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London 7/7 Bombings: Lets move on.

So the London bombings inquest begins today.   Sky is covering it as unfolds: 7/7 Inquest Live: The Hope For Answers .The events of that dreadful day will be regularly paraded across our TV screens and newspapers for the next few months. It does not take any remarkable forsight to predict that while the official focus is on the security services, police etc and what could have been done on their side to stop it, there will a subtext in the proceedings that will regularly be drawn out by the media to  stand alongside it.  Islamic extremism,  Islam and ordinary Muslims will once again be under the spotlight.

The power of the media to multiply and perpetuate the impact of an event  is at times like this begas many questions.  Terrorism thrives on this ability to captivate our minds with ... terror. A time limited event can now more powerfully be imprinted on our minds.  The media in a highly questionable way does the job of the terrorist in reminding us of what happened.  "Never forget!" can easily be replaced by "We won't let you forget!" 

And quickly "Never Forget!" becomes wedded to "Never Forgive!"   Already this morning we have had interviews with Julie Nicholson who as a Church of England priest found she was unable to forgive the murder of her daughter on that dreadful July day. Bombers "should not be forgiven" says priest.  [I'll link to the BBC interview later.]  

Mine here is not to write again about forgiveness. Julie's article in The Times in 2006 explaining her position is behind the Times paywall and I am not going there. However there is a long piece written around her story here on Rachel from North London's blog whose article appeared with it in the The Times that day.   I may venture forth on that subject another day, but for now my focus is not on forgiveness, nor really on forgetting, but rather moving on.

My hope is simply that we can move on, and quit forever stirring up the anger associated with that event. We need to move on.

And we need to stop beating the very very large majority of the Muslim population who were deeply shamed by 7/7.  I'll write more on that, but for now I am stating my position.

Making room and bringing healing - a call for a grand and gracious gesture.

So a gathering of Muslim leaders from across the USA discussing "the ground Zero Mosque" (1)  has just announced that as Americans they have a freedom to worship where they choose. They have also committed themselves to increased dialogue.  Muslim Groups Back Islamic Center Near Ground Zero.

''We stand for the constitutional right of Muslims, and Americans of all faiths, to build houses of worship anywhere in our nation as allowed by local laws and regulations,'

Quite honestly it was to be expected. It is no longer a case just for Iman Rauf, but has become the cause celebre  for all American Muslims. It has moved beyond the issue of a mosque near such an iconic place  and has become about their right to build mosques in many places, about their freedom to celebrate their faith as they choose,  about the sacredness of their holy book the Qu'ran, about their integration into American society, about their very identity as Americans who are Muslims. At the heart of the discussion has been a deep and growing fear and hatred of Islam, not just of extremist forms of Islam. Islamophobia is running deeply through the veins of American society. In many ways to back down would be to set back their own integration into the nation, the very thing they are accused of avoiding. You could argue that it would be to allow Islamophobia to have its ugly way.

In What a lot of anger - It can't be good for you written a month ago I argued that that while they should be free to build, it may be wisdom had another way. 

As for the issue of wisdom, the answer needs to be arrived at not by a media / political / interfaith slanging match but by seeking healing of the huge scar in America's national psyche that Ground Zero represents. No truly fair or just decision that is really good for the nation can ever be made for a mosque or indeed anything on the site when it not only represents the evil of 9-11 (and make no mistake, I do not deny it was evil) but is also suffused with so much pain and anger, so much victim-hood, so much unforgiveness.

