The Question: Pope Benedict's recent baptism of a well-known Italian Muslim has prompted criticism in much of the Islamic world. Has Benedict done enough to build bridges to Islam?

Looking at this problem as an outsider who is neither a Christian nor a Muslim I feel that the tensions between the two religious groups go back into history when each tried to convert as many people of the world as possible to their religion. This competition resulted in bitterness and even violence. Although in modern times Christianity claims that it no longer proselytizes as in the past the reality is quite different. In India, for instance, even today Christian priests and activists are known to lure poor people into their fold with promises of food, shelter and a better life. Islam does the same causing a backlash from the majority Hindu community.

Continue »

The Question: Which "ism" is more entrenched in America, sexism or racism? Which should religion address?

I think Americans are certainly more obsessed with sex and sexism and would like to forget racism. When many countries all over the world have had women as prime ministers, the United States still hesitates to elect a woman as president. It is only in the United States that we believe our president is "the Leader of the Free World" -- and only because we have a powerful army and powerful weapons of mass destruction. But in reality we have done nothing tangible to give the free world a moral or ethical direction.

Continue »

The Question: E-mail: Blessing or Curse?

Depending on what one's concept of progress is, E-mail can be a blessing or a curse. Although I am guilty of using E-mail more than snail mail I think it is a curse because it has made life faster when we need to slow down and enjoy the beauty of nature and living. Life was fast enough before E-mail and now it has just got to the point when we can't move away from the screen to see anyone or enjoy nature and the family. We have no time to cultivate relationships or interact with human beings (except snipe at each other on email) and this form of isolationism only leads to more violence in human societies. There is also the other aspect. Future scholars will find no written records to piece together the history of this period. We don't write much in E-mail and we don't save them as we did letters which provided material and color to historians. E-mail has made communications faster and has ended up in more work, work, work!!

Some years ago I read an article which claimed that is Jesus were to apply for a job at a university he would be rejected because he lacks all the qualifications. No degrees, nothing published and so on. As a non-Christian I am going to stick my neck out on this one. I think Jesus would be neither a Democrat nor a Republican but a Liberal. I say this because my perception of a Divine Being is one who is full of love, compassion, respect and understanding. In my view Jesus embodies all these and more.

The Democrats and the Republicans can boast of none of these positive attributes. Their politics is all about the self and power.

Continue »

That so many Americans switch Faiths during their lifetimes is not an indication of their deteriorating spiritual health. I think it is a telling commentary on the deterioration of religious practices in all religions. Instead of providing the believer with "mental peace and salvation" modern religion seems to fill people with "fear". Religion, like every other aspect of human life, is almost totally fear-based. The fear of sin, the fear of Satan, the fear of God and his wrath etc. I am reminded of the prophetic words of my grandfather uttered sometime in the 1930s when Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the leader of India"s hundreds of millions of so-called "untouchables," threatened to leave Hinduism if reforms were not implemented. The vision of converting approximately 150 million "low-caste" unfortunates lured many Christian and Muslim men of religion to India.

Continue »

The Archbishop has a valid point which has been buried under heaps of angry and ignorant responses. When a society becomes multi-cultural it stands to reason that some accommodation has to be made. I think there needs to be an honest, intelligent amalgamation of different cultural laws into the existing system so that different cultural groups can feel a sense of being accepted by the majority and also feel a sense of integration.

If a citizen of a country is made to feel like an alien then that society cannot be united and cohesive. I think the key word in the Archbishop's suggestion is "incorporation". There needs to be a dialogue with the different ethnic groups to understand what aspects of their personal law is important enough to be incorporated into the general law. This process should not lead to situations where one ethnic group claims it will be governed only by their own laws and not be the general laws established in a country.

It should also not lead to a situation where people find it convenient to escape rigorous punishment by converting to another religion and seek to be governed by that law. For example, in the seventies when I was a journalist in India I discovered that the general law that prevailed then made it very difficult for couples to get a divorce. The easy way out was for people to convert to Islam and get a divorce under the Sharia law by simply pronouncing three times in the presence of a witness "I divorce thee". The process became so easy that one could divorce and remarry in about an hour and it was all legal. This form of exploitation is what one needs to guard against.

A few months ago when I met His Holiness The Dalai Lama in Ithaca the first question he asked me was "What did your grandfather feel about secularism?" I was taken aback and asked: "Why are you asking me questions?" His Holiness said: "Wherever I speak about secularism the American audiences seem to reject the idea because secularism has come to mean rejecting your own faith." I think this is the crux of the problem. A gross misunderstanding of what secularism should mean.

