Veneer of tolerance

Late last week, the NY Sun reported that the recent Saudi sponsored conference on religion ended on a “sour note.” A statement read by the sponsoring organization at the end of the conference, wasn’t the same one that participants had agreed upon.

The final statement, which was read by an official with the Muslim World League, Abdul Rahman Al-Zaid, rankled several of the conference participants because it differed from an earlier agreed upon draft. Under pressure from a conference participant, William Vendley of Religions for Peace, a second version was subsequently drafted which attributed the communiqué to the “conveners” of the conference and not the participants, as the earlier version had.

One complaint, which two participants voiced on condition of anonymity, is that the communiqué called for the Muslim World League to select some of the delegates for the suggested upon United Nations conference on interfaith dialogue.

The major complaint of many participants was that the document appears to have been revised at some stage without the consent of members of a drafting committee. And the vast majority of participants never had a chance to review any version of the statement before Mr. Al-Zaid of the Muslim World League read it aloud.

This might be a consequence of how Muslims – or at least Saudi Muslims – view other religions. Anne Applebaum observes:

Among other things, the Saudis sponsored an interfaith dialogue this week, one that all participants hailed as a great breakthrough — despite the fact that the meetings took place in Spain, apparently because it would be too embarrassing for Saudi Arabia to host Christian and Jewish religious leaders on its own soil.

The point of Applebaum’s column though wasn’t the conference but Saudi produced textbooks that teach students to despise adherents of other religions.

Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question from a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, “Monotheism and Jurisprudence,” in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish between “true” and “false” belief in God:

Q. “Is belief true in the following instances:

(a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.

(b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.

(c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers.”

The correct answer, of course, is (c): According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn’t enough to simply worship God or just to love other believers; it is important to hate unbelievers, too. By the same token, (b) is wrong as well: Even a man who worships God cannot be said to have “true belief” if he also loves unbelievers.

This test and other outrages Applebaum points out, come from the new edition of the Saudi textbooks that were supposed to reflect a

“comprehensive revision . . . to weed out disparaging remarks toward religious groups.”

These textbooks are an issue because they are used in Saudi sponsored schools all over the world.

Shrinkwrapped notes how Islam-Online characterized the conference:

Spain Meet For Criminalizing Blasphemy

Shrinkwrapped continues:

There is only one religion whose adherents continue to criminalize blasphemy today. It is also a religion whose adherents consistently define terrorism to exclude attacks on non-Muslims.

A dialogue designed to avoid a clash of civilizations must be a two way dialogue; the alternative is referred to as surrender.

…which goes a long way towards explaining why the Saudis didn’t consult the participants before changing the final statement.

Marc Gopin, who apparently was at the conference, saw it as a positive step.

Throughout the three days, and even after the event has concluded, some of us are still deeply engaged with the Muslims present, exchanging information and opening up worlds of information to each other, from information on the inner workings of American Jewish politics to the inner realities of the Madrassas of Pakistan. We have been in in-depth conversation with Saudi journalists, Saudi sheikhs, and Pakistani activists. I was also on Saudi Television last night and was amazed by the respect that I was shown. This is the essence of how and when religion can become a bridge of piece in a complicated world.

It would seem, though, that the respect accorded to Rabbi Gopin and other attendees was personal. The failure of the organizers to consult the participants and the failure of Saudi officials to change the textbooks, show a general level of disdain for adherents of other religions.

Daled Amos provides a list of actions and words that demonstrate the superficiality of the tolerance purportedly demonstrated by the conference including:

Islam’s idea of ‘open dialogue’ appears to be building as big a mosque as possible in Rome while denying any open display of any other religion in all of Saudi Arabia.

Which raises the question: just what does Saudi Arabia want out of these discussions, anyway?

And the answer is that it wants participants like Rabbi Gopin who don’t look past the veneer of tolerance at the conference and will vouch for a changed (or at least changing) Saudi Arabia. Such ambassador’s of goodwill would serve as a counterpoint to the still intolerant textbooks.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.