The Power of Religion to Turn People to Goodness
On August 2, 1990, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein staged an
armed invasion of Kuwait, igniting the possibility of war in
the Persian Gulf. This area has long been a tinderbox, and I
could see that the world was about to be swept up in the vortex of war.
I concluded that Christian and Muslim leaders must meet to stop the
conflict, and I acted immediately to do everything I could to stop a war
in which innocent people were sure to die.
On October 2 of the same year, I sent members of our church to
Cairo to deliver my urgent message of peace to the highest spiritual
authorities of the Middle East and the Muslim world. Many wondered
why I, a person with no apparent ties to the Middle East, would convene
such a meeting, but to me it is simple. I believe every religion should
contribute to world peace. A conflict between Christianity and Islam
would be far worse than the conflict between democracy and communism.
There is nothing more fearful than religious war.
I implored President George H.W. Bush through direct correspondence
to avoid war in the Arab world, and instead work to realize
Saddam Hussein’s retreat through diplomatic means. President Bush
may have thought he was going to war against Iraq, but that is not
how Muslims would think. In the mind of Muslims, religion exists in a
higher position than the nation-state. I was very concerned that if Iraq
were attacked, the Arab world would join in opposition to the United
States and the Christian world.
Our emergency conference in Cairo involved top Muslim leaders
and grand muftis from nine countries, including the grand muftis of
Syria and Yemen. At the core of the meeting was my desperate appeal to
the Arab and Muslim world not to support Saddam Hussein’s claim that
this was a holy war. Whether the United States won or Iraq won, what
good would it do? What value would it have if it meant that bombs rained
down, destroying houses, fields, hills, and precious innocent lives?
The Cairo conference was just one of our many peace activities.
Every time a crisis arose in the Middle East, our members worked fearlessly,
risking their lives at the scenes of danger. For years, throughout
the violence and terror in Israel and Palestine, our members, traveling at a
moment’s notice, collaborated with major organizations to work for peace.
I am always uneasy sending our members to places where their lives
are at risk, but it is unavoidable when working for the cause of peace. I
may be in Brazil tilling the soil or visiting refugee camps in Africa, but
my heart is constantly drawn to those members who insist on working
in the dangerous tinderbox called the Middle East. I pray that peace will
come to the world quickly, so I no longer need to ask our members to
go to such places of death.
On September 11, 2001, we all felt utter horror when the World
Trade Center twin towers in New York City were destroyed by terrorists.
Some people said this was the inevitable clash of civilizations between
Islam and Christianity. But my view is different. In their purest form,
Islam and Christianity are not religions of conflict and confrontation.
They both place importance on peace. In my view, it is bigoted to brand
all Islam as radical, just as it is bigoted to say that Islam and Christianity
are fundamentally different. The essence of religions is the same.
Immediately following the collapse of the towers, I organized religious
leaders from New York and around the country to pray and minister to the
victims and first responders at Ground Zero. Then, in October, I convened
a major interfaith conference for peace in New York City. Ours was the first
international gathering in New York after the tragedy.
These dramatic contributions to peace in times of war did not spring
up from nothing. For decades, I have invested in promoting interreligious
harmony. It is on the foundation of this investment that we have
the trust of major faith leaders who would travel to Israel during the
Intifada, or to New York in the wake of 9/11.
In 1984, I brought together forty religious scholars, instructing
them to compare the teachings that appear in the sacred texts of
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and other major world religions.
The book that resulted from their efforts was World Scripture:
A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts, published in 1991.
What they found was that the sacred texts of religions convey
the same or similar teachings more than 70 percent of the time.
The remaining 30 percent are teachings that represent unique
points of each religion. This means that most of the teachings
of the major world religions are the same at their core. On the
surface, some believers wear turbans, some wear prayer beads
around their necks, others carry the cross, but they all seek the
fundamental truths of the universe and try to understand the will
of the Creator.
People often become friends even if all they have in common is the
same particular hobby. When two strangers meet and discover they have
the same hometown, they can immediately communicate as if they had
known each other for decades. So, it is truly tragic that religions, which
share the same teachings more than 70 percent of the time, still struggle
to understand each other and communicate happily. They could talk
about the things they have in common and take each other by the hand.
Instead, they emphasize their differences and criticize one another. All
religions in the world talk about peace and love. Yet they fight each
other over peace and love. Israel and Palestine talk of peace and justice, yet
both countries practice violence until children are bleeding and dying.
Judaism, the religion of Israel, is a religion of peace, and the same is
true of Islam. Our experience when compiling World Scripture leads
us to believe that it is not the religions of the world that are in error but
the ways the faiths are taught. Bad teaching of faith brings prejudice,
and prejudice leads to conflict. Muslims were branded terrorists after
the 9/11 attack. But the vast majority of simple, believing families are
peace-loving people, just like we.
