Interfaith Guidelines on Human Rights, Pluralism, Democracy, and Authority

Posted August 7, 2006 in News

"The number one rule was never to seek agreement for the mere sake of agreement, because this would produce only least-common-denominator platitudes and lead to nowhere.  This cowardice, in turn, would give dominion to those who have a self-serving agenda incompatible with the search for truth and wisdom." 

Yet this paper gives practical examples of how hard-lined souls could compromise even the most basic of steps. For example  "It was most difficult was the effort to adopt a single paradigm for our approach because one member forbid us ever to mention the word “spiritual,” which all the others had held as the framework for all of our work. Another practical insight was that our vertical relationship with God must inform our lateral relationship with one another, so that the political agenda never trumps the spiritual." 

Dr Crane also suggests souls be careful not to by into concepts "...merely to show that one is friendly and moderate. When a member of any faith does this, one loses the respect of others and even one’s own respect for oneself.  The purpose of dialogue is not to agree but to learn from one another.  Agreement is merely a bonus."

The article does quite a good job of distinguishing pluralism from secularism. It also does a good job of teasing out differences in understanding regarding democracy, authority and revolution.

Dr Crane's advice in this paper includes:

"The two most profound guidelines for interfaith dialogue are pluralism and praxis.  The highest guideline for interfaith dialogue is respect for pluralism.  Pluralism means that we listen to others because everyone has so much to offer.  Most Muslims have a lot to learn from Christians and from many Jews, but we Muslims also have a lot to offer and should not fail to do so.

The second most important guideline is praxis.  Talk is cheap and totally useless or even distracting and counter-productive unless it results in action in the pursuit of peace through justice.  Freedom and democracy are great slogans, but they are empty unless they serve not as ends in themselves but rather as means to the higher purpose of justice. 

Justice may be defined as the Will of God.  Justice can be understood only by reliance on divine revelation and on rightly guided human reason.  Justice consists in respect for human responsibilities and rights and is the very purpose of all civilization."

Source: The American Muslim.

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