Statement

His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal

Abraham Geiger Award, 2008

Berlin, Germany

4^th March, 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is indeed an unexpected honour to have been chosen as this year’s recipient of the prestigious Abraham Geiger Award and allow me to express my profound thanks for this seal on my continued association with this great seat of learning whose aims and objectives reflect so closely my own.

I stand before you today not as an intellectual, in this noble college, the recollection of whose forefathers prompts spiritual and intellectual humility, but as an individual speaking for shared values and experience.

Abraham Geiger, after whom this prize is named, was not only a child prodigy, an extremely capable historian, and a man of huge courage and intellect, but espoused above all three pre-eminent principles: the freedom of conscience and belief; academic freedom, and the political freedom of all humanity. His influence on the shape of Reform Judaism cannot be overestimated, and his focus on the preservation of the past through creative dialogue with the present resonates strongly today.

And it is worth recalling as the Lebanese author Amin Maalouf writes, “No doctrine dies from being criticized, or even attacked; but it can die from being made impermeable to criticism.”

Speaking some years ago at the Sorbonne (2004), I raised the issue of conscience universelle et valeurs partagées, and I believe, in this land, so famous for its great philosophers, its art, music, mathematicians and conversation, that we can develop a shared consciousness by understanding each other through our common experiences.

In the words of Imam Shatibi, nu’adhem al-juwaame’ wa nahtarem al-furooq, we enhance the similarities whilst respecting the differences. I do not refer here to comparisons or synthesis. I favour learning by analogy, which means empathy, and an ability not only to listen, but to hear. We have all - God help us - endured enough monologues about dialogue.

Writing in the foreword to a remarkable collection of essays entitled: Re-orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East, William Dalrymple highlights the fact that, and I quote: ‘…the intellectual awakening that the Renaissance represented owed almost as much to the interplay of East and West as it did to any process of self-regeneration drawing from Greek and Roman roots.’[1]

And only last year, at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities’ ‘Leibniz Day’ lecture, I was delighted to have an opportunity to pay homage to the contribution, made by all cultures to today’s global civilization. A contribution, in which, as revealed in the Genizah fragments, Judaism has played a significant role since the earliest of times.

Today we still hear loose references to cultures in the context of religion - Jewish, Christian, Islamic culture, the implication being that some sort of conflict exists - that they are mutually exclusive and necessarily contradictory or even antagonistic. Yet each represents, in its own form, the potential civilising power of faith. As universal religions, none may be circumscribed by time or place. They represent different expressions of the same ‘civilisational’ values; different interpretations of eternal trusts. Thus, they may be present in the same society without risk of contradiction, and in one world without inevitably provoking confrontation.

There is equally no dichotomy between patriotism and faith.

When I visited Auschwitz in 2000, I was asked very politely: "Why have you come?" Perhaps the simplest answer is that I was drawn to this terrible place by my deep sense of common humanity. It reminded me of the terrible deeds that man is capable of and it also gave me hope. For when the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was signed, my mother-in-law, Begum Ikramullah, who was a member of the Pakistani delegation in 1948 to the United Nations and who worked on the Convention, strongly supported the work of Professor Raphael Lemkin who lost 24 members of his family in the holocaust. Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves". Lemkin carried out a campaign that sought to make genocide a crime under international law. His efforts were a prelude to the incorporation in December 1948 of an article prohibiting genocide into the United Nations Charter, which took effect in January 1951. It is our responsibility today to ensure that this article and, indeed, the full array of international humanitarian legislation is enforced universally and without prejudice. It is in that spirit that I accept this prize today.

As Muslims, Jews and Christians, we are all bound by a common heritage of spiritual struggle under one God. Unfortunately, we also share the sin of departure from true fundamentals. Ironically, in attempting to preserve the traditions and customs of our shared civilization, many individuals are undermining the very foundations on which it was built. The children of Abraham have lost their way.

Ladies & Gentlemen,

Human security is the key to better relations between and within nations and their peoples.

The challenge before us all is to ensure that the effects of technological development, social change and globalization do not continue to disenfranchise or alienate sections of our societies. I believe we must face this challenge with unity and cohesion, drawing strength from our faith and from our shared values. Our future wellbeing depends on an integrated approach to humanity and security, which necessarily includes the voiceless victims, or the “silenced majority”.

The Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy and the Barcelona Process for Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue outlined three inter-connected categories of human relations: security, economy and culture. We must integrate these into a coherent strategy with a humanitarian vision at its core. I believe that knowledge of our respective faiths and our diverse achievements can help to promote this and remind us that we have far more in common than we often realise.

For Europe, migration is an inevitable aspect of economic globalisation, bringing the issues faced by far off populations to the heart of European societies. Ethnic and religious groups are no longer confined to one region as traditional margins shift and groups disintegrate and reintegrate at escalating rates. And we have all seen how conflicts arising from repression can spread swiftly from their epicentre.

Since the tragic events of September 11^th 2001 and subsequent horrors the world has become a much less welcoming place for Muslims. Mere condemnation of such despicable and un-Islamic behaviour is insufficient. Rather, as the Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric has indicated in his remarkably perspicacious and relevant Declaration of European Muslims[2] the onus is on Muslims, and I quote: “(to) proclaim to the whole world the non-violent nature of their faith and teach their children that the right way to success in this world and to salvation in the hereafter is not through argument of force, but through force of peaceful argument”.

In this regard, I feel compelled to mention on this occasion the names of some of our heroes of 20^th Century Arab history: Si Ali Sakkat, governor of the city of Tunis, who opened his home to sixty Jews who fled prison; and Khaled Abdel Wahhab, the son of a famous Tunisian writer, who spirited several Jewish families from their shelter at midnight in order to protect a Jewish woman from rape. I would also mention the efforts of many Algerian immigrants in France who sheltered Jewish children and protected them in one of their mosques.

Muslims in Europe, whether migrant, first, second or third generation, must demonstrate that: “European Muslims are fully and unequivocally committed to the rule of law, to the principles of tolerance, to the values of democracy and human rights, and to the belief that each and every human being has the right to five essential values: the value of life, the value of faith, the value of freedom, the value of property, and the value of dignity.” They must, he says, realize that Muslim freedom in Europe has to be earned and that it is only by shouldering wholeheartedly their responsibilities in economic, political and cultural terms that this can be achieved. In return, he notes, they have the right to certain expectations.

At its core the issue is one of identity, and here, peoples with shared experience as religious communities can assist one another to integrate fully as loyal members of civil society without assimilating at the transcendental level (OR without relinquishing anything of loyalty to God). The Qur’an reminds us that difference and diversity are to be welcomed as enriching and falling entirely within the divine purpose.

And to quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams: “We all grow by our encounter with the other. Supremely we grow by encounter with that divine Other who addresses, moves, judges, challenges and heals us. But we grow also in encounter with those human others who in their different ways bring us something of God that opens doors in our own selves that we would not otherwise be aware of.”[3]

In my region likewise, the religious sphere must complement the societal one. The politicization and degradation of our religious hierarchies and of our holy cities has created a vacuum for those who prosper on bigotry and intolerance. Today, altruism and charity have disappeared from public policy. The principle of zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam which obliges the faithful to invest a portion of their wealth in building a future for the poor, has been toppled by the nation state without thought to replacement or implications, and tarnished by association with terrorism.

Unless this dangerous imbalance is recognized and addressed, the pulpit-bashers and self-canonisers who ensnare desperate and lost souls will continue to misrepresent our history, our faiths and our needs - with dire consequences. Their hatred industry has prospered in recent years, fuelled by the alienation and disenfranchisement that leads so easily to religious fanaticism. Its grizzly collateral the lives of innocent victims, and those of misguided perpetrators, the suicidal nihilists. And let us not forget that as long as we fail to act, we are all complicit in empowering the haters and I quote Professor Yehuda Bauer’s powerful words “…thou shalt not be a perpetrator; thou shalt not be a victim; and thou shalt never, but never, be a bystander.”[4]

The political powerplay in our world ignores the existential needs and realities of people on the ground. People-politics has long been superseded by petro-politics, and democratization in my region is regarded with serious misgivings. Meanwhile, the international alphabet soup of acronyms PfP - Partnership for Peace; Euro-Med - Euro-Mediterranean Partnership; OSCE - Organisation for Security and Cooperation - Each designed to align governments with some new approach to securitization, are of little relevance to people on the edge of an abyss.

