The InterFaith we can do, but between ourselves?
I attended an inter faith dialogue event a few months ago in my hometown that was setup by a Shia Muslim group on the topic of end times prophecies. It was a well attended and well run panel with a number of religious leaders explaining their own theology's views of the end times. Most of the presenters were incredibly respectful of each other and the topic itself was a pretty neutral one.
So I was pretty flabbergasted when the Muslims on the panel started going after each other with aggressive rhetoric.
Sniping between Muslims
The Sunni Muslim presenter was fine and didn't get pulled into the nastiness. The trouble started when an Ahmadi Muslim audience member asked the Shia panelist a gotcha question. Then the Shia and the Ahmadi panelist had a testy back and forth, and finally the Shia panelist got offended by something the Sufi panelist said and the MC of the event had to step in to move things along.
Meanwhile one of the Christian panelists was having a grand time laughing at this nonsense and the Scientologist just looked confused at the whole thing.
The reason I bring up this anecdote is that the only thing that was really surprising to me was that the various people involved weren't able to control themselves in a public setting. The back and forth sniping between different Muslim denominations is, sadly, entirely predictable.
The real horror is that this isn't just restricted to nasty verbal attacks, but real world Muslim on Muslim hate crimes and a complete lack of unity when it really matters.
Why does it happen?
The West
I'm no scholar on this by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly feels like a divide and conquer strategy followed by Western powers that have mastered it over centuries of colonial loot and pillage. The European model of pitting different indigenous groups of people against each other to facilitate European domination has always taken advantage of any division that it can exploit and differences between denominations have proven to be effective in Muslim majority areas of the world.
That is to say, that when we Muslims tear each other down over these differences, we're being Western stooges. Some of us, I'm sure, get paid to do this, but others of us do it for free. It really doesn't matter which one is worse, but the real world ramifications are obvious and horrific as the nearly 2 billion strong community that we are, are unable to stop the genocide of our Palestinian brothers and sisters the majority of whom are Muslims like us, not to mention sectarian violence.
Muslim History
Now while I'll always put the lion's share of the blame for any bad situation on the powerful, and the European colonial exploiters are definitely that, I have no hesitation in highlighting the weaknesses of the exploited that allow the exploiters to do what they will. And the history of us Muslims is littered with divisions that we created amongst ourselves even as we built some of the most powerful and forward thinking empires in history.
While some may disagree when it all went wrong, it is undeniable that the first Muslim Empire, the Umayyads, was built in opposition to the fourth and last of the Rashidun (or Rightly Guided) Caliphs, or successors of the Prophet Muhammad. This was Ali ibn Abi Talib, whose sons, both Hassan and Hussain, resisted the creation of the Umayyad Empire, with the latter being massacred for his resistance. Peace be upon all of them. This all happened to the very first generation of Muslims, those who had learnt at the feet of the Prophet Muhammad himself (PBUH) and built with him the first Muslim community in the city of Medinat al-Nabi. The Second Muslim Empire, the Abbasids, overthrew the Umayyads, and as a part of their justification, appealed to those still distraught by the way the Umayyads had treated the family of the Prophet Muhammad, to whom Ali and his sons belonged. Many later Muslim empires did the same, appealing to the original conflict in one way or the other to legitimize their own rule.
These original conflicts over who should have succeeded the Prophet Muhammad, haunts the Muslim community still and many of the schisms come from these crises of succession. The biggest, that between Sunni and Shia, is just one example. While it is little wonder that this tragic history is ripe for exploitation by outside forces seeking to cause division, it is very easy to exaggerate it. In the personal lives of millions of Muslims, these differences are nothing more than an interesting discussion over coffee, or a heartfelt conversation about which traditions to hew closer to for the children of a mixed marriage.
How do the verbal fights manifest?
There are three basic approaches that I've seen when Muslims in a group realize there are different understandings of the faith in the group.
You're not a real Muslim!
The first and most destructive is the desire to eliminate the difference. To attack the other as 'not being a real Muslim', to loudly insist that the other is wrong. As far as I'm concerned this sort of reaction is what actually causes the splinters and toxic inter denominational suspicions that drive us apart, not the differences themselves. In fact, God has created us humans as individuals, and so differences are inevitable. The toxic way we react to them are not.
It happens so often that the are terms for it, 'Takfiri' is the word to describe a Muslim who verbally excommunicates other Muslims, 'Haram Police' is the social media term for those who seem to love nothing more than criticizing other Muslims on social media for not behaving enough like a 'real Muslim'.
