Why Pope’s UAE visit was so important
Inter-faith conference raised a direct challenge to extremism
This past week I delivered one of the opening addresses at a conference in Abu Dhabi dedicated to creating understanding and building relationships and mutual respect among the world’s religious leaders. The conference coincided with Pope Francis’ historic visit to the UAE and his signing with the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Ahmad Al Tayyeb, of a document committing them both to working to build “Human Fraternity”.
I was pleased to have been there and to have had the opportunity to participate in these events. In the first place, the pope came to the Arabian Peninsula, to a Muslim country, to celebrate mass in a stadium — with 35,000 in attendance inside the stadium and another 100,000-plus assembled outside. This was too big and too historic to be dismissed, as some suggested, as a PR stunt by the UAE to “burnish their image as a tolerant society that promotes religious freedom” or as a way for the pope to distract attention from the church’s sex abuse scandal.
How big was it? Just ask the UAE’s nearly one million Catholics. For them, it was not only the excitement of seeing their beloved Francis, it was also a validation of their faith and as a clear a message as could ever be sent that their freedom of religion is secure in the UAE. What they found especially heartening was the fact that the UAE government ministers attended the mass and exchanged with others the ‘kiss of peace’ as a gesture of solidarity.
In the mid-1960s Shaikh Zayed built the first church for Catholic expats living in Abu Dhabi. There are currently 40 churches (and, in addition to Catholics, there are Protestants, Orthodox and Evangelicals). And UAE government officials frequently attend services on Christmas and other special events. In the face of growing concerns with extremism and violence against Christians, the pope’s visit and the reaffirmation of official support for the community were deeply affirming.
Finding common ground
On the day before the Mass in the Zayed Stadium, Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar cosigned the Abu Dhabi Declaration — entitled a ‘Document on Human Fraternity’. In that document, both clerics call on their co-religionists to “stop using religion to incite hatred, violence, extremism, and blind fanaticism and to refrain from using the name of God to justify acts of murder, exile, terrorism and oppression.”
In his statement before signing the Declaration, Al Tayyeb urged countries in the region to “continue to embrace your brothers from Christian sects everywhere, as they are our partners in the homeland.” Christians, he added should not be viewed as “minorities”, but as equal citizens. In his remarks Pope Francis not only spoke out against the scourge of war, specifically mentioning devastating conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, he also echoed the Grand Imam’s call for “societies where people of different beliefs have the same rights of citizenship.”
In recent years, there have been a number of interfaith sessions in the UAE involving the three Abrahamic faiths. This effort, however, was more expansive and its rhetoric was bolder in scope. It was about finding the common ground and respect necessary to build a human family.
Some western observers have made light of these gatherings or have been cynical about the UAE’s creation of a Ministry of Tolerance, or the UAE declaring this to be an official ‘Year of Tolerance’.
In my remarks at the opening of the conference, I questioned the arrogance that is at the root of this cynicism.
“All of us,” I observed, “East and West, are facing similar challenges. No country is immune, and no society or faith community is innocent. There are Christian fundamentalists, Muslim extremists, Jewish extremists, and Hindu nationalists.
“There are some in the West who point an accusing finger at the East. And, to be sure, there are problems to point at: ethnic and religious minority communities have been targets for violence and victims of discrimination, their labour is exploited, their human rights are denied.
“But with Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, homophobic hate crimes increasing in the US and Europe, with incidents of racially-motivated violence occurring with disturbing frequency in the US — we need to do less finger-pointing and more looking at ourselves and then turn not on each other but to each other — and understand that we share a common problem and can benefit from working together to find solutions. And so I begin by asking us to approach this engagement with humility, recognising the truth behind the delightful Italian proverb that says ‘everyone has their own fleas’.”
In light of this, I think about Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan partnering with Jimmy Carter to cure diseases in Africa, or Lamia Makkar, a young Egyptian-American highschool girl in the Emirates working with her friends to raise the money needed to build a school in Haiti. Even imagining actions of this sort would have been impossible a century ago.
Now, large and small, they are happening every day, in every place. They are clear evidence of the expanded global consciousness that is transforming our human relationships. That was why the papal visit and the coming together of religious leaders was so important. Of course, one visit, one Declaration, and conference will not produce the change we need. But they do serve to continue the expansion of our awareness of each other and to build the relationships we will need to create the human fraternity that Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar envisioned in their joint statement.