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CONTRIBUTE BLOGS
04/02/2009 18:22
by Marcia Stepanek
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in The Observer written by
Joss Garman, the 24-year-...
03/02/2009 22:35
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As the recent copyright woes
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02/16/2009 07:24
by Marcia Stepanek
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God.org
Can philanthropy help ease rising ethnic and religious conflict in ways that governments cannot?
There is no easy solution to the myriad challenges posed by religious and ethnic diversity, and mitigating growing conflict around
the world requires a confluence of efforts and new conversations. New
relationships are needed to more effectively bridge the cultural,
political, and economic gaps that make peace in the rapidly globalizing
world seem ever more elusive. Action by central state authorities has
not been enough. How can the nonprofit sector play a role?
To discuss peace, charity, and what philanthropy can and cannot do to
help mediate rising religious and ethnic conflict at home and abroad.
CONTRIBUTE's Editor-in-Chief Marcia Stepanek
convened a roundtable of eight nonprofit and religious leaders,
conflict mediators, and academics including a Rabbi, a Catholic, a
Muslim, and a Unitarian minister. Participating in the roundtable
October 9 at the magazine's Greenwich Village design studio were: Robert Malley,
former special assistant to President Clinton on Arab-Israeli affairs
and a program director for the International Crisis Group in
Washington; Ron Bruder,
a former business executive, philanthropist, and founder of Education
for Employment Foundation, which aims to provide job training and
education to Muslims in the Middle East; Dr. Peter Dobkin Hall, a lecturer and nonprofit expert at Harvard University; Rabbi David Kirshner, seniordirector of institutional advancement at The Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan; Kerry Robinson,
executivedirector of the National Leadership Roundtable on
ChurchManagement and a member of Foundations and Donors Interested in
Catholic Activities; Ahmed Younis, national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; William Vendley, secretary-general of Religions for Peace, an international coalition of world religions, and the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt, minister of the Fourth Universalist Society of the City of New York.
What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.
CONTRIBUTE:
Robert Malley, you chaired a working group at this fallis Clinton
Global Initiative conference on religious and ethnic conflict. The
point was made that religious institutions are the worldis largest
distribution systems for aid. What about new messages of tolerance and
mediation?
MALLEY:
The links of faith for most people around the world, perhaps the
majority, are more important than anything else. It's what ties us
together. People listen to religious leaders. They want to get their
basic services, not necessarily from the state, but from churches,
mosques, synagogues. What inspired me was the notion that if aid could
be provided this way, then so, too, could messages of conflict
resolution and cooperation. Now, we can't be naive and think that the
messages are always messages of tolerance. But since religious
institutions are conveyors of such critical messages, it's incumbent on
everyone to make sure the messages are those of peace and tolerance
rather than of hatred and warfare.
Dr. Hall, you're an historian and expert in nonprofits and philanthropy. Can philanthropy be a force for mediation?
HALL:
Overall, NGOs, both religious and secular, play a key role in
developing and spreading universal norms and the cause of human rights
and of economic justice. Even those religious groups going head-to-head
with others are doing social service work. Hezbollah may be spreading
doctrines of intolerance, but they're also doing a social service
delivery. So it's a very complicated situation.
Kerry Robinson, you're on the board of Foundations and Donors
Interested in Catholic Activities. Some 60 percent of all charitable
dollars are given to religious charities and institutions. Is there
enough transparency over how that money is being spent?
ROBINSON:
I think as Catholics in this country have risen to levels of affluence
and influence, they are looking for greater transparency in terms of
making philanthropic donations. They want to maximize the grant dollar,
and they want to be certain that the Catholic organizations receiving
their money are well managed, financially transparent, and accountable,
and that the money is perceived as well invested, and that there are
appropriate professional human resource development policies in place.
Dr. Hall, are we entering a new phase of religious activism through nonprofits?
HALL:
Oh, yeah. This activism is definitely a new thing, and interestingly,
it started among the evangelicals in this country. There have been a
whole series of evangelical financial scandals. Some evangelical
leaders have told me they did not have a theology of money, so the big
challenge they faced in the late 80s and early 90s was to devise a
theology of money and also a set of practices that would give the
public and donors some sense that their money was not only being well
invested but deployed in accordance with their values and beliefs. I
think we're seeing this spread all across the spectrum. Essentially, it
used to be a trustee regime, and now it is becoming more transparent.
