Compassion, Love, Mutual Respect

Now there's a diversion.  Saudi Arabia, the most culturally, religiously rigid of all societies, the keeper of the two most holy places in Islam; the funder of foreign madrassas teaching impressionable young Islamic boys the fundamentals of Islamic precepts and which have become centres of violent jihad in the name of submