Abrahamic Faiths, Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts
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Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series 1. Culture and Values, Volume 7 Abrahamic Faiths, Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts Edited by Paul Peachey George F. McLean John Kromkowski The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy 1 Copyright © 1997 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Abrahamic faith, ethnicity, and ethnic conflicts / edited by Paul Peachey, George F. McLean, John A. Kromkowski. – Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1997. p.cm. — (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series I. Culture and values ; vol. 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ethnicity—Religious aspects. 2. Nationalism—Religious aspects. 3. Ethnic Relations— Religious aspects. 4. Religion—Relations. 5. Abraham (Biblical patriarch). 6. Judaism. 7. Christianity. 8. Islam. I. Peachey, Paul, 1918-. II. McLean, George F. III. Kromkowski, John, 1939-. IV. Series BL65.E75A37 1997 97-20062 291.1’4—dc21 CIP ISBN 1-56518-104-2 (pbk.) 2 Table of Contents Foreword ix Introduction 1 Part I. Ethnicity and Conflict in the World Today 13 Chapter I. Belief, Ethnicity, and Nationalism 19 by David Little Chapter II. Belief Ethnicity and Nationalism. The Case of Judaism 41 by Sidney Schwarz Chapter III. Peoples and Nations of God: Response to David Little 49 by Alex F. C. Webster Chapter IV. Ethnicity and Islamic Modernization 59 by Mustafa Malik Chapter V. Liberal Intimations of Transcendence 77 by David Walsh Part II. The Call of Abraham -- "Go . A Land That I Will Show You" 95 Chapter VI. Abrahamic Faith: Calling and Response in Jewish Narrative Theology 99 by Michael Kogan Chapter VII. Of Flesh and Faith 115 by Theodore Pulcini Chapter VIII. Ibrahim: A Family Portrait 129 by Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo Part III. The Social Anthropology of Ethnicity and Primordial Solidarities 139 Chapter IX. Ethnicity, Culture and Primordial Solidarities 143 by George F. McLean Chapter X. Response to George McLean 175 by Henri M. Yaker A Brief Response 180 by George F. McLean 3 Chapter XI. Response to George McLean 183 by Joseph G. Donders Chapter XII. Ethnicity and Community in Islam 189 by Chaoura Bourough Part IV. Transcendence of God Versus Absolutizing Tendencies 203 Among Monotheistic Peoples Chapter XIII. Mipne Darche Shalom: Transcending Boundaries in Pursuit of Peace 207 by Jack Luxemburg Chapter XIV. Distance and Belonging 213 by Miroslav Volf Chapter XV. Scriptural Faith and Ethnicity: Some Lessons from the Islamic Experience 237 by Sulayman Nyang Part V. A Socio-Political Analysis of Religion and Modernization 249 Chapter XVI. Scriptural Faiths and the Social Process 253 by John Kromkowski Chapter XVII. Halakah, Mitzva and Individual Liberalism 287 by Bernard Cooperman Chapter XVIII. The New Nationalism and the Gospel Witness 295 by Vigen Guroian Part VI. The Vocation of the Monotheistic Faiths in a Conflictual World 305 Chapter XIX. The Vocation of Judaism in a Conflictual World 309 by Jack Moline Chapter XX. The Vocation of Christianity in a Conflictual World 321 by Charles West Chapter XXI. The Vocation of Islam in a Conflictual World 331 by Khalid Duran Epilogue. Abrahamic Faith and Ethnicity in Lieu of a Conclusion 341 by Paul Peachey A Brief Response by George F. McLean 4 Acknowledgements 5 Foreword George F. McLean The issue of "Abrahamic Faiths, Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict" can be taken up at a number of levels, each with its own concerns. The fact that ethnic conflicts have undermined the high hopes for peace which accompanied the end of the cold war suggests that our analysis of conflict in our times had been superficial. It appears to have ignored the deep human sensibilities and commitments involved in ethnic identity and their even deeper religious roots. This is not surprising, for in modern secular culture all is directed toward ignoring these dimensions of life -- toward placing them on the other side of "a wall of separation" according to Jefferson’s term, or behind a "veil of ignorance" as employed by Rawls in his Political Liberalism. Due to such exclusions it can be expected that even the best intentioned public efforts at overcoming ethnic conflict will be but palliatives which treat the symptoms while leaving the real causes to fester unattended and suppressing the real remedies. Indeed, only by pure and improbable chance could such efforts avoid exacerbating those causes while weakening the roots of human comity which they refuse to acknowledge. This suggests, rather than ignoring cultural identities, the need to take the opposite route looking positively into the nature of ethnicity and its roots in religion in order better to understand the nature of both and their mutual relation. In so doing the goal is to see how they are ordered to creating harmony, how, like all that is human, this can devolve into