Dr. Vendley, you're the
secretary-general of Religions for Peace, the world's largest
multireligious organization. You work to promote collaboration among
the world's religious communities. As one who has an ear to the ground
globally, what new approaches to collaboration are required?
VENDLEY:
The big problems, the problems of war, the problems of poverty, the
problem of protecting the earth, these are not Catholic problems or
Hindu prob- lems, Buddhist or Islamic or Jewish, these are our
problems. So the fundamental revolution that's taking place is that the
religious institutions, the world's largest infrastructures, the ones
who built the biggest set of social infrastructures latticing the earth
are now aligning themselves around deeply held and widely shared
concerns. All of the religious communities have engaged in philanthropy
from the very beginning, but today the new reality is that by
cooperating, they can identify shared concerns and they can unleash the
complementarity of cooperation. The big challenge when it comes to
philanthropy is that historically, we have not thought of the religious
communities in terms of conflict mediation, in terms of ending poverty,
in terms of structural poverty, or in terms of protecting the earth.
Therefore, we need targeted philanthropic assistance to change the
thinking here. When religious communities cooperate, stunning
achievements take place. They literally go to the front lines of civil
conflicts and mediate them. The U.N. acknowledges they can't solve
those conflicts. They go to the front lines of the HIV/AIDS pandemic
where every mosque, church, and temple is already located where the
children are. They're impacted. They become a delivery system that
simply couldn't be built by any other governmental or intergovernmental
agency. So thats the revolution that's under way and the challenge that
is presented to philanthropy today.
Dr. Malley, is the American core principle of separating church and state a hin- drance or a help in this regard?
MALLEY:
Well, there's no reason why it should be a hindrance. What Bill Vendley
just said is absolutely right. Consider Islamist organizations in
countries that have been able to deliver services, to come to the aid
of victims in natural disasters, to provide for people in times of
need. What they've been able to do is combine grass roots support and
work with young people and be close by. Thats not easy for states to
do, as we've seen in a number of places. Therefore, it's not a matter
of substituting for the state but seeing how some organizations have
become complementary. We could learn from those that have been able to
do it. In fact, religious institutions can play exactly the kind of
role that Bill Vendley suggests, without in any way intruding on the
political separation between church and state.
Ron Bruder, is the business
sector doing enough? After 9/11 you decided to leave the corporate
world and start a new foundation. You are Jewish; your nonprofit NGO is
all about creating employment opportunities for youth in Muslim
countries. Is this the way to go here?
BRUDER:
I don't know about the way to go, but I think its a very powerful way
to go. It's one of many alternatives to alleviate poverty. It became
apparent to me that after 9/11 the core problem is that the countries
we're focused on have not kept up with the Western world in terms of
job creation and integration within the global community. And I've seen
very clear evidence of this. In the last decade, I've spent time in
Belfast, Ireland, and I saw a sea change in attitudes between the
various re- ligious groups when poverty was alleviated and when the
economy radically changed. If you want to have people living together
harmoniously on this globe, then the core way to get at it is to give
them hope, to give them opportunity, and to give them the ability to
bring home a decent living for their family and for them to have a
future and for their kids to have education. And we are doing that. We
focus on creating schools in the communities in which we work, and we
do it in conjunction with local partners. We've found that there is an
attitude among businessmen that's relatively new. There are now a lot
of individuals such as myself that feel that they've done reasonably
well, and doing more isn't necessarily going to enhance their quality
of life. It may even diminish it. And that if they want to have a
meaningful life and a life where they really get up in the morning and
are once again excited about what they're doing and thinking that what
they're doing can make a difference, there's an opportunity to do so.
What are some of the key
challenges facing philanthropists in this arena of ethnic and religious
differences? Isn't it tough to create new conversations where there
have been only muted ones, if any at all?
BRUDER:
Good question. The key challenge for me was going from a for-profit
world to the nonprofit world, where you dont have the discipline of the
almighty dollar to keep everybody focusing and playing well together.
When you go to the nonprofit world, one of the things that Ive learned
is that often, people are not motivated to do what they say theyre
going to do. And I speak of this globally. And then, obviously, going
into Islamic countries, initially there was a lack of credibility who
are we, why are we doing this. We were able to overcome that in large
part by putting together a fairly powerful board thats recognized
internationally. And probably, more important, in every country that we
go, we partner with powerful local individuals who share our goals.
