November 3, 2024.
Dear Friends,
We will gather together remotely for our Badaliya and Peace Islands Institute faith sharing on Sunday, November 3, 2024 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. Please join us on Zoom, or in spirit, as we encourage Inter-faith relations and pray together for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, especially in Israel and Palestine and Lebanon; for an end to the violence in the West Bank, a ceasefire of the war in Gaza and Lebanon an end to war as a solution to the many conflicts in our world, especially in the Ukraine, Haiti and the Sudan. Our prayers are on-going for all the victims of human-created violence as well as natural disasters, unprecedented hurricanes last month in Florida and for the many humanitarian groups risking their own lives to offer much-needed aid.
Today we are keeping in mind and heart two prophetic voices and spiritual guides of our time: Fethullah Gulen and Louis Massignon, who returned to God on October 31, 1962, the vigil of All Saints Day.
On October 20.2024 Fethullah Gulen, founder of the Hizmet movement and spiritual inspiration for the Peace Islands Inter-faith gatherings, returned to God. His vision of a more peaceful world emphasized Education, Inter-faith and Inter-Cultural exchange inspired by his grounding in Islam and the writings of the theologian, Said Nursi. The Hizmet movement has spread to 100 countries, throughout Central Asian countries and many European nations as well as in the United States. HIs writings contain a rich legacy from which future generations seeking a spiritual foundation can be inspired in their efforts at creating a more peaceful world. Our Badaliya USA has been blessed in our faith sharing groups to welcome many followers of the Hizmet philosophy, a word that means service in English. Much like the prophets in every age, Gulen suffered from false accusations and his followers have been persecuted seeking safety in exile in other countries. As Christians we are bound to welcome the stranger and the marginalized as did Jesus in his time and for us it has led to enriching friendships and sharing of life.
It is increasingly painful to witness from the safety of our homes in the United States and Europe both the devastation and continuing loss of life in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon expanding the war in the Middle East into a regional confrontation along with the years long invasion by Russia in the Ukraine. Where, we might ask, is our God and how does our gathering in the Spirit of Badaliya each month support our hope for a better world? In the spirit of the origins of the Badaliya it is to Louis Massignon and his vision of peace with justice that we can turn to as our guide today.
Massignon wrote and lectured extensively on the place of the patriarch Abraham in all three Abrahamic faith traditions and on the issue of Palestine with the establishment of the state of Israel and the forced displacement of thousands of Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, in 1948 into the 1950's. This reality continues to remain unresolved and has fueled an unfathomable number of wars and horrific loss of lives as we are witnessing today. As believers, both Christian and Muslim, Massignon reminds us that the lens through which we must envision peace with justice is solely through the religious terrain. Only this can lead us beyond the weaknesses of our human political agendas. He asks:
"How, in relation to Palestine can we envision peace with justice in general? We cannot try to address this crucial problem for humanity as the regime in the Holy Land. It is not only a question of the dry stones of the land that we will fertilize with technical means that I don't admire, but the question of the living stones who are the people that are there now. He said: Blessed are the persecuted for justice, blessed those who hunger and thirst for justice ... theirs is the Kingdom of God. For us, The Holy Land must be a small foretaste, an advance inheritance of Paradise. Paradise is a garden. I have written, and with patience I repeat, the Holy Land must be the kindergarten, the children's garden of reconciled humanity."
Today I can only quote a very few words of wisdom from Massignon's extensive writings on Israel and Palestine, Jerusalem and peace with justice, so we will begin with a parable he used of a legend about the famous Muslim Sultan, Saladin.
When his first son was born, a father had a ring fashioned for him as a sign of royalty and that this son would inherit his father's crown. Then two other sons were born. Before he died the father commissioned a goldsmith to make an exact replica of the ring to be given to his other two sons hoping that this would unify them in loving one another. One author suggests that instead it caused division and hatred.
Massignon then adds:
"For me, Jerusalem is precisely this ring, and I am convinced that it is only profound affection for Jerusalem that can lead to reconciliation between three antagonistic elements who before anything are religious elements." He continues to describe how all three faith traditions experience Jerusalem and that this could help them to empathize with the devotion of the other for this sacred city.
From Jerusalem we turn to Abraham, the patriarch of all three faith traditions. After referring to his extensive writing about the three visitors to the patriarch Abraham that he suggests demonstrates one of his major themes of hospitality, he wrote:
"The problem of displaced persons is the whole problem of peace with justice. We cannot have justice for ourselves when we have oppressed and done injustice to others. ... I believe that I have made you sense that the problem of hospitality dominates the whole question of peace with justice. As much as we do not treat displaced persons as Guests of God we will not find solutions. We do not realize that the divine visitation, who is a person who has nothing when he comes to you who have everything, that this is a symbol of the Last Judgement... which will be: I was naked and you clothed me; I was hungry and you gave me something to eat."
It is the promises of our common patriarch Abraham to all three faith traditions that are yet to be fulfilled. We fail to recognize the Divine Guests in the immigrant, the refugee and the displaced families escaping war and violence in our world. Massignon reminds us of the significance of the "tears of Hagar, the first tears in the Scriptures, into which God showed the source and the salvation." The promise made to Hagar and Ishmael and the promise to Israel is demonstrated with the iconic ending of the story; when Abraham dies, Isaac receives Ishmael in Hebron in order to bury their father together.
In the Qur'an Ibrahim is mentioned 73 times. In Surah 4:25 Abraham is called the friend of God and the father of the prophets. Muslims believe that he is one of the ancestors of the prophet Muhammad, the father of the Jewish and Arab people and founder of a universal religion. Qur'an 3:84 states:
"Say: We believe in God, and what has been revealed to us, And what was revealed to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac , Jacob, and the Tribes, And in the Books given to Moses, Jesus and the Prophets from their Lord: We make no distinction Between one and another Among them, and to God do we Bow our will (in Islam)."
It is in Surah 2:142-144 that the instruction was given to change the direction Muslims are to face in prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. "There are only three mosques to which you are to embark on a journey: the sacred Mosques in Mecca, my Mosque in Medina and the alAqsa Mosque in Jerusalem." These are the three holiest places in Islam. It is Jerusalem, al Quds in Arabic, that Muhammad visits and experiences his iconic Night Journey and Ascension.
It is in reminding us of the sacredness of this City of Peace, Jeru-Salaam, for all three Abrahamic faith traditions that Massignon begs us to remember when we struggle to envision peace with justice in the Middle East and indeed, for all of humanity. In 1932 Massignon took the name Abraham when he made his final vows as a Third Order Franciscan, identifying himself with both the embrace of the poorest of the poor, that Francis of Assisi named Lady Poverty and the vision of all creation as sacred, as well as the unifying figure of the patriarch Abraham for all Jews, Christians and Muslim believers.
As difficult as it is in the midst of the horrors of the daily news of war and violence, death and destruction and unimaginable suffering we are still called to hold out an olive branch of hope for peace with justice in our world as believers in the One God of Abraham. The answer to the question, where is our God is found in the pages and photos of our news feeds every day. The compassionate heart of Divine Love revealed in the faces of human suffering and in those courageous reporters and health care workers risking their lives to help. May we do all we can to support their hizmet, service.
Peace to you.
Dorothy
References:See www.dcbuck.com for all past letters to the Badaliya and Peace Islands