The Need for Empathy in the Face of Bigotry

Islam's two famous personalities, Rumi and Muhammad Iqbal have lauded the spiritual message of the Buddha. Rumi, in his poem "Kulliyat-e Shams-e Tabrizi # 302", sees spiritual equality between the holy sites of Mecca and Bodh Gaya, while Muhammad Iqbal, in his poem "Bang-e-Dara", calls the teaching of the Buddha as a message of truth and humanism that was lost on Indian Brahmins and flourishes today outside India. The recent bomb blasts at Bodh Gaya's Mahabodhi Temple tell us that the message of the Buddha and the sense of inter-religious spirituality is lost on the world today. Religions, which are wisdom traditions, have been reduced to mark parochial identities and are used as functions of power.

The Buddha's message of the religious humanism stands equal with those of the founders of all religions, and the status of Bodh Gaya is equal to all sacred sites around the world. All founders of religions stand above the inter-religious conflicts and violence we witness today, mostly rooted in ethno-religious nationalism. Manipulation of religion by clerics, politicians and the media results in transforming rational human beings into sheep.

Since nobody is guilty of a crime until proved so, condemnation of violence at Bodh Gaya is required of all religious communities for the sake of building peace where it is highly fragile. For trying to prove that one's own religion has a better record on peace than others is a futile exercise. The stark truth of history shows that no religion is free from the stain of violence. Condemnation of violence against any sacred site is not an admittance of guilt, it is an act of building human solidarity for understanding and peaceful coexistence. Leave it to the security agencies to find the guilty without prejudice or bias. 

In my lectures, I often tell students that if the Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were among us today, they would not fight as their followers do worldwide at inter- and intra-religious levels. For we are often attracted by the emotional appeal of exclusivist ethno-religious or secular nationalism in the contest for power in the public sphere. 

I, as a Muslim, accord the highest respect to the Buddha as being a prophet among the unnamed prophets of the Koran. From the koranic perspective of the history of religions, God has, from time immemorial, raised prophets among all nations to teach moralistic monotheism. The Koran names only 25 of them who came to Arabia, while thousands of others remain unmentioned. (Koran 40:78. See also 4:164). 

The Muslim tradition says that 124,000 prophets have appeared since the beginning of time; surely all of them could not have been from Arabia. The Buddhist tradition also talks of the Buddhas who appear over time to teach dharma - the principle or law that orders the universe and sets out the path to nirvana, or enlightenment. The differences in the teaching of Islam and Buddhism, or for that matter between all religions, should not be a point of contention about which is true and which false. They should be seen as different languages through which we humans encounter "ultimate reality".

The Koran talks about the diversity of religions as a divine and natural reality, a test on the path to building human cooperation. Thus the Koran advises that instead of fighting over differences, religions should compete with each other in doing good, which is the essential message of all religions (Koran 5:48).

From this perspective, the Buddha's experience of nirvana and the Prophet Muhammad's experience of wahy - the koranic revelation - are the sources of their essential teaching of loving kindness and mercy towards humanity. The significance of the teachings of the Buddha and Muhammad lies in their being models of enlightened and humane worldviews, as a means to overcome religious ignorance and bigotry. For the Buddha, this ignorance is rooted in the cycle of samsara (rebirth due to attachment) as the cause of dukkha (suffering). For Muhammad, ignorance is rooted in kufr (human rebelliousness against God) as the cause of human loss. These compatible and dialogical, and at the same time unique, messages of the Buddha and Muhammad are not taught in religious schools.
This results in breeding bias and prejudice, which lie at the root of conflict and violence between religions. Differences between religions are not primordial but historical, political and sociological. We often confuse them.

In view of the blasts at Bodh Gaya, I am surprised at the total silence on the part of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) - the major Muslim international organisation. Yet the OIC previously called for a UN resolution against Koran burning in the USA. The demand for interreligious peace and coexistence demands impartiality and respect for the sacred objects of all religions. The Koran calls explicitly for the protection of sacred sites as an essential part of religious freedom (Koran 22:40). The Prophet Muhammad himself guaranteed protection of non-Muslim sites of worship in Arabia during his time, through the instrument of peace treaties - which still stand today.

Bodh Gaya is the Mecca of Buddhists. The Bodh Gaya incident will have important consequences for the future socio-cultural dimension of the Asean region - the only region where Muslims and Buddhist coexist in large numbers. Muslims make up the largest religious group in the Asean community, followed by Buddhists. Success at building an Asean Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) demands moving from the position of coexistence to cooperation through the removal of mutual ignorance rooted in stereotyping. It requires an evolution from an understanding of the religions of the Buddha and Muhammad as ethnic-affiliated to that of them being world religions. The same applies to the status of Christianity in Asean.

It is surprising to note that in six centuries of coexistence between Islam and Buddhism in Southeast Asia, there is no single academic work by a Muslim scholar about Buddhism, or Islam by a Buddhist scholar. On the other hand, popular stereotyping about each abounds. The future of Asean as a region of peaceful coexistence has to be inclusive and not exclusivist, for living with diversity is the challenge of the age of globalisation.

The minds of today's youth - our future leaders - are being shaped by access to information. The challenge before contemporary and future Asean citizens is to practice religious empathy where damage to one pains all. This requires the recognition of the fact that, in spite of religious diversity, we have shared a singular religious history since the beginning of humanity.

 

Dr Imtiyaz Yusuf is director of the Centre for Buddhist-Muslim Understanding, the College of Religious Studies, Mahidol University.