Presented to
Peace Responsibility Symposium
January 18-20
Sponsored By
The Egyptian Society for Spiritual and Cultural
Research (ESSCR)
And
The International Association of Sufism (IAS)
Distinguished
participants,
Sisters
and brothers,
It
is a great pleasure and honor for the Egyptian Society for Spiritual and
Cultural Research (ESSCR) to join with the International Association of
Sufism (IAS) in organizing this symposium. We welcome the many eminent
speakers and participants in our midst.
This
symposium is dedicated to promoting a sense of human responsibility in
spreading peace within and world wide. I would like to share with you a few
thoughts on the themes of this meeting from my standpoint.
1- The path to peace in world
spiritualities:
Ethnic
and religious hatred has a long history, even though the spiritualities in all
religions encompass the idea of tolerance and consequently peace. This is not a
new idea. The word “Islam” in Arabic is derived from the root "س
ل م" which is
the same root of the word peace "سلام" .
Islam in its wider sense includes all revealed and earthly religions as can be
read in this verse:
“So if they dispute with
thee, say: "I have submitted My whole self to Allah and so have those who
follow me." And say to the People of the Book and to those who are
unlearned: "Do ye (also) submit yourselves?" If they do, they are in
right guidance, but if they turn back, Thy duty is to convey the Message; and
in Allah's sight are (all) His servants.” (Ala
The
word peace appeared in 50 verses in the Holy Qur'an. In some verses, the word
has the sense of being in a high spiritual state. The paradise is even called
the home of peace:
"For them will be the home of peace (Paradise) with their Lord. And He
will be their Walî (Helper and Protector) because of what they used to do.” (Al
An’am 6:127)
If
a human being is “Muslim” in the broader sense, as we explained, he would be in
a high spiritual state of inner peace, and will accept others and have peace
with them. This idea was reached by humans who have inner vision like Thomas
More. In his Utopia, written five hundred years ago, tolerance was one of the
essential virtues - essential not only to preserving the civil peace but also
to the integrity of faith itself.
2- Peace, a practical manifestation
of harmony with all aspects of creation:
God
created nature, all beings, events, and others according to His will. When
people look to some events that happen on earth, and cause tremendous damages
to humans such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, etc, they keep asking
themselves why God did that. This is just one example, and even when they look
to a handicapped person they ask the same question why God created him/her like
that. We have to address this question, not by trying to answer it because our
knowledge is limited and our ability to embrace all aspects of life is very
confined. The rationale we depend upon in reasoning is our observations,
education, and common sense that we acquire from our experience on earth and
what we think as good or bad according to culture and society's norms. These
norms must be used when we are responsible for any action but not to be used
for judging what is beyond the seen. If we believe in the
unseen as a result of perceiving that what we know is very tiny compared with
what we don’t, we will understand that we are responsible for what we can
change, and have to learn how to live with what we cannot, keeping in mind that
this does not mean that what we cannot change now will last forever. A day may
come when we can do more for helping those who suffer. Understanding our own
responsibility and trying to do our best to serve whoever needs our service
will help us in getting peace that will be manifested in our harmony with all
aspects of life.
3- Peace between heart, mind and body:
God
empowered humans by all the gifts He bestowed upon them. Mind, heart, and body
are these gifts that humans need to complete their earthly journey. Mind has
the capability of analysis, inducting, deducting, generalizing, specializing,
abstracting, concretizing, memorizing,
recognizing, and other mental capabilities and functions that we do not know.
The super self, the sacred power, or the “Ana” “I”, who is beyond mind, heart
and body, uses the mind's capacity to perceive what is going on in the world
and take actions to change it accordingly.
The 'Ana' “I” also uses mind to interpret what God has revealed, and
transfer the revelation to action in the mundane life. Thinking and
contemplating strengthen the mind. Although the mind is very powerful it has a
ceiling that it cannot overpass. Heart can deal with issues that cannot be
completely proved by mind. So if mind stops at a certain point the “Ana”
consults the heart. The heart is the center of feeling, sensing, loving,
hating, envying, and other good and bad attributes that do not depend on
rationale. Therefore, the heart needs to be filtered out of bad attributes by
remembrance “ذكر”. Body is responsible
for perceiving and initiating events in the mundane life. The body has earthly
needs and desires, which represent a driving force for mind and heart to try to
fulfill. These needs and desires are embedded in the body to keep the person
working on earth. The revelations have explained to humans that these needs and
desires are given to them to achieve the objective of their existence on earth
through transforming the energy they have been gifted with into spiritual
energy that lasts after leaving earth. The wisdom in heavenly and earthly
religions has provided humans with training systems to harmonize mind, heart
and body to achieve the goal of existence. Peace between heart, mind, and body
comes when the “Ana” succeeds to let them work together to achieve this goal.
