A leap of faith: Religious leaders involved in waging peace

Tensions have grown in recent months regarding the holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, home to the al-Aqsa mosque. The President and Foreign Minister of the Palestinian Authority have recently warned against the political conflict turning into widespread religious conflict. Few know however, that local religious leaders of Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths in the region have quickly banded together to condemn the violence and urge for peace. These voices should be highlighted.

In a statement on 9 November 2014, the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land lamented that the holy site of the Temple Mount and Haram al-Sharif has become a focus for conflict. They maintain that the current status quo regarding holy places must be respected, emphasising that each religious community’s attachments to such holy places should never be a cause for bloodshed, violence or other expressions of hatred. Were the political conflict to dissolve into violence with religious dimensions, they stated, the only ones to win would be extremists on all sides.

In a briefer statement on 18 November the Council expressed shock and horror over the murders of worshippers at the Har Nog synagogue in Jerusalem, saying that such deeds, particularly in a house of worship “are the ultimate abuse of religion”.

The Council represents the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the heads of the local churches of the Holy Land and the Ministry of Islamic Waqf at the Palestinian Authority. It is based in Jerusalem and was established as the Second Intifada – a Palestinian uprising sparked by events at the Al-Aqsa Mosque – waned in 2005. These most recent statements are only two in a series calling for respect for holy spaces and religious freedom. It is also but one example of innumerable efforts around the world by moderate religious leaders and faith-based organisations to prevent conflict and bring about peace.

Oftentimes these kinds of efforts are not publicised, supported or even understood.

Until the last decade or so there was a strong assumption that the course of modern history would see the world becoming more secular, pushing religion to the margins of international affairs. This has not been borne out at all. Instead, there has been a ‘religious resurgence’ in international affairs, increasingly noted by academics and politicians. The events of 9/11 marked a turning point in this new awareness. It ensured that secular western actors were no longer able to ignore religious dimensions of conflict and international relations, and pushed many Muslim political leaders to make sure they were clearly identified with moderate, non-violent voice of religion.

We saw a similar dynamic with Muslim leaders more recently through the open letter to al-Baghdadi, leader of the so-called “Islamic State” organisation in Syria and Iraq. The letter, released on 24 September 2014, was signed by an unprecedented 120 plus Muslim scholars from around the world, including the Mufti of Jerusalem and All Palestine. It strongly denounced the organisation as un-Islamic and, using the Quran, emphatically refuted the organisation’s philosophy and the violence it has perpetrated.

Building on this, Sunni and Shiite leaders joined together with leaders of Christian, Madean and Yazidi faiths from the WANA region to denounce with one voice all violence in the name of religion, including that of the ‘Islamic State’ organisation. The religious leaders produced the Vienna Declaration, which rejects “violence in all its forms especially the violence perpetrated in the name of religion”, mentions the suffering of the millions of people displaced, including religious minorities who have been specifically targeted through sexual violence.

While it is rarely discussed, there is a multitude of faith-based actors pursuing peace in conflicts around the world, including in the WANA region. They are involved in conflict zones working in advocacy, negotiation, peace education, intra- and interfaith dialogue, shuttle diplomacy, local peace committees and mediation.

I have previously conducted empirical research, together with Professor Isak Svensson, focusing on a very small portion of these actors. This revealed 48 cases of faith-based diplomatic mediation in intrastate armed conflict since 1989. These local, regional and international actors of Christian, Islamic and Buddhist faiths acted as third party mediators with warring parties. We found that a higher proportion of these efforts were successful (55 percent) in reaching a peace agreement than most other types of mediators in civil wars. Ten of these cases took place in the WANA region, including mediations in 2004 between the Iraqi government and the Islamic State of Iraq, the al-Mahdi Army and Ansar al-Islam by Pope John Paul II, and Iraq’s top shi-ite religious authorities including the Grant Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Why can these not be a model for further efforts in the region?

Religious actors can employ different resources than secular actors. They wage peace on a different front. For example, some religious leaders on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have employed religious language, texts and symbols to recruit believers from outside the region, morph an essentially territorial dispute into a religious one, and delegitimise the others’ religious identity and attachment to holy sites. So in countering this dynamic, high-ranking religious leaders play a critical role. They are able to de-construct and negate these influences, and re-shape religious identity and demands.

For example, Israeli Professor Yitzhak Reiter has examined fatwas (legal opinions) given by muftis (Islamic leaders) in the WANA region. Islamic law is an important cultural rode accepted in most countries in the region. He shows that a number of the fatwas draw on Islamic jurisprudence to justify and support a peace agreement with Israel. Some of these are incredibly important, for example those by the Chief mufti of Egypt who lent support to the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979.

Against the many decrying the role of religion in conflict, we join our voice to two others who have recently tried to draw attention to the positive role religious leaders can play and to promote their increased inclusion. One example is last October’s visit to Rome by Jerry White, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. He was there to promote discussion about an interreligious peace treaty, stating that because much violence in the world is related to religion, religion has to also be part of the solution. White also tacitly recognised the role that Pope Francis has already played in working to create space where effective dialogue across borders can take place, alluding to a potential ‘third side’ or mediator role. Indeed, Pope Francis’ “purely religious” trip to Jordan, Israel and Palestine earlier this year diplomatically touched on several conflicts in the WANA region.

Similarly, International Crisis Group’s (ICG) Ofer Zalzberg recommended earlier this year that religious leaders be substantially included in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, particularly in relation to the question of Jerusalem. He suggests that potentially counter-intuitive options created by religious actors should be explored, such as King Hussein of Jordan’s idea of declaring the holy site of the Temple Mount and Haram al-Sharif under divine sovereignty rather that of either of the two parties. This follows ICG’s report at the end of last year which urged the international community to support interreligious dialogue of political issues related to the peace negotiations. This last recommendation is even more salient given the present efforts of the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land in relation to the holy site of the Temple Mount and Haram al-Sharif.

Let’s take a leap of faith and ensure their voices for peace are heard.