Practical suggestions for successful interfaith dialogue
E-Book, Englisch, 95 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-03805-201-2
Verlag: buch & netz
Format: EPUB
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One special feature of these Guidelines is that it has been written by Jewish, Christian and Muslim women working together.
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Religions don’t speak. It is people, and not religious systems, who encounter each other in interfaith dialogue. They all live in specific socio-political contexts. They have all been influenced by their particular cultures and religions, by their economic position and social class, by their gender, and by their position as part of the social mainstream or as members of a minority group. Everybody’s identity is complex. Religion is only one of the things that shape a person’s view of who he or she is. But in interfaith dialogue – if the encounter is one that concentrates on matters of religion – the religious part of a person’s identity gains more weight, perhaps more than it carries in their everyday life. When people make statements in an interfaith conversation, the statements may seem to be more strongly anchored in religion than they really are – and than the speaker intended them to be. Since the people involved in the dialogue may be seen primarily as representatives of their faith community, the people listening may come to think that opinions which are evidently subjective are actually based on religion, even if in fact they have no link at all to its core values. This can lead to people having a distorted view of each other – and of the religions in which they have grown up. When people of different cultural or religious backgrounds meet, they usually have preconceptions about what the others are like. They have mental pictures of what they expect of the others in an encounter. Therefore, it is not enough merely to approach the other participants with openness and curiosity – you have to be conscious of the preconceptions you yourself have, and ask yourself what basis you have for them. Dialogue means not only learning, but also unlearning, if we are to reach an encounter based on mutual respect. So what organisational measures need to be taken, and what attitudes must be adopted, if people in interfaith dialogue are going to understand each other? In the following we formulate what we have learned over many years as Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women who have set out to promote dialogue. We offer guidelines and examples from our experience of interfaith dialogue in practice. Each example is followed by our reflections on what happened, and the insights we gained. The examples often have to do with a feeling of uneasiness, a conflict, or an encounter which failed. They are based on our experience, and usually on an experience which we have had often – not merely once. It is these memories which show quite clearly where stumbling- blocks in interfaith dialogue can be encountered. Reading these examples, and our comments about how we realised what had gone wrong, may help you as a reader to gain useful and maybe unexpected insights. As people often say, you learn from your mistakes! And so we hope that the experiences, guidelines and rules which we formulate here will help readers to anticipate and avoid the things which can lead to conflict when people meet for dialogue; things which can very well lead to the failure of their efforts. If you get the impression that these examples tend to stress the “mistakes” made by members of mainstream society and the Christian majority, you are quite right. This may at first seem unjustified and unfair. However, it is natural that the members of the majority society are less likely to question their own position than members of a minority with a “foreign” background. Members of the majority group make a lot of assumptions about what is the norm, and do not question them. These assumptions can easily lead to an unintended and unconscious lack of sensitivity. The problem of relations between majority and minority groups leads to much of the friction which may occur in dialogue – and is, of course, a constant issue in all social contexts. But even though the members of the majority religion may have particular problems with dialogue, our suggestions are also intended to help representatives of religious minorities to improve their approach to dialogue, and thus contribute to the better and more lasting success of interfaith encounters. The following guidelines and rules for dialogue are partly taken from the book by M. & J. Hartkemeyer und F. Dhority called “Miteinander Denken” [Thinking Together].[1] Individuals from our group have adapted specific rules for interfaith dialogue for specific contexts, for example in the European Project for Inter-religious Learning (EPIL), interfaith theology courses, and interfaith contact groups. We have used them over several years. In these “Guidelines” we have also added some additional rules and suggestions of our own.[2] 2.1 If a dialogue is to go well it will depend on the dialogical attitudes of the participants
When the members of a group take turns to introduce themselves and their beliefs about the world, this is not yet dialogue. Dialogue involves empathy, exchange, interaction and trying to understand. Dialogue is a special form of communication, because it is reciprocal. It depends on a balance of listening and speaking, and is based on respect, empathy, mutual acceptance, and the acknowledgement that all the people involved must be regarded as equal partners in discussion. If you embark on a dialogue with the feeling that you are part of a hierarchy – even though your feelings of superiority or inferiority are purely subjective – you will scarcely experience anything new. You will more likely be in danger of concluding that your existing imperfect knowledge of the other side is correct. Dialogue is neither a monologue nor a duel. As an example, consider discussion programmes on TV. These like to give the impression that they are offering an in-depth exploration of a theme which will contribute to an increase in public understanding. They like to give the impression that all points of view are represented and that they can thus contribute to the formation of public opinion and even to social integration. (These ideas are formulated in the guidelines for discussions staged by Swiss public TV). However, in actual fact, the people appearing on these programmes are chosen so that they will confront each other argumentatively – in effect, in a duel rather than a dialogue. For example: on June 14th 2013 in “Arena”, a programme for political debate on German-Swiss TV, there was a discussion on the theme “Is forbidding head-scarves sensible or discriminatory?” Should Muslim girls and women be forbidden to wear head-scarves in certain situations? Or would such a measure discriminate against Muslim women? The debate was sparked off by a dispute about whether two Muslim schoolgirls should be allowed to wear headscarves in school. Two of the four speakers argued for prohibition in public schools; one of them was a well-known feminist, and the other was a member of the right-wing party responsible for much of the propaganda against Muslims in Switzerland. Both had made a name for themselves during the earlier national campaign to forbid the building of minarets in the country,[3] and were known to be very critical of Islam in public discussions. Both had already had a lot of experience of appearing on TV and radio. Their introductory statements contained a series of assertions calculated to stir up anti-Muslim emotions, referring to “the danger of Islamisation”, or the way that “people from foreign cultures must adapt themselves more to Swiss society than they do at present.” They produced sweeping allegations, for instance that “Muslim children are held captive, mentally and socially, in their family’s traditional Islamic value-system”, and made highly questionable comparisons. The headscarf was said to be like a condom; something which reduces sensory perception. The two people on the other side, especially the Muslim woman invited to attend, who was experiencing the heat of a TV discussion for the very first time, were forced into a defensive position, answering the accusations which had been made. It was only the second opponent of the proposal to ban headscarves from schools, a Swiss woman from the Green Party, who managed to bring the discussion to a more realistic and pragmatic level. This example shows that in TV Talk-Shows – and more and more also in public discussions – although theoretically the objective is mutual understanding, what happens is a dispute, a verbal duel, presented in a way which is as exciting and as confrontational as possible. Such events are not really meant to help people to understand each other, empathise with each other and look for solutions to common problems. The participants are trying all the time to gain victory over the others. They are competing for public support. So, especially in programmes in which the people taking part are mostly elected politicians speaking to their particular constituency, the opinions presented and the questions discussed are formulated aggressively and in such a way as to make a clear division between “them” and “us”.[4] There can, of course, be an opposite problem: “dialogues” in which everybody concerned wants to keep things harmonious, and real differences are kept under wraps. Any dissonance is automatically regarded as judgemental and avoided because it is liable to lead to a quarrel. It is important to remember that the dialogical approach is different from negotiation. In negotiations both sides know what they want to achieve, where they are prepared to give way or compromise, and...