That makes a huge difference. We create a vision that is a joint
vision. In Egypt Im building a nursing college because my partner, Dr.
Hossam Badrawi, felt there was a strong need for nurses in Egypt, and
he is a physician, a Member of Parliament. And so when we go into Egypt
and we are seen and we visit the ministers, its his face that they
recognize, and that gives us the credibility.
Ahmed Younis, when you see the Muslim world affected by poverty,
illiteracy, and for many a sense of deprivation, the uninformed world
may think Islam is a religion of militancy. What role can Muslim
philanthropy play to alleviate conflict?
YOUNIS: I think what Ron
said is 100 percent on target. Much of the Muslim world is looking to
the West to contribute to its development. Muslims are looking to the
disposition of Muslims in the West as a litmus for whether America or
Europe are following through on their basic principles. Today, Muslims
see an American Muslim community that is plagued by a U.S. Treasury
Department action that has shut down the majority of American Muslim
nonprofits; they see an inability by the mainstream of American Muslims
to contribute philanthropically to whats happening in the Muslim world
because of the inability of their charitable institutions to thrive.
Muslim donors arent sure if these institutions are going to be shut
down or put on a terrorist watch list. We as American Muslims and as
Muslims in the West really have the primary role of being at the apex
of not just the war on terrorism but also the war on extremism, the war
on radicalization within religion. I travel the Muslim world
frequently. How can I convince young Muslims in Malaysia, a plural
society, not to engage with Osama bin Laden if I am unable to bring
dollars from my country to build schools? Muslims in the West need to
be able to build a vision that young Muslims worldwide can see for
themselves, for their own individual lives for years to come.
Dr. Vendley, what's the opportunity here?
VENDLEY: Stunningly, when
religious communities are brought together and identify common goals
and they deploy their own assets. their local churches and mosques,
their women of faith groups, their youth groups, their networks, it
works. And to do that doesn't take great additional amounts of money.
There is a wild disparity between the needed funding and what's
present. Currently, the U.S. government is spending around $300 billion
to fund the Iraqi enterprise. It cost us recently only $100,000 to
bring the 20 most senior Iraqi religious leaders together. Thats
0.00004 of 1 percent. It's not a rounding error in the $300 billion
budget. Rather, it should be dead obvious that when you have sectarian
conflict, government efforts are needed to bring religious leaders
together and enable them to do things, like make their youth and women
stakeholders in the outcomes. Instead, the reality is that you have to
fight very hard to find that little piece of money to do the dead
obvious in contrast to hugely expensive enterprises by governments and,
I daresay, even the more established NGOs. So here is one of the truly
historic, underleveraged moments of our time: the opportunity to align
philanthropy with interreligious work for peace.
Reverend McNatt,
Unitarian-Universalism has long preached religious tolerance and
mediation, particularly here in New York. How far can dialogues among
faith communities really go? What are the limits?
McNATT: I think the
limits really run up against, for us, some of the core universal
values. There are issues around which we feel we cant compromise, such
as marriage equality and womens autonomy in the culture. But once you
get past those, there's a lot of room to align yourselves with some of
the things that make the most difference in people's lives. Issues
around poverty are things that people really can come together on. And
the role that women play in the ability to lift an entire family and a
community up from poverty are ways that she can make a difference
there. Now that sounds very much like what Roman Catholics believe, and
I grew up Catholic, so I bring with my own Unitarian Universalist faith
that sense of social justice Catholicism that I grew up with in the
1960s. But the Church has changed, and for some people, people of
different sexual orientation are, for example, not entitled to certain
rights. And for me thats not a negotiable point. So when you have those
kinds of religious tensions, it becomes impossible for people in local
ways to have dialogue.
Rabbi Kirshner, what are the perceptible differences that you see in
terms of people's views on the role of religious philanthropy? Have
things changed since 9/11?
