THE SOUL OF EUROPE 2008 ARCHIVES:
It is very nearly a year since we have been in touch with you about the Soul of Europe so we hope you will be interested in this update about our work.
It has been productive. Two books have been written.
The first by Peter Pelz: the white house – From Fear to a Handshake. This has been published and details of the book are attached or included with this Newsletter. The other book is Donald Reeves' autobiography A Very Dangerous Man. This was commissioned by Continuum and will be published in April 2009. Donald was relieved to receive an email from the publisher which said ' I am really delighted. It reads so very well. It is so deliciously unponderous and the wit and humour are most appealing. But it is serious too'.
KOSOVO.
We are enclosing a paper: Interventions and Peace building, about the Monasteries Project in Kosovo. Learning from our experience it describes a new approach to kick start our work there.
BOSNIA
We have discovered a Foundation which will be sympathetic to supporting the Ferhadija Mosque, which began in June 2007. This information is now with the Bosnian Islamic community. We are also in touch with the Foundation to enlist its interest in supporting the establishment of a European network of Ferhadija Associations.
Arvon Foundation. The Arvon Foundation encourages writers at every stage of their writing lives through residential creative writing courses in the UK. Part of their remit is to create opportunities for people from post-conflict regions to write up their experiences. The Soul of Europe and Arvon would like to offer this opportunity to our many colleagues, associated and friends in Bosnia. The search for funding is under way.
CONFERENCE
APRIL 24 th -26 th 2009 HAZELWOOD HOUSE
Together with other partners, including Through Heart to Peace and Marjon College, we are planning a conference to be held at Hazelwood House near Plymouth. The conference will be about ‘ Peace Building and the Imagination’. The name is yet to be decided. The dates are from Friday April 24 th to Sunday April 26 th 2009.
Along with our own books we will be discussing the witness and writing of Paul Lederach among others.
Hazelwood House is the centre from which Hearts for Peace operate, a group of women organizing projects in Bosnia, Palestine, Byelorus, the Ukraine and many other places. The house is situated in a beautiful part of Devon and, incidentally, serves the best food in the South West.
Please let us know if you want more information. My lecture at Lambeth Palace in May 2007, The Moral Imagination, provides useful background. You can find it on our website, but we can post it to you if you cannot access the internet.
A GIFT FOR OUR SUPPORTERS
We would like to give you a copy of the white house – From Fear to a Handshake in appreciation of the support you have given our activities over the last ten years. Please let us know by January 31 st if you would like a copy of the book.
The book costs £11.99 in the shops. Thank you for supporting us, and we hope that you will continue to do so. We operate on the most modest of shoestrings and every donation helps us continue our work.
MORE ABOUT the white house – From Fear to a Handshake
We see the book as a continuation of the project at Omarska we were not allowed to finish. We are already in touch with organizations who will invite us to make a presentation about the Omarska Memorial, in London, Brighton, Cambridge, Leeds and Edinburgh. We have already spoken at Plymouth University and Exeter. If you know of churches, mosques, rotary clubs, professional associations or networks interested in peace building, mediation and conflict transformation, please put them in touch with us or let us know and we will send them information.
IN GOOD HEART
Donald now goes to the gym three times a week. He is more mobile now than when he was at 60. In the Diplomatic and Overseas New Years Honours List he was awarded an MBE for ‘interfaith work, conflict resolution and peace building in Bosnia.’
Our projects continue… all of them.
Peter keeps the machinery of the Soul of Europe going, is painting and drawing intensively again and working on his major book, The Ferhadija Mosque, which tells the full story of our work together over the last ten years, mainly in Bosnia but also in North Africa and the Middle East as well as all over Europe, with significant historical, cultural (Islamic and Western) and autobiographical dimensions.
THANK YOU for your encouragement and support over the last ten years.
A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND ALL THE BEST FOR 2009.
Donald Reeves & Peter Pelz
QATAR CONFERENCE
RELIGION, VIOLENCE AND NATIONALISM
I want to thank Dr Ibrahim Alnaimi and his committee for inviting me to participate in this conference. This is my second visit to your country and I am delighted to be here once again. Thank you for the invitation and while I am standing here thank you to those who have worked so hard to ensure that this conference takes place. Thank you.
