Empathie ist der Weg zum Frieden: verstehen statt verurteilen, versöhnen statt vernichten, lieben statt hassen.
Transparenz TV – Leben mit der Energiewende – 958. Sendung vom 17.05.2021.
FRIEDEN ZWISCHEN PALÄSTINA UND ISRAEL IST MÖGLICH
Gottfried Hutter, Psychotherapeut, Theologe, Nahostkenner mit Jahrzehnte langen Kontakten zu wichtigen Persönlichkeiten aus Politik und allen drei Religionen im Nahen Osten macht in seinem Buch „100 Jahre Nahostkonflikt – Ehrenhafter Frieden“ einen neuen, überraschenden, zunächst utopisch scheinenden, aber doch realisierbaren Friedensvorschlag: Die umstrittenen israelischen Siedlungen im Westjordanland als Friedenschance!
Seit 100 Jahren leisten die Religionen im Nahen Osten eher Beiträge zum Krieg als zum Frieden. Jede hat Angst vor der Übermacht der Anderen. Doch die Geschichte lehrt, dass Angst und Misstrauen nicht durch Krieg und Gewalt zu überwinden sind. Welchen Beitrag können Religionen zum Frieden im Nahen Osten ganz konkret und praktisch leisten?
Die zentrale Tugend der drei abrahamischen Religionen ist in gleicher Weise die Barmherzigkeit. Hier steckt ein riesiges, noch unerschlossenes Friedenspotential. Die gemeinsame Basis von Judentum, Christentum und Islam heißt: verstehen statt verurteilen, versöhnen statt vernichten, lieben statt hassen. Empathie ist der Weg zum Frieden.
Das Buch von Gottfried Hutter gibt Antworten zur Frage: Wie kann bleibender Frieden gesichert werden zwischen der muslimischen Welt und Israel?
Während Machtpolitik meist weiteren Kampf hervorruft, baut dieses Buch auf menschlichem Mitgefühl und Verstehen auf.
Studiogast: Gottfried Hutter, Autor Moderation: Franz Alt – 958.
After we had talked a lot about the marked hostilities in the Middle East, especially the competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the determination of the Iranian government to destroy Israel, I could tell a friend of the unique possibility of making peace that life had shown me:
It all began with my second visit to Egypt in 1981/82 when I had my bed directly opposite the entrance to the sanctuary of the Hussein mosque in Cairo, in one of the two apartments owned by the Sufi Sheikh Mohammed Osman in whose spiritual community I then lived for a full year. Every day I had the opportunity to visit the sanctuary and many times I made use of this opportunity, because I wanted to experience the spirit of that place and of its history.
This sanctuary, so it is said, enshrines the head of Sayyidna el Hussein, the son of Ali, the first caliph of the Shiites – who was a grandson of Prophet Mohammed. On October 10, 680, he was killed at Karbala in a battle against a Sunni army.
Not far from the Hussein mosque there is another mosque, the famed Al Azhar whose Grand Sheikh, Dr. Al Tayyeb, is the spiritual head of Sunni Islam. The Al Azhar was built more than a thousand years ago by the Shiite Fatimids, who then ruled Egypt. The Hussein mosque was built two hundred years later, during the crusades.
I also visited Al Azhar many times, but living right next to the Hussein sanctuary, made me feel emotionally closer to Hussein. Still, the fact that these two mosques stand right next to one other I found impressive, especially after I had heard that both had been built by Shiites and that the Al Azhar had since become a symbol for Sunni Islam.
Shiite and Sunni Islam, these two schools of thought, could not have regarded themselves as enemies in the way they do today or else these buildings would not still exist. After all, the second Caliph of the Shiites was a grandchild of the Prophet!
My experiences back then have since become the background to my attempt to find a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict – yet it took 9/11 to motivate me to dig deep into the matter.
After 9/11, I dealt mainly with the question of peace for Israel, which had become virulent after the United Nations divided Palestine, given one part to the Jews who, after repeated persecution in Europe, dearly longed for a state of their own in the area of the biblical Israel.
For the Muslim inhabitants and neighbors this came as a shock, because now, all of a sudden, the immediate vicinity to one of the most holy places of Islam, of al Haram ash Sharif, where Muslims think of Mohammed’s ascension into heaven, became a Jewish state. That radically changed the atmosphere between Muslims and Jews who had been living together peacefully thoughout the thirteen hundred years when the Muslims ruled the area.
During the times of Muslim rule, the Jews had accepted their status as dhimmis, as wards of Islam, easily. For the inhabitants of the state of Israel this was no longer an option. Besides the fact that the new Jewish state had been implanted in traditionally Muslim territory, that state did not acknowledge the superiority of Islam and, therefore, it could not be accepted by the Muslims. Thus, the Muslim neighbors refused to accept the partition of the land by the UN. The Muslim neighbors waged war against this alien implant – but they did not win the war. In the end they had to accept an armistice – which did not lead to peace.
Already in 2001 today’s Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, formulated his ideas about a possible solution to the conflict in his book “A Durable Peace”. He believes that the deep resentment against the state of Israel, especially in the population of Israel’s neighbors cannot be changed by mere contracts. In consequence, he thinks that a new state of Palestine could never possess the rights of a normal state, because that would entail the possibility that a sovereign state of Palestine might team up with, say Iran, and station Iranian missiles on its territory which could not only call into question the existence of the state of Israel but could even annihilate it. Under such conditions, Netanyahu thinks that the Palestinians can never be accorded rights equal to the rights of Israelis.
While I, too, can see the deep rejection by Israel’s neighbors of the state of Israel as the main reason for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, my conclusions are completely different – because of my experiences during my year in the spiritual community of Sheikh Mohammed Osman in Cairo.
There I could see that by nature Muslims are willing to embrace peace, but such peace must not defile their honor, so that only an honorable peace would have a chance of becoming real peace. This means that peace cannot be imposed on them – as has been the case with all the models of peace which have been presented so far. Peace had to come from the Muslims themselves.
But how could peace with the Jewish state come from the Muslims when that state had in fact been imposed on them? Would that not be self-contradictory?
A truly honorable peace will be possible only if it is not imposed! But how could the coercion which forcefully installed the Jewish state back then disappear? That coercion is a fact of history! How could such a fact disappear?
The coercion could only disappear only if the Muslims could somehow be motivated to offer that territory to the Jews as a gift. But what could motivate the Muslims to present such a gift?
It is not as impossible as it looks. Muslims could, in fact, be motivated to present such a gift by considering the succession of their prophets: Nearly all of the Muslim prophets are biblical prophets. The religion of Islam owes a lot to Judaism! But current hostilities have made men blind to that awareness and pushed it into a dark corner in the background. Yet reality speaks for itself. Muslim authorities can revive the memory. And that would not be manipulation, it would only be the reemergence of reality – not in a sense that could cause feelings of guilt because there is no reason for guilt, but in a sense that would arouse natural gratitude on a scale that would enable the Muslims to present the country the Jews have named “Israel” to them – anyway only a small gift when one remembers the fact that, without the preparatory work of the Jewish prophets, Islam would hardly be thinkable.
And at that point the state of Israel itself could make a contribution of its own: the very name “Israel” goes back to Jacob, the ancestor of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob was entangled in a deadly conflict with his brother Esau. Under normal conditions, the reunion between the two meant certain death for Jacob, because his brother was determined to kill him. But meanwhile Jacob was able resolve himself to do something that would have seemed impossible before. Facing certain death Jacob could now see that he had to ask his brother for forgiveness. He did exactly that. He threw himself to the ground before his brother seven times. This gestures which was almost incomprehensible for Esau moved him so deeply that he was now again able to accept Jacob as his brother. The Bible says that for showing the steadfast courage to make that gesture God gave Jacob the name “Israel”, “the one who has fought with God and prevailed”. Thereafter both brothers could live in peace as neighbors.
Today’s Israel would need something of that kind, admitting that the implanting of a Jewish state in this region was a course of action that was necessary for their survival, yet completely unacceptable to the inhabitants of the land, and consequently, that the Jews have every reason to ask the Muslims for forgiveness – just as four thousand years earlier Jacob had every reason to ask his brother Esau for forgiveness. And just as Esau was able to forgive his brother the Muslims will now be able to forgive the Jews, especially if they remember that they have every reason to be grateful to the Jews, because God chose to use the Jewish prophets to open the mind of the prophet Mohammed, thus preparing him for the new revelations of the Koran which he was to impart to him.
An essential role in bringing these facts to the people’s attention will certainly fall to the Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar, Dr. Al-Tayyeb, who has plainly already embarked on that task – first by visiting the Pope in Rome, the location of that great Council which made the deepest, most positive changes to the Catholic church’s attitude towards Islam and Judaism.
Such a council in Cairo could change the entire world, on the one hand by making room for Muslim gratitude for what they received from Judaism, and thus enabling the Muslims to present the Jews with a state of their own, Israel – on the other hand, because such a council could also cement peace within Islam – as a side effect of the location of the council, in Cairo, on the site of the two mosques, which are in Sunni territory today, yet were founded by Shiites – and are still are of the utmost importance for Shiites, Al Azhar and the Hussein mosque!
By including the Shiites in the council, they could concur with the step of presenting the area of the state of Israel as a gift to the Jews, and thus come together in making peace, both with the state of Israel and with their Sunni brethren.
hp | 2019
The Author of ‘Honorable Peace’
Gottfried Hutter
The author studied Catholic theology, history and political science. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, he went to live in San Francisco for five years. There he gained a sense of human beings’ potential, especially in terms of spirituality and civilization. This, in turn, motivated him to learn about other cultures and religions. He moved to Egypt and stayed for one year in Cairo, mainly experiencing the spiritual depth of Islam. Back in Europe, teaching Catholic religion in schools and studying Shamanism and native religions, he trained to become a psychotherapist. Working with psychiatric patients, he wrote his first book, Resurrection – Before Death. How to Use Biblical Texts in Psychotherapy. In his therapeutic practice he is now mainly working with severely traumatized Middle Eastern refugees. More ->
Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
June 11, 2019, Report on 2019 May 27-29 »New philosophical and theological foundations for Christian-Muslim dialogue«
Dear esteemed memebers of our class world religions!
