IN THE WAKE of the terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern seamlessly incorporated Muslim rituals into the public rites of grieving. Her response to the attacks was striking for its cultural competence in engaging Muslim tradition and also projecting it in ways that engaged a broader audience to build empathy and not further structural violence. It allowed for immediate national unity and rehumanizing of the Muslim community.
The prime minister’s response to the violent attacks in New Zealand pointed out the importance of extending interreligious education to state actors.
Religious violence is often an impetus for interreligious education. But we are caught in the myth that interpersonal peacemaking is the starting point for achieving peace between religions. Johan Galtung’s work interrogates the notion that violence is merely between individual actors.
For Galtung, one of the pioneers of peace and conflict studies and longtime director of Peace Research Institute Oslo, the notion of structural violence is front and center.
The events in New Zealand raise questions about the responses by states to violence that occurs in the name of religious discrimination. How do we respond to state actors who incite violence? How do we teach our congregations and communities authentic theologies of coalition-building and if necessary nonviolent resistance against the actors who do this type of inciting?
The Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka raised other questions. How does a Muslim minority in such a place respond to acts of terrorism like these and at the same time deal with their own precarious position? Actions by Muslim organizations in the area such as fasting with Christians and issuing statements in solidarity with Christian community members are important steps.
And how are these questions different when an entity that replicates a state actor is responsible for violence, in this case the horrifying acts of ISIS? What do religious traditions say about building coalitions and what actions are possible when these nonstate actors have the equivalent capacity to inflict violence that a state actor does? What is the moral imperative of each community and the collective responsibility to create not only theologies of tolerance but active strategies for building peace? What does religious education look like in times when the capacity to inflict violence by groups far exceeds just a lone person catalyzing religion for inflicting terror? How do we interrupt the cycle of violence that is created by such large-scale infliction of pain?
Questions such as these can help us think through how we teach, dialogue, build, and assess the models of interreligious education, and how we implement those models. The interrogation may start with a focus on responding to violence, but the ultimate emphasis is on the proactive questions about how to build a just society.
Najeeba Syeed has been recognized for her work in interfaith peacebuilding, restorative justice, and religious leadership in Muslim contexts. She is co-editor of a forthcoming volume on interreligious learning and theological education.
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