I have a lot of problems with this approach. Firstly they're doing the colonizer divide and conquer work for them. Secondly they're making Islam look like a scary religion where people shout and scream at anyone for not behaving according to a code of conduct that seems to have an strict rule on every detail of life. Finally, and maybe most importantly, it's an act of extreme arrogance. I don't see how anyone can engage in this sort of behaviour without first imagining that they themselves are completely right about Islam. Which is completely at odds with how we are supposed to see ourselves, as flawed and imperfect beings, and certainly not All-Knowing like God.
Even a little bit of humility and keeping in mind that "In the end only God knows best" should be enough to prevent this. Us Muslims aren't supposed to be arrogant, so why are so many of us?
Let's not talk about it
This is the one where we just want to brush all contentious differences under the rug and never talk about them. It's understandable and, honestly, in some scenarios, such as the event I mentioned before, the exact right thing to do. There is a time and place to talk about sensitive topics and there is no benefit to forcing these discussions when they're not wanted.
But the desire to always ignore these subjects is counter-productive. It allows people to dominate the conversation who seem to have no shame but a lot of arrogance. These differences exist, are real, and they allow hostile external forces to divide us and pit us against each other. Pretending they don't exist doesn't help.
Let's talk about it with mutual respect
If, as I believe, we have to be able to talk about our differences, then it has to be done in an atmosphere of respect. This leads to conversations and discussions that, rather than tearing us apart, will build bonds of friendship across divides. These can create a mutual understanding and sense of appreciation between different Islamic traditions and enable us to be each other's trusted allies rather than suspicious neighbours that any outsider can spark a fight between.
Plenty of these rich and productive conversations happen all the time. But we need more of them and be able to recognize when someone is being divisive, rather than constructive, and call that behaviour out.
What can we do about it?
The thick line between respect and disrespect
Have Humility
The most dangerous thing we can believe ourselves to be is right. It kills self-reflection and any possibility of self-improvement. After all, why would we need any of that if we've already convinced ourself of our rightness? It also means that we approach those who we differ with, not as imperfect equals in our struggle to understand our faith, but as a teacher correcting their students. Hardly a recipe for a respectful conversation.
Just keeping in mind that only God is perfect and we as humans all have some flaw in our thinking should be enough to check that. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't have confidence in our beliefs, but there's a large gap between confidence and arrogance, as large as the one between respect and disrespect.
Give up the need to win
Debates and arguments are verbal fights, and the point of being in a fight is to win or at the very least not lose. Anyone who gets roped into one of these unwillingly can attest that at some point the point of the dialogue ceases to be mutual understanding, but a struggle to defeat the other side. While this can be a fun way to pass the time on less fraught matters, it is absolutely not on topics where this struggle to win has become physical rather than just rhetorical.
If we give up the idea of winning and losing, then we can engage in these conservations in a productive way and not a destructive one.
Approaching Hot Button topics with care
Even if we approach sensitive topics in the appropriate time and place, with humility and with a genuine desire to understand each other, we can still trip across causing insult where we don't mean to. Still we do need to engage with these topics rather than just pretend they don't exist. Going further we also need to be able to disagree with each other in a way that doesn't make us react in a defensive or aggressive manner. Here's a few things that I think help.
- Assume Good Faith: The first thing is we have to give each other the benefit of the doubt in these conversations, at least to begin with.
- Be sensitive to the sacred: We have different ideas of what is sacred and we have to respect what that is for the other person. As the late Pope Francis said... "If my good friend... says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It's normal."1
- Agree to Disagree: As soon as any one of the sides doesn't want to engage in a topic anymore then the conversation should end. Questions raised don't always have to be answered.
Call bad behaviour out
This world will never be a perfect one and we will never reach a situation where there are no overly passionate disagreements. But we can move to a reality in which the destructive forms of dialogue become a rarity while the constructive ones become common. And that can only happen if we call out people engaging in these destructive behaviours, those who force contentious topics in the wrong time and place, who act arrogant, insist on winning points no matter what, and don't care about the other person's sensibilities.
Unity does not require uniformity, which is a good thing because uniformity among humans is impossible.
Once we give up on demanding uniformity of each other and start treating each other with respect, we'll make real world hate crimes between Muslims less possible, and allow us to unite effectively on things that really matter... like rising up as one against genocide.