The late Yasser Arafat led the Palestinians for a long time. Like all
political leaders, he had hoped for peace, but he was also associated
with strife in the region. As chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization,
Arafat embodied the determination for the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank to become an independent Palestinian state. Many argue
he shifted from his past associations and began to deter the activities of
extremist organizations after he was elected president of the Palestinian
National Authority in 1996. In the interest of seeking peace in the
Middle East, I communicated with Arafat on twelve separate occasions.
Of course, my words never wavered. God’s way is the way of harmony.
The road to Arafat’s office was literally a difficult one. Anyone approaching
his office had to pass between heavily armed guards and submit
to at least three body searches along the way. But when our members
arrived, Arafat, wearing his keffiyeh, would welcome them. These sorts
of relationships cannot be built in a day or two. They come from the
years when we poured out our sincerity and devotion for the sake of
Middle East peace. It was our arduous efforts and constant willingness
to risk our lives in terror-ridden conflict areas that prepared the way for
us to be welcomed to relationships with the religious and political leaders
at these levels. It took large amounts of resources. Finally, we could
gain the trust of both Arafat and top Israeli leaders, which allowed us to
play a mediating role during outbreaks of conflict in the Middle East.
I first set foot in Jerusalem in 1965. This was before the Six Day War,
and Jerusalem was still under Jordan’s territorial control. I went to the
Mount of Olives, where Jesus shed tears of blood in prayer just prior to
being taken to the court of Pontius Pilate. I put my hand on a 2,000-
year-old olive tree that could have witnessed Jesus’ prayer that night. I
put three nails in that tree, one for Judaism, one for Christianity, and
one for Islam. I prayed for the day when these three families of faith
would become one. World peace cannot come unless Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam become one. Those three nails are still there.
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are sharply divided against each
other in today’s world, but they share a common root. The issue that
keeps them divided is their understanding of Jesus. To address this
problem, on May 19, 2003, I asked that we de-emphasize the cross in
relations among the Abrahamic faiths. Thus, we enacted a ceremony
of taking down the cross. We brought a cross from America, a predominantly
Christian culture, and buried it in the Field of Blood in
Israel. This is the field that was bought with the thirty pieces of silver
that Judas Iscariot received for the betrayal of Jesus that ended in Jesus’
crucifixion.
Later that year, on December 23, some 3,000 Ambassadors for Peace
from all religions, and from around the world, joined with 17,000
Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Independence Park to symbolically
remove the crown of thorns from the head of Jesus and replace it
with a crown of peace. These 20,000 then marched for peace through
Jerusalem city. Local authorities granted permissions and protected
our efforts, and Palestinian families supported our march for peace by
placing a light in front of their homes. Through that march, which was
broadcast live via the Internet to the entire world, I proclaimed that
Jesus had his authority as King of Peace restored to him. After centuries
of misunderstanding and division, an opportunity was created for
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to reconcile with one another.
Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest mosque in Islam after those
in Mecca and Medina, is in Jerusalem. It is the spot from which the
Prophet Mohammad is said to have ascended to heaven. Ours was
the only mixed religious group welcomed to all parts of this house of
worship. The mosque leaders guided the Christian and Jewish leaders
who had participated in the peace march to the sacred spaces of the
mosque. We opened a door that had been closed tightly, and prepared
the way for many Muslim leaders to communicate at a new level with
their Christian and Jewish brothers and sisters.
Human beings like peace, but they also enjoy conflict. Human beings
will take the most gentle of animals and make them fight. They will
have roosters stand their crowns on end and peck each other with their
sharp beaks until pieces of soft flesh begin to fall away. Then, people
will turn around and tell their children, “Don’t fight with your friends.
Play nice.” The fundamental reason that wars occur is not religion or
race. It is connected to what lies deep inside human beings. People like
to attribute the causes of armed conflicts to such things as science or
the economy, but the actual fundamental problem lies within human
beings ourselves.
Religion’s role is to turn human beings toward goodness and eliminate
their evil nature that finds enjoyment in fighting. Examine the major
religions of the world. They all hold a peaceful world as their ideal.
They all want to see a kingdom of heaven, utopia, or paradise. Religions
have different names for this ideal, but they all seek such a world. There
are numerous religions in the world, and virtually every one is divided
into countless factions and denominations. But the essential hope for
all is the same: They want the Kingdom of Heaven and a world of peace.
The human heart has been torn to shreds by the violence and enmity at
our core. The kingdom of love will heal it.
