Extremism and
Tolerance
Some 110 people attended the third retreat of interfaith dialogue
that was
organized by the Interfaith Encounter Association (IEA), this time
in
Netanya on June 27-28, and sponsored by the United States Institute
of
Peace (USIP).
This retreat attracted many people from a wide
variety of walks of life
and levels of religious convictions.
The
retreat was opened with an introduction to IEA's work and approach,
and
welcome greetings by Ms. Vered Swed, Vice-Mayor of Natanya and by
Mr.
Abd-el-Rahman Salameh, Mayor of Qalansawa. In the next morning we
were
also greeted by Sheikh Jaber, Mayor of Jaljulya. Both mayors
fully
attended the retreat.
During the weekend we had three sessions -
each dedicated to the joint
study of the topic from an angle of a different
religion. Each of the
sessions began with a 30 minute presentation followed
by a one and a half
hour discussion in small groups.
The Jewish
perspective was presented by Dr. Yacov Dafna who focused on Old
Hillel, who
is the Talmudic paradigm of the tolerant non-extreme
personality. One example
is the story about the man who wanted to convert
to Judaism and asked Hillel
to teach him the whole Torah while he was
standing on one leg. Not only the
Hillel accepted the challenge (and did
not send him away like his colleague
Shamay did) but he chose to say the
whole of Torah is encapsulated in the
sentence "Don't do to your friend
what you don't like being done to you" and
said that the rest of the Torah
is an interpretation to this sentence.
The
Christian perspective was presented by Fr. Dr. George Khoury who
related the
ability to avoid extremism and to achieve tolerance, to the
level of the
achieved equality. Fr. George also pointed out that the
separation
accomplished in Christianity between church and state has a big
contribution
to this ability.
The Muslim perspective was presented by Dr. Thabet Abu Ras
who gave a
courageous analysis of both the Islamic society in relation to the
topic -
pointing out both positive and negative phenomena and of the
Israeli
society.
Between sessions there were many opportunities that
were used by
participants, to dine together, hold informal conversations,
form
relations and make connections. We concluded the retreat on
Saturday
evening when each person approached another person who
particularly
touched his or her heart and expressed this to him or her.
Many
participants conveyed their appreciation for the depth and
effectiveness
of the experience of encountering the other that they had
during this
weekend, and their desire to maintain the relations they made and
to take
part in one or more of the groups to be created as a result of
this
retreat.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The
Interfaith Encounter Association
P.O.Box 3814, Jerusalem 91037,
Israel
Phone: +972-2-6510520
Fax:
+972-2-6510557
Website:
www.interfaith-encounter.org
Board:
Sheikh Muhammad Kiwan,
Chair
Sr. Karmela Farrugia, Vice-chair
Mr. Shlomo Alon,
Vice-chair
Rabbi Dov Maimon
Fr. Dr. George Khoury
Ms. Ibtisam Mahamid
Sheikh Tawfiq Salama
Yehuda Stolov,
Director
E-mail: msyuda@phys.huji.ac.il
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