As report from our symposium in Portoroz »New philosophical and theological foundations for Christian-Muslim dialogue« I send to you some notes form me and a wonderful summary of our new member Lenart Skof who organized this meeting together with me. Thanks to him for the wonderful cooperation.
It was a great meeting with quite different approaches to the theme. I believe it’s a cornerstone meeting for building up a common home for all of us. Especially I was glad to see so concrete the two different and complementary vision for a cooperation of the religions for peace and development: The comparative and systematic (dogmatic) doorway and the more practical approach of fundamental theology with the theology of the people (teologia del pueblo) and political theology (teologia de la liberacion) which is direct connected to the social society level.
Both together – as mentioned in the lecture of comparative political theology – could be able to change the social societies an to strengthen the international peace building process against hate speech and terrorism. As I hope this cooperation will go on and bring as together as friends.
Yours Elmar Kuhn
Here´s the report of Lenart Škof
Between May 27-29 Hotels Bernardin in Portorož (Slovenia) have hosted an international conference titled »New philosophical and theological foundations for Christian-Muslim dialogue«. The conference has been jointly coorganized by Science and Research Centre Koper (Slovenia – as a main organizer), Iranian Association for Philosophy of Religion (Iran), Centre for Comparative Theology and Cultural Studies, University of Paderborn (Germany), European Academy of Sciences and Arts – World Religions Class, and Society for Comparative Religion (Slovenia), with the special financial support of Slovenian Research Agency and The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The conference was held under the honorary patronage of the president of the Republic of Slovenia Borut Pahor. At the conference opening special addresses were given by H.E. the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Slovenia Kazem Shafei, Msgr Dr Jurij Bizjak (Bishop of Koper), Mag. Nevzet Porić (Secretary General of the Islamic Community in Slovenia), and Dr Gregor Lesjak, Director of the Office for Religious Communities of the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia.
The special importance of this conference is in close cooperation between Christian philosophers of religion and theologicans (Catholic and Protestant) and Iranian Shi’a philosophers and theologians. At this event, we wanted to explore new ways in which philosophical and comparative theological theories can foster Christian-Muslim understanding. Among the main questions, addressed at the confernece, were the following: Can Christian and Muslim theologies as equal partners in conversaton, and as comparative theologies, help us foster better intercultural and interreligious understanding? What are best philosophical models and theories of dialogue for framing the theological conversation between European Christians on one hand and Iranian and other Middle Eastern Muslims on the other? How can contemporary theories from both Christian and Muslim background help us shaping new paths of a »friendly co-traveling« in our paths, as one of the conference participans beautifully emphasized.
The focus of discussions at this conference also was on a current migration crisis and possible ethical responses to it, then on the rise of the populist politics in Europe and democratic responses from philosophers that rather then to hostilities, based on fear, would rather like to orient their thoughts towards better intercultural and interreliigous understanding. Participants have discussed also on the role of Sharia in Europe and on various aspects of the understanding the future cohabitation of citizens of European democracies.
During the conference, a special interreligious Christian-Muslim prayer was organized in the Church of St Bernardine, hosted by Dean of the World Relgions Class, Prof Dr Elmar Kuhn and in cooperation with Emer Prof Dr Janez Juhant, EASA and Prof Dr Reza Akbari from Imam Sadiq University in Tehran.
This conference has shown that in the era of insecurity and fear, underpineed with huge social and political challenges in Europe, USA and in the Middle East, we need to continue to work with our partners on interfaith dialogue in order to secure a peaceful place and harbor where people of all faith could find their resting place, but also where new theories in comparative theology and interreligious philosophical studies could be discussed and further shaped for our common future.
Prof Dr Lenart Škof, conference director
EASA Class World Religions
hp | 2019
The Author of ‘Honorable Peace’
Gottfried Hutter
The author studied Catholic theology, history and political science. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, he went to live in San Francisco for five years. There he gained a sense of human beings’ potential, especially in terms of spirituality and civilization. This, in turn, motivated him to learn about other cultures and religions. He moved to Egypt and stayed for one year in Cairo, mainly experiencing the spiritual depth of Islam. Back in Europe, teaching Catholic religion in schools and studying Shamanism and native religions, he trained to become a psychotherapist. Working with psychiatric patients, he wrote his first book, Resurrection – Before Death. How to Use Biblical Texts in Psychotherapy. In his therapeutic practice he is now mainly working with severely traumatized Middle Eastern refugees. More ->
Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
The basis of dialogue: in their essence all religions are one.
