Faith in reconciliation: perspectives from Commonwealth countries
This paper is based on case studies and documentation on experiences from a number of different levels (city, state, national and international) as well as more general perspectives. The Commonwealth Foundation invited submissions from a range of contacts, and has sought to précis, draw on and bring together those received to compile this paper. It was prepared as a background paper to help inform discussions at the Muslim Aid/UMCOR Conference Beyond Conflict – Spiritually Reconciling Communities, held in Sri Lanka, 15 to 17 December 2008.
1. Bradford, United Kingdom – a city-level initiative
It is important to examine work at the city level as well as national and international levels. The majority of the Commonwealth’s citizens now live in urban rather than rural locales, so for many millions of people the city forms the primary context in which they live. Cities are often cosmopolitan crucibles of diversity where difficult questions of identity surface frequently. British cities, for example, are often home to large Muslim populations, disproportionately clustered in inner or outer city areas which reveal multiple indicators of deprivation. Bradford, United Kingdom, is one such city. Bradford saw two major riots, in 1995 and 2001, part of a pattern of riots in towns and cities across the north of England. Inquiries following the riots revealed that polarised communities were living parallel lives, with very little overlap or interaction between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. There was also growing extremist political support on both sides of the divide, and a significant generational divide between young Muslims and their parents, with some disaffected young Muslims rebelling into adoption of extremist or vulnerable identities.
A response to develop bridging social capital in Bradford was led by the Bishop of Bradford (a Church of England leader), a Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and a leading policeman, who brought together sectoral groups from the city, including faith groups, but also voluntary, community, youth, education and business groups. Political groups were deliberately not overly involved. The aim was rather to develop a shared civic voice to speak to local government. In each sectoral group it was ensured that young Muslim people of Asian origin were involved, with the aim of encouraging a new and confident generation into civic action.
There were three main drivers behind the initiative. First there was the realisation after the terrorist attacks in Madrid, Spain, in March 2004, that a similar attack in the UK was inevitable, and there was therefore a need to develop in advance a response mode to reduce community tensions and conflict in the wake of any such attack. Second, a longer term perspective on Bradford saw it as a place that occasionally experiences disruption and violence without the underlying causes, such as a number of different segregations (including around class and ethnicity as well as faith), unemployment and crime, being addressed.
Based on a case study submitted by Professor Philip Lewis, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, United Kingdom..
A third source of inspiration was Ashutosh Varshney’s seminal study into violence between Hindus and Muslims in Indian cities after the Ayodhya dispute in 2002 (in which a mosque was destroyed and attempts made to replace it with a temple). Varshney looked at six cities, three of which experienced high levels of Hindu-Muslim violence in the wake of this dispute, and three of which did not. Broadly, he concluded that in those cities which did not experience high levels of violence, there were on offer a range of forms and opportunities for crosscutting civic engagement and association, including cultural groups, political parties, businesses and professional organisations.
In the Bradford meetings, a focus was on developing a plausible scenario of a terrorist attack, and preparing a plan to respond to such a scenario. This plan was put into action in the city following the bomb attacks in London in July 2005. Actions included the issuing of guidelines to schools on how to address issues raised by the attacks; publication of a joint statement by the Chamber of Commerce and Asian Trade Link, an association of mostly Muslim businesses; the opening of different places of worship, including the cathedral, mosques, synagogues and temples for silent prayers; and a public signing of a civic condolence book by a cross-section of local leaders and young people. Because the network had already been developed, the city’s police force was able to use it to engage with communities vulnerable to backlash to reassure them that they would respond to prevent and effectively police attacks on communities or places of worship. In short, this robust civic network was able to mount a rapid and multi-faceted response to the crisis.
A second initiative in Bradford brought together young professionals from different communities – Christian, Muslim, other faiths and non-faiths – into an inter-cultural leadership school. Over four days the school aimed to develop the religious literacy of the participants – their understanding of faiths, how these interact with identity, how difference is construed and where commonalities exist – and develop conflict resolution and leadership skills, as well as skills in working with the media. The school was seen to offer a safe space to ask often difficult questions, and to begin to craft a shared vocabulary to address contentious issues. The school has now been offered nine times and has been replicated in other British cities and in other contexts in Europe, Indonesia and Pakistan.
