MUSLIMS MAKE GOOD NEIGHBOURS - World Lutheran President says today’s world is suffering from ‘Islamophobia’ - “In my experience living with Muslims in the Middle East, the Muslim is a good neighbor,” affirms Bishop Munib Younan. “You can live well with them - the vast majority of Muslims are moderates. There are those extremists who are vocal and problematic, but you cannot really equate them with Islam. Bishop Younan is a Palestinian Christian leader visiting Australia for the first time. The Bishop is the current President of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), and provides leadership for the Heads of Local Christian Churches in Jerusalem and the Council of Religious Institutions in the Holy Land, a group comprised of Jerusalem’s Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities. “I think the world today has mistaken Islam as their enemy. Islam has many faces, like Christianity does, like Judaism does. Muslims have problems with their extremists as we do as Christians, and as Jews do. If we say that, today, all Muslims are extremists, then we are not rendering any favour to our Christian people either - we face the same problem being viewed in that way. “Where will the Australian people head if they allow discriminatory ideologies to overrule their belief in fairness? The world has suffered from anti-Semitism; the world is suffering today with Islamophobia. “You can only combat extremism in two ways. The first is through the transformative power of education; the second is by interfaith dialogue. Interfaith dialogue helps us to find common values around living together in justice and peace.” Through his various roles, Bishop Younan is aware of his responsibility to be a prophetic voice locally and globally. “In our world today, we need to speak on common values in religions, not comparative religions. It is very important to take an inclusive approach for religion to combat extremism. We often forget the common values we share but interfaith dialogue should always look to common sharing. If you want to combat extremism, it is vital to swing against the fear of ‘Other’ that is going on at the moment. “God created us, of all religions, equally. And under the UN Charter, we all have the human right to choose which is our religion.”
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 02:26:37 +0000
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