KIRSHNER: Well, the
Jewish people have always been tied to philanthropy, and I think that
stems from our doctrine of Jewish law, which encourages us to tithe, to
give 10 percent to our charity, and oral law, which encourages us to
give. But going into the modern world, what I think is changing in
culture is that weve become or were starting to become a little bit
more proactive and a little bit less reactive. And one perfect example
of that is what Mr. Bruder is doing. This is a proactive program to
help educate people who would otherwise not have any availability to be
educated. What the Jewish people are notorious for is coming together
in our time of crisis and our time of need. There was no greater
example of that than during the conflict in Lebanon this summer. The
United Jewish Federations came together and are raising close to $300
million; the New York Federation came up with $56 million in the course
of six weeks, all for relief. So that is how we've historically come
together in times of reactive crises. But I think its our
responsibility now to be a little bit more proactive, to think about
where we can draw on our neighbors of different backgrounds and
different faiths and use those common denominators to strengthen us
together.
YOUNIS: I think that one
of the most important things that we as faith leaders or as folks
interested in the development of communities globally have to do is
stop allowing the extremists to define the characteristics of each
community. If you are engaging with a Muslim that tells you that men
and women are not equal or a Muslim that tells you that a black man
can't be the leader of the prayer because he can't pronounce the Arabic
of the Koran perfectly, or if you're engaging with a Jew who is
articulating racism or what have you, then you immediately know that
this is not a partner in the community. So I think the Rabbi is
absolutely right: Muslim communities, Christian communities, Jewish
communities have been mostly only giving back home, giving to their own
communities. But what were beginning to see are things like the
Alliance to End Hunger that was put together by Bread for the World,
bringing Jews and Muslims and Christians and people that have no faith
together, to do what? To end hunger. Because that is a common
denominator principle for people of all faiths, of all orientations
globally all around the world. We as leaders in the West need to en-
sure that folks globally have a chance to engage. We need to create a
cohesion amongst our faith pluralisms that allows each of us to protect
each other. It's my responsibility as an American Muslim to ensure that
Jews in America can give, and its the responsibility of the Jewish
community to ensure that Muslims in America can give.
Robert Malley, are we seeking to engage the right people? Are we speaking to those with the most power to promote peace?
MALLEY: Well, I think
it's a critical issue. Inevitably, a conversation like this comes down
to ultimately who are we talking to? What are we talking about? Partly
because of whats happened over the last six years or so, more or less,
there's been greater polarization between the Muslim world and the
West, and we have, in the United States, limited the scope of who were
talking to. So more and more, we tend to talk to people who agree with
us, and in a tone that we find acceptable. This may make for a nice
conversation, but it has increasingly less relevance to whats happening
on the ground. On the ground, the people who have constituencies, who
have resonance, who have relevance are precisely those people that were
trying to keep at arms length, that were trying to marginalize, and who
we think were isolating. But in fact, these are the people with whom we
need to be talking.
YOUNIS: If the only
moderates that we engage with in the Muslim world are secularists, then
we will create absolutely no change on the ground.
What conversations are we not having?
VENDLEY: In the teeth of
sectarian violence in Iraq, representatives of those communities could
disagree about vast areas. But could they agree about helping
war-injured children? If you are a Sunni, could you agree about that?
If you are a Shiite, could you agree about that? Yes, I believe you
could. From that kind of mod- est area of agreement, then a
humanization of your enemy can take place because you begin to
cooperate with the group that you think is your enemy and in whom you
have a stereotype. It is essential, critical, and possible to bring
people with very divergent views together and to hammer out areas where
they do have agreements and set in motion a process that can assist
them.
McNATT: A lot of times,
the notion of legitimizing these extremist voices as the only real
religious voices has cost us great damage. But it is a spiritual
practice for us to speak to people with whom we do not always agree
because it is our only hope to create the world in which we want to
live and in which we want to give.
BRUDER: To me, if one
wants to marginalize radicals, you need to create jobs, you need to
alleviate poverty, you need to create economic sustainability. We went
into Gaza. We created a mini MBA program through the Smith School of
Maryland University. We partnered with a very powerful Palestinian,
Said Khoury, the founder of CCC Construction, which is the largest
construction company in the Gulf. In the beginning, nobody wanted to
come. Everybody was 100 percent sure that we were not going to be able
to create jobs. They were so far from hope, that we could not enroll
anybody. It took months to get people to really believe that this was a
legitimate programand this was partnered with a major, well-known
Palestinian. Can you imagine if we didn't have him as our partner? We
wouldn't have gotten anywhere. Now we have more enrollees than we know
what to do with. We're going to expand the program to accommodate the
demand. I think the work that were doing there is a very powerful way
of creating a moderate society and marginalizing those who want to
destroy it.