A key recommendation coming out of the Bradford experience is the need to develop religious literacy among local policy makers. Further, there is a need to promote an understanding that democracy itself is a complex tradition informed by many intellectual, cultural and spiritual sources. Religious people need to be able to see themselves in civic and public life, and bring their religious convictions with them in doing so, or their participation may be lost and civic discourse and opportunity limited. Finally, there is an urgent need for spaces and networks for sustained dialogue to be developed between religious thinkers and secular thinkers and policy-makers. In summary, safe spaces at the city level can widen the potential for civic participation and a civic life representative of the diversity of the city. Such civic life offers a robust resource for response to conflict.
2. Nigeria – personal process in a shared state
Ninety-two per cent of Nigerians have said that they regard religion as a very important force in their lives. Nigeria has roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, and with a population of 140m, is often said to be the country which contains the greatest number of Christians and Muslims in one nation. While faiths tend to be regionally distributed, with the Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (Yale, 2002).Based on previously published material from a number of sources. See, for example, The Pastor and the Imam at www.peoplebuildingpeace.org/thestories/print.php?id=93&typ=theme and In Nigeria, Christians and Muslims In Uneasy Calm at http://ncrcafe.org/node/966.
Pew Global Survey, 2002. See http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=167
north predominantly Muslim and the south mostly Christian, there are also many locales where followers of the two faiths live side by side. In Kaduna State, northern Nigeria, with a population of 3.5m almost equally divided between the two faiths, conflict has seen thousands killed in the last two decades and an informal partitioning of Kaduna city along religious lines. Many more have been displaced.
Violence is seen as having its origins in the adoption of extremist positions by some local religious leaders in the 1970s, which intensified as a result of debates over Shariah law in the 1990s. But it is important to put this in its wider context. Religious dimensions are often given to battles for political space and scarce economic resources, with both Christian and Muslim communities constructing narratives of marginalisation. Oil-fuelled corruption, and long periods of military governance and patronage (with Muslim northerners tending to occupy more positions of power in the army) have contributed. The situation is highly volatile, yet federal government interventions have often treated peace as a law and order issue, and all too rarely seen peace as a process or examined the structural roots of conflicts.
It was against this backdrop that the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum, and subsequently the Inter-Faith Mediation Centre, was founded by two religious leaders, Pastor James Wuye and Imam Muhammad Ashafa, themselves former leaders of violence and militancy. They first came face to face to talk about a common problem in their communities, drug abuse, in 1995, and agreed to begin a tentative dialogue between themselves to try to find a shared understanding. This personal interaction and reflection, originally charged with suspicion and doubt, eventually led to public-facing activity which aimed to develop trust and begin collaborative relationships to build reconciliation over time.
The main objectives of the work are to re-establish relationships that have been damaged due to violence; attempt to minimise the likelihood of the reoccurrence of violence; offer projects which require the involvement of both Christians and Muslims, such as cultural events and workshops; and help support the capacity development of partners involved in peace-building. Activities have a particular focus on including women, as the chief transmitters of and educators about values in the home, and young people, who are vulnerable to religious calls to violence. Ashafa and Wuye themselves recount tales of the cult-like indoctrination in which they formerly participated. Work has begun in schools to provide conflict resolution training to religious instructors and other educators, recognising that minor conflicts can escalate if not tackled early.
A major landmark was the signing of the Kaduna Peace Declaration in August 2002. This was drafted to be inclusive of and acceptable to a broad range of religious leaders, who were encouraged to review drafts with their constituents. Twenty religious leaders signed the Declaration, and instituted an annual Peace Day in Kaduna State.
