Good morning. Salaam – means peace. Salaam Alaikum – peace upon you

On this beautiful day, let me begin by asking you to do something quite un-orthodox – this is to throw political correctness out of the window. I am not politically correct as it becomes a barrier to honest discourse and honesty is essential to a dialogue on peace.

So let me start with the bad news.

In case you haven’t noticed, we live in perilous times where there is chaos in the world on every level. Cosmic and earthly. There are many signs that suggest that we have destroyed the environment through our materialism and consumerism and our souls through an overdose of technology. The world of information and technology is overwhelming – its like being on a speeding Ferris wheel with no way to get off.

When I take the GO train in Toronto to go downtown, I seem to be the only person who is not connected to a machine. The Ipods, computers, earphones and cell phones -  these are causing a death of humanity. We connect with each other through portals called Facebook, My Space and You Tube. have we forgotten how to converse or reach out and touch?

Trust me, those of us NOT connected are in a minority and are looked upon as quite weird. Told my son Space book and he was alarmed at my ignorance of combining face book and my space – this by the way is also a generational thing.

Question: what is this doing to us? It is harming our souls and shattering our psysche into little pieces which, like Humpty Dumpty can’t be put together again. We are spiritually wounded but we live with this preposterous arrogance that we can heal ourselves and will live forever.

Sometimes we ask ourselves how did this happen? What have we done? We wish to respond because it’s a natural instinct to respond but we may find that sometimes its too late.

E.g. Media has made us immune to human pain and the sight of blood. Now we look at it without cringing.

I believe as a woman of faith that God will ask me: what did you do when the world was burning?

Good news is that according to some spiritual gurus, only when we exhaust our physical capacity and have consumed ourselves, do we respond. Andrew Harvey (Sacred Activisim) says that along with chaos I talked about earlier, there is a birth of new humanity and a birth of a consciousness of the divine within us.

I too believe that as human beings we are called to be God's stewards, that we are responsible for dialogue and action that can help sweep, shovel and clear the pathways to peace for the Global community to find a long term vision for peace and global solidarity.

Peace my friends in not just the absence of war. There are many paths to peace. One of them is to understand that it’s not enough to negate or hate but to be pro-active and promote interaction and dialogue. When we are against something i.e. when we lobby against poverty, we must support the opposite of poverty i.e. We should engage in building bridges across the schisms and chasms of misperceptions, misconceptions and misunderstandings that separate marginalized groups of people from the ones with privilege and power.

We are inhabitants of one planet and citizens of one world and where the lives and well-being of all peoples on earth are inextricably intertwined. I believe that as people who affirm the humanity and dignity of all people, we have the responsibility as well as the ability to create a world from which injustice, inequity, inequality and oppression, are gradually eliminated. We need to be  committed to finding other like-minded persons who will work with us to construct the foundations of a justice-and-compassion-based world in which all people can live in peace without fear or insecurity.

Peace is also constructed at many levels and through many disciplines. First we have to be at peace within ourselves and then work at peace between humans, peace between religions and peace between nations. As Hans Kung says there can be no peace between nations unless there is peace between religions.

This brings me to the critical question of peace between religions. The world in which we live today, is divided. There is polarization between "the West" and "the World of Islam".  Theories abound about a Clash of civilizations whereas we need a DIALOGUE OF CIVILIZATIONS. While the world has become a global village in terms of technology and economy, the same strides are not seen in the world of faith. It seems that the most troubled areas of the world, are areas involved in religious conflict. Even relatively poor nations have become slaves to the International weapon industry. We need to exchange these weapons of mass destruction with weapons of mass instruction so that we can eliminate ignorance that leads to racism and discrimination that leads to hate that leads to violence. Violence only begets more violence so there have to be other solutions.

From the ashes of Afghanistan to the burning of Baghdad, there are no winners in any war.  We desperately need dialogue.

The dialog has hardly begun to any significant degree, or if it has been attempted, it is complicated by political facts that obscure where our common ground lies. But we cannot have an effective dialog unless we can identify our common goals and values. At this point the misunderstandings are great. Whether we are Muslims, Hindus, or Christians, or Jews, whether we are Americans, Europeans, Russians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Saudis, Indians, Chinese: our hands are dirty.

In 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. published a monumental essay titled “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community? Dr. King ended this essay by stating “we still have a choice today. Non violent co-existence or violent co-annihilation.”  Like Martin Luther, I too believe that as human beings, we have a choice. If we are ever to have peace between nations, we must begin with peace between religions, so today, I choose to talk a language of peace and love, emphasizing that the path to peace is through justice and truth.

As many of you know I started this talk with the salutation of peace from my faith – Islam. The question that must be uppermost in your minds is how can a faith of peace be transformed into an ideology of hate and violence? You would be justified to ask such a question because it is an important one – one that relates to world peace or lack of peace in many parts of the Muslim world.

