Lessening division may help lead to solutions

As I’m writing this article, the country and the world are being treated to the spectacle of a Long Island, N.Y., congressperson who is refusing to step down from his post despite multiple revelations that, while campaigning, he did not tell the truth about several critical aspects of his life.

Unfortunately, Rep. George Santos is not alone in this regard. Nor is this phenomenon limited to the Republican Party. Democrat Kathy Hochul became the first female governor of the state of New York because her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, was forced from office by a series of scandals involving his apparent public misrepresentations while in office.

Those of us who hold positions of religious leadership are not immune to these blatant violations of public trust. Synagogues, churches and Islamic centers have been racked by similar scandals.

Betraying public trusts is not a new thing. What is new, is that leaders, when faced with cold hard facts, refuse to apologize and step aside. This behavior is part of what I call the coarsening of this country. Concurrently, we are being treated to new ways to gamble away our hardearned money and the newly legalized powerful mind-altering substance, marijuana. When you observe the incivility of both sides in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, we

find public debates filled with harsh, demeaning rhetoric. Further, the raucous disagreements about teaching about gender or race in public schools is yet another indicator of how coarse and uncivil we have become.

For Muslims, our moral exemplar is Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). If you search the numerous reports about his life example, you would be hard pressed to find the kind of divisive language and exclusionary tactics displayed by many of today’s leaders, both religious and secular. Any fair, non-polemic examination of Islam’s founding communities in Mecca and Medina over 1,400 years ago would find relatively inclusive multi-cultural societies that were extraordinary for that time. In light of today’s liberal standards, his efforts don’t look like much.

However, in the tribalistic, misogynistic context into which he was born, what he preached and practiced was extraordinary. Islam, under his leadership, transformed the Arabian Peninsula into a less coarse, more orderly society.

Faith matters – I urge people of faith, no matter what tradition, to use the best from their religious heritage to lead efforts to tone down the coarse, divisive rhetoric. Hopefully, this will help us to solve some of the difficult problems that our country and the world face today.

Contributed photo Jimmy E. Jones