Encountering the Stranger: A Jewish-Christian-Muslim Trialogue

11. Reflexivity and Tawallî between Jews, Christians, and Muslims

149 11 Reflexivity and Tawallî between Jews, Christians, and Muslims Bülent Şenay The twenty-first century is beset by seemingly intractable problems which point to the fact that we are suffering a deep spiritual crisis. Despite positive developments in many spheres of life, scientific breakthroughs among them, humanity still lacks the wisdom to keep our differences and disagreements within safe and appropriate boundaries. Because so many of us see the earth as a resource to consume rather than as something holy, we not only risk environmental catastrophe—halaak (utter destruction) or shoah (catastrophic destruction)—we have also lost our sense of the sacred inviolability of the individual human being. The darkest epiphanies of our century—the Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, among others—reveal that our ability to harm and mutilate one another has kept pace with our development, our “progress.” Threatened by selfdestruction , we need a spiritual revolution that can take us beyond those theological disagreements and interreligious conflicts which continue to inflame violence. Religion ought to cultivate wisdom regarding the inviolability of the human being. Although religious traditions provide much of the spiritual groundwork that could enable human beings to overcome the phenomenon of exclusivity, intolerance and religiously motivated terrorism abound. Of course, if seen in isolation from the whole of their traditions, 150 Bülent Şenay individual scriptural passages in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an can easily be utilized to sanction violence and cruelty. The scriptures have been and are still being used in this way, thus serving to set in motion some of the darkest episodes of our recent history. Our response to this phenomenon should be self-criticism and, especially, reflexive listening . From Moses through Jesus to Muhammad (peace be upon them all), we have a spiritual heritage that remains relevant and important because— and this point may shock many who think they are “religious”—the insights and messages of the founders of our traditions reflect relatively little interest in formal doctrine or theology. These spiritual giants taught that what matters is not solely what one believes but how one believes. The founders did, of course, teach us rituals to help keep us close to their message , but they mainly emphasized the ethical significance of what they taught. Morality must be at the heart of spiritual life. The only way we could genuinely encounter God, Allah, or any aspect of divine reality is to live a compassionate life, a life with rahmah (compassion or mercy) and wadd (love). Although these teachers lived and had to survive in often violent societies , Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad all preached the importance of empathy and compassion; they taught that people must abandon their egotism and the violence that can so easily follow from self-centeredness. Despite the fact that aspects of teachings purported to them have often been used to legitimize “cleansing” massacres or crusades to “purify” the world and the “sacred order” of things, such readings of holy texts distort their essential messages: kindness in Jewish thought, love in the message of Jesus, and afw (forgiveness) in the Qur’an and Sunnah (the whole of lawful practices followed in Islam). Thus Muslims say “peace be upon them” every time they hear the names of these teachers. Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad all preached benevolence that was not to be confined to one’s own people but should be extended to the entire world. The golden rule of this spiritual anthropology was—and remains— “Do not do unto others what you would not have done to yourself.” Without departing from our own traditions, we can learn from others how to enhance our particular pursuit of the ethical life. This insight helps explain why Islam was originally called tazakkah, a word related to zakaat, or “purity.” Its meaning combines traits of purification, generosity, and compassion , indicating that anyone who enters into Islam should develop these 151 Reflexivity and Tawallî characteristics. Working to do so is the ultimate jihad, or striving in God’s cause. The key question is how we deal with our differences, particularly, but not only, the differences found in the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Any dialogue/trialogue is an attempt to straddle borders of difference. If we generally agree that it is better to venture beyond the thresholds of our own intellectual borders, then we might acknowledge that we also need to venture beyond the thresholds...