wfn.org | BWNS - Baha'i scholar receives interfaith honor

["Michael Day" <mday@bwc.org>]

Baha'i World News Service
For more information, contact editor@bahaiworldnews.org
 
Baha'i Scholar receives interfaith honor

COLLEGE PARK, MARYLAND,  United States, 2 March 2004 -- Professor Suheil
Bushrui, who holds the Baha'i chair for World Peace at the University of
Maryland, has received an award previously bestowed on such luminaries as
Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.
 
On March 1 2004, Professor Bushrui was honored with the Juliet Hollister
Award from the New York-based Temple of Understanding, a global interfaith
organization.
 
The award is in recognition of Prof. Bushrui's "exceptional service to
interfaith understanding."
 
As well as the former South African president, Mr. Mandela, and the Dalai
Lama, recipients have included Queen Noor of Jordan, and the former UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. Also receiving the award this
year were Coleman Barks, and Cokie and Steven V. Roberts.
 
"What we are looking for are people who carry the interfaith message to a
large audience, and Prof. Bushrui has certainly done that," said Alison Van
Dyk, executive director of the Temple.
 
Prof. Bushrui has a long record of promoting intercultural and interreligious
understanding. 
 
In large part, this work has been built on two main themes -- the commonality
of all religions and the essential oneness of the human family. 
 
For the last 10 years, Prof. Bushrui's platform for the promotion of such
ideas has been the Baha'i Chair for World Peace at the University of
Maryland, a professorial post endowed largely by the worldwide Baha'i
community. 
 
Prof. Bushrui has organized conferences promoting international and
interfaith dialogue. He has lectured in the United States and Europe on
globalization and human rights, and has sponsored prominent guest lectures. 
 
Prof. Bushrui is also known for the quality of his teaching -- another factor
in the Hollister Award. 
 
"Many teachers are good," said Maynard Mack, director of the Honors Program
at the University of Maryland. "But Suheil is life-changing. We hear this
over and over again, that students' whole attitude towards education, their
whole attitude towards life, changes in his class." 
 
In 1999, Prof. Bushrui was chosen "teacher of the year" at the University, a
significant honor on a campus with more than 2,800 full time faculty. 
 
Elie Teichman, a 21-year-old senior at the University who is considering
rabbinical school after graduation, said that Prof. Bushrui's honors seminar
on "The Spiritual Heritage of the Human Race" was "one of my most treasured
academic experiences in college." 
 
Cynthia Roberts Hale, assistant dean in the College of Behavior and Social
Sciences, where the Baha'i Chair resides, said Prof. Bushrui has had an
"enormous impact" on the campus, despite some initial skepticism about him. 
 
"But he has developed relationships all over the campus, and he has won the
respect of many people, first because he is a scholar in his own right and
second because he is a citizen of the world. 
 
"So often, academics have a message that is only for each other. But Suheil
has the capacity to communicate with everyone, whether a child, a student, a
scholar, or the House of Lords," said Dr. Hale. "And Suheil wants you to know
that he believes in God, that there is a world order, and that there is a
code of human behavior -- and he is constantly translating that into a
formula for world peace."
 
Born in Nazareth
 
Born 74 years ago in Nazareth, Suheil Bushrui went to Arab primary schools
and then to St. George's College in Jerusalem.
 
"I had a foundation in Qu'ranic, Arabic studies, but then I moved to an
English school, and the literature fascinated me," Prof. Bushrui said.
 
"In particular, I was fascinated by the romantic poets, Keats, Shelley, and
Byron. They appealed to my Arab imagination, I think."
 
He obtained a doctorate in English literature at the University of
Southampton. He taught there and later at universities in Nigeria and Canada.
 
It was in the junction of two worlds -- of his Arab childhood and of his
English education -- that he found a great resource for intercultural
harmony.
 
"The link between the two cultures is that tremendous area -- where I think
many cultures meet -- that is commonly referred to as the 'perennial
philosophy,'" said Prof. Bushrui. "My whole work on Yeats has always been
about the perennial philosophy, about his search for a universal religion."
 
Popularized by Aldous Huxley, the term "perennial philosophy" encompasses the
idea that there is one Divine reality underlying all religions and cultures,
even though it has been revealed to humanity at different times and in
different forms.
 
The other main influence on Prof. Bushrui's thinking has been his practice of
the Baha'i Faith. Born into a Baha'i family, he has lived by the Baha'i
teachings since childhood. Its themes of religious and human oneness are
clearly found throughout his writings and lectures.
 
"For me," said Prof. Bushrui, "the Baha'i religion -- which does not
emphasize a narrow religious perspective -- opened up tremendous vistas of
acceptance of other traditions in such a way that it emphasized the
commonalities between the various cultures and religions of the world."
 
Lebanon and Gibran
 
Prof. Bushrui accepted a position at the American University of Beirut in
1968.
 
"In part, my return to Lebanon stemmed from a tremendous desire to publish in
Arabic and to express myself in the language I have loved from childhood,"
said Prof. Bushrui. "It was in Lebanon that I began to work assiduously on
Gibran."
 
As with Yeats, Prof. Bushrui found in the work and life of Kahlil Gibran a
profound repository of universal thinking that he believed could be a great
source of healing in the world.
 
"Gibran was perhaps one of the foremost promoters of world unity and the
unity of religions," said Prof. Bushrui.
 
Prof. Bushrui published several books on the Lebanese poet, including, in
1998, "Kahlil Gibran: Man and Poet," which he coauthored with Joe Jenkins.
 
"His words went beyond the mere evocation of the mysterious East but
endeavored to communicate the necessity of reconciliation between
Christianity and Islam, spirituality and materialism, East and West," wrote
Bushrui and Jenkins.
 
One of his recent projects, a book entitled "The Wisdom of the Arabs," which
compiles traditional sayings from throughout Arab culture, takes a popular
approach to promoting cross-cultural understanding.
 
"It's a critically important book," said Arab cultural specialist Mounzer
Sleiman, who calls Prof. Bushrui a "super ambassador" for Arab culture.
 
Prof. Bushrui also has "real world" experience at promoting cross-cultural
harmony. In the 1980s, Lebanon's President Amine Gemayel, one of his former
students, appointed Prof. Bushrui as his non-partisan cultural advisor,
bringing him directly into the field of international politics and conflict
resolution.
 
"In Lebanon at the time, of course, the main concern was how do you create
understanding and resolve conflict between the various religious groups
there, especially between Christians and Muslims," said Prof. Bushrui. "I
believe that it was possible to do this through the arts, through the great
works of literature, and particularly through the works of Gibran himself."
 
"You see, what most people don't appreciate is that literature is a holistic
study," said Prof. Bushrui. "It encompasses psychology, history, culture, and
politics. And what has interested me is how culture and religion have
interacted towards one another. And how they can be reconciled."
 
"In poetry, for example, whether the poet is aware of it or not, there is a
sacred knowledge, which is transmitted from generation to generation," said
Prof. Bushrui. "And that sacred knowledge, which is the basis of all great
poetry, is what makes poetry universal."
 
In one of his speeches, "The Spiritual Foundation of Human Rights," Prof.
Bushrui argued that since all religions recognize "the existence of
individual souls and the relationship between that soul and its Creator,"
every religion in essence agrees that "human beings enjoy certain inalienable
rights that no worldly authority may capriciously or systematically
abrogate."
 
Prof. Bushrui has addressed many prominent audiences. In 2000 and 2001, he
addressed the House of Lords in Great Britain, and in 2001 he spoke at the US
Library of Congress on the topic of "Globalization and the Baha'i Community
in the Muslim World."