Part of the follow-up to this has been the development of a cadre of religious leaders who can be rapidly deployed to defuse tension in times of crisis. In November 2002, for example, a newspaper article about the Miss World beauty competition, due to be held in Nigeria, caused offence to many Muslims. Ashafa and Wuye, with other religious leaders, quickly visited affected neighbourhoods and made united television appeals for calm. This was seen as something that would not have been possible without the formal commitment earlier made in the Kaduna Peace Declaration. When Pope Benedict XVI made comments about Islam which many found offensive in a speech made in September 2006, the lack of violent response by Muslims in the state was attributed to the groundwork done by the Interfaith Mediation Centre.
The work has since been applied to contexts other than the strictly religious, such as ethnic contexts, with the skills developed in Christian-Muslim peace-building used to bring together opposing Fulani and Berom tribes. The work of the two leaders has also been showcased in a film launched in 2007, The Imam and the Pastor.
This experience demonstrates the need for processes of reconciliation to start from personal and apparently modest roots. A process of personal acceptance and understanding gradually broadened out into something that could reach and engage with others. It also draws attention to the need for inspirational leadership and role models, and for the sharing of this experience through popular forms that can reach others, such as film. Further, while the Kaduna Peace Declaration can be seen as a symbol – and symbols are of course important – an opportunity to demonstrate its value in practical application was quickly taken. Ultimately, for both Ashafa and Wuye, the starting point was a willingness to work round initial hostility and suspicion and a readiness to admit than an understanding of another’s faith might be faulty. The first step was that they were prepared to have their own assumptions challenged, but in a safe, private and unpressured space.
3. South Africa – reconciliation during transformation
The origins of political violence in South Africa are complex, lying in polarisation forced by apartheid, which meant that the majority community effectively did not have its own civil structures, such as a police force and fair legal system, and the battle for socio-economic gains in the wake of a system which had impoverished many to enrich a few. South Africa moved from a system of racist, minority government to a democratic system in 1994.
Much of the credit for South Africa’s relatively peaceful transition between 1991 and 1994 can be claimed by the National Peace Accord (NPA), a process in which the church was a major instigator and source of inspiration. 1990 saw a landmark in reconciliation with the meeting of 80 religious denominations and 40 religious organisations in Rustenberg, South Africa, including members of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and Afrikaner churches. At this meeting the Dutch Reformed Church for the first time publicly confessed its guilt for participating in apartheid. Then, in the Rustenberg Declaration issued at the conference, participants called on churches to condemn all forms of violence, and agreed to co-ordinate future church strategies and convene a peace conference.
In the light of this there were two parallel attempts to bring together different leaders to address violence. One, led by President FW de Klerk, was rejected by many who maintained that the government was illegitimate, including the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress and SACC. A SACC attempt to hold a peace conference was also rejected by many as partisan, as SACC was seen as too closely aligned with the ANC. The main conclusion of the government-led meeting was that the Rustenberg church committee should act as a facilitator in developing a broader-based, more inclusive process. A co-ordinating committee of people from religious groups and business leaders – the Consultative Business Movement having also emerged as a progressive civic force – convened a peace summit attended by 120 people from across the political spectrum. The meeting, which was closed to the media, was run as a brainstorming rather than debating exercise, in which participants were asked simply to list what they saw of as the causes of political violence and their suggested ways for ending it.
Out of this some key recommendations emerged, including codes of conduct for political associations and security forces, and enforcement mechanisms for these, and the need for socio-economic reconstruction and development. These formed the basis of the National Peace Accord (NPA). Peace was pledged and the Accord signed by the leaders of 27 political parties, trade union and arms of government after a conference in Johannesburg in Based on material published in Phiroshaw Camay and Anne J Gordon, Evolving Democratic Governance in South Africa, (CORE, 2004).
September 1991. This was seen as a huge achievement, and significantly, one which had its origins in church action. Religious leaders continued to be involved through a presence on the National Peace Committee and the Regional Peace Committees underneath it.
