Al-Huda
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the Message Continues ... 6/107
Newsletter for July 2010
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The Tragedy of Monotheism
by
Rabia Terri Harris
Everybody needs a tribe. One person alone faces a frighteningly
big, sometimes brutal world. Even a family can be too small to
deal with some challenges that come down the pike - while if
family relationships are the only ones around, obsessive family
closeness can suffocate us. No, tribes are the way to go, which
is why most of the human race carefully conserves them.
When religions behave like tribes, though, things can go wrong.
Religion loses itself. For the very point of an Abrahamic
Religion is that some things are more important than the
interests of my group.
Nearly all of us learn rules and ideals that honour the members
of our own tribe. But there's a problem. When tribe comes up
against tribe in the struggle for resources, those rules do not
apply. And where there are no rules, bad things can happen -
massacres, cruelties - seemingly without repercussions. It's
only our own tribes that can require moral responsibility of us
in ways that we can see.
That's why the notion of one God ruling everyone - a universal
God of Justice - was a revolutionary idea. Historically, this
vision revealed itself in times of tribal strife. And one of the
central points its revelation makes is that there can be no
injustice without repercussions. The world of responsibility
extends far beyond what we can see. Either the consequences of
our acts hit us now, or else they hit us later, but there is no
escaping the impact of what we do. For the whole world is in the
sight of God, both physically and morally.
What monotheism teaches us is that everyone is connected to
everyone else at any given moment time. This can apply to the
Israeli-Arab conflict as much as anywhere else. Therefore our
true self-interest does not lie in grabbing the most we can or
in refusing to share. And my true accountability lies far beyond
the mere approval of my tribe.
Reminding us of the call to universal justice is what the
institution of prophethood was all about. And it is the
prophetic voice that today calls Jews and Muslims alike to the
remembrance of the God of All. Remembering this is essential
when dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Judaism and Islam were both born out of struggles for freedom
and dignity, particular struggles that based their aspirations
on a universal vision of human worth. The tragedy of monotheism
has been that with the passing of generations, the
self-centeredness of individual communities has tended to
overwhelm the universal principles that called them into
existence in the first place. Traditions lose their context; the
forest gets lost in the trees. And then another sort of bad
thing happens. For since my trees are slightly different from
your trees, and I prefer the familiar, that means that I must be
better than you. This simple slip of the mind introduces untold
evil into human relations.
The way the logic goes is that if my community is the only one
to really understand God, and only the community that really
understands God matters, then God belongs to us...and our
interests are far more important. The universal justice my
religion teaches then becomes an empty concept, a sort of sacred
image I drag out and show around occasionally to increase my
self-esteem. For when its founding vision is lost, monotheism is
no more than idolatry with fewer options.
Our prophets all warned us about that. Here's Isaiah speaking
for God: "When you come to appear before me, who has asked this
of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless
offerings!" Today, the institution of prophethood has vanished,
but the prophets still have plenty of heirs. There are so many
who struggle for the human dignity of their seeming opponents -
even in the Israeli-Arab context. Unfortunately, these heirs
like the prophets before them (as Jesus remarked), tend to have
no honour back home. Most of us find it much easier to blame
others than to examine ourselves, so whoever calls us to
self-examination is likely to be wildly unpopular. Let us take a
moment, therefore, to honour both Jews and Muslims, Israelis and
Palestinians - and people of all communities - who take a stand
for justice over tribe. For with such often very humble people
rests the guidance of God, the truth of religion, and the future
of the world. May we all find the courage to seek a place among
them.
Rabia Terri Harris is founder and director of the Muslim Peace
Fellowship (www.MPFweb.org),
dedicated to the theory and practice of Islamic nonviolence and
is a Muslim community chaplain. This article was written for the
Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service, 25 March 2010
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