We are faced right now with the massacre of innocent people in the Middle East where no one wants to talk the language of peace. There are other acts of violence in the name of Islam. Through false religiousity and misappropriation of religious teachings, the terrorists used the name of God as a tool to destroy human lives and property and in this attempt, they hijacked my faith

The answers to these questions can be traced to the fact that there is a huge divide in the message of the Quran and the practice of Islam, essentially a gap between theory and practice.  

In order to understand this phenomena, allow me to give you some quick insight into the spiritual message of Islam and then help you understand where it all went wrong.

Islam preaches that there is no peace without justice so it stresses human justice for the cause of peace.

The Koran says “the Islamic relationship between individuals and nations is one of peace….Muslims learn from the Koran that that God’s objective in creating the human race in different communities was so that they could relate to each other peacefully.” 49:13

The Prophet Mohamed, peace and blessings be upon him, was the peace maker of his time. He endured torture, hunger and the killing of his loved ones by his enemies, but he remained a merciful person. In his most startling conquest of Makkah only four people died.

The Quran says: if two parties of believers fight with each other, make peace between them.

Through the centuries, however, this message and others like it, have been sidelined and Islam has been subjected to anti-pluralist, or exclusivist, interpretations in order to advance both political and religious subversive agendas.

In more recent times, exclusivist discourses have also been prevalent among a variety of groups in the Muslim world including the so-called Islamists who have increasingly interpreted Islam in exclusivist ways to provide a political ideology on which to base their conception of a modern nation- state.

historically, exclusivist interpretations of the Quran have also been used to justify domination over others both Muslim and non- Muslims, specifically those whose interpretation of the faith and religious practices were perceived as deviating from the norms established by traditionalists.

The zeal of such groups to understand Islam in a “pure” monolithic form, to engage in revisionist history, and to read religious texts in an exclusivist manner that denies any plurality of interpretations, has created a situation in which any Muslim who dares to disagree or oppose their perspective is immediately branded a heretic.

The reasons for the rise of such groups are complex.  Broadly speaking, these movements are a reaction against westernization, economic deprivation, the politics of oil, global domination by western powers (particularly the United States), and support by such powers for repressive regimes in predominantly Muslim lands.

The most dramatic and influential of these movements  is the Wahhabi movement in Arabia. Named after the reformer, Abd al-Wahhab, who died in 1791,  this puritanical movement acquired an explosive energy after its founder allied himself with a petty Arab chieftain, Muhammad ibn saud. To propagate their particular brand of Islam, the wahhabis attacked fellow Muslims whose practices they considered “un-Islamic” only because they differed in interpretation. They disregard the Quranic injunction that there should be no compulsion in religion.

Not surprisingly, this movement considers Jews and Christians to be infidels. To this day, Saudi Arabia’s state version of Islam is founded on an exclusivist, misogynist interpretation of the Quran, intolerant of both interreligious and intrareligious plurality. Through the use of millions of petrodollars, the Saudis’ extreme interpretation of Islam has been exported all over the Muslim world, much to the dismay of the liberals and pluralists. 

All is not doom and gloom. There are signs of progress and there are solutions.

It might interest you to know that the extremists are a very small minority among Muslims – about 5%  while most Muslims are moderates who have a strong Islamic identity, and believe in human rights and peace. So, the West would do well to build alliances with Muslim scholars, moderates and intellectuals, as mentioned in a recent Rand report.

 There have always been reformers and critical thinkers in the Muslim world.  Progressive Muslims are now engaged in an exciting process of redefining their societies, including redefining for themselves what it is to be Muslim. Generally speaking, progressive Muslims pursue the re-implementation of social justice, gender equality and pluralism in society.

Quran 16:90 – Indeed God commands justice, and the actualization of goodness and realization of beauty.

Progressive Muslims insist on serious engagement of a full spectrum of thought and practices. We want to bring back the concepts of ijtihad which among many meanings, is interpreted broadly  as committed critical thinking, independent legal reasoning and refers to striving for results based on disciplined but independent reasoning to come up with solutions to new problems,  not necessarily the attainment of correct answers.

As a progressive, pluralist Muslim who is Canadian, I am struck by the resonance between the pluralism espoused in the Quran and that in the Canadian charter of freedom and rights. Contrary to what some may claim, one can be fully Canadian and Muslim simultaneously. As one who is proud both of Islam and of my adopted country, and is inspired by the consonance of their pluralism and Canada’s image as a peace-maker, I share words from the Quran that also resonate in our collective consciousness: Humanity is but one Community.

Furthermore, as Pope John Paul the 2nd. suggested,  all world religions must cooperate to eliminate the social and cultural causes of terrorism by teaching the greatness and dignity of the human person and by spreading a clearer sense of the openness of the human family.

Unfortunately dirty politics and materialistic regimes don’t allow for simple solutions to peace, but we can try and bring some order through our communities.  When we sow one seed of love and peace, it will definitely grow.

I’ll end with a message from a wise Persian poet who says:

Human beings are like members of one body

Created from one and the same essence

When one member feels pain, The rest are distraught

You -  unmoved by the suffering of others

Are unworthy of the name human.