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From Middletown to the Middle East

~ Reflections on travel and teaching

From Middletown to the Middle East

Tag Archives: extremism

Mutual religious understanding: not a panacea, but helpful

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by tgilheany in Fulbright project

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Comparative religion, critical thinking, extremism, israeli-palestinian conflict

Not just a Zionist conspiracy - the actual foundation wall of the actual Second Temple!

Last month I interviewed a professor named Marc who expressed skepticism that education in comparative religion could improve the conflict. This month another Marc (Silverman, of Hebrew University) also questioned the relevance of this kind of work. He took a different line of critique, however. While Rabbi Rosenstein suggested that the conflict was primarily about issues other than religion, Professor Silverman proposed almost the exact opposite. “Imagine a child is raised with a real appreciation of the divine – not through being told, but through her parents’ enthusiasm. Her parents get excited at the experience of being in nature, for example. Such a child will likely be open and appreciative to the divine all around them as an adult, not just in their own tradition but in others’ as well.” He raised the possibility that I was putting too much stress on the academic, that information about other peoples’ belief systems would not significantly affect how people approach the other, and that the true influence takes place much earlier and from another direction.

In light of this critique, which I find powerful, let me try to assert some ways in which teaching comparative religion can help reduce conflict between people of different beliefs:

1. It signals to students, teachers and the culture in general that those in authority value others. The very fact that it is taught (with the exception of presenting it as “know your enemy”) is teaching by example.

2. It is an ideal platform from which to teach critical thinking skills, and such skills are a powerful antidotee to extremism.

3. There is information that can undermine extremism.

While all three of these claims need to be defended, here let me argue in more detail simply for the last one. I have frequently heard the claim that “just teaching people a few facts about another culture won’t help them be more tolerant.” I agree: learning a few facts won’t help, if those facts are unrelated to the prejudices and misunderstandings people hold. Let me give two examples, one teaching about Islam, the other about Judaism. (I’ll wait for a Christian example for another time.)

Several times people have told me that learning the Five Pillars of Islam does little to increase understanding. Well, I would claim memorizing the pillars does a small amount – it helps the student consider the claim that creedal Islam encourages many ethical values. But what are students’ really wondering? Primarily they are wondering about links between Islam and terror and Islam and the position of women. One needs to address these issues, honestly and fully – one cannot simply present an apologist argument. In the case of violence, Qur’anic verses condemning suicide are necessary but not sufficient. One needs to dig deeper and to go outside of what many teachers would consider “learning about the religion.” For example, reading several of the recent studies of the psychology of suicide bombers can contextualize self-identified Muslims who engage in acts of violence against civilians. These readings and discussions can help students reflect on the extent and the limits of the links between Islam and terror.

One can ask similar questions of Judaism. Learning that Jews place the Ten Commandments at the center of their ethical thinking likely will help a Palestinian student understand Judaism a little better, but probably will not help address their core questions. Recently a friend of mine, Professor Charles Stang, gave a talk about early Christianity to students at a Palestinian university. In the course of setting up his discussion he referred to the Second Temple and its destruction by the Romans. The teacher who had invited him to speak had to spend the next class explaining to surprised students that the Second Temple had in fact existed, and was not just a Zionist excuse for taking over the Haram al-Sharif. This points us to a key question for Palestinian students: what is the link between Judaism and the occupation? Understanding the role of Jerusalem in the hopes and dreams of diaspora Judaism and understanding the scale and impact of the Holocaust would likely help students reflect on the extent and the limits of the links between Judaism and the injustices of the occupation.

Finally, to be clear – I am not claiming that mutual religious learning will end conflicts. What it can do, I believe, is problematize and so defang some beliefs that exacerbate many conflicts.

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Does comparative religion matter to the conflict?

03 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by tgilheany in Fulbright project

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Comparative religion, ethno-nationalism, extremism, interfaith

The land through which whats-his-name led the Israelites to the Promised Land.

Why is there no study of comparative religions in the Israeli schools? Rabbi Marc Rosenstein posits a reason. “Given the history of Christian missionizing, many parents are nervous about anything that would involve the New Testament in the schools. As for Islam and the Qur’an, it is different, since there is not that same history. It is perhaps just more of a sense of ‘why do we need to know that? We have our world, and they have theirs.’” Rabbi Rosenstein described this position with a significant amount of fervor, which surprised me since he has been involved in interfaith dialogue for many years as the director of the Galilee Foundation for Value Education. We met at his office at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, where he is the director of the Israel Rabbinic Program. I asked him if he thought teaching comparative religions could in fact lead to reducing the conflict. He was not dismissive, but he was skeptical. “I’m not sure the conflict is about religion. It is an ethnic and national conflict. Once when I was visiting an Arab neighbor I asked her about her religion. She had an interesting reply: it is not relevant. She was saying that the important thing was that she was Arab, and if I heard she was Christian I might assume she was more westernized, more open.” Still, he did note, “religion is used for ethnic and national purposes.”

If learning about the core tenets and texts of other religions might have limited effects, how about studying different historical narratives? “Well this is a very controversial idea. As you may know, there have been many proposals for parallel textbooks, etc. But when you say the word ‘narratives’ you already raise hackles, because narrative implies there are different truths, and that goes against the official position on both sides.”

If people are not learning about each others’ religions in the schools, are they learning about them in adult settings? Rabbi Rosenstein was evocative about the limits of dialogue even among religious leaders. He has heard them say, “It’s not that I don’t support what you are doing. It’s just that it will take two hours and I will not learn anything.” Why? “Well, if we begin ‘Say your name and one sentence about why you are here,’ two hours later we have heard many platitudinous speeches about peace and have had no discussion.’” Even if there is a discussion, he notes, sometimes it is hard for a reform rabbi coming from a tradition of textual criticism to find much in common with a village imam with little education. Still, he struck a note of hope when he mentioned that once he began a discussion by asking each person to give one example of a difficult question someone from the congregation asked. “Then we had real exchanges.”

I think about Rabbi Rosenstein’s questions, and then I read Akiva Eldar’s opinion piece today in Haaretz. Eldar notes that at the UN Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the connection of the Jewish people to Israel but only talked of “the Palestinian population living within it.” He also noted that President Mahmoud Abbas spoke of “the prophets Jesus and Mohammad, but ‘forgot’ Moses.” Such omissions sound absurd to the ears of people who know the religious identities of the peoples involved. Today also Jewish settlers burned a mosque in the Galilee. If those involved had known a little bit more about the beliefs of their neighbors, might they have hesitated to take such an extreme action?

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