Religions for peace

THE DECLARATION ON peace, poverty and the environment adopted by the landmark millennium summit of spiritual leaders at the United Nations will be received with hope around the world. More wars have been fought in the name of God than over any other issue, a trend particularly noticeable in the years since the end of the Cold War, that any attempt to break down the faith boundaries and foster a degree of unity and mutual respect among the religions must come as a breath of fresh air. The apparent incongruity of the United Nations, a decidedly secularist organisation, hosting such a ``peace'' summit of religious and spiritual leaders will be readily overlooked if there is promise of a tangible movement towards bridging the religious divide. If the effort leads to greater understanding among the different peoples and reduces hatred and violence that are the two ugly faces that the world has begun to see more and more these years, humanity will hail the summit. For, whatever the root cause, religious extremism is fast turning out to be the most potent source of violence and human suffering in the world today. It is no consolation that this is a malaise that has afflicted all the faiths, as revealed in a 23-page report to the U.N. General Assembly prepared in December last year by the special rapporteur. ``No religion is free from extremism,'' the rapporteur commented in his report and urged the Assembly to urgently evolve ``a strategy of prevention'' to curb the spread of religious intolerance. Each passing day in the past decade has underlined the very real dangers from this new reality, beginning with the outbreak of the more ruinous war that followed the culmination of the Afghan conflict of 1979-89 when religion replaced ideology as the weapon.

The ``peace'' summit, organised by an inter-faith coalition, sponsored by the corporate world and held in collaboration with the U.N., has for the first time served to address this urgent need for fire-fighting measures. The summit's promise of a plan of action to help to reduce hatred and provide a forum to foster greater understanding must in this background be deemed a major gain. The participants' pledges to work for eradicating poverty and reversing the widening gap between the rich and the poor and their resolve to educate their followers on preserving the ecosystem will be taken as tools to bind the gathering together on the basis of popular slogans and in preparation to face the more divisive issues of inter-faith differences. It is hard to see what major role religion as such can play in the fields of socio-economic upliftment. But this should not detract from the boldness of the decision to address the most serious problems facing humanity: intolerance and violence arising from religious differences. The commitment undertaken by the over l,500 spiritual and religious leaders to work for ``an unprecedented collaboration'' among the different faiths must be reassuring. In this age of intolerance, their resolve will be tested on a daily basis around the world.

``Religious leaders have not always spoken out when their voices could have helped combat hatred and persecution,'' Mr. Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary-General, told the opening session of the summit, addressing a gathering that for a change had more saffron, green and white robes than grey suits. Mr. Annan was acknowledging a global reality: religion's increasing attraction for the masses. Such underscoring of the fundamental responsibility of the religious leaders for peace on earth must have been a recurring theme of discussions behind closed doors during the four days of the ``peace summit''. If they have their way with their followers, education and dialogue should replace the sword and the gun and become the only ways to eradicate intolerance and change the people's mindset. It was a positive message from New York.

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