The church also played a critical role as convenors in bringing together two opposed political leaders. In June 1993, Archbishop of Cape Town The Most Reverent Desmond Tutu and The Reverend Stanley Mogoba, Bishop of the Methodist Church of South Africa, brokered a meeting between ANC leader Nelson Mandela and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, head of the Inkatha Freedom Party. This was widely seen as a major step in tackling a key obstacle on the road to peace, and one only religious figures could have achieved. Religious figures were also involved in a broad-based two week national campaign for peace in September 1993 and a National Peace Day that mobilised the public. Township churches, meanwhile, participated in the Rainbow Youth Peace Campaign, which aimed to offer young people alternate avenues for participation and expression.
The limitations of the NPA approach need to be recognised. Implementation called for the establishment of Local Peace Committees (LPCs), but it was not always easy or quick to establish these, particularly since the locales in which they were most needed were precisely those in which there were the highest levels of conflict, and therefore those where the conditions for establishing them were the hardest.
The lack of real sanctions for breaches of the Accord was acknowledged as a major weakness. There were also unrealistic expectations, given resourcing constraints. Nevertheless after 18 months, 85 LPCs were established – eventually they numbered more than 200 – and many of them became seen as a legitimate local forum for dispute resolution and prevention. There was a move towards trauma counselling projects, and the preparation of local conflict inventories to give clear indicators of likely outbreaks of violence. Over 15,000 peace monitors were trained, and the NPA was widely felt to have gradually pushed back the boundaries and forms of political violence, with violence restricted to fewer particularly volatile areas and large-scale communal violence reduced. Participation in the committees themselves helped to build new local civic capacity, with committee members often people who had never worked together before, and other forms of co-operation emerged as spin offs. This new civic engagement was arguably an important factor in the relatively smooth political transition to democracy in 1994. The NPA and its processes were also arguably a stepping stone to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission processes established in 1995, in which the church also played a significant role, not least in the chairmanship of Archbishop Tutu.
Divisions also need to be acknowledged between SACC member churches on whether to participate in NPA structures, in a society that remained highly politicised, with some churches frustrated at the apparent failure of the process to curb violence against black people and criticising those involved for being disproportionately white. While Bishop Mogoba was Deputy Chairman of the NPA, many felt that churches had been sidelined in processes following the Accord’s signing. Bishop Mogoba suggested that it may also have been the case that churches did not participate proactively enough in structures following the signing of the Accord, and many had only revived their interest after it became clear that the NPA itself was not going to significantly abate violence. He also emphasised the importance of churches avoided taking sides in disputes. The lack of involvement of traditional leaders, such as village chiefs, early in the process was also seen as another limitation.
The South African experience demonstrates that religious leaders and institutions can be a major source of inspiration and instigation for reconciliation processes. They can also bring together political figures in ways that might otherwise not be possible. But there is a need to stay the course and exercise commitment and continued, neutral engagement beyond the initial euphoria of dialogue.
4. Consensus-building – the global, political dimension
The Strategic Foresight Group (SFG) is an NGO think tank based in Mumbai, India. The starting point for their work is a recognition that terrorism and the alleged conflict between the West and Islam have dominated recent global policy discourses. While several organisations have made good efforts to promote respect and understanding, much of their work has, not unexpectedly, focussed on religious leaders and scholars. They saw a complementary need to bring politicians of different views together in the search for common ground.
In June 2004, the First International Roundtable on Constructing Peace, Deconstructing Terror was convened in New Delhi, India. The roundtable brought together leading strategic thinkers from Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States, and issued the Delhi Declaration on Sustainable Global Security. Its recognised that terrorism offered a significant threat to human security, but also that this was nothing new. Its key recommendations included making a distinction between terrorism as a phenomenon and acts of terror, and disassociation of religion from terror. Five principles set out in the Declaration are:
• The principle of humane conduct: all human societies are equally respected.
• The principle of dialogue: multi-stakeholder dialogue should explored between parties to conflicts.
• The principle of just means: rejection of the right to use unjust means such as terror and violence against civilians.
• The principle of universal values, while recognising regional and local specificities in constructing peace and deconstructing terror.
• The principle of prevention of violence and conflicts.