For my grandfather secularism did not mean rejection of your own faith or any other faith. It meant respect of all faiths and the belief that there is only one God but people have different names and ways of identifying that one God. That is why grandfather always said to us: that religion is like climbing a mountain. We are all striving to get to the same summit so why should it matter which side of the mountain we choose to climb from?

For four generations prayers of the Gandhis have been held at home in private or with friends and others interested in joining in a neutral place where no symbols of any particular religion are displayed. There is only a candle in the middle and the prayers contain hymns from all the major religions of the world. Grandfather treated all religions as equal and with equal respect. This is something we still find very difficult to do in the United States.

I am reminded of my grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi's, words: No one can oppress us more than we oppress ourselves. By submitting to tyranny, to thoughtlessness, to downright injustice and to senseless intolerance we are only encouraging the maniacs on the fringes to hijack our societies and our religious beliefs.

This is what I meant (in my earlier submission) by the Culture of Violence that pervades human society. We tend to look at violence only in terms of its physical manifestation and ignore the violence of thought, word and deed. It is this "passive" violence (or non-physical) that eventually lserves as fuel to spark physical violence. So, stopping physical violence requires us to acknowledge and eradicate the "passive" or non-physical violence that we commit in society all the time. For peace to prevail we need harmony in human society and to achieve harmony we have to build relationships that are based on respect, understanding and acceptance. If Islam is hijacked by a small group of inhuman and radical elements it is for the larger Islamic society to wake up and do something about it.

Continue »

In my opinion the most deadly of the seven sins is GREED. It not only makes people selfish but it enables people to rob the poor for their own personal aggrandizement. I think it is also at the root of most of the other six sins. We see a proliferation of GREED not only among Christians but among all people everywhere and this is eroding values and morals of a civilized society.

I am writing to correct some regrettable mis-impressions I have given in my comments on my blog this week. While I stand behind my criticisms of the use of violence by recent Israeli governments -- and I have criticized the governments of the U.S., India and China in much the same way -- I want to correct statements that I made with insufficient care, and that have inflicted unnecessary hurt and caused anger.

I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish people. Indeed, many are as concerned as I am by the use of violence for state purposes, by Israel and many other governments.

I do believe that when a people hold on to historic grievances too firmly it can lead to bitterness and the loss of support from those who would be friends. But as I have noted in previous writings, the suffering of the Jewish people, particularly in the Holocaust, was historic in its
proportions. While we must strive for a future of peace that rejects violence, it is also important not to forget the past, lest we fail to learn from it. Having learned from it, we can then find the path to peace and rejection of violence through forgiveness. | Readers Respond to Gandhi. | Statement by president of the University of Rochester.

Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience -- a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful. But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.

The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs. In Tel Aviv in 2004 I had the opportunity to speak to some Members of Parliament and Peace activists all of whom argued that the wall and the military build-up was necessary to protect the nation and the people. In other words, I asked, you believe that you can create a snake pit -- with many deadly snakes in it -- and expect to live in the pit secure and alive? What do you mean? they countered. Well, with your superior weapons and armaments and your attitude towards your neighbors would it not be right to say that you are creating a snake pit? How can anyone live peacefully in such an atmosphere? Would it not be better to befriend those who hate you? Can you not reach out and share your technological advancement with your neighbors and build a relationship?

Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept. You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.

Continue »

I would look for a Presidential Candidate who does not wear his/her religion on their sleeve, but recognizes the fact that the United States is a country with many different religions and that even if all of them are in the minority, they must be respected and treated as equal. People of the United States have the mistaken notion that secularism means rejection of one's own religion. It is not rejection at all. It is a true and sincere respect of all religions. I am reminded of the time in the 1930s when Christian missionaries came from the West to convert the oppressed "low caste" Indians. They stood on street corners denouncing Hinduism and proclaiming the virtues of Christianity.

Continue »

That the U.S. Congress decided to legislate the importance of Christmas is, in itself, something ridiculous. For centuries the Christian world has been celebrating Christmas and everyone knows its importance to the Christian world. The trouble is that with increasing materialism in the world, especially in the United States, Christmas has become just another holiday to exchange gifts and boost the economy. Everyone is more interested in how much was spent and what it means to the economy rather than the spiritual aspect of the day. Paying lip-service in church for a few minutes -- mind you, the church service must never interfere with the enjoyment of the ball game and other events!! -- does not make a good Christian nor does legislating the importance of Christmas make Americans good Christians. The importance of the day is not even the birth of Jesus but the profound message of love, goodwill and peace that he preached during his lifetime. And, mind you, his love and goodwill were unconditional.
There is also the question of how do we celebrate this event inclusively. How do we make non-Christians realize that this is the day of Love and Peace and not about being a Christian? There is no such thing as Christian Love or Christian Peace.

