THIS month, scores of nations and faith-based non-governmental organisations are rolling out programmes in celebration of World Interfaith Harmony Week that is officially observed by the United Nations during the first week of February every year. Interfaith events will continue to be held until Feb 28.
In an endeavor to make Interfaith Week relevant for a Covid-scarred humanity, the UN has proposed that celebrants focus on ways to remain socially connected while practising social distancing in the pandemic crisis.
However, despite 10 years of Interfaith Week celebrations the 12 world religions have not lessened the psychological distance between them. To this day, they have not formed any coalition to raise humanity one notch up.
It is disappointing that religious leaders across a spread of religions are less cooperative than moderate politicians who at least have the good sense to form multicultural alliances to govern the nation.
In the religious arena, we continue to witness power tussles between strong religions that avoid forming partnerships and focus instead on battling each other.
Humanity is the loser in any contest of faiths, because the purpose of religion is to unite the masses. Religions were set up for this reason.
It should be a natural progression to move from uniting a civilisation under one religion to uniting humanity under all the world religions.
US President Joe Biden, in his inaugural speech, used the word “unity” or “uniting” 11 times.
Unity was clearly his theme for he said: “Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.”
Biden gave a tip: “See each other not as adversaries but as neighbours.” It is a message that all religions should hear.
The UN World Interfaith Harmony Week’s perpetual motto is: “Love of the Good, and Love of the Neighbour.”
Let us do away with the current mood where most religions treat every other religion as strangers instead of neighbour and worse, as a coronavirus to be avoided. Let us develop a global unity of faiths.
There should be interfaith committees throughout Malaysia to bring religious adherents together for better governance of the nation, poverty reduction, institutional reforms to combat dishonesty, elimination of wildlife trafficking, and climate change mitigation.
But there is no unity of faiths because many religions want to practise exclusivity.
Long before property developers thought up the idea, religions had already formed loyalty clubs granting exclusive privileges to their adherents that are denied to non-followers.
However, we cannot resolve the severe crises affecting humanity unless all religions join hands under a global faith initiative.
What keeps the world religions apart? You may be surprised that belief in God has always been the primary cause of religious division. The mistake we make is to confuse belief in God with the actual reality of God.
To explain the gulf separating belief in God from the actual reality of God, we can use a dramatic analogy: 500 years ago, all Europeans were compelled by the religious authorities to believe that the sun travelled around the earth daily from east to west. If you disbelieved you faced execution, as did one astronomer.
What this tragic example demonstrates is that all beliefs are founded on our particular situations. Viewed from the earth, it is the sun that journeys daily from east to west.
All types of belief in God arose from the geographical, historical, sociocultural, literary, and political context of each civilisational group that nurtures a particular set of doctrines about God.
However, if you don’t accept its set of doctrines you are classified as a non-believer even if you believe in God.
Many strong religions adopt a non-inclusive theological approach that non-believers will go to hell for their unbelief.
That being the case, why bother with developing cooperation with other religions?
It is very easy to figure out why the 12 religions have different beliefs concerning God.
The three great West Asian religions – among them are Judaism and Christianity – developed the notion of an interventionist God who gave commands to His faithful worshippers, because West Asian history was soaked in constant wars.
Tight bonding with the interventionist God was a vital part of their faith as these West Asian peoples went through the horrific experiences of communal slavery, foreign subjugation, frequent warfare, and elitist tyranny.
Each of these three influential religions formulated a distinct variant of the interventionist God because of differing political conditions.
Taoism, in contrast, developed the notion of a hands-off God who let nature run the show because China 2,500 years ago was a vast tapestry of wilderness and the Taoist sages lived near mountain rivers and caves.
Hindus could opt to believe in a highly interventionist God or a hands-off God of nature, because India was a civilisation of great ethno-cultural, linguistic, geographical, political, and intellectual diversities.
These differences in the God Belief across 12 religions must be put aside today because there is now only one context – the global context.
National and civilisational contexts are vanishing, and the sweeping Covid-19 pandemic is evidence of this rapid new development in globalisation that is squeezing humanity into one tight mass.
If we allow religious differences to keep separating us, we are sticking to the belief that our sun traverses the sky daily from east to west.
Belief in God is a very far cry from the actual reality of God. We must resolve to abolish the psychological distance between religions or risk being unable to resolve any of the global dangers threatening humanity’s survival.
The writer champions interfaith harmony. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