I spent a full year in the Muslim Sufi community of Sheikh Mohammed Osman in Khartoum and in Cairo. With the idea of the unity of all religions on my mind I asked the Sheikh “is this true? Or is Islam the only true religion?” What he replied I found truly enlightening. “There is only one true religion,” he said. “It is not the one with the name ‘Islam’, it is Islam!”
Then he explained the difference between Islam and Islam. The only true religion,” he said, “the only way to true inner peace, is obedience to the will of God. This is what is meant by the word ‘Islam’.” It is finding peace by doing what God wants you to do, by listening sincerely and honestly to this small voice inside you.
But there is also some general guidance. It can be found in the formula “bismillâhirrahmânirrahîm”, in the name of the all-merciful God. Devout Muslims begin whatever they do with this formula. In the name of the all-merciful you will of course not kill innocent people and you will not commit any crimes. In the name of the all-merciful all your actions will be benevolent. This is what is originally meant by the word “Islam” – but this same essence can be found in all religions. In this all religions are one. Sometimes it will happen that members of the religion named “Islam” will not follow Islam, but members of other religions will follow Islam and vice versa.
Another way to differentiate between the two meanings of Islam is the difference between “we” and “them”.
Once people identify with a religion of a certain name, they are differentiating between “us” and “them”. And then they are in danger of reserving mercy only for the in-group. Then, of course, the essence of religion is lost. Then, only the name of the religion is left. Members will identify with a religion named “Islam” or named “Christianity” or named “Judaism”. These will be the times of religious wars, “we” against “them”.
Please allow me to give you an example from some 17oo years ago – with powerful consequences up to this very day:
Just about 1700 years ago the religion of Christianity experienced its coming out. The mother of the Roman emperor Constantin had an important role in this. Helena was her name. She was Christian. When her son became emperor, she traveled to the Holy Land and tried to uncover the traces that were left of the life of Jesus.
Helena was incredibly successful. She found the place of Jesus’ birth in Jesusand she had the church of nativity built there. In Jerusalem she found the cross to which Jesus had been nailed and she found the hill of Golgotha, where they had put up his cross. From the hill of Golgotha she had seven shiploads of soil taken and shipped to the capital of the empire, to Rome. In Rome this soil was brought to a certain place she had named. It was heaped on the ground – and on top of that heap a new church was built, “Santa Croce”! This was her attempt of sanctifying the capital of the Roman empire. In Jerusalem she had built the “Holy Sepulchre”, the church of the grave of Jesus from which he had risen.
All of this was very meritorious, no matter from which angle you look at it. This is why she later became a Christian saint. But there is one detail she was not able to treat the best possible way. Her way of dealing with it has dire consequences up to this very day:
First, she ordered the Roman temples to be destroyed which had been built at the site of the former Jewish Temple. But instead of building a Christian monument there in memory of the Jewish Temple she demonstratively left that place in ruins and later on that site even came to be used as a garbage dump.
What she did there was the opposite of inter-religious dialogue. She apparently wanted to demonstrate Christian superiority over Judaism. There was no gratitude towards Judaism for providing the rich background from which the new religion of Christianity could emerge. There was also no respect for the Apostles who had continued to visit the Temple long after Jesus had risen to heavens. There was mainly disrespect. We know that, we are used to that. So we hardly even spend a thought about any other possibility.
But what if she would have had the due respect? Then she would have not left the site in ruins. Then she would have built a memorial at this site for the Christians to remember the day when the mother of Jesus brought her newly born son to the Temple, the days of the twelve years old Jesus teaching the teachers in the Temple, the days of Jesus returning to the Temple only days before he was crucified, and the days of the Apostles visiting the Temple after Jesus had risen from the dead.
With such thoughts on her mind, Helena most certainly would have had built a monument on the site of the Temple in high respect for its important role for both, Judaism and its great son, Jesus.
Please take a minute to imagine the impact such a monument at that site would have had.
First it would have inspired the Christians to hold in honor their predecessors, the Jews.
Then, such a memorial would have made a decisive difference for the Caliph Omar, when he asked the Christian Patriarch Sophronius to show him the site of the Jewish Temple.
Now we know, when the Caliph Omar asked the Patriarch to show him the site of the former Temple, Sophronius was embarrassed – because what he had to show to the Caliph was a garbage dump.
The Caliph was appalled. He had not expected such disrespect! He got his people to clean up the place. That way he practically took possession of the place. Later on, he built a simple but respectful memorial at the site. And one of his successors, the Caliph Abd El-Malik, built what we can see today, the beautiful Dome of the Rock.
But now, just imagine, if the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine had already built a Christian memorial at that site! What difference that would have made for the Caliph Omar – and what difference that would have made throughout the subsequent history up until today. Just imagine if you would see today above the Wailing Wall not a Muslim but a Christian Dome of the Rock!
Nobody can really know how history would have developed then. But then, there may have not been any crusades – and today there may not be a State of Israel! Because with the due respect of the Christians towards Judaism, there may not have been any Christian pogroms, and thus there may not have been the movement of Zionism, there may not have been the concentration camps – but, possibly, the Jews might have been allowed to return to their Holy Land much much earlier!
