Table Of ContentRELIGION AND ETHICS IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD
RELIGION AND ETHICS IN
A GLOBALIZING WORLD
CONFLICT, DIALOGUE, AND
TRANSFORMATION
Edited by
Luca Anceschi, Joseph Anthony Camilleri,
Ruwan Palapathwala, and Andrew Wicking
Palgrave
macmillan
RELIGION AND ETHICS IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD
Copyright © Luca Anceschi, Joseph A. Camilleri, Ruwan Palapathwala,
and Andrew Wicking, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-10462-4
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
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this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-28921-9 ISBN 978-0-230-11768-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230117686
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Religion and ethics in a globalizing world : conflict, dialogue, and
transformation / edited by Luca Anceschi [. . . et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Religion and politics. 2. Religious ethics. 3. Globalization—
Religious aspects. I. Anceschi, Luca, 1976–
BL65.P7R4525 2010
201(cid:2).72—dc22 2010028077
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: February 2011
CONTENTS
Editors’ Preface vii
Introduction Religion: Part of the Problem or
Part of the Solution? 1
Joseph A. Camilleri
Part I Emerging Challenges for
Religious Understanding
1 Re-e nvisioning Conflict, Dialogue, and Transformation:
The Imperative for a New Methodological Paradigm 23
Ruwan Palapathwala and Andrew Wicking
2 Surmounting the Wall: Religion and Conflict 45
Graham Maddox
3 Virtues in a Globalized Context 67
Neil Ormerod
4 The People of the Book: Reconciling Religious
Fundamentals with Universal Human Rights 85
Michael Kirby
5 Holding Hands and Bearing Arms: A Continuing
Challenge for Global Religious Communities 103
Merrill Kitchen
Part II Implications for Multifaith
Dialogue—Assessment and Critique
6 Relationship Building in the Middle East among
Adversaries: Israelis and Palestinians 117
Dvir Abramovich
vi CONTENTS
7 Bejeweled Dialogue: Illuminating Deadly Conflicts
in the Twenty-F irst Century 141
Chaiwat Satha- Anand
8 Christian Ecumenism, Other Faiths, and the
“Peace of the World” 157
Peter Carnley
Part III Toward a Deeper
Understanding of Islam
9 The Search for Communities of Peace: An International
Reflection on Christian- Muslim Relations 175
James Haire
10 How Muslims View the Scriptures of the People
of the Book: Toward a Reassessment? 191
Abdullah Saeed
11 Broken Covenants and Broken Relationships:
Guidelines for Cooperation in a World in Transition 211
Ian R. Fry
Conclusion Interfaith Interaction: Contradictions
and Conflicts 243
Chandra Muzaffar
Notes on Editors and Contributors 257
Index 261
EDITORS’ PREFACE
From time immemorial, religion has been a point of reference for peo-
ples of all civilizations and cultures in search of meaning and purpose
to their existence. In this search for meaning and purpose, peoples have
named differently a common cardinal referent—Atman, YHWH, Allah,
Dharma, Dao, the Holy, and many others—in whom or through which
answers to the human condition and the possibilities for transcendence
and salvation were sought. This kind of encounter, which according to
some theistic traditions is also facilitated by the revelatory character of the
Divine, has led human beings to live meaningfully through the agency of
culture despite being subjected to the vicissitudes, conflicts, suffering,
and tragedies of existence.
In many respects, it is the Holy Texts of cultures that embody and
preserve this Divine-human encounter as the story of the peoples. Within
these scriptural frameworks—which provide the meaning-giving struc-
tures in the subconscious of individuals, communities, and cultures—
human beings determine their destiny on earth in the here and now and
in the beyond here-after. From this perspective, religions and their Holy
Texts can be considered foundational to cultures and their peoples. They
are also sacred compendiums—the stories of cultures and peoples, their
sufferings, conflicts, joys, hopes, loves, beginnings and ends; they tell
how these stories interweave the human and the Divine, the sacred and
the profane, and, ultimately, life, death, and timelessness.
Underlining the imperative of these dimensions of religion and cul-
ture for human existence, the chapters in this book consider a range of
conflict situations and explore whether and how dialogue may play a
pivotal role in bringing about transformation at the personal, societal,
and global level. These chapters had their origin in the Seventh Annual
Globalization for the Common Good: An Inter-Faith Perspective
Conference: “From the Middle East to Asia Pacific: Arc of Conflict or
Dialogue of Cultures and Religions?” held at Trinity College, University
of Melbourne, Australia (June 30–July 4, 2008) and constitute a response
viii EDITORS’ PREFACE
to the vision of Dr. Kamran Mofid, the founder of the Globalisation for
the Common Good Initiative.
