I prefer to reserve much of my own comment on the article below, from the Austin American Statesman, to which a friend alerted me, and simply give you the story to muse over and perhaps comment on. It's a good article, which moves me away from the controversy of politics to yet another kind of controversy--the theologically controversial position of demanding an answer, an apology, from God.
A few minutes into our conversation about how efforts to make peace between Jews and Muslims help honor his slain son, Judea Pearl stopped me in my tracks by announcing that he believed God owed him a personal apology.
Let me back up. I had called Pearl, father of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, to discuss Sunday's Abraham Walk at the Dell Jewish Community Campus. Pearl will speak at the annual interfaith event that brings together Jews, Christians and Muslims to retrace the journey made by their common ancestor, Abraham.
Our phone interview came hours before the sunset ushered in Yom Kippur, when Jews around the world gathered in synagogues to stand before God and atone for their sins. A local Jewish scholar had suggested I raise the question of how Pearl deals with his son's murder by a militant Muslim group in Pakistan almost seven years ago when Daniel Pearl was on assignment there. What better time than Yom Kippur to talk about forgiveness?
Pearl's answer was swift and raw.
"I am Jewish. I don't buy the Christian notion of forgiveness. I don't think there's any inherent mystical power in the act of forgiving. You forgive when the person who did a certain crime acknowledges regret and change of behavior. Until that happens, in the Jewish tradition, forgiveness doesn't catch."
Then Pearl said evenly, "God owes me a personal apology, not only to me but to all decent people in the world for betraying their expectation of what good and evil is in this world."
He includes most Muslims in that aggrieved group, but there's no denying that Pearl is at war with radical Muslims, the ones who beheaded his son. It seems to me that interfaith dialogue becomes harder and harder as the world's religious conflicts intensify.
Yes, Jews, Christians and Muslims share a common ancestor in Abraham, but can they call each other brother and sister at a time when radicalism and resentment build globally? When government and faith are perceived as interwoven, making Christians and Jews afraid of Iranian Muslims and Muslims angry at Israeli Jews and American Christians?
People such as Pearl, a computer scientist who runs the Daniel Pearl Foundation, and Tom Spencer, CEO of the Austin Area Interreligious Ministries, live and work with the hope that it's possible to overcome those challenges.
Pearl's way of doing this is by rejecting what he calls the "nicey-nicey" atmosphere of many interfaith meetings in favor of encouraging people to lay bare their fears, assumptions and darkest thoughts.
He does it by example. Pearl works with a Muslim friend, Akbar Ahmed, the former high commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain. The two, Pearl said, have managed to reach beyond the "professional interfaithers" by confronting hot topics in public discussions with Jews, Muslims and others. No issue is taboo.
"The trouble with interfaith meetings ... is that people enjoy the music and they enjoy the cookies, but they hate to spoil the party by discussing the hard issues," Pearl said. "And we went the other way around. We come with the expectation that their pains will be discussed, will be expressed honestly and faithfully and will be treated and responded to with respect."
He doesn't shy away from the fact that many Muslims are angry at the Israeli government, and many Jews are upset that Muslims use anti-Israel rhetoric that sometimes comes across as anti-Semitic.
But he also sees the value of celebrations of unity through events such as the Abraham Walk where he believes his son's spirit shines through.
It seems fitting, Spencer said, that the Jewish Community Association of Austin would host the walk, which re-creates on a small scale the journey the prophet Abraham made through the desert, and that the international event coincides with the festival of Sukkot, when Jews build a sukkah, or booth, similar to the shelters their spiritual ancestors used while wandering the desert. During the festival, Jews eat and sometimes sleep in their sukkah.
Also inspiring to Spencer is the idea that this year's event would be driven by the youths who will perform skits depicting three Abrahamic virtues. Christians will demonstrate unity, Muslims faith and Jews hospitality. The Jewish booth will be an actual sukkah.
In addition, Pearl's talk will be bookmarked by musical performances as part of World Music Days, another project created to preserve Daniel Pearl's legacy as an avid musician.
"You think about these three traditions and their long, tangled and often bloody history together," Spencer said. "These are the world traditions that are most in need of healing. This is one of the most critical issues of the 21st century: How can we resolve the painful histories of these three faith traditions?"
For years, we have seen interfaith leaders attempt these conversations and events in Austin. Spencer acknowledges that sometimes, conversation leads nowhere. Sometimes, the breakthrough happens when people from the city's various faiths don't talk at all but take up hammers and paint brushes and repair the home of a poor elderly woman in East Austin.
The descendants of Abraham have not had an easy time sharing space. Pearl says his job is to make his small contribution with the hope it will benefit future generations.
And that is how a man who rejects the idea of forgiveness for its own sake, a father who feels betrayed by God, can find the possibility of redemption. Through these small contributions he's made with his brothers and sisters in Abraham, Pearl says he might have heard God whisper that apology, not to him personally but to all of humanity.
"Perhaps he already made this step in the form of World Music Days, in the form of this kind of gathering of people of all denominations recognizing their oneness, in the form of the legacy of Daniel Pearl," he said. "On a collective basis, perhaps God has made this step here that can be viewed as a positive step toward peace. So many people now have a face to relate to. Peace means Daniel Pearl. ... Perhaps this was God's way of advancing peace on the collective level."
Recent Comments