MY NEIGHBOUR'S FAITH AND MINE
Religious identities : For better or for worse?
An interreligious encounter in Geneva
12-14 November 2005
Religious identities : For better or for worse?
An interreligious encounter in Geneva
12-14 November 2005
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MY NEIGHBOUR'S FAITH AND MINE Religious identities : For better or for worse? An interreligious encounter in Geneva 12-14 November 2005 |
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DOCUMENTS Speech by Rev. Dr Hans Ucko This colloquium is to explore an issue that speaks to as well as challenges religion and society. The theme 'End of Tolerance' has been chosen because it would hopefully help us to take a closer look at the concept of 'tolerance' itself, and would open up dimensions of relationships of living in pluralist societies especially as minority and majority communities. In this way, it is closely related to the overall theme of this weekend: living together interreligiously. The word tolerance actually has many different meanings:
The point is, to bear something, which is not that easy to bear. The meaning of tolerance is similar to the question of how much of a poisonous substance an organism can tolerate without suffering serious damage. Tolerance is not approval, just the opposite. To tolerate something presupposes that we do not approve of it, and this is precisely why we are called to bear or tolerate it. To tolerate a different opinion does not mean that we share this opinion but that we are prepared to accept the fact that there are people who have views which we do not share. Or to tolerate a different lifestyle does not mean we approve of this lifestyle.2 Quite the contrary, to tolerate it means that we accept that people choose life-styles which we deem to be false but which we for various reasons have to tolerate. A very recent document, published by the Evangelical Church in Germany says that tolerance is grounded in God, who created us all according to God’s image. It says that our tolerance is not dependent on the tolerance of the other, although reciprocity will enable us to arrive at a dialogue on different ways of living, thinking and acting. There are limits to tolerance, where the life and dignity of people are jeopardised and threatened. The document goes on to say that tolerance means to allow people to be actively involved in society. Does tolerance, continues the document, mean that I involve myself with the one I am supposed to tolerate? No. It is more likely that I do not involve myself. I tolerate while gnashing my teeth. It shouldn’t be like this, since tolerance involves an active element, requesting mutual respect and an end to intolerance. Its theological founding is in God’s tolerance, an expression by Martin Luther, who attributed tolerance to God’s patience with us human beings. Until the coming of the God’s reign, God allows also that which contradicts God. 3 In discussing this document recently, we were quite a few from outside Germany, who wondered about the wisdom of making tolerance a keyword in understanding the plurality we are more than ever before living in Europe. Is tolerance really the lubrication for living together interreligiously? The following are a couple of points that one needs to consider. 1. The various policies of tolerance in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, which, to a varying extent, enabled minority faiths to remain, were not a product of religious pluralism but rather an instrument devised to maintain the set-up, the boundaries and the continuation of the nation state. We are however today no longer living in neatly defined, single societies; we now inhabit a world where everything affects everything else and where the notion of the nation state is under debate. 2. Tolerance may for the one at the receiving end of tolerance leave a feeling of being at the mercy of the majority. Tolerance does not really open up for the minority to enter with confidence into the new society. Instead one is more likely to hold on to what one has as a protection. The minority feels marginalised and insecure and needs to cling to that which provides safety and security in a new situation and environment: the religious and cultural traditions as safety net, memory and identity. There is a sense of not really being welcome but at the most tolerated in society. One is thrown back at one’s real community (religious, ethnic, racial, cultural). It is here one seeks the safety net needed for dignity. Integration is not made easy. 3. An increasing number of countries, with a homogenous rather than a heterogeneous past, usually without an experience of religious and cultural plurality, often seem ill equipped to deal with this new development of a religiously and plural society. Controversy and conflict as to the religious and cultural set-up of society is waiting around the corner. The encounter is one of uneasiness, friction and abrasion. Although we can witness similar phenomena in several parts of the world, there seems to be a particular European difficulty in how best to come to terms with a society of religious and cultural diversity. Europe has never developed an immigration culture and doesn’t really know how to give immigrants a stake in the construction of society. One may be more at ease with strangers who come today and leave tomorrow than with the stranger who comes today and stays tomorrow but who remains a stranger, a potential wanderer.4 4. It is maybe as a consequence of the uneasiness of Europe to deal with cultural and religious plurality that European immigrants seem to have been less eager than immigrants to the United States to take on a new identity, instead adhering to their traditional identities, languages and customs for generation after generation. 5. What does it mean to integrate? How much does one have to throw over board or discard? Who accepts whom? I think most people think of Europe as the accepting partner. It is the benevolent and generous party. But is it? An editorial in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said last week “One of the greatest dishonesties of European policy and intellectual discourse has been that multicultural issues can be discussed only in one direction - the 'accepting society.' Whoever calls on the immigrants themselves to integrate better is seen as a nationalist monster who lacks 'openness.'" There are many that say that the problem plural society faces is the reward for having been too lax and tolerant. All and everyone have been accepted. Too many have been allowed to enter. The end result is a ghettoisation or the development of parallel societies in society, suspicion, stereotyping, and xenophobia. There is a call for an end to tolerance. More restrictions in immigration and refugee policy are seen as the panacea. Integration of the foreigner or stranger is understood as obligations to adjust to the majority culture and religion. 6. One needs to go beyond tolerance, because tolerance is today mostly understood as non-interference. You have to stand it but you try to keep it as far away as possible. The French author Paul Claudel said when asked about tolerance: “Tolérance. ‘Il y a des maisons pour cela’.” There are houses for that, meaning brothels, which the good bourgeois society established behind closed doors so that they were not seen. We need to move beyond tolerance towards respect. We need to create space for the integrity of the other, while ensuring a living together and a sharing of responsibilities. We need to find a new concept of society, where plurality is affirmed, where we don't look upon minority - majority as the defining category of society, where the minority status depends on the benevolence of the majority as is now the case among dhimmi and in Europe. In such a society, what does co-citizenship mean? 7. What does it mean for the immigrant, refugee bringing maybe another set of values? Tariq Ramadan says in a recent interview: “We have to be able to accept that our values might be different from those of people around us, but that we are still part of one society. He calls it "psychological integration" and continues: “But when Muslims are being accused of terrorism and extremism, what is easier: to retreat into the safety of their own community, or work their way into the wider society? It’s a difficult psychological leap”. "We need an intellectual revolution. First it’s about education. It’s about self-confidence. Don’t look at yourself as part of a marginalised minority. At the moment, there is a ’protect yourself’ mentality among Muslims. But the best way to be respected is to give something to your society. To give value and presence."5 8. Can we re-imagine and rethink a society that is able to cope constructively with religious and cultural plurality? In such a process, there are some questions to be addressed.
1. Britannica.com |
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