wfn.org | Southern India meets southern Indiana

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Note #7430 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

17-September-2002
02354

Southern India meets southern Indiana

Interfaith speakers encounter like minds at Corydon Presbyterian

by John Filiatreau

CORYDON, IN - After enjoying a night and day of Hoosier hospitality, a
Muslim-Christian "tag team" from India wrestled with ugly stereotypes and
told about 35 people at Corydon Presbyterian Church that Islam is a
hospitable and peace-loving religion.

The featured guests at the Friday night event were Andreas D'Souza, the Roman
Catholic director of the Henry Martyn Institute for Christian-Muslim
Relations, in Hyderabad, southern India; and Ismat Lateef Mehdi, a Muslim
professor at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, also in
Hyderabad. 

D'Souza has a doctorate in Islamic studies and speaks 15 languages, 10 of
them fluently, all of them mellifluously. Mehdi, a Muslim, has a degree in
English literature and a doctorate in modern Arabic literature, and has
worked as a cultural attachi at the Indian embassy in Cairo, Egypt. They were
introduced as academics of "impeccable credentials" who "speak more foreign
languages than you and I could probably name."

They are one of 10 Muslim-Christian pairs taking part in the inaugural
Interfaith Listening Project, in which teams from 10 countries around the
globe are meeting with groups of U.S. Presbyterians in more than 30
presbyteries from coast to coast to talk about how people of different faiths
manage to get along in their home cultures. 

The two-week pilot program, sponsored by the Worldwide Ministries Division
and the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program of the Congregational Ministries
Division, was created in the wake of last year's terror attacks on New York
City and Washington, DC.

D'Souza and Mehdi were fresh from a down-home meal prepared by church member
Karolyn Mangeot, who had curried their favor by finding and dusting off old
her Yoga cookbook (a relic of "the flower-child era," she said), making rice
and vegetable dishes called pulao and raita (certified "authentic Indian
food" by her guests), and having Mehdi offer a kind of grace - "what Muslims
would say before a meal."

During the later give-and-take at the Corydon church, Mehdi said Islam
teaches that, because God is "merciful and gracious - merciful to infinity,"
Muslims "also on our part should be merciful."

D'Souza, explaining that the word "Islam" actually comes from a root that
means "peace" and "submission," pointed out that the Koran says repeatedly
that "nothing is more hateful than man killing man." Muslim scripture makes
clear, he said, that when people have disagreements, they are to "sort them
out properly," not resort to violence.

Responding to questions about the Muslim suicide bombers who have become a
mainstay of the Western media, Mehdi assured her hosts that "suicide is
absolutely forbidden in Islam - Allah has given us life, and Allah will take
us away." Asked about the suicide bombers' reputed belief that their souls
will go after death to what the questioner, perhaps thinking about Indians of
another sort, called "the happy hunting ground," she said mainstream Muslims
believe that if a person takes his or her own life, "the soul will suffer."

Both Indians contended that Christianity and Islam are more alike than not.

Mehdi said her country is 12 percent Muslim and 3 percent Christian (80
percent of Indians are Hindus), and "for the most part is a very tolerant
country ... a melting pot of so many religions." Muslims in India, she said,
have "watered down the very strict order of Islam" and incorporated some
practices more common among Hindus, to make it "more acceptable."

"Muslims of, say, Bengal, resemble their Hindu counterparts more than (they
resemble) Muslims from another area," she said.

Although Muslims are a relatively small minority in India, she added, the
country has more adherents of Islam than any nation except Indonesia.

D'Souza asked his audience what sort of images come to their minds when
someone speaks of Muslims. The answers were what he'd expected: Middle
Easterners. Arabs. Terrorists. Suicide bombers. Fanatics. Oppressors of
women. "Are all Muslims terrorists?" he asked. "Are all Muslims violent? Who
is a Muslim?"