Continue »

The question whether we are too politically correct about celebrating Christmas I think is misstated. I believe we are too politically "incorrect" in our celebrations of important religious occasions in any religion because we have taken the spirituality out of it and replaced it with crass commercialism.

The essence of the teachings of Jesus -- love and compassion for all of humanity -- has long been forgotten. We pay lip-service to His message in Church services and then go out and exchange presents and boost the economy with a lot of unnecessary and wasteful expenditure. The important question after Christmas is not what we did to further Jesus' message but how much money was circulated in the economy and who got the largest share of it.

Can well-intentioned religious leaders find a cure for the world's intractable problems? This question raises two fundamental questions: "Well-intentioned" and "religion".

It is rare to find religious leaders who are well-intentioned in the sense who really want to resolve world issues without gaining anything from it. Religious or other leaders today always seem to have an eye on the prize. It is either that the leader wants to get the Nobel Peace Prize or the leader hopes to convert those receiving help into their religious beliefs. In the context of eastern beliefs and especially according to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence when a good act is performed with such expectations the results are never what one desires.

It also raises the question of "religion" -- We understand religion in the narrow sense of the rituals that we practice and rituals really don't add up to religion. Merely because one reads the Bible every Sunday or a Muslim prays five times a day or a Hindu performs a host of rituals in a Temple everyday is not an indication of a pious soul if that ritual does not enhance the quality of that person's life.

It is not how many times we pray that is important but how well we incorporate that prayer into our daily lives and in our relationship with other human beings that is important. So, one can be a well-intentioned religious being but if one does not have the universal love and compassion in one's heart for all fellow beings then one's intentions become suspect.

I believe the United States has double standards as far as sex is concerned. So much about the United States is sexually oriented. The freedom of sex, the lust for sex, the millions (or billions?) of dollars spent on enhancing sexual pleasures and discovery of newer drugs so that sex can be enjoyed even when one has at least one foot in the grave. Marriages are no longer sacrosanct, they are contracts not so much to raise a loving family but to provide sexual enjoyment. Politicians are products of this obsessive sexual milieu so why should anyone expect them to be saints in their public life?

Of course it all boils down to whose moral standards are we going to judge them by? If these standards are not observed by anyone can we legitimately apply them to politicians? For someone whose sex life began some sixty years ago sex outside of marriage is a sin because to me sex is for procreation and not for pleasure alone. But in the 21st century this line of thought is blasphemous. Today sex is nothing more than physical enjoyment, like eating ice cream when you feel like it.

The moral standards for human behavior have been set by human beings and, therefore, they can be changed and even challenged by human beings. To those of us who have remained faithful to one partner in our collective lives such promiscuity is unpardonable and a violation of the commandments. To the more modern who believe in sex as a pleasurable pastime they should stop indulging in double standards.

I think we must first and foremost be thankful for life. Second we ought to be thankful for family and friends but these are becoming rare commodities. Many families are broken up and friends are like autumn leaves delicately poised to fall with a whiff of wind. But, we do have life and we have intelligence and we should be able to make a resolve to strengthen our bonds with family and friends and eventually with all of humanity. If we continue to label and stereotype people we will alienate them, but if we begin to respect people as human beings whoever they are and wherever they come from then creating a bond of friendship will become easier.

In a capitalist/materialist world everyone has become selfish and self-centered. We pass this message to children when we exhort them to be successful in life by any means possible. Thus, when relationships are contingent on "What am I going to get out of it?." the potential for conflict and unhappiness is rife. Family ties are very weak now and when people do get together it is more out of tradition than love and respect. Gandhi said "Materialism and morality have an inverse relationship. When one increases the other decreases." I believe we are witnessing this phenomenon now.

Apart from torture being inhuman it also escalates violence to a new level. If we can justify torture to catch those whom we call criminals what right will we have to complain if someone who considers us "criminals" and uses torture against our soldiers or citizens?

Violence will dispel violence only when darkness can be dispelled by darkness. True measure of civilization is not how low we can stoop to deal with an enemy but how high can we raise our enemy so that we can see eye-to-eye.