Security framework agreements cannot provide an answer to our problems and peace cannot be born of projects. Rather it will emerge from a concept that addresses existential needs. Shared consciousness is about extending a hand over the boundary. It is not only the pipelines that matter, but the people who live next to the pipelines, the Iraqis, many displaced, suffering without water and electricity in extremes of heat and cold. They need repair not only of material infrastructure, but of their hearts and minds - post-war psychological reconstruction and development - so that they can again become participants in their own future.

The Middle East urgently needs support moreover in creating a regional stability charter to encompass codes of conduct, goals for regional cooperation, and the mechanisms of a regional cohesion fund to tackle underdevelopment and fund new infrastructure. The complementarities between countries rich in human resources and oil-producing states should be harnessed, while energy-derived investment must be diverted from the old markets of the west to the Gulf's troubled hinterland. The ultimate result would be an interdependent Middle East that fosters stability and nurtures growth.

Globalisation is not simply the spread of capitalism or deeper economic and political ties, but a chance to bring to prominence our shared consciousness. This universal approach implies compassion and altruism, and a willingness to understand both sides and to recognize each other’s pain.

The primary concern for all governments and the international community must be the restoration of human dignity in our societies. This can only be done by applying just law and by stifling voracious interest groups on all sides. Interference, intimidation for political, ideological and financial gain has all but destroyed the fabric of communal harmony that existed in our region for centuries. Meanwhile Europe is facing its own issues with the breakdown of the family, youth alienation and lack of social cohesion.

In the early years of this new millennium, Man has created a world where difference is celebrated by self-serving politicians and angry mobs. In this age of "spin," we are less inclined to believe that our histories have anything more in common than struggle and division. Yet our shared traditions can teach us so much more.

Indeed, my deep awareness of our common heritage has prompted me to call for a recognition of the moral and philosophical authority of holy sites and cities. Religious authority must be raised above the mundane. The civilisational ties which we all have with these unique structures must lead to a demand that they do not become pawns in political and ideological struggles.

Every religion celebrates the concept of "truth" in faith. But for every angry believer who has not taken the time to nurture his soul and examine his spiritual heritage, truth is degraded and violence is sanctioned. Violence and faith are hateful contradictions for Jews, Christians and Muslims, and violence justified by a misrepresentation of faith is perhaps the greatest threat to peace in our region and our world.

In a new century already scarred by tragic conflict, we must maintain faith in our abilities to overcome the myriad challenges we face. We have at our disposal an heritage of engagement and discovery to guide us through these darker days.

We live in a world increasingly governed by a law of war which offers few concessions to a silenced majority. However, with the benefit of our collective wisdom - the anthropology of knowledge - I hope we can all contribute to a renewed effort to build,in the words of Hersch Lauterpacht, a law of peace to govern relations between states and peoples; to define a positive position in the context of our faiths, not only in terms of individual, but collective responsibility; and to ensure equity and humanity in globalisation, leading to mutual cooperation, cosmopolitanism and ultimately, conviviality.

I would like to conclude by quoting my dear friend Professor Jonathan Rabbi Magonet, speaking at his Rosh Hashanah service (18th September 2002),

“At a time when extremism seems to be on the increase, when stereotyping blunts any hope of recognising the humanity of 'the other', I wanted to remind us of another voice. … Somewhere in these shared feelings there has to be a way for us to meet beyond the conflict that diminishes and corrupts us all, Jews, Christians, Muslims… But there are possibilities of meeting each other at the level of religious understanding. Whenever we read the hallel, that Psalm can also be a call to us to escape the narrowness of vision that lumps all people together, that denies their uniqueness and humanity, and reduces them to a label or a slogan, the other, the enemy.[5]

‘To get out of this narrowness I called on God.

God answered me with a broader vision.

Give thanks to the Eternal who is good.

For God's love is l'olam, for the whole world.’”

[1] Re-orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East; ed Gerald MacLean; Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

[2] A Declaration of European Muslims by Mustafa Ceric Grand Mufti of Bosnia

[3] Islam, Christianity and Pluralism, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, First Zaki Badawi Memorial Lecture, 2007.

[4] Professor Yehuda Bauer, In The Wake of Holocaust Remembrance Day January 27, 2006

[5] Professor Dr Rabbi Jonathan Magonet quoting also Dr Mtri Raheb of the International Centre of Bethlehem, Rosh Hashanah Service, 18 September 2002.