Given that the chapters in this book were written in a postmodern and
globalizing context, in which there is a greater awareness of the world’s
religious traditions and their various contemporary developments, as well
as new advances in the methods in the study of religions, we have not
limited our scope to a traditional notion of “dialogue.” Rather, we have
re-envisioned dialogue. Given that our contemporary context is post-
modern and globalizing, from the very first chapter we challenge our
readers to examine the inadequacies of existing methodologies in the
academic study of religion, conflict, dialogue, and transformation and
invite them to consider a new methodological paradigm that may be
applied in such studies.
The book consists of essays from both scholars of religion and scholarly
practitioners of religions. We have included these two categories of
authors because, on the one hand, in general, the serious study of religion
tends to be the domain of two types of specialists: first, the scholars who
have earned the privilege of studying religions with erudition and disci-
pline-specific objectivity; and second, the sage and the practitioner who
experience the truth embedded in the traditions to which they belong
with subjectivity and a yearning to transcend the temporality of the
experiences of truth. On the other hand, while the academic scholar
masters the art of studying religion with dedication, skill, and the neces-
sary detachment, the religious teacher or prophet may be more concerned
with the salvific dispensation of theirown religious tradition. In our
attempt to document the richness of both of these categories, we have
resisted the temptation to strictly classify the wisdom and the skill that
the specialist, the sage, the scholar, the practitioner, and the nonspecialist
bring to the study of religion, in general, and the themes of religion,
conflict, dialogue and transformation, in particular.
To maintain the integrity of this publication, all chapters have been
peer-reviewed before they were accepted for inclusion. We have also
resisted the temptation to restrict all the chapters to exclusively academic
theorization that might prove inaccessible or irrelevant even to the well-
informed reader. To have done so would have been to exclude an impor-
tant slice of human life as well as the situations and experiences that
provide us with the reasons, contexts, and ‘codes’ to interact and engage
meaningfully with the themes of religion, conflict, dialogue, and trans-
formation both inside and outside the academy. In these respects, this
publication is of value as a textbook for both the scholar and the student
of religion. We have edited the book to make it relevant and informative
to the nonspecialist as well.
EDITORS’ PREFACE ix
In a world where neoliberalism and neoimperialism have been ascen-
dant, drawing the globe into a vortex of control and exploitation, and
where religious fundamentalism and international terrorism plague the
face of the earth, demanding authoritarian, subjugating, and violent
responses to brute force, this publication will, we hope, contribute to a
widening and deepening discussion of the role of religion and the part it
can play in conflict, dialogue, and transformation. This publication is
offered in the expectation that a dialogical frame of reference offers the
most promising antidote to the disorder of present-day human experi-
ence. In the spirit of the admonishments of Shri Krishna to Arjuna in the
Bhagavad Gītā, the chapters in this book ask that we not betray our pas-
sion for justice and scientific honesty to such enslaving forces, but that we
allow scholarship to foster the dialogue of cultures, religions, and civili-
zations in the interests of achieving a fully developed humanity.
INTRODUCTION
RELIGION: PART OF THE PROBLEM OR
PART OF THE SOLUTION?
Joseph A. Camilleri
Secularization theory, as developed by the leading social thinkers of the
nineteenth century—Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile
Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—argued that reli-
gion would gradually fade in importance with the gradual advance of sci-
ence and industrial society. This view generally held sway in the twentieth
century. A wide-r anging consensus in the social sciences postulated that
metaphysical beliefs, liturgical rituals, and sacred practices would gradually
give way to a secular ethic that would rank with bureaucratization, rational-
ization, and urbanization as a defining feature of m odernity.1 The global
resurgence of religion in the last several decades has called this consensus
into question and has led a number of authors to reexamine the relationship
of religion to modernity and to international relations more generally.2
Much of the literature has focused, perhaps understandably but not
always insightfully, on the upsurge of fundamentalist movements, partic-
ularly in the Muslim world.3 This line of argument holds some attraction
to exponents of the secularization thesis in that it ascribes the resurgence
of religion to vestiges of tradition and social irrationality that will sooner
or later be swept aside by the unavoidable onset of modernity. However,
as Scott M. Thomas rightly points out, the resurgence of religion is not
confined to a few “traditional” outposts, but is global in every sense of
the word, manifesting itself across different regions, political systems, and
religious traditions.4
If the resurgence of religion is a global phenomenon, then it is appro-
priate to ask what has been the impact of this resurgence on the political