I was reading this afternoon a piece that my American friend Charles Strohmer recently wrote in a very similar way in a piece on his blog, Truth about ‘The Mosque at Ground Zero’ .  Charles is pursuing the application of the ancient wisdom traditions to international relations and diplomacy, ideas that are at the heart of the wisdom tradition in which the Hebrew scriptures emerged, and which are thus central to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Having sorted out truth from error about the location of the Community Centre (1), and the Sufi Muslim beliefs of Rauf (2), he moves on to what a wisdom oriented approach would be to bring healing to Americas deep woundedness. In doing so he adopts an analysis of the situation similar to mine. He tries to look at it from the shoes of the Iman. Strohmer recognises that while law allows the mosque, law doesn't heal, and he urges Rauf to consider what would bring healing:

What we need right now is a dramatic gesture that will defuse the firestorm while being an agent of healing. It really would be nothing short of a blooming miracle to have it in one’s power to evoke both concurrently, but Imam Rauf now has that in his power to do. To release it would only take a simple announcement in the right spirit that “we are going to refocus our efforts on finding another site, still in our beloved neighborhood Tribeca in lower Manhattan, but one a bit farther removed from Vesey Street.”

... Show us on a grand scale that “Islam,” which you told us in your New York Times editorial, “comes from a word cognate to shalom, which means peace in Hebrew,” can repay evil with good, big time. Help make our country more sound. Forget about a physical space so near to ground zero. Create a capacity space for healing in the lives of zillions of Americans across this country who are not bigots but who for whatever reasons still remain too sensitive to an overt institutional Muslim presence in the halo area."

Strohmer here is encouraging a grand, generous and gracious gesture. I agree with him it would be good, it might have done the job. It is still not impossible, but for Rauf now to move so far from the counsel of his brothers in faith is most unlikely. 

So if a start to the healing does not come from his gracious move, we have to look elsewhere. I argues a month ago that:

The task of God's people in this is not just to act the chaplain to the victim but to seek to move beyond that to be the representative of He who we believe brings full healing, freedom and reconciliation.

... To be even more direct, it is time for America to move on, and experience the healing of its national wounds that can come from the faith of many of its people. And its time for its Christian people, and especially its Christian leaders to lead the way, by proclaiming the source of that healing. I make no apology for being direct.

Strohmer was calling for a gracious response.He was right! But I would widen it to say that grace can come from both sides. It can come be exercised in an apology or in forgiveness. It can be demonstrated in the humilty of backing down, or the humility of making space. It comes through embrace, not exclusion.

Rather that wait for the other side to make the move, rather than pointing the finger of blame, we need to look in the mirror, and examine again the call to forgiveness, and the resource we have for forgiveness. As Christians we know forgiveness and the healing that can flow from it are not an option; we can never say "they didn't do their part!" 

I believe this issue is pivotal in relation to the standing of Islam and Muslims in American society. It will have implications at home and overseas. We need to see it from that perspective. Again this is genuinely the moment for a grand gesture of grace. May we be seeking to outdo one another in grace! 

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(1)   I use "Ground Zero Mosque" to identify it as that is popular speak; the reality is that it is three blocks from Ground Zero. I drew attention to that in my piece on the plans a month ago,  What a lot of anger - It can't be good for you.). The piece by my friend Charles Strohmer has a detailed description of its location in his piece  Truth about ‘The Mosque at Ground Zero’

(2) More on Sufi Islam here, and see Strohmer for the outworking of that:  Truth about ‘The Mosque at Ground Zero’    Most journalism looking at the subject have lost the subject of the nature of his faith. It frankly seems as if it is enough to say Muslim and allow the stereotypes to define.

What a lot of anger - It can't be good for you.

A friend of mine, a man I respect enormously despite his politics and his theology, posted  a link on his Facebook page yesterday about a church that stood un-restored near Ground Zero while the infamous mosque was being given the go-ahead. His comment and the comments of a friend made it clear they were among the 61% of Americans who oppose the mosque. (while 26% are in favour, according to the Time survey.) 

I have been a bit out of regular blogging these past months, though I regularly pile up articles I really want to comment on, and compose posts in my head. The post in my mind on "the Ground Zero Mosque" -- or to be more accurate the Muslim Community Centre, with a mosque within it, two blocks from Ground Zero -- has been growing as the news brought more and more outrageous comments from American conservatives ( like Nazis protesting next to the Holocaust museum - Newt Gingrich), among them many evangelical Christian commentators ( "It's hypocrisy. It's mockery. It's mocking the 3,000 Americans who died just around the corner, who were killed by Islamists in the name of Islam. ... The lack of universal condemnation by the Islamic world, their silence, shows their support of this. - Franklin Graham ). It was waiting to burst forth when my friends words on Facebook became the detonator. 