My subject is Religion Violence and Nationalism. I want to show how these three subjects are related to what has been called a ‘chosen trauma’. I will explain what I mean by ‘chosen trauma’ and then present five proposals to address the phenomenon of ‘chosen trauma’ particularly relevant for the progress of inter-religious dialogue.
What I am saying emerges from seven years working in Bosnia. I am the founder and director of a small NGO the Soul of Europe (not to be confused with the Soul FOR Europe). Our aim is to realize the words of Nelson Mandela: ‘If you want to make peace you do not speak to your friends you must speak to your enemies.’ We have been working in Banja Luka, the administrative centre of the Republika Srpska, the mainly Serb part of Bosnia where most of the Muslims were ethnically cleansed in the Bosnia War. We have been endeavoring to raise interest and funding for the reconstruction of the Ferhadija Mosque, one of the magnificent mosques in Europe, built over four hundred years ago by one of the greatest architects ever and destroyed by Serbs in 1993. The reconstruction will be a sign of collaboration between Muslims and Christians for Bosnia and the world. We were also invited to mediate between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Orthodox Serbs in a dispute about a memorial for those Muslims who were murdered by Serbs at Omarska, a killing camp in North West Bosnia. The atrocities committed there became a significant factor in radicalizing Muslims throughout the world. In our time in Bosnia we also created opportunities for religious leaders in Bosnia, who are the leaders of each ethnic group, to meet together and make joint public statements of reconciliation.
So much of what I will now say is filtered through the lens of our experiences in Bosnia. It will be noticed at once that inter-religious dialogue in the Balkans cannot be easily separated from political and economic issues and cannot be detached from questions about human rights and ethnicity. We have been involved both in inter-religious dialogue (which involves as much listening as talking) and in mediation – bringing former enemies together.
So to our subject. Here is a formal definition of a ‘chosen trauma’. Chosen trauma is ‘the mental representation of an event that has caused a large group (a nation or a state) perhaps long ago to face drastic losses, feel despair and become victimized by another group, sharing a humiliating injury’. Understanding this is a key to discerning the process of the transmission of past historical events.
A nation or a state’s identity is linked in large part to what its people remember and keep alive. The trauma remembered renews itself as part of the unconscious psyche of group identity and is passed down across generations: a particular event or events are remembered in a particular way. That moment shaped their identity then and it continues to shape their identity now. In any circumstances the ‘chosen trauma’ provides justification for preemptive violence and revenge. The dates may go way back in history but they are present as if they happened yesterday. Historical time collapses into mythical time. These highlighted moments in the social landscape of a people form and shape a contrived sense of who they are, and as the same events are reconstructed yet again in the present they perpetuate a cycle of renewed violence at the hands of one side and then the other.
Here is a story of how a ‘chosen trauma’ has been reactivated for political purposes, leading to revenge and violence.
The story comes from the Balkans. There are many, particularly in the West, who consider the Balkans a special case. This is not so. Wherever there is a prolonged conflict, or the potential for conflict, the phenomenon of the chosen trauma is invariably present and is one of the factors contributing to the outbreak of violence and revenge. Religions either deliberately or unwittingly contribute to fostering these ancient memories of hurt and humiliation, because religious leaders, muftis, imams, bishops, priests and rabbis, by virtue of their office, and their representative functions, hold within themselves the identity of their group. It is not a question of the numbers who go to the mosque or church or synagogue; religious leaders cradle the nationalistic impulse.
Here is the story.
After becoming independent from Byzantium in the 12 th century the Kingdom of Serbia under the leadership of the Nemanjic dynasty flourished for two hundred years. It was the golden age of Serbia, reaching its peak in the Emperor Stefan Dusan. He died in 1355 and the dynasty came to an end. Then one Prince Lazar was elected. The political power and influence of Serbia declined as the Ottoman Empire expanded, culminating in the Battle of Kosovo on June 28 th 1389.
There are many versions of the truth around the Battle of Kosovo. We do know that the leaders of the warring groups were killed. Lazar’s body was canonized and moved to a monastery north of Belgrade. I have seen the body. Lazar was regarded as a Christ figure who in the night before the battle held a last supper with twelve of his knights, one of whom betrayed him.
