The interfaith dialogue
By Asghar Ali Engineer
Friday, 11 March, 2011
IN our pluralist, globalised world, inter-religion, inter-culture and inter-civilisation dialogue has become very crucial.
There are serious misconceptions about communities other than our own; not only this, there are serious misconceptions about other sects in the same religious community.
Thus even intra-faith dialogue becomes necessary. The whole world has become multicultural and it is all the more necessary in a democratic system to get to know and understand one another. In a democracy, all citizens, whatever their culture, religion or ethnicity, enjoy equal rights and misconceptions about the ‘other’ come in the way of respecting that other’s equal rights. In a democratic, pluralist society, the three ‘Ds’ become necessary, i.e. democracy, diversity and dialogue.
Diversity strengthens democracy and dialogue strengthens diversity. Many tend to think that uniformity is necessary for democracy. It is a mistaken notion. In fact, uniformity can lead to dictatorship, and diversity can become a powerful force to ward off dictatorship. So diversity and dialogue become important. Also, it is important in a democracy to accept the ‘other’ as the ‘other’ is; no one has the right to prescribe how the other should be, which many often do, especially for minorities, be they cultural or religious.
It is often demanded of religious and cultural minorities that they should become part of the ‘mainstream’ culture and not maintain their distinctive features. All minorities come under such pressure. And it is religious or cultural majorities who define for the rest what the ‘mainstream’ culture is. Often, cultural or religious majorities also become a political majority to enforce their writ on society, which is against the spirit of democracy.
One should not confuse a cultural or religious majority with a political majority. The two are different. It is sheer arrogance on the part of a religious and a cultural majority to equate its social norms with having a political majority and thus the right to impose such norms on all. This is happening even in western democracies where minorities are coming under severe pressure to conform to majority cultural norms.
It is through inter-religion and inter-culture dialogue that one can understand the distinctive features of the other’s religion or culture. The basic thing about such a dialogue is the capacity to listen to the other. Listening is much more important in dialogue than speaking. There should be a proper balance between speaking and listening otherwise we can never understand the other. Better if we minimise speaking and let the other speak. There is one more tendency in dialogue which tends to deprive the dialogue of its essence, i.e. to bring out the best features of one’s own tradition and point out the worst from that of the other. One should be very honest and objective in a dialogue. One should bring out critically the weaknesses of one’s own tradition and readily appreciate what is best in the other’s tradition.
The best way to appreciate the other is to be a participant-observer, which many Sufi saints were in the subcontinent by adopting the local culture and language. Thus they became closer to the masses and influenced them more than if they were to write in their native Persian or Arabic.
Furthermore, one should not only quote from the scriptures but also evaluate critically one’s historical practices. What is written in the scriptures is often quite different from historical practices. We often take the best from our scriptures and the worst from the other’s historical practices and then tend to ‘prove’ our superiority. It is downright dishonesty to make such comparisons. Scriptures should be compared with scriptures and historical practices should be compared with historical practices.
What the scriptures prescribe is ideal, but historical practices depend on various factors, like interpretation, pre-existing cultural traditions, selfish interests of practitioners and so on. For example, what is stated in the Quran about women’s rights was never practised in Islamic societies as these societies were patriarchal in structure and their cultural traditions could not accept gender equality and hence they found various ways of violating gender equality. Thus it would be unfair to blame gender oppression in Muslim societies on the Quran.
In all interfaith dialogue, the idea should be to understand the other rather than convert the other to one’s own point of view.
An interfaith dialogue should be carried out in the spirit of acceptance of the other rather than rejection. For this, it is necessary that both sides be well-versed in their respective traditions. Deep conviction is necessary in one’s own tradition before one is able to appreciate the conviction of the other.
However, this does not mean one should be rigid about one’s own position. Tolerance and respect for the other is the very basis of dialogue. One should not condemn the other even if one cannot accept the other’s point of view or practice. A good example is that of Mazhar Jan-i-Janan respecting the Hindu tradition of idol worshipping and its justification from the Hindus’ viewpoint, though he himself would not do so.
Intra-faith dialogue is also very important for the coexistence of various sects of the same religion, especially where majority and minority sects are concerned. There exist misgivings about one another’s beliefs and rituals, which can lead to rioting amongst adherents of the same faith but following different sects. In pre-independence days there were riots between Bohras and Sunni Muslims in Patan, India, when a Sunni boy went missing and it was said that he was slaughtered and his blood mixed with rice by Bohras, who ate it. It was on Jinnah’s intervention that the riots stopped and peace was established.
The writer is an Islamic scholar who also heads the Centre for Study of Society & Secularism, Mumbai.