Dr. Hall, in the world of foundations and religious nonprofits, are people like Ron Bruder more the exception than the rule?
HALL:
Well, actually, that's a good point. The real divide in the world isn't
religious. It's economic. Underlying the dynamic that empowers
extremists every stride is economic injustice. And what I'm hearing
from Ron and from others at the table, certainly from Bill as well, is
that, just as in the 1880s, when it looked like the whole capitalist
order was falling apart in this country, some very imaginative leaders
said, hey, wait a minute, soup kitchens are not the answer here. Rescue
missions are not the answer here. What we really need to do is to
address the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots. I hear a
very similar spirit both at this table and in the larger world, the
idea that it's not enough to do traditional kinds of international
relief. That's very good, and that kind of relief of suffering is
important. But wouldn't we rather set up a situation where people
aren't getting beat up in the streets and left for dead? Certainly, I
think the kind of thing Ron and Bill and others are talking about
suggest that there's a move in that direction. But remember, foreign
aid has been largely privatized. The U.S. government is, for all
practical purposes, out of the foreign aid business compared to what
they were doing during the Cold War. Second, there's this huge problem
of state failure in the Third World. So the only entities that have any
governmental capacity are the NGOs, and the religious groups are part
of that. So the ball is really in their court to start approaching this
with a real interest, infused with their moral imagination but also
their pragmatic understanding of how things work.
KIRSHNER: I agree that
the divide is more economic than anything else. I think the reason
Hamas was so successful in the last elections was because Hamas offers
more for its people than any of the other governments did. But the
problem is these governments are radical. They do believe in all the
things that were trying to change. How do we start to address that?
VENDLEY: Well, Rabbi
David, to a part of your question, if you do not engage the religious
youth in the transformation of their society, and if you do not engage
them through their own religious infrastructures, others will so engage
them. It's that simple.
YOUNIS: I think that's
true. I mean, I don't believe that people drop their kid off at school
and burn an embassy on their way to the office. [laughter] The people
that were rioting in the streets are the same people who don't have
jobs. They are the same people that are not integrated into the
economic reality of where they live on a day-to-day basis. If you have
something to do, youre not going to burn an embassy.
So how does one engage them? Who engages them?
YOUNIS: I think we engage them through economics.
HALL: Give them an MBA.
BRUDER: If you look at
history, you tend every now and then to learn something meaningful. We
have an EU thats functioning well. You have countries that were sworn
enemies 60 years ago sharing a common currency. Who would have ever
thought 60 years ago that this was a possibility? My perception is that
it all became a possibility because of one thing: the Marshall Plan.
After World War II, we as a nation were smart enough as a leader to go
into these countries, our sworn enemies, and to bomb them with economic
opportunity and to rebuild and to make them economically powerful. I
think we have the same opportunity and the same challenge today, and if
we go into these countries and do the work that I and others are doing
on a much more massive scale were setting up models then its our hope
that our models will be expanded radically by others and that people
will see that what were doing works and has influence.
MALLEY: I'd be the last
to argue that economic deprivation does not play a critical role. But
it's not just economic deprivation and humiliation; its political
deprivation and humiliation. And if we don't understand that aspect, we
don't understand why Hamas won, why Hezbollah's doing so well, and why
so much of what we in the West say falls on deaf ears. There are people
there who are not just starved for food; theyre starved for political
dignity. And that's not inconsistent with what we've said. In fact, it
reinforces it: if governments cant play the role of bridging that gap,
and, unfortunately, a lot of them cant, well, others can, by starting
conver- sations, starting meetings to try to address and understand
that sense of political deprivation and humiliation. That, in my view,
is what is fueling what we're seeing in the Muslim world as much as
economic deprivation and lack of resources. I think that's a theme that
we have to conduct at some point, and I think, again, the work that so
many around this table have been doing is consistent with that, but we
need to be continually reminded that you cant buy yourself out of
political anger or political alienation. That has to be addressed
through real political dialogue.
YOUNIS: Yeah, absolutely.
I fully agree with that. I think much of what we are attempting to do
is to fight the proposition that there is a clash of civilizations.
