The world is passing through a tumultuous time, in which the need for a better interfaith relationship is badly felt
IN my humble opinion not many people would know about a boy named Ali Jawarish. On Tuesday, November 11, 1997, the nine-year- old boy was playing with his friends near a holy site in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, when he received a rubber-coated bullet in his forehead, fired by an Israeli soldier, and passed away. An anti-Israeli demonstration was taking place nearby. Later on, his parents donated his organs to the Israeli National Organ Bank.
Similarly, I doubt if many of us remember a 23-year-old young girl named Rachel Corey from Washington, ran over on March 16, 2003 by an Israeli army bulldozer in the town of Rafah, Gaza Strip. It happened when Rachel and her companions from the International Solidarity Movement were trying to block the path of two bulldozers and an Israeli tank that were hellbent on tearing down Palestinian buildings.
Then there was a photograph printed in different newspapers showing a sombre-faced, white-haired man with the Bosnian Muslim leader Mustafa Ceric, in Srebrenica, helping members of a family bury a man and his three sons killed in the 1995 massacre. It was former US president Bill Clinton, invited by the survivors of the Srebrenica carnage to have a look at the cemetery for more than 7,000 victims on Sept 20, 2003.
On my part, I don’t even know the names of those three rabbis from Israel and the United States who came to rebuild the demolished Palestinian homes in Al-Khalil in March, 1998. However, I am quite sure that the above-mentioned examples form just a part of numerous such examples — examples, that symbolize the universal human yearning for a harmonious interfaith relationship.
But then why was Medina Mustafa Shaikh of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India made to live, as long as she’s to live, with the terrible memory of her young daughter, screaming in pain, crying for help as a group of Hindu men raped and tortured her to death in a maize field where her family had holed up to escape a bloodthirsty mob during the 2002 genocide of the Muslims?
Why doesn’t Slabodan Milosivic express any remorse for torturing and killing 80 people, including women, in Croatia and Bosnia? It is a known fact that he used to cut off ears of the Muslims.
These examples too unfortunately happen to be just an exposed part of something of a greater magnitude. Religious intolerance is a reality that is bitter and agonizing.
What further pains a sensitive person is the fact that despite all the well-attended seminars, workshops, conferences and other similar happenings around the world, despite all the well-written articles, theses and theories, books and booklets, lectures and sermons, interfaith animosity continues to grow. Numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations are trying to find ways whereby the goal of better interfaith relations can be achieved.
However, these organizations have their own limitations. Some of them are single religion-based, working for different sects; some are devoted to promote harmony between two particular religions; and some concentrate on a specific geography and thus have a confined scope of activity.
Many of these organizations are limited to seminars and conferences, which seldom produce widespread and long lasting results. Some of them are guided by their own selfish political agenda and some have lopsided representation of a particular religion. And most of them suffer resource deficiency.
Indisputably, there’s a need to get to the crux of the matter to disrupt the roadmap of hate. This means that insufficient information translates into misinformation; misinformation turns into misgivings; misgivings into fear; and fear into hate.
We need an organization of logic that could deeply delve into the root causes of all such problems. An organization which could perform everywhere, for all religions — an organization of religions (OR).
It’s a fact that the politicians, government owners, corporate rulers and other elements of power who reap a lot of gains because of interfaith mistrust, cannot be reformed. Such elements have always wielded great influence in history in one form or the other, and would continue to harm the harmony of the world in times to come.
Still, there’s a lot that can be done. The problem can be deprived of its vital energy source, which is misinformation. And it can be replaced by information and truth.
The organization of religions can be formed under the patronage of people like former Malaysian prime minister Mohathir Mohammad (who turned a country strewn with ethno-religious discord into a modern miracle of interfaith harmony), former South African president Nelson Mandela (who led a great struggle against apartheid), former American president Bill Clinton (who deprived former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali and former British prime minister John Major of the sadist pleasure of relishing a well-organized killing of the Muslims in the centre of civilization, the European hemisphere), Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz (whose peace plan for the Middle East is still the most rational and viable initiative conceived in the recent past), and Prince Charles (who’s been consistently fostering interfaith relations).
In this regard, key objectives of existence and key motives of action can be achieved by replacing misinformation with truth, for which the organization of religions would have to gather true knowledge of religions through genuine scholars and institutions from all over the world.
The organization would find points of agreement between religions for their followers in order to understand each other. After all, every religion preaches peace.
The organization would have to be apolitical in nature and would not operate in any areas of conflict. It would alleviate interfaith misunderstanding by highlighting the facts in poorly- informed societies through multimedia and a multisource approach. It would be extra cautious in identifying the scholars to work with. It should not solicit the assistance of any scholar who’s associated with any government in any capacity. It could be funded by different governments not involved in any interfaith conflict and individuals and businesses who would not seek to influence the organization.
It should also be an agile organization with not a huge staff strength, divided into secretariat and field personnel reaching out to scholars and institutions around the world. However, the organization would have a large number of honorary members to work within their respective societies.
The founding and running cost of the organization could appear negligible when compared with the cost of losses incurred by interfaith misunderstanding.
This all may seem too optimist a dream, just like the idea of interfaith understanding. But then, aren’t we supposed to dream?
The world is passing through a tumultuous time, in which the need for a better interfaith relationship is badly felt 