It also suggested that the Charter of the United Nations should be reviewed and strengthened in the light of the new threats to global security, particularly terrorism. It was proposed an expert group be created to explore a new approach to developing fair rules for the use of force by states designed to deal with the threat of terrorism, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The group would also explore new ways of promoting political and peaceful resolution of conflicts leading to the end of military occupations. Also recommended was a Global Transformation Initiative to reform education and promote tolerance and respect for religions and ethnic groups among young people. The group also emphasised that the long term needs of sustainable global security would be addressed by eradicating poverty, establishing the rule of law, respecting human rights and abolishing weapons of mass destruction.
The work was carried on to a Second Roundtable, held in Brussels, Belgium, in June 2005, with particular participation from Members of the European Parliament. In the Brussels Consensus developed at the meeting, participants recognised that groups engaged in terrorist acts have many different objectives, and in many cases underlying motives and root causes which may not be the same as those objectives. Accordingly, policy towards different groups would need to be closely tailored, case by case, to individual situations. Participants called for greater willingness to embrace strategies that go beyond reliance on coercive police and military means, such as dissuasion of disaffected groups from choosing terrorism as a tactic to achieving goals, denial of terrorists of the means to carry out their attacks, deterrence of states from supporting terrorists, development of state capacity to prevent terrorism and defence of human rights in the struggle against terrorism. They supported an increase in investment in quality and inclusive education; new partnerships between the Based on material submitted by the Strategic Foresight Group, www.strategicforesight.com. state, private sector and civil society to create employment, especially for young people and women, in fragile societies; commitment to empower women in efforts to construct peace, and to develop policies of gender mainstreaming; intra- and inter-faith dialogues to promote understanding and proper interpretation of the teaching of all religions; promotion of accountability, open and democratic political space and people's participation in governance and civil society; and capacity building of states to deal with crime and terror in effective and fair ways and to resolve conflicts.
They convened again in Brussels in November 2006. Here, the group noted that current counter terrorism strategies had manifestly failed to curb support for extremism, and the costs of continued failure were high. They continued to emphasise that terrorism and extremism are the problems of humanity and not of the Islamic world alone, while calling for new partnerships between Western and Islamic countries. The Roundtable was endorsed by the League of Arab States, and supported by The Friedrich Naumann Stiftung. The group recommended an Inclusive Semi Permanent Conference on Peace in the Middle East, a Western Islamic Dialogue and Engagement Initiative, an International Historical Study Group on Common Human Civilisation, an Arab Islamic Renaissance Initiative and the promotion of the Compact of Dialogue-Democracy-Development
In June 2007, SFG decided to take the next step beyond declarations. Lord Alderdice, former Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, convened a meeting of senior political leaders and high level Arab League representatives to discuss how to convert statements into concrete political change. In the subsequent processes, under the guidance of political leaders from around the world, particularly the Middle East, SFG has prepared two instruments: a concrete proposal for an inclusive and semi-permanent conference for comprehensive peace in the Middle East and a first ever thorough analysis of the cost of conflict in the Middle East. In November 2008, SFG held consultations with leaders in Israel and the Palestine Authority on how to use the instruments to find political solutions without being overshadowed by extremist religious thinking. With the installation of the Obama Administration in the USA in January 2009, the stage would appear to be set for concrete political action on both interfaith and political platforms using the above two instruments. It is anticipated that mainstream political leaders will be moving into action using these tools from early 2009.
The work of the group demonstrates that political will and credibility can be built at a high level, and sensitive issues addressed, by the institution of regular, focussed and relatively small roundtables. It also shows that, even when engaging with issues that have a strong religious dimension or implication, other actors, such as political decision makers, should not be left out of analysis or engagement. The challenge here, of course, is to move from the issuing of statements and recommendations to demonstrating real influence in action and the achievement of change for those most often the victims of violence: the poor.