In 1987 at the approach of the 600 th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, President Milosevic, a communist bureaucrat, attended a meeting of three hundred party delegates in Kosovo where just 10% of the population is Serb, the rest being Muslim Kosovo Albanians. During the meeting Serbs forced their way into the hall to voice grievances about their lives in Kosovo at the hands of the Muslim majority. They were prevented from entering. It is now known that Milosevic staged the demonstration and even paid people to throw stones at the Serbs so he could step forward and announce: ‘Nobody, either now or in the future, has the right to beat you.’ This political manipulation of myth made Milosevic a hero to Serbs and inspired the Bosnia War. He transformed himself into a Serb nationalist leader, saying Serbs were not a minority in Kosovo because he declared ‘Kosovo is and always will be Serbia’.
Aided by the Serbian Orthodox Church Milosevic reactivated the Serbian ‘chosen trauma’, renewing and strengthening Serb nationalism. The remains of the legendary Lazar were placed in a coffin and taken on a tour of every Serb village and town where it was met by Orthodox priests and mourners in black. Historical time collapsed. Past and present merged; six hundred years ago became today. As they greeted Lazar’s body they wept and vowed never to allow such a defeat to happen to them again. The tour of Lazar’s body functioned as a daily reincarnation.
The significance of the story is this: Milosevic made space for the group to grieve its defeat at the Battle of Kosovo so as to inspire a reversal of defeat and shame. The Serb nation bonded and became suffused with a new sense of entitlement, of revenge. This played a significant part in creating a frame of mind which sanctioned war, destruction, killing and atrocities against Muslims.
I spoke of how religious leaders ‘cradle the nationalistic impulse’. They hold their group’s sense of who they are. I was present at the blessing of a new Orthodox church in Omarska (near the killing camp I described earlier). Omarska is a small poor community. The bishop arrived in procession with priests and the service began. Three church bells with their donors standing by were to be blessed; then as the service proceeded the bells were raised into position. Hundreds of people attended the banquet afterwards, the entire local Orthodox community. When the bells began to peal for the first time everyone stood and remained silent. The bishop recited a prayer.
The peal of bells told the people of Omarska: ‘This is our place. This is our land.’ In Ottoman times bells were forbidden and the faithful had to be summoned to worship by wooden planks being struck loudly together.
My description of the ‘chosen trauma’ of Serbia is NOT a polemic against Serbs. I have many Serb friends. Much of what I am saying needs to be more carefully nuanced. For instance it has to be stated that the majority of the Serb Orthodox Church condemned Milosevic for the way he conducted the Bosnia War. However Serb culture, literature and art, kept alive terrible memories nourishing the ‘chosen trauma’. The work of Ivo Andric, the Bosnian Christian Nobel prize-winning author, became favorite reading for Serbs including Milosevic who kept by his bedside a copy of A Bridge Over the Drina, which chronicles in inflammatory detail the cruelty of the Ottoman occupation.
It would be instructive to examine the ‘chosen traumas’ which are being activated in the present conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Meanwhile I have identified five strands for the possibilities for inter-religious dialogue in the movement towards justice and a more peaceful world. Each needs to be developed. Time permits me only headings with just a few words of clarification.
1
EUROPE
One of the great difficulties we in Europe experience about inter-religious activities is that secular governments do not take us seriously. The reason for this is a legacy of the European Enlightenment at the time of scientific discoveries, industrial development and colonial expansion world wide. Religious belief could only be tolerated in this new political and social revolution if it remained a private matter. Everyone in this room knows that this is as reductionist a view of religion as is possible to be. The Archbishop of Canterbury is insistent that religious minorities play their full part in British society. He is determined to see that the rights and customs of Jews, Muslims and Hindus are respected and protected.
It is therefore difficult for those of us who are committed to inter-religious dialogue to have the resources to do our work. That most secular of institutions, the European Commission, is not interested.
2
CULTURE OF SOLIDARITY
Where dialogue happens, trust between religious leaders is given a chance to grow. In regions of the world where there is latent or endemic conflict then solidarity between religions becomes essential. Gaining that trust is difficult and not without danger. How much would it take for the Muslim and Jewish communities in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon to stand in solidarity with the rapidly diminishing Christian communities? Not to mention Iraq.
For example in Bosnia there is little trust between the religious and ethnic groups. But a successful outcome of prolonged dialogue would result in Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics standing together in the face of many and different threats. So when mosques are vandalized, then Orthodox and Catholics will continually and vigorously affirm their support for the Islamic community. When Orthodox priests and their families are harassed as has happened in Sarajevo, then Muslims and Catholics join the protest. When the Catholic Church in Bosnia is denied rights about the return of their properties, then Muslim and Orthodox will stand with them.