The River Does Not Reject the WatersThat Flow into It
Selfishness is rampant in the world. Ironically, however, the individual
is destroyed by this, and not just the individual, but those
around him and the nation as a whole. The greatest obstacle to
the world of peace is avarice in peoples’ hearts. It starts in individuals,
expands to the nation, and hearts stained with avarice cause division
and conflict at every level. Countless people throughout history have
shed blood and died in conflicts caused by avarice.
To eliminate such conflicts, we need a great revolution to change the
erroneous values and thinking that are widespread in the world today.
The complex problems our societies face today can be resolved quickly
if there is a revolution in peoples’ thinking. If each individual and nation
begins to look out for the other first, working together with the
other, the problems of modern society will be resolved.
Throughout my life, I dedicated myself to efforts for peace. Any
time the word “peace” comes up, I become emotional. I choke up, it
becomes difficult for me to swallow my food and tears begin to well up
in my eyes. It moves me deeply just to imagine the day when the world
becomes one and begins to enjoy peace. That is the nature of peace.
It links people who think differently, are of different races, and speak
different languages. Our hearts yearn for this world and harbor a hope
that it will be realized. Peace is concrete action; it is not a vague dream.
Building a movement for peace has not always been easy. There have
been many difficulties, and it has required large sums of money. I have
not done this for my own honor, nor to make money. All I did was invest
my full effort, so that we can have a world where a strong and true peace
takes root. For as long as I have been doing this work, I have never been
lonely. This is because, ultimately, peace is the desire of every person in
the world. It is strange, though. Even though everyone wants peace, it
has still not come.
It is easy to talk about peace. But to bring peace is not easy. This is
because people push aside the most elemental truth needed to bring
about a world of peace. They pretend not to know this truth is there.
Before we talk about peace among individuals or among nations, we
must talk about peace between ourselves and God.
Each religion today thinks of itself as the highest, rejecting and
looking down on other religions. It is not right to build fences against
other religions and denominations.
A religion is like a wide river flowing toward an ideal, peaceful
world. The river flows for long distances before it comes to the
wide expanse of peace. On its way, many streams flow into it. The
streams cease to be streams from the point they meet the river.
From that point, they, too, become part of the river. In this way,
they become one.
The river does not reject any of the streams that flow into it. It
accepts them all. It embraces all the streams and forms a single flow
as it continues toward the ocean. People in the world today do not
understand this simple truth. The streams that seek out the river and
flow into it are the numerous religions and denominations of today.
Each stream traces its origin to a different spring, but they are all going
to the same destination. They are seeking the ideal world overflowing
with peace.
Peace will never come to this earth unless we first tear down the
walls between religions. For thousands of years, religions have grown
in alliance with particular ethnic groups, and so they are surrounded
by high cultural walls. Tearing these down is an extremely difficult task.
For thousands of years, each religion has surrounded itself with such
high walls, insisting that it is the only correct religion. In some cases,
religions have expanded their influence and entered into conflicts and
fights with other religions, using God’s name in places that had nothing
to do with His will.
The will of God lies in peace. A world fragmented by differences in
nationality, race, and religion, where people attack and fight one another
and shed one another’s blood, is not what God wants. When we
shed blood and fight each other in His name, we only cause Him pain.
A world torn to shreds has been created out of the desires of people to
promote their own wealth and glory. It does not represent the will of
God. God clearly told me so. I am only His errand boy, receiving His
words and carrying them out on Earth.
The path to bring about a world of peace, in which religions and
races become united, has been exhausting. Many times, I was rejected
by people, or my own abilities fell short, but I could not put aside this
mission. When members and colleagues who worked with me would
cry out in anguish because of the difficulty of the task, I would even feel
envious of them.
“If you decide this path isn’t for you, you have the option to stop and
turn back,” I told them. “Or if you try and try and still can’t accomplish
it, you have the option to die trying.”
“But you should pity me,” I said. “I am a person with no such options.”
There are some two hundred countries in the world. For all these
countries to enjoy peace, the power of religion is absolutely necessary.
The power of religion is in the love that overflows from it. I am
a religious person whose role is to convey love, so it is natural that I
would work for world peace. There is no difference between Islam and
Christianity in their commitment to bring about a world of peace. In
America, I lead a movement for peace, bringing together twenty thousand
clergy who transcend denomination. Through this movement, we
discuss ways that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and all faiths
can come together. We devote our full efforts to change the hardened
hearts of people.
My purpose is the same today as it was yesterday. It is to create one
world with God at the center, a world brought together like a single nation
without boundaries. All humanity will be citizens of this world, sharing a
culture of love. In such a world, there will be no possibility for division and
conflict. This will mark the beginning of a truly peaceful world.