Under these circumstances, the Christian memorial at the Temple Mount meanwhile might already have been replaced by a new Jewish Temple…
Who knows? Of course, all of this is speculation – but, I hope that speculation may arouse your curiosity – also your curiosity about my book: “100 Years of Middle East Conflict. Honorable Peace. How Can Lasting Peace be Secured between the Muslim World and Israel”.
It is not a speculative book. It is a book about facts – but facts which today are not duly respected, in danger to be put aside, because they don’t fit in with our secular world view.
But our secular world view may not have the assets the world will need to make peace at this pivotal point between orient and occident, between the Muslim world and the West.
To discover a way to honorable peace we will definitely need to include the essence of religion, which is still present in each of the three religions based on Abraham. And that essence we all will need if we want to avoid any future 9/11s!
Thank you!
hp | 2019-09-04
The Author of ‘Honorable Peace’
Gottfried Hutter
The author studied Catholic theology, history and political science. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, he went to live in San Francisco for five years. There he gained a sense of human beings’ potential, especially in terms of spirituality and civilization. This, in turn, motivated him to learn about other cultures and religions. He moved to Egypt and stayed for one year in Cairo, mainly experiencing the spiritual depth of Islam. Back in Europe, teaching Catholic religion in schools and studying Shamanism and native religions, he trained to become a psychotherapist. Working with psychiatric patients, he wrote his first book, Resurrection – Before Death. How to Use Biblical Texts in Psychotherapy. In his therapeutic practice he is now mainly working with severely traumatized Middle Eastern refugees. More ->
Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Mostly Unseen Problems in the Christian-Muslim Interreligious Dialogue
Gottfried Hutter
Psychotherapy has been deeply influenced by the ideal of dialogue outlined by the physicist David Bohm. The aim: to overcome prejudices and destructive misinformation. By freeing the mind from socio-cultural accretions, a free space can be created in which something new can happen.
This ideal can, however, be hard to live up to since intercultural dialogue has throughout history always been characterized by the dominant power structures of that time.
Even as late as 2002, when the famous interreligious Alexandria Declaration was formulated one of the Egyptian participants did not dare to sign. If I sign this today, I will be a dead man tomorrow. This the son of one of the other participants told me only last week.
Dialogue naturally creates a bond between two parties. When they are talking about a third party, they will tend to create a distance in relation to that missing party.
Thus, Christians and Muslims in dialogue naturally tend see the Jews in antagonistic terms.
Dialogue between Christians and Jews tends to isolate and scapegoat the Muslims in like manner.
And dialogue between Jews and Muslims tends to scapegoat Christians.
My research into the history of the Middle East has shown up this tendency up again and again.
All too often the dialogue partners are barely aware of this automatism.
Thus, there is a risk of them agreeing that they have a problem with the missing third party.
Because of the natural tendency of dialogue partners to develop loyalty to one another, there are not so many people keeping up contacts with both sides of a crucial issue.
Mostly we find persons who are well known for their contribution to Christian-Muslim dialogue or Christian-Jewish dialogue or Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
At the time of Reconquista when the Jews were driven out of Spain along with Muslims, they were welcomed by Muslims in Egypt and in the area of today’s Turkey. The Christians were the enemy.
When the new State of Israel was founded there were rather close relations between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. Israel was the enemy.
And in today’s West there is all too often a Jewish-Christian bond in which the Muslims are the enemies.
One famous example of the exclusion of one partner from dialogue is the letter “One Common Word”, written by the Jordanian Prince Ghazi about the most important word in the Bible: love. The letter was adressed to the Pope and high Christian leaders. It completely excluded the Jewish Rabbis, even though the one common word originates in the Jewish Bible.
But let me go back to my first statement:
Throughout history any interreligious dialogue has always been characterized by the dominant power structures of the time.
As long as the Jews were dominant in the first and second century CE, Jews would occasionally complain to the Roman authorities about Christians. As a result, Christians were in danger of persecution – a very early cause for antisemitism.
When the Christians became dominant during the rule of the Emperor Constantine, the Christians not only removed the traditional Roman temples in Jerusalem, they also showed their dominance over Judaism by demonstratively leaving the area of the former Temple of the Jews in ruins – they even used it as a garbage dump. Had Constantine’s mother Helena cherished the Temple as the Apostles had, she would have built a memorial there – and that would have made a considerable difference for the Caliph Omar, when he conquered Jerusalem, and for the entire Muslim world up until today.
In 614 CE, when Persian troops under Jewish influence conquered the Holy Land and took it from the Byzantines, they removed Christians from all positions of power and destroyed many churches. After a couple of years, the Persians became aware of the problem and reinstated the Christians in their former roles.
