Universalist pagans. It has been a source of controversy within our own tradition as well in terms of being a group that has been open minded to, you know, religious understanding as it emerges. And there have been people within our own movement who identify themselves more strongly with the Christian side of Unitarian Universalism that have had to stretch to feel comfortable with within the pagan movement. It's interesting, within the Latino part of our congregation to find people that very much value the indigenous roots in Mexico, combined with the Christian teaching and finding a way that the commonalities intersect within the Latino community as well as some of the differences there. So I think that sometimes I think the word pagan, it's one of those words that's kind of

loaded. And it's interesting to me that the neo pagan movement chose chose that word rather than Earth based spirituality or Earth based tradition, which perhaps has a little larger framework of of inclusiveness, including, you know, Native American traditions, native traditions, indigenous traditions in lots of different communities, not just in European based. There are so many pagans who I want to call themselves witches. And I mean, there I go to defer for the moment, for the moment to Reverend Scott Peterson, that I think it's a Leviticus that says thou shalt not suffer witch to live something that was abused, shall we say, in places like Salem, Massachusetts. How do you respond to someone who would present themselves as a witch? Well, in terms of in terms of being part of an interfaith. Yes, well, certainly that's a faith. But I don't see that there's any you know, even in the vaguest realm of of of finding something in common that there would be other than that is a religious practice.

And I have a religious practice. Therefore, we both practice religion. Therefore we have something in common. But you could be open and tolerant to someone who calls himself. So I can I can be open to anyone. I mean, you know, if I believe what the Bible says, the Bible says that God loves everybody and I need to love everybody. And what do we do with a line like Thou shalt not suffer in which to learn what people and what? Can I just interject something? Because in the Hebrew it doesn't say say which it says sorcery. And what we're talking about here is manipulation of the elements through what might be more commonly called black magic. Now, whether that's with witchcraft or whether that's paganism, I mean, I personally don't think it is it the word which is begging the question to say that that's what it is. Well, whatever it was, it was used to put women to death. Obviously, there is no doubt about that. And putting women down is not something that's foreign to Judaism either. All right. But the point is, is that I don't see that on an interfaith situation that there would be much commonality and.