3
PEACE BUILDING
Politicians try to establish dialogue leading to agreement through ‘road maps’ and peace processes. These agreements often collapse and violence breaks out yet again. Why is it that so many countries emerging from war fall back into war? A short answer is that peace has to be established at the grass roots level; peace building requires patience and tenacity at the grass roots. The cycle of violence (through fear, grief, anger, bitterness, revenge and retaliation leading to resumption of hostilities) has to be dismantled at the level of the human heart and mind.
Religions proclaim teachings about peace (the reverence for life etc and the dignity of every human being); therefore in this process of dismantling the bitterness and anger emanating from grief – a task for generations – religious leaders in particular need to draw on the rich tradition of peace and peace making. They have a unique opportunity to assist in this dismantling of the cycle of violence.
It is sometimes necessary to bring people from outside the situation to act as catalysts in the healing process.
When a United Nations Peace Commission is formed then there needs to be also a core of people experienced in mediation and familiar with the principles of the Abrahamic faiths (and where necessary also Eastern religions) ready to be invited to establish inter-religious councils, or whatever initiatives are appropriate; provided long term resources are available to sustain them.
There is much knowledge, much experience of mediation and conflict transformation on the one hand and inter-religious dialogue on the other that this reservoir of wisdom can be drawn on in the way I am advocating.
4
ACADEMY
There are two areas where scholars can contribute to the movement away from religious nationalism and violence towards a more civilizing future.
Historians can point to those times in our history when the Abrahamic faiths have lived together more or less satisfactorily. The tradition of Convivencia is one to be celebrated. History in the West is told mainly from the perspective of the Crusades, a conflict between faiths. The well chronicled tradition of co-existence and co-operation is neglected.
What I look for in the scholars of our sacred scriptures is help in reading the texts for our own time and to be taken down to the depths and ground of my faith and to be nourished in those depths, as a continual act of the imagination. I do not want to be part of some intellectual effort which strives after what we have in common – such effort does not engage the imagination. But where there is resolve to look eye to eye at our differences with respect, always with respect, then oddly and paradoxically our differences can energize our imagination to work collectively together. (Here the practice of scriptural reasoning is a most useful beacon.)
And I also look for scholars to engage in the practice of peace building between religions, so they share their wisdom and also learn from what is happening. Is there a place for practitioners and scholars to work together? We must create such a place.
5
CULTURAL HERITAGE
The Soul of Europe has been actively engaged in securing interest and funding for the Ferhadija Mosque, because we believe that mosques, churches, and synagogues do not always have to be signs of division and partition. They can also be signs of meeting and reconciliation and as these projects happen, so the relationship between those of different ethnic groups and religions associated with the reconstruction or rebuilding is itself a sign, a promise of something new and good. There should be many such projects in the world today.
These are five proposals to contribute to the dismantling of the ‘chosen trauma’. They are modest and difficult and essential. Essential because as we all know, we can see on the not so distant horizon storms approaching. I am referring to the political, economic and social effects of climate change. It has been estimated that within thirty years, maybe even less, the agricultural yield of parts of Africa will have decreased by up to 12%. This means thousands will experience famine and starvation. This means inevitable migration on a scale we cannot imagine.
I say this not to scare myself, but to remind us that we will, from all our religious traditions, need all the wisdom we can draw on to diminish the inevitable violence. So the sooner we can realize the fruits of our dialogue the better for our children and future generations.
I believe the time has come for those committed to inter-religious dialogue to be more assertive. To those who say ‘We have the truth, we will not compromise’ we have to reply: ‘Yes but there is always more to see and learn about God.’ To those who say: ‘We do not want religious minorities or other ethnic groups in our land’, we should reply: ‘Do not be afraid. We are all of us interdependent, we have to live together. And we can live together.’ To those who say: ‘We will take revenge on those who have murdered our families, the old and the weak,’ we must say: ‘We bear witness to God’s justice, because our safety and security lie ultimately with God.’
So let us be more assertive, more demanding of one another and ourselves, more passionate about our calling to the work of dialogue among our religions. For we undertake this work not for ourselves but for God alone in whom we trust.
Thank you for your attention.