A Holy Week for All
Dr. Bernard Sabella
Jerusalem
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007
Inspiration comes with commemoration. Moslems, Jews and Christians
are going through days of inspiration judging from the holy days they respectively
observe this week. Moslems celebrated on Saturday last Eid Al Mawled Al Nabawi
(Birthday of the Prophet); Jews celebrate Pessach (Passover) today and Christians
celebrate Easter on next Sunday. Each of these celebrations carries significance
to the respective faithful. In fact, for some of these faithful their own
sense of identity, their world view and their justification for doing or
not doing things are all motivated by religious belief. When religious belief
permeates one’s being all else falls in place, or so one would like to think.
Difficult decisions and acts that are judged controversial and unacceptable
by any standard are considered in the line of religious duty. They are often
a proof not of prayer and meditation but of solidarity with one’s group and
its ideals of history and religion, of selective experiential reality and
of the world to come, both heavenly and earthly.
No one group or individual is immune from impulsive religious beliefs
and their effects. In the act of self and group justification, projection
on others of the bad and ugly is one method whereby we stand on a different
moral, ethical and spiritual plateau. This is a style used not only by religiously
motivated politicians and practitioners but also by a variety of faithful,
of all religions, driven by religious belief and commitment, among other
things. In this sense, the religious experience that is supposedly intent
on promoting self and group cohesiveness could become a way to denigrate
others and to justify all acts against them. In the end, being confined in
one’s religious belief and bounded by one’s group spells ignorance of others
and their natural claims to precisely the same things that we claim.
The failure of monotheistic religions lies in their inability to open
up to each other’s narratives, beliefs and details of faith. Condescending
attitudes abound while genuine mutual acceptance is rarely put to a test,
if ever. This is evidenced in the conflict over the Holy Land, venerated
and sanctified by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. While the conflict, in
its very nature is political territorial, the religious dimension nevertheless
is intertwined particularly with the territorial. Trying to disengage the
religious from the political and territorial becomes a formidable task especially
when the religious is used as basis for territorial claims.
In this week of holy celebrations, it is most appropriate to send to the
faithful of the three religions wishes for blessed and happy commemoration
of the respective great feasts and holidays. This is an elementary sign of
mutual religious acceptance and it reflects the good in one’s heart but clearly
it is not enough. In the long run, much needs to be done particularly by
the religious leadership. While this leadership remains limited in its political
clout nevertheless, it has the heavy responsibility of seeing to it that
a basis is found in which the faithful of the respective religions learn
to appreciate and respect each other’s narratives and beliefs. It is then
that one can hope that the religious will cease to be a basis for claims
that negate the other and what he/she stands for. It is then that the test
of the belief in the One God can become a factor for peacemaking and healing
rather than for continued confrontation and plight.