5. Some potential general principles from other sources
In addition to the above, the Christian faith-based NGO, Tearfund , has attempted to set out some general principles for community peace-building from a Christian perspective. These include:
• analysing conflict, including its content, potential sources and timeline;
• examining identities and different layers of identities, and looking at individual rather than group identities;
See Peace-building within our communities, Tearfund, http://tilz.tearfund.org/Publications/ROOTS/Peace-building+within+our+communities.htm
• developing ‘soft’ ways of working together, such as through public ceremonies and symbols that bring people together;
• understanding reconciliation as a process in which the most valuable resource is time;
• developing communication skills, the most essential of which is listening;
• establishing forward-looking and group-owned visions of what sustainable peace might look like;
• using indicators to measure success in reconciliation;
• enabling leaders to play a key role;
• recognising the strength of long-term networks
While research carried out for the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies , United Kingdom, attempts to set out some guidance specifically for Christian organisations seeking to work in environments where there are other faiths, including:
• involving and including local churches;
• working with other faiths, but also the secular world;
• developing partnerships that bring together developing and developed country actors;
• inclusively recruiting leaders from developing countries, including women;
• including and building on indigenous leadership and indigenous knowledge.
6. Summary – key learning from the above
There are some key common issues from the above case studies and conclusions which suggest potential for application in other contexts:
• Peace needs to be seen as a process rather than an end product. Processes need to be open-ended and non- judgemental rather than time bound and target-driven.
• While there is a need to understand, and engage with, religious belongings and structures, there is also a need to create secular and civic processes and spaces in which people with different religious identities may feel more comfortable in coming together than explicitly religious spaces and processes. Cultural and social spaces are particularly valuable here in offering potential for common ground and the identification of commonalities between people and communities. An investment in secular and civic spaces does not, of course, imply a rejection of religion’s central role to many people and communities. Rather it acknowledges an important dimension which can sometimes be insufficiently represented in existing civil spaces.
• Conversely, amongst secular actors, such as policy-makers and politicians, religious literacy needs to be built to help nurture a stronger civil involvement of people who hold strong religious identities.
• Public declarations in support of peace, especially when they can be shown to demonstrate broad-based backing, are important. Also important are public commemorations of such landmarks and achievements, for example in the form of festivals or symbolic days.
• Declarations, however, need quickly to demonstrate tangible influence on events if they are going to continue to win the support of communities looking for solutions to conflict and continue as living documents.
See www.faithindevelopment.org
• Similarly, workshops and conferences can be good starts but they must flow into and be backed by long-term investments in spaces and processes if initial enthusiasm is to be maintained.
• There is a need to build networks and structures in advance of crises to offer rapid responses to flashpoints and crises when they arise, and to identify and anticipate potential sources of conflicts and flashpoint situations. This need is seldom, however, recognised by governments and funders, which often act in hindsight and put resources into affected communities only after violent conflicts have arisen.
• Grassroots, community-owned initiatives show the best chances of sustained success. However, leadership is also important, and religious leaders can play a key role as sources of inspiration and often as neutral convenors of political leaders. Sometimes personal engagement of leaders can be the start of a public process. Both leaders and communities need, therefore, to be included and addressed as part of reconciliation processes.
• Women tend to occupy key roles within homes as educators of their children and inculcators of values. Young people can be vulnerable to calls to extremism and feel alienated from older generations of their families. Processes therefore need to be inclusive of, and pay special attention to, women and young people.
• Attention needs to be paid to the role of the media. Sometimes processes need to begin away from media scrutiny, while building awareness of how the media works and can be worked with is an important part of any training.
• Initiatives need to be documented and publicised in accessible forms. As well as practical learning, they offer sources of inspiration for others engaged in the difficult business of peace-building and reconciliation.
About the Commonwealth Foundation
The Commonwealth Foundation is an intergovernmental organisation working to help civil society organisations promote democracy, development and cultural understanding in Commonwealth countries. One of the Foundation’s four programme areas is culture, and as part of its Culture Programme it seeks to promote inter-religious co-operation to enhance development and social cohesion. The Foundation’s 2007 report, Engaging With Faith, sets out some of its initial work with faith-based and interfaith organisations between 2005 and 2007. This report is available from the Foundation’s website, www.commonwealthfoundation.com.
7 November 2008
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