VERN BARNET FAITH & BELIEFS

Lowering the ‘temperature’ of conflict"

On Tuesday, November 13th, about 1,000 people at Village Presbyterian Church listened intently to a Jew and a Muslim talk with each other as part of this year’s 12-day-long Greater Kansas City Festival of Faiths.

One member of the audience, Dallas Ziegenhorn, said afterward, “The evening gave me a new way of talking with friends about ‘radical’ Islam and the increasing animosity of many countries toward the West.

“It is imperative that we have a deeper understanding of Islam in order to lower the ‘temperature’ of conflict. Since there are 1.4 billion Muslims today and 2 billion Christians, we must find a way to prevent a global confrontation.”

(The world’s Jewish population is about 25 million.)

Hussain Haideri, president of the Crescent Peace Society here, called the evening “nothing less than scintillating.”

The speakers were two grandfathers who spoke with the wisdom and compassion of experience. Judea Pearl is the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and a professor of computer science at UCLA. Akbar Ahmed is professor of Islamic studies at the American University in Washington, D.C.

In Haideri’s personal opinion, the evening “was an honest attempt to do some soul searching and scratching beneath the surface of complicated, aggravating and sensitive issues that transcend religious, political and social borders.”

Haideri said the dialogue “explored the root causes of hatred that fans extremist actions on both sides and perpetuates the mistrust between Judaism and Islam, two of the Ibrahimic (Abrahamic) faiths with more in common than often realized.”

“Repercussions directly affect the world’s largest religion, Christianity.

“Therefore, what could be more appropriate than sitting face to face in God’s house, as Professor Ahmed pointed out, and sifting through the causes of this dilemma?”

While other areas of the world were discussed, he said, “Professor Pearl laid out a utopian view of Jewish and Palestinian states, adjacent, in harmony. Ahmed agreed but pointed out that mistrust on both sides is high, and work needs to be done to bring down ‘temperatures.’

“They each reflected on the positives within each other’s faiths. Pearl called Islam ‘a universal religion,’ and Ahmed appreciated the ‘value of learning’ in Judaism.

Haideri concluded, “I am eager for the (evening’s) excitement to spill over to the masses locally and then snowball into an effort that spreads across the nation and hopefully, someday, across the globe, restoring the true image of America as a leader of nations.”

Vern Barnet does interfaith work in Kansas City. Reach him at vern@cres.org.

<Return to Media page>