conflict, and how such conflict can be avoided or overcome. The approaches found in this work are then twofold. One looks to the political order in ways which separate ethnicity and religion from public policy, and searches for responses to ethnic conflict in terms of the isolation and/or reduction of ethnic and religious identities. The other looks for insight into the nature of ethnicity, particularly as this is rooted in scriptural faiths, and the possibilities these provide for understanding a cohesive diversity from within a deeper unity. In this light some of the main themes of this study of "Abrahamic Faiths, Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict" might be ordered along a trajectory moving from the level of political structures, to the pattern of civil society, to ethnic groups, to religion, and thence returning inversely to ethnicity and civil peace once again. Political Structures: In the North Atlantic region a liberal, capitalist outlook has shaped public legislation and funding, the courts and the media. This focuses upon the human person as an individual subject of rights; all is related adversarially, especially in terms of the individual’s acquisition of property. The social order is constituted of the compromises required in order to promote and protect this right of the multiple individuals, which is the chief task of the political order endowed with coercive power. The necessary compromises of personal freedom are considered tolerable if based upon full and equal assent, which, in turn, becomes the overriding sense of freedom and the center of proximate concern. With regard to religion, on the supposition of one variant that this is a purely individual matter, and conceiving the different faith commitments also to be related adversarially, equal participation in society is seen to require that religion be carefully separated or "walled off" from the state. Conversely, the state is to be indifferent to religion and to assure that all and only secular concerns have recognized standing and are promoted in its domain. As society becomes more complex and the political dimension expands, in reality, as notes, Rabbi Jack Moline in Chapter XX below, religion comes to be relativized and marginalized. It is considered only as the servant of secular 7 concerns for equality in competitiveness, which presume to judge a God-centered approach in terms of whether it meets this test of liberal correctness. Problems were noted with this more negative view: 1) its ethnocentric character: that it is constructed on the basis of the individualistic prejudices characteristic of the nominalist Anglo-Saxon culture, a dichotomy of public vs private, and a particular theology of religion as a purely private matter. 2) its ideology of aggressive secularism sedulously removing the consideration of God and religion from all that touches upon public life; and 3) given the present importance, on the one hand, of the state and international organizations in public life, and, on the other hand, of religion as the basis of culture, items (1) and (2) combine to generate a public policy which is consistently negative with regard to cultural distinctiveness: along with religion, ethnicity too must be relegated to the private sphere. In this individualist and adversarial ideology ethnicity can be understood only negatively as fundamentally aggressive, and hence, like all creative freedom, must be subjected to the political concerns of the Grand Inquisitor. In contrast, David Walsh’s analysis of Dostoevski’s classic passage points to the forgotten but essential need of the liberal view for a positive religious context The secularization of the Christian faith in the transcendent value of freedom cannot survive the loss of faith in the participation of transcendent reality. By itself the liberal faith in the unconditional worth of the person, their free donation of self in love, cannot be sustained. Without a recognition of human openness to the reality that is beyond all reality, the political expression in the preservation of inalienable rights becomes a hollow shell. Once faith in transcendent reality is firmly rejected, faith in the transcendence of human nature cannot survive. This suggests that a more positive approach to the issue of religion, ethnicity and peace be explored. Civil Society: The difficulties in the above arise from the supposition that the only reality is the individual human being, and that all social relations are purely contractual ones between conflicting individuals for utilitarian purposes. Hence, the first step of a response is to restore the sense of the inherently social nature of humankind. This could begin in faith from the recognition that human beings as created by the one God are by nature social. But for those who can consider all, even faith, only in an adversarial perspective it is sufficient to recognize that persons can be born only of, and into, a social union, and that their own survival depends upon the concern of others, which must be mutual.