Another feature of dialogue came into play when the Muslims became the dominant power. They had a famous rule of tolerance: indigenous non-Muslim populations had to submit to Muslim dominance. They had to sign a treaty, the so-called “dhimma”. Once subdued, they had a right to be protected by Sharia-law. And then there was no problem in dialogue.
As long as they respected their subordinate role as dhimmis they could live in peace and thus there was [mostly] interreligious peace throughout the time and the area of Muslim rule.
Jews and Christians could live in peace with each other and with the Muslims. They could even take very high positions in the state.
The end of the Ottoman empire after WWI brought about fundamental changes in the power structure. That change was aggravated with the founding of the Jewish State of Israel. As soon as the Jews had their own state, they naturally refused to be regarded as dhimmis – while the Christians in their minority position in the Middle East tended to continue to live as they were accustomed to: as dhimmis.
But the Jews refused and from that moment on they were regarded as enemies of Islam.
Today this is hardly ever talked about anywhere.
Today, in any talk about politics a strict dogma must be upheld: religion has no role in politics. This is the effect of today’s power structure.
Thus, the Middle East conflict is seen as a purely political conflict. Consequently, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is seen in purely territorial terms.
The rationale behind this is the idea that, as soon as the factor of religion is included, the conflict becomes insoluble.
This rule has its merits, because religion has indeed caused much trouble in politics.
Yet, some features of the conflict will remain inexplicable and inextricable as long as religious motives are tabooed.
As long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is explained as a purely territorial conflict the question remains, why then has it not been solved long ago – like all of the major territorial changes following WWI and WWII.
Today, nobody is talking seriously about foreign colonization of German territories in the East or colonization of Greek territories in today’s Turkey or of the German speaking region of South Tyrol. So, why are people speaking of Israel colonizing Palestinian territory?
In my view, the Muslim complaint against the Jews is not so much related to the fact that the Jews have taken territory from the Palestinians (as I just said, after WWI and WWII much territory has been taken from other people with little complaint), it is related far more to the fact that the Jews refused to subordinate themselves under the rule of the leading culture of the Middle East, and were thus regarded as an enemy of its people – by the people of Gaza, for instance, even after the Israelis had ended their occupation.
The Christians on the other hand are in many ways still acting as dhimmis and thus are forming an alliance with the Muslims – against the State of Israel – because the Jews are refusing to subordinate themselves.
Christians did not protest when in 1949 Jerusalem came to be a part of the Kingdom of Jordan. They rather protested when Israel conquered Jerusalem in 1967 – even though the Israeli government actively guaranteed freedom of access to all religious sanctuaries – which the Jordanian government had not guaranteed before.
So, in Christian-Muslim dialogue the old dhimmi rule still matters, and it is creating alliances and declaring the third party to be the enemy. That I have felt over and over again in my talks with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.
Since dialogue is the subject of this conference, I chose these special aspects to be my subject.
But now, please see this new book of mine:
“100 Years of Middle East Conflict – Honorable Peace. How Can Lasting peace be Secured between the Muslim World and Israel”
The entire book is a book about interreligious dialogue, laid out in its consequences for the reality of the life of people in Israel and Palestine – always keeping in mind that there are three parties to what is a trialogue.
If people want their lives to be normal, they will need an Honorable Peace! They will need what you will find in this book.
hp | 2019
The Author of ‘Honorable Peace’
Gottfried Hutter
The author studied Catholic theology, history and political science. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, he went to live in San Francisco for five years. There he gained a sense of human beings’ potential, especially in terms of spirituality and civilization. This, in turn, motivated him to learn about other cultures and religions. He moved to Egypt and stayed for one year in Cairo, mainly experiencing the spiritual depth of Islam. Back in Europe, teaching Catholic religion in schools and studying Shamanism and native religions, he trained to become a psychotherapist. Working with psychiatric patients, he wrote his first book, Resurrection – Before Death. How to Use Biblical Texts in Psychotherapy. In his therapeutic practice he is now mainly working with severely traumatized Middle Eastern refugees. More ->
Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
A remarkable intolerance within interreligious dialogue
An impression I got trying to get invited to an interreligious conference of Religions for Peace
Within religion there is a constant control of anything said by members of that religion if it conforms to the dogma.
In the past the intolerance within a specific religion could go as far as to condemning people who were seen as not conforming to the dogma to death.
The intolerance within interreligious dialogue is, of course much milder, but it can lead to the exclusion of anyone who is not an official representative of one of the accredited religions or of an organization recognized for its interreligious dialogue.
Remarkably such intolerance is never present within truly accomplished representatives of specific religions.
This is what I experienced with a Sudanese Sufi teacher who had thousands of disciples in Sudan, in Egypt and all over the world; Mohammed Osman was his name.
With him I stayed for one year, mostly in Cairo. When I met him I had mainly one question on my mind: can it be said, that in essence all religions are one?
It took me a full year to pose my question. But this year was filled with wonderful information about the religion of Islam.
He truly taught me to understand Islam. And when I finally was able to ask my question his reply contained a twofold teaching.
My question was: can it be said, that in essence all religions are one – or is there only one true religion?