That has to do with the ability of people in the global south, as we've
identified them today, to not only be economically integrated into
their society, but that economic integration will necessarily lead to a
political integration through an ability to determine for oneself the
road of life that will be seen by their progeny. And I think it's very
important for us to fight this ridiculous notion that we have a world
view that is different from the world view of the other for us to break
down this proposition that there is a clash of civilizations.
Dr. Hall, what is the opportunity, then, for religious nonprofits?
HALL: I think that when
you look at the dollar amounts of assets that religious congregations
control in this country, and when you ponder how poorly they're stew-
arded, I think that theres just huge possibility. Fifty years ago, 100
years ago, local congregations used to reach out internationally in
terms of their benevolences, and that has since disappeared. I remember
you could earmark religious giving for domestic and international
benevolences, and thats really disappeared. One of the things we need
to do on the congregational level is we have to raise peoples
consciousness about what they can do. It should not just be about
giving it all to CARE anymore.
YOUNIS:
We recently created something called the National Council of American
Muslim Nonprofits, a body that a Muslim nonprofit can come to and vet
itself ac- cording to due diligence measures. That was based on the
Wise Giving Alliance, on the Evangelical Council for Financial
Accountability. So when we talk about the ability of American
charitable institutions to stay true to their mission and stay fi-
nancially accountable to their congrega- tions and transparent, this is
something that is across the board, and it's very much part of the
American story. American Muslims are learning from the other
faith-based institutions how to respond to what's happening.
Rabbi Kirshner, you're involved locally.
KIRSHNER:
For us at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and at the reform
counterpart, and the orthodox counterpart, we are spending more time
than ever in training our clergy because ultimately its the clergy that
the religious communities look to for leadership on how to solicit the
funds, how to guide people in the direction that they need to be
guided. Sometimes its in the direction of the living wage, sometimes
it's in the direction of Israel, sometimes it's in the direction of
community needs, sometimes it's in the direction of a Salvation Army or
a federation or other opportunities. But what we have neglected, I
think, and were starting to be proactive on now, is teaching our clergy
people how to be solicitors, how to identify what are the opportunities
for growth, and how to ask people for money. If we don't train our
clergy people to find out what's important and valuable to our donors,
then we won't be able to continue to grow.
ROBINSON:
I find great hope not only in this conversation but also in the
potential of the intersection of faith and philanthropy. And this is
why: In both faith and in philanthropy, there is the possibility of
profound transformation and imagination and conceiving of meeting
seemingly intractable problems in a creative and other centered way.
And I think many faith filled philanthropists rely on the sustenance of
their faith to meet these unmet needs, and they don't back down from
it. As dire and as frightening as the problems of our world are, you
don't back down from it because you recognize, whatever faith one is
from, you recognize that this is your responsibility, to live out your
faith in the world and to effect reconciliation.
McNATT: I'm going to
piggyback on that. We've talked a lot about hope and what hope means.
And I think we underestimate how little hope there is. There are people
who are completely secular who feel completely despairing about
everything were talking about at this table. As people of faith, we
bring great strength to these conversations because we all believe that
these are conversations that can be had; we all believe that these are
problems that can be addressed, and we all believe that these are
issues that can be solved. And the cynicism and the nihilism that you
feel in the culture at large I think is a sort of reaction to the
overwhelming sense that this is just way beyond anything we can do.
Nobody at this table really believes that or we wouldn't be doing what
we do.
So what next steps are critical?
VENDLEY: Bringing
together the leaders of the world's religions in country after country
on national, regional, and global levels is incredibly important but
its insufficient. It doesn't harness their own real potential for
collaboration. So we have begun to build lay trustees, people like Ron
and people from different sectors who can work and share the mission of
multi-religious cooperation, and also harness the extraordinary
competencies that reside in the business community, like relation-
ship-building and resource mobilization. Bringing religions together
and helping them to cooperate sets up the possibility of other
partnerships where the partners, be they governments, foundations, or
private donors, dont want to fund the sectarian agenda but do want to
fund the area of collaboration on the big issueswar, poverty, and
protecting the earth.
A second point? Let's not forget the issue of spirituality. I spent the
first 10 or 15 years arguing about the social assets and the moral
assets that the religious communities have in solving conflicts and
addressing big problems. I was timid to talk about the spiritual
assets. Fifty percent of our human family lives on less than $2 a day.