So for those starved of my comment in recent months I have rescued them from the obscurity of a comment on Facebook, to form the heart of my long dreamed of post on the matter: 

I am going to be quite straight with you ... I think Christian comment needs to rise above this sort of accusation of "favouritism" [Muslims getting permission to proceed building, not Christians - the original article above],  quite apart from abstaining from the horrible un-Christlike rhetoric I am hearing.

As the article on the church says they are unrelated and totally dissimilar apart from that they are near ground zero. But I think this is just a distraction.

I believe the President has -- in the combination of his comments over the weekend - brought the wisest most principled voice to this yet. In a land that upholds freedom of religion one must not stop this just because its Muslim. But -- is it wisdom? Another question, and the answer to that is arrived at differently. That is principled leadership. It may yet lose him the election because its massively unpopular, but THANK GOD for a principled leader who makes at least this decision without the ballot box factor. [Obama's Brave Stand]

As for the issue of wisdom, the answer needs to be arrived at not by a media / political / interfaith slanging match but by seeking healing of the huge scar in America's national psyche that Ground Zero represents. No truly fair or just decision that is really good for the nation can ever be made for a mosque or indeed anything on the site when it not only represents the evil of 9-11 (and make no mistake, I do not deny it was evil) but is also suffused with so much pain and anger, so much victim-hood, so much unforgiveness.

The task of God's people in this is not just to act the chaplain to the victim but to seek to move beyond that to be the representative of He who we believe brings full healing, freedom and reconciliation.

And when that is found you will have the victory - even if "the enemy" achieves his building. In fact I don't believe you will have an enemy at that point for you will slain him with love, and he will be your friend.

To be even more direct, it is time for America to move on, and experience the healing of its national wounds that can come from the faith of many of its people. And its time for its Christian people, and especially its Christian leaders to lead the way, by proclaiming the source of that healing. I make no apology for being direct.

This is not first about Islam, about Muslim peoples, about a mosque. It is about you my friends. I fear that the hatred that is running wild in your nation will rob you of all that is great, all that is gracious, all I admire  about you.

It has been easy until now to dismiss the hatred in extreme Islamophobic writers as marginal. Take for example Pamela Geller who heads Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA)  and who wrote an inflamatory piece titled  Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction. which is believed to have fuelled this fire back in May (see How the Fear Mongering Began ), Geller has been ranting for years on her blog AtlasShrugs  but now I hear loud echoes of her in the national press and in mainstream Evangelical leaders. Geller and her associate Robert Spencer plan a protest against the mosque in New York on this coming September 11th, and have achieved mainstream status with no less than Newt Gingrich speaking.

That same fear is reflected in the movement to the mainstream of the fear that the US President is a Muslim. Growing number in America believe Obama a Muslim - poll  An incredible 18% of Americans now believe he is a Muslim, and even more shockingly 34% of Republicans.

The increasing willingness to blame Muslims in geneal for 9-11 is spreading. There was shock this past weekend when CNN Anchor  Don Lemon expressed that to one of the most gracious American Muslims Eboo Patel.  A CNN anchor expresses the crux of "mosque" ... opposition.

Lemon:   ... Many people lost their loved ones on 9/11 --

Patel: Including Muslim Americans who lost their loved ones. . .  .

Lemon:  Consider the context here.  That's what I'm talking about. 

Patel:  I have to tell you that this seems a little like telling black people 50 years ago:  you can sit anywhere on the bus you like - just not in the front.

Lemon:  I think that's apples and oranges - I don't think that black people were behind a Terrorist plot to kill people and drive planes into a building.  That's a completely different circumstance.

Patel:  And American Muslims were not behind the terrorist plot either.

Such distortions can only grow unless the source is cut off - and I contend it is that unrelieved national pain.