He replied: there is only one true religion, it is Islam – but it is not the religion known by the name “Islam”.
From all I had learned about Islam I could understand because the “Islam” he meant describes the peace springing forth from being conform with the will of God.
This conformity can, of course, be reached in any of the religions, it can be accomplished if a member honestly takes his religions as a guideline to deal with his personal consciousness.
But then it may happen that by taking his religion as such a guideline this person can get into contradiction with the representatives of his religion who are tasked with controlling its dogma.
Because, sometimes such officials have a rather narrowminded understanding of the dogma. They never would agree with someone saying that in essence all religions are one, because in their view, there can be only one true religion and it is theirs. In their view all other religions, are wrong and need to be antagonized.
For that reason, it can happen, and in the past more it has happened more than once that, confronted with such representatives of their specific religion, such persons were accused of being heretics.
The most famous example, probably, is Jesus. But there are numerous other examples of people who have been put to death because they were suspected of being heretics.
Within interreligious dialogue, of course, no one will be put to death. But a similar mechanism is at work.
Here, the organizers of such dialogue have to watch out, that only representatives of the participating religions or of recognized dialogue organizations will be invited to speak.
Persons who engage in interreligious dialogue without being representatives of a dialogue organization or a recognized religion are likely to be excluded, because their participation could cause irritation with some of the delegates.
This is what happened to me in August 2019 at a big interreligious conference in Lindau, Germany, which was organized by “Religions for Peace”.
I had just completed a book outlining a way to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By applying a strictly interreligious perspective I was able to describe a procedure which could enable the parties involved in the conflict to question their own position and to understand the true needs of the opposing parties.
With this book, I thought, I would be an ideal dialogue partner for the representatives of each one of the religions present at the conference in Lindau.
Even though I had been accepted as a dialogue partner by one of the most prestigious participants of the conference, Rabbi David Rosen, with whom I have been in contact for the past 17 years, the organizers of the conference were skeptical about my work. And, just to be on the safe side, they kept me out. They did not allow me to participate in their conference. They also did not allow me to present my book at an exhibition area of the conference where partner organizations could present their work.
And when I then distributed some flyers about my book outside the conference, they prohibited that and said, if I continued, they would send in the police – something that reminded me of measures against heretics in the past.
As I talked about this to another “visitor”, also excluded from the conference, he said, that he too had the impression that the organizers could only see their organization but not the intention from which this organization had arisen. And that these organizers have indeed great similarity to the representatives of religions in the past who were, as the guards of orthodoxy, entitled to exclude certain individuals whose scope of mind they could not grasp.
hp | 2019-09-04
The Author of ‘Honorable Peace’
Gottfried Hutter
The author studied Catholic theology, history and political science. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, he went to live in San Francisco for five years. There he gained a sense of human beings’ potential, especially in terms of spirituality and civilization. This, in turn, motivated him to learn about other cultures and religions. He moved to Egypt and stayed for one year in Cairo, mainly experiencing the spiritual depth of Islam. Back in Europe, teaching Catholic religion in schools and studying Shamanism and native religions, he trained to become a psychotherapist. Working with psychiatric patients, he wrote his first book, Resurrection – Before Death. How to Use Biblical Texts in Psychotherapy. In his therapeutic practice he is now mainly working with severely traumatized Middle Eastern refugees. More ->
Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Honorable Peace: In this book religion appears in a completely different light. And this different light gives access to an entirely different world, one in which, surprisingly, both the main religions in this conflict have plenty in common.
Inclusion of the Religions in the Peace Process could lead to a Result
Cover: Honorable Peace – The Book „100 Years of Middle East Conflict – an Honorable Solution. How can the Muslim World make Peace with Israel?”
One of the basic rules for settling political disputes in our time is secularity. While that is certainly adequate in most cases, the author of this book believes that in the case of Israel and Palestine inclusion of the religions in the peace process could lead to a result which would not be possible on a solely political level: a peace that can speak to and for everyone.
However, including religion is unusual. For this reason, many people may suspect that this book is following a wrong approach. While they will admit that up until now not even one of the purely secular approaches has led to real peace, they will keep suspecting that involving the religions can lead only to chaos. And on the face of it, this makes sense. One has only to consider the hair-splitting about certain doors in the Muslim sanctuary. Thus, in his role as the custodian of the grand Muslim sanctuary in Jerusalem, the King of Jordan can only state that he will not deviate one millimeter from the status quo, which makes it quite clear that the Jews have no rights to any part of what they call their “Temple Mount.”
Nobody seems to notice that in all these contexts the term “religion” is being used exclusively in the sense of group identity and as a form of political power.
Isn’t it strange to see men so willing to fight for their religion and so unwilling to live according to its precepts? Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
In this Book Religion appears in a completely different Light
And this different light gives access to an entirely different world, one in which, surprisingly, both the main religions in this conflict have plenty in common.