D'Souza, dressed in a white, flowing garment called a kurtha pisama, noted
that Christianity and Islam have much in common: Belief in a single God;
respect for the values inherent in the 10 commandments; a common forebear,
the Biblical Abraham (Christians descended from his son Isaac, Muslims from
his son Ishmael); a reverence for scripture (the Bible, the Koran); belief in
heaven and hell; shared holy sites, notably Jerusalem; a love of God that
finds expression in love of other people; a long, ironic history of violence
against people of other faiths; and a conviction among the adherents of each
that theirs is "the one true faith."

When one female listener said, "I feel sorry for the (Muslim) women, the ones
who have to wear all the clothes," Mehdi, herself unveiled and dressed in a
colorful native sari, responded that such practices are "much more cultural
than religious"; noted that some Islamic cultures are more liberal than
others; explained that "women actually have a very respectable position in
Islam ... a very high position"; but conceded that "women are second-class
citizens in some countries, which keep their women behind, and put them
down," out of devotion to "what they think is pure."

She pointed out that Muslim cultures were among the first to grant women the
right to marry and divorce, to go into business, to own and inherit property.
"Women may be covered head to toe but they are making a great contribution,"
she said.

In response to a question about "jihad," she said the term's primary meaning
is "the struggle with the self, the struggle with the urges, fashions, lusts,
with the promptings to do evil things."

"We have to fight within ourselves," she said. "Every day we have to have a
little reckoning."

The secondary (though more familiar) meaning of "jihad" is warfare against
non-Muslims "in case the community is attacked - if you are attacked, then in
self-defense you may fight," Mehdi said. She complained that politically
radical Muslim groups "have hijacked the whole concept of jihad," redefining
it as a global battle against "infidels," specifically Christians and
Americans.

Referring to suicide bombers, D'Souza said: "I will begin to ask, why are
they doing this, why are so many young men in Palestine killing themselves?"
He answered his own question: "They have no future. ... It is an act of
desperation; there is no way they can find justice, they have tried all means
possible to get redress, to get justice."

"They have killed innocent people," D'Souza conceded, referring to the
Palestinians, "but how many of them have been killed? ... There are many
innocent people who have died; I cry over that ... but they (the
Palestinians) also are human beings. ... 

"The child that is dying, whether in Palestine, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, it
is the same life. The parents have the same aspirations for their child."

"As Christians we have a duty to break the cycle of violence," he added.
"Jesus loved us so much that he died on the cross, and that is the example we
have."

Nora Pendleton, a Muslim native of Malaysia who married and moved to Corydon
in 1984, said she was surprised to learn "how similar Christianity and Islam
really are." When she returns to her homeland, she said, she encounters "so
much hatred of America, because of American policies. ... All we know about
Americans is when they drop bombs on Muslim countries." Pendleton, a mother
of three children, said some members of her family in Malaysia ask, "You
really allow (Christians) under your roof?"

That was an echo of a man who earlier had observed, "We have only seen ...
the bad side of the Muslim faith."

A co-sponsor of the Indians' appearance in Corydon was a community group
called Unity in Community, created several years ago when the Ku Klux Klan
scheduled a rally in the Harrison County town (in a part of Indiana once
considered a hotbed of the KKK). Presbyterians and others in the community
collected 2,500 signatures on a resolution expressing support for "the
dignity of all people."

The KKK rally "fizzled horribly," Mangeot said, and the race-hate group has
never come back to Corydon.

Asked about his impressions after four days of his American tour of nearly
two weeks, D'Souza said, "Wherever we have gone, we have found open hearts,
generosity and love."

The session ended with a few moment of interfaith prayer. D'Souza began by
asking his hosts to breathe deeply and "be conscious of the breath, a gift
from God," saying, "Just as breath is abundantly available to us, so God is
available right now." After Hindu, Muslim and Christian prayers, including a
thoughtful, phrase-by-phrase recitation of the Lord's Prayer, everyone broke
for conversation and dessert.

Interim Pastor Wayne Willis said he believed the event was a success and had
created good will. "How could you feel hostile toward either of these human
beings?" he asked, referring to Mehdi and D'Souza.

Mary Lou Stevens, a member of Corydon Presbyterian, said she thought the
90-minute program was "marvelous," adding: "It just didn't last long enough.
We want to know more."

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