4- Peace among religions:
Misinterpretations
of religions' commandments and guidance have been the source of conflicts
between nations in the history of earth. One of the reasons of
misinterpretation, from our point of view, is the separation of the guidance
from its objective. Another reason is the very literal interpretation of sacred
scriptures and limiting this interpretation to one meaning, and claiming this
is what God means. The Qur'an did explain in many verses that the main
objective is to submit yourself to Allah, which means not to be a slave to any
person or any dogma on earth. Submitting yourself to Allah means to be free.
This is what the Holy Qur'an calls “الكلمة السواء” in this verse:
“Say (O
Muhammad (peace be upon him)) "O people of the Scripture (Jews and
Christians): Come to a word that is just between us and you, that we worship
none but Allâh (Alone), and that we associate no partners with Him, and that
none of us shall take others as lords besides Allâh. Then, if they turn away,
say: "Bear witness that we are Muslims."(Ala
It
is very astonishing how people committed a lot of wars and crimes in the name
of Allah, especially among those who are assumed to be believers in one of the
religions. In effect the main reason of any conflict has never been “Religion”;
rather it is power, money, desires and lust in the mundane life.
Peace
among all religions will only be achieved by listening to each other to
discover the commonalities and the oneness of all religions, and not arguing about what we think of the
unseen as all our thoughts are just thoughts, not real, because by definition
we cannot argue on something that transcends our capabilities.
5- Peace between religiosity and
secularity (humanness and divineness):
Secularity
is part of religion. To be a good Muslim, Christian, Jew,… you have to respect
plausible reasoning, rationale, logic, and people's interests. From our point
of view the main difference between secularity and religiosity is the belief in
the after-life and its relationship with the earthly life.
However,
this difference must not cause any hatred or conflict because believing in the
unseen is something very personal and depends on what a person thinks, his
abstract mental capacity, and the inner self. On the societal level the gap
becomes wider because some people who claim that they are religious deviate
from rational values, and imagine that there is a sacred law to be applied on
earth that was revealed in the Scriptures. They cannot understand that the
words are just carriers of meanings and they depend on context, culture,
objective, and others. The interpretation of holy verses is relative and not
absolute. However, the only way I can see to solve this paradox, is to allow
freedom in societies and encourage dialogue. Nowadays, so many religious
movements believe in a civil state where all people can live and choose their
governance system. This is a good step towards peace between religiosity and
secularity.
6- Oneness of humanity and diversity
of expressions:
All
humans came from one origin; and they all have minds, hearts and bodies.
However, each person has his/her unique character. So every human on earth is
expressing his/her inner self. As all humans are subjected to the same divine
order, revelations have revealed this divine order in different ways. The
rituals revealed in different religions, express the same concepts in diverse
ways. Therefore, diversity of expressions that are manifestations of the same
concept should never be a source of hatred and conflicts. Therefore, we have to
work on this issue and educate ourselves to accept diversity.
These
are brief thoughts that I wanted to share with you but I am looking forward to
hearing more from you through the panels and workshops that will be conducted
in these three days.
I
wish you successful discussions, interactions, deliberation and fruitful
outcomes. I also wish you a pleasant stay in Egypt
Last
but not least, I would like to thank all those who participated in making this
Symposium a reality. Special thanks for Dr Nahed Angha, Dr Aliaa Rafea, Ms.
Aisha Rafea, Ms. Magda and Ms. Amani
el Mofty who were responsible for organizing the symposium, Ms. Passainte
Mousa for her dedication in taking the responsibility for the logistics,
together with Ms. Inas El-Sahn, the
ESSCR secretariat Mr. Anis El-Refaai, Mr. Mohamed Hamed for handling financial
and governmental issues.
Special
thanks go to Ms. Neveen Sidqi, Ms Maha Gohar, and Dr. Ines Amer for their fine
art, as well as Mr. Muhammad Abbas.
I
am also very proud of the young ESSCR members who did a lot of work to make
this symposium possible: I appreciate the artistic work of Amr Mamoud Kheirat, Yomna El-Esseily, the
contribution of Atef Mahmoud on several levels, and the great effort of the
translation team: Muhammad Halawa,
Shereen Aly, Amira El-Adawi, Ali Al-Salamoni, Mennat Mahmoud, Ola Badawi, Hoda
Ezz el Arab; and those who share in receiving
our guests, monitoring the arrangements in the conference room, preparing the
symposium's bags, paper work, and many
other efforts: Hassan Abdel Ra’ouf, Ahmad Saqr, Nelly Shoira, Amina Shaher,
Aliaa Ibrahim, Marwa Khamees, Wael Atef, Waleed Moustafa Mahmoud, Haitham el
Bendari, Rafea Saleh, Mohammad Zein, Ali Abbas, Eman
Habib, Muhammad Abdel Fattah, Amr Fekry and Muhammad Salah. I am sure that
there are names of other members in our circle who have shared in making our
Symposium a reality, and they know themselves. So, I would like them all to
stand, so they can be recognized for their devotion and sincere work.
I wish you all a very pleasant and successful
symposium.