On the way to the Jewish Wailing Wall a brief glance at the great Muslim sanctuary through a door where only Muslims are permitted to enter, Foto (C) Gottfried Hutter
In the world to which this book is leading no one will be surprised if the supreme representative of the religion of Islam decides to visit the Pope and vice versa, with both showing mutual respect and the will to peace, because both are clearly aware that they have more in common than what could separate them.
Thus, if you follow the track this book is laying out you will arrive at completely different concepts of conflict resolution, concepts far beyond the issues of power but grounded in virtues and mutual respect.
Follow this line and, suddenly, honorable peace will be within the grasp of parties who have lived in enmity for more than a thousand years or who managed to live together only by applying clearly defined instruments of domination or subordination.
Yet now, suddenly, we find them able to live side by side as equals, respecting themselves and one another.
Here is what’s new, even quite sensational in this book. For here is an approach that has the potential to instill true and lasting peace – something that would remain forever out of reach as long as religion remains taboo to would-be peacemakers.
The author studied Catholic theology, history and political science. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, he went to live in San Francisco for five years. There he gained a sense of human beings’ potential, especially in terms of spirituality and civilization. This, in turn, motivated him to learn about other cultures and religions. He moved to Egypt and stayed for one year in Cairo, mainly experiencing the spiritual depth of Islam. Back in Europe, teaching Catholic religion in schools and studying Shamanism and native religions, he trained to become a psychotherapist. Working with psychiatric patients, he wrote his first book, Resurrection – Before Death. How to Use Biblical Texts in Psychotherapy. In his therapeutic practice he is now mainly working with severely traumatized Middle Eastern refugees. More ->
Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Honorable Peace: There is no way to avoid what this book is offering
Honorable Peace. The new book “100 Years of Middle East Conflict. Honorable Peace. How Can Lasting Peace be Secured between the Muslim World and Israel” hardly fits any cliché. Yet, for the last 100 years the cliché prescriptions have not led to peace, just the opposite, so that today true peace seems further away than ever before.
Cover: Honorable Peace – The Book „100 Years of Middle East Conflict – an Honorable Solution. How can the Muslim World make Peace with Israel?”
As long as the Palestinian people cannot live in peace the entire Middle East will remain in turmoil.
This book offers a surprising solution; all the more surprising in that it is not foreign to the people of this part of the world. On the contrary it has been deliberately ignored for the past hundred years because in the view of most Western politicians including it would have violated their strict imperative of secularity.
This book violates their taboo on religion: the way to peace offered by this book draws on the most central quality of religion, its ability to enable people to feel empathy – even for people who would normally be seen only as recalcitrant competitors. This is the case of Jews in the eyes of Muslims, since the Jews are no longer willing to subordinate themselves under the religion of Islam, even though that subordination had given them peace for the previous thirteen hundred years.
The fact is that, throughout the entire process of establishing their new State, the Israelis never experienced empathy from the Muslims. No wonder, how could the Muslim world have accepted this new entity named “Israel” which took possession of a land big enough to incorporate millions of people from all over the world, if these newcomers were unwilling to subordinate and integrate? And how could the regular inhabitants of the land accept that these strangers be allowed to settle in the immediate vicinity of one the most holy places of Islam?
“God will destroy this wall”
The Jews do in fact have a very natural relationship to that land since it had been the land of the Bible – which is also an essential part of the historic background of the religion of Islam. But that historic chain was broken eighteen hundred years ago. At that time, almost all Jews were banished from the land, when the Romans brutally crushed their uprising. Subsequently, the population of the land became Christian, and later on, Muslim. So it remained for the next thirteen hundred years. So why ever should the Muslims of that area accept a Jewish repopulation?
It could be done only by force in a process similar to colonization. So, how could the Muslim population be persuaded to accept that?
Historically such things have been done by brute force. Here, however, even force could not succeed indefinitely, since a relatively small minority was implanted in a huge area among a population of a quite different culture. This is the case with the Jewish minority settling in the Middle East.
So, how could such a conflict find a peaceful solution?
Today, many people may say that most Arab states would like Israel to be their powerful ally against their main enemy, Iran.
But in the end, all these states are bound to admit that Israel cannot be their ally as long as the Palestinians are suffering.
In other words, a peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prerequisite for harmony in the region. Before the Arab neighbors can genuinely befriend Israel, they will need an honorable peace. And that is exactly what this book is offering!
The author studied Catholic theology, history and political science. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, he went to live in San Francisco for five years. There he gained a sense of human beings’ potential, especially in terms of spirituality and civilization. This, in turn, motivated him to learn about other cultures and religions. He moved to Egypt and stayed for one year in Cairo, mainly experiencing the spiritual depth of Islam. Back in Europe, teaching Catholic religion in schools and studying Shamanism and native religions, he trained to become a psychotherapist. Working with psychiatric patients, he wrote his first book, Resurrection – Before Death. How to Use Biblical Texts in Psychotherapy. In his therapeutic practice he is now mainly working with severely traumatized Middle Eastern refugees. More ->
Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