They bear the unbearable. They do find hope where there doesn't seem to
be any apparent grounds for hope, and they often forgive the
unforgivable. That's not a government program. There's no particular
charity, secular charity that can do that. Those same spiritualities in
the noonday sun are the schools of kindness, of generosity, of
compassion, of love, and joy. So amazingly, while religious communi-
ties come together around shared moral agendas, they are animated by
spiritualities that allow them simply to go forward and to find
strength, to have courage, and to find compassion and healing when, in
fact, other remedies would not apply.
Religious communities are simply the largest social organizations that
the human family has built. Yet while they are learning to cooperate,
they have enormous, and yet-to-be-fully-utilized potential on the main
problems that confront the human family today. In that context, we need
to recognize that they are all in varying degrees being hijacked.
They're being hijacked by extremist politicians, theyre being hijacked
by extremists within their own houses, and theyre being hijacked by the
sensationalist media. So were not in a situation of neutral.
Cooperation has to be the front lines for the religious communities, in
order to free themselves from misuse and to enter into the commonweal.
For this they need mechanisms of cooperation that allow for a wide
assortment of different stakeholders to enter safely into compacts that
can unleash these enormous assets.
HALL: The power of
religious organizations is immense. Even if we're just talking about
the United States, were talking about a community of organizations that
has the most assets, the most volunteers, and the most geographical
extent within and beyond the United States and across class lines. And
it's a power whose potential is largely unrealized, both in pragmatic
matters such as mediating social conflict but also in other areas such
as meeting needs within and beyond the United States. We've been told
again and again over the last 50 years that this is the age of
secularization. And it isn't, you know. I don't think we're having a
fourth grade awakening, but I think that the continuing and enduring
power of religious belief and religious communities is really
impressive, and I'm very glad that this roundtable has helped to focus
attention on it.
ROBINSON: If the great
world religions can come together and recognize what they hold in
common, these problems that face our world will be well served by
people of faith. And I think philanthropy and fundraisers have a large
and prophetic role to play in that.
BRUDER: When I started my
foundation, it was my perception that the American
communityfoundations, government, whateverwould embrace us as a poten-
tialpresent-day Marshall Plan. But I found just the opposite. I find
that the perception in this country, which is often sad, is that
Muslims are the enemy, and that were helping the enemy. Well, if we had
that attitude after World War II where so many people died, we would
never have the EU today, and we need that attitude today. I go to
foundations, and they say, Yes, you're doing great work, keep it up,
and then I make a request for a grant, and they say, Well, we love what
youre doing, but we don't know whether we can help. What they're not
saying is that they don't want to take the risk of associating
themselves with an organization thats working in the Islamic world.
It's sad and it needs to change.
YOUNIS: As an American
Muslim, I'm reminded of Alexander Hamilton, the first Federalist. The
whole project of creating America, itself the whole idea of what were
experiencing now, is whether we can build a life that is based on
reflection and choice or whether we will be destined to be ruled by
fear and force. And I believe as an American, this is not just
something that we have to bring to fruition at home but something that
we have a charge to bring to fruition throughout the world. We need to
create a world and we have the power as Americans to do s oin which
each individual lives a life that is based on reflection and choice.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, always recited a specific chapter of
the Koran at the end of interfaith meetings, and the chapter of the
Koran goes like this: By the token of time, verily man is at loss.
Except for those who do righteous deeds and attain patience, verily
they are the ones who persevere. And I do believe that this is about
faith. It's about having faith in ourselves and, more importantly,
having faith in each other. It's my faith in the Rabbi that will
determine whether we have the patience to persevere and to see these
initiatives come to fruition, not necessarily my faith in myself or my
faith in my own religion.
Dr. Malley, any parting thoughts?
MALLEY: When I look back
at the days when I was working in the White House, I think the question
is, we can run away from religion, but religion won't run away from us.
For so many people, religion is how they organize their lives, it's
what they care about, its how they express economic or political or
other forms of alien- ation or frustration or wants and wishes. In so
many areas, our relations with the Muslim world are at an absolutely
critical point, and if we dont correct it, we're really heading to much
worse times. Interfaith cooperation. who we speak to, how we speak, and
what we speak about, how we organize philanthropic activity, and,
again, what Ron Bruder was saying, who we can deal with in a particular
area will determine our success.
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