Its good to say that by no means all Christian leaders are against "the Ground Zero Mosque". The same article above in which Franklin Graham was quoted listed many others who were much more measured in their response. Many Religious Leaders (Except for Franklin Graham) Support Mosque  Perhaps the most significant conversation for me on this has been between Eboo Ptel (quoted above in his interview with Don Lemon) and various Christian leaders. Patel, the young Muslim and dynamic leader of Interfaith Youth Core,  and writes regularly in The Faith Divide column in the Washington Post. He recently ionvited his Evangelical Christian friends to write what they thought about the Mosque. He sums up their replies here: My Evangelical Heroes. (But see all the articles here)

Its good to see what can happen when the blockages to relationship - the prejudices, the anger, the fear and the hatred - are dismissed. We cannot afford for a nation that had such a strong Christian inheritance to become possessed by the politics of fear and hatred, of unforgiveness.

Rudd, the "Sorry-King", does it again!

For most of the past year a large percentage of the hits on this site have come from google searches for the Australian Prime Minister John Rudd. I blogged on him when he first apologised to the Aboriginal peoples of his land for wrongs against them. He is at it again!

"We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter of our nation's history and we come together today to offer our nation's apology,

"... to you, the Forgotten Australians and those who were sent to our shores as children without their consent ... we are sorry.

"Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where you were so often abused, sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation, and the cold absence of love of tenderness of care.

"Sorry for the tragedy, the absolute tragedy of childhoods lost, childhoods spent instead in austere and authoritarian places where names were replaced by numbers."

"The truth is a great evil has been done." ...

"The truth is this is an ugly story and its ugliness must be told without fear or favour if we are to confront fully the demons of our past."

More here on an ABC Australia says Sorry for "great evil"

and on the BBC:  Australia 'sorry' for child abuse

Of course, most of the hits by people looking for Rudd are in pursuit not of what he did say but what he actually patently didn't say!    Beware the hoax "Muslims out of Australia Speech"  More soon!

The politics of apology

There has been a lot of talk about Gordon Brown apologising for things recently. And of course Barack Obama has been humbling himself.  ("a simple gesture of respect" : Humility in International Relations.)

Mark Easton, BBC Home Affairs Correspondent, has a nice little piece on his blog:
BBC - Mark Easton's UK: The politics of apology.

He concludes:

Saying "sorry" is powerful because it incorporates a degree of humiliation, of personal weakness and, most importantly, it infers acceptance of blame. It is dangerous.

It is dangerous. But that does not make it wrong:

But even Number Ten knows that there comes a point when only "sorry" will do.

It makes sense to me that if we live in a moral universe, only morality will do.

Man who lost family when jet hit house: I don't blame pilot

This is a remarkable story of forgiveness.

Man who lost family when jet hit house: I don't blame pilot - CNN.com.

"Please pray for him not to suffer from this accident," a distraught Dong Yun Yoon told reporters ... He is one of our treasures for the country," Yoon said in accented English punctuated by long pauses while he tried to maintain his composure. I don't blame him. I don't have any hard feelings. I know he did everything he could,"

I am neither American nor Korea (though I am privileged to have an American Korean daughter in law!) and I live far away in England.  But Dong Yun Yoon's story of forgiveness and grace worked out in the life of someone in terrible loss and grief touches me deeply.

I came across the story of Dong Yun Yoon in a post on Eugene Cho's blog yesterday:  dong yun yoon: the man who lost his family in the san diego jet crash  and later on why aren’t we drawn to dong yun yoon?.  Eugene leads a great multicultural church, Quest, and also Quest Cafe in Seattle, and is a voice for that city and the Asian American community.  He was suprised that the story was not more widely covered in the media and especially in the Christian blogosphere.  So he asked the question: Why? Was it because he wasn't a celebrity? Was it because he isn't American? Or Was it because he didn't look like an American? He knew he risked being called "an angry Asian man." He is certainly not silent on the issue of racism and prejudice, and says it like it is for his community.(eg Racism Sucks  and My Slanted Eyes are Beautiful ), and for that respect him.

So why didn't the story of a deeply grieving American citizen, a Korean by birth, who had lost his Korean wife, two children and mother-in-law, and rose to a remarkable forgiveness make the Christian blogs. While I am not an American my suspicion its a good bit of all the things that Eugene suggests, plus a whole lot of "forgiveness isn't sexy." I host a blog that focuses on peace and reconciliation. And more importantly perhaps its my work. And I know that Christians would far rather rant about other things.

Yet the reality is, forgiveness unleashes grace and a force that can change the world. And there I stop, lest this turns into a rant, and distracts from the story of forgiveness and grace at work. 

When apologies count | Who's sorry now?

An interesting article that starts with a picture from the Lifeline Expedition in 2007, apologising for slavery:

Link: When apologies count | Who's sorry now? | The Economist.

Good questions asked in the article, and aclear suggestion that an apology without cost (reparations) is worthless.

An interesting question for the USA: would an embrace of an Obama presidency by whites, with a clear empowerment of Aficans Americans, and a real spirit of unity  across America be enough? It might be a bit of a naive wish, but ...

"he forgives us all"

Link: God's Politics - Jim Wallis blog, faith blog, religion, christian, christianity, politics, values.

Many find Jesus’ teaching on enemy love and forgiveness a stumbling block to faith. Because we find it too difficult to practice, we dismiss it as unrealistic and utopian. We should think again, and we should pray that it is not unrealistic, because this congruence of Jesus—the consistency between his teaching on forgiveness and his action on the cross—is really our only hope. It is all that stands between us and the consequences of our monumental frailty. Thank God today that Jesus died as he lived, because with those words, “Father, forgive...” he forgives us all, and he forgives us still.

Peter Storey
Listening at Golgotha: Jesus’ Words from the Cross

The call to forgive and the need to forgive

Over these past three days President Bush has been confronted by the reality of the need for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. (See Now he's really talking for some of his thoughts on that.)

But his time in Israel has brought two other experiences his way that can either help him or hinder him on that journey.  A visit to Yad vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, and a visit to Galilee to the Mount of the Beattitudes.

Apparently George Bush was so moved at his visit to Yad Vashem that he asked Condoleeza Rice, "Why didn't we bomb Aushwitz?"   Bush's US Bombing Auschwitz Claim  He was obviously reflecting on what you can do in the face of such evil that seeks to systematically scientifically eradicate a people from the face of the earth. A good question.  But the question can and should also be asked, "What is the appropriate response as we look back at such evil, to us and to others?  In the light the next stop of his journey, I would suggest that forgiveness is the key.

Later he went to the Mount of the Beattitudes. Bush Gets a Brush-Up on the Beatitudes .( Bush ends Mideast peace mission   covers both stories.)   He was apparently conducted through his visit there by Father Elias Chacour, a Palestinian priest.  He had a wonderful opportunity to reflect on what for me are the foundation stones in peacemaking: Jesus teaching on making peace in the Sermon on the Mount:

• if your brother has anything against you go say sorry (Matthew 5.21-24)
• forgive that you may be forgiven (Matthew 6.12,14-15)
• don’t judge (Matthew 7.1-2)
• remove the log in your eye before going for the speck in your neighbour - look in the mirror!(Matthew 7.3-5)
• turn the other cheek / do not resist an evil person (Matthew 5.38-42)
• love your enemies (Matthew 5.43-48)

In summary "love your neighbour as yourself". Imagine a world like that!

Blessed indeed are the peacemakers. (Matthew 5.9)

The challenges would seem to be huge. Will his quest for peace be aided by the teaching of Jesus, or will it be hindered by what seems to me to be a huge blockage to peace: the pain of the Jewish people at the memory of the great evil of the Shoah ( what we call the Holocaust), and its apparent elevation to a quality of evil that remains unexperienced by others. I wept from the time I entered Yad Vashem to the time I left, and yet I have also wept at other sites associated with great evil.

I believe forgiveness has to be the key to the future as it unlocks the past. I will reflect more on forgiveness and the Shoah in a blogpost sometime soon.

Forgiveness

Resources on Forgiveness from a UK Evangelical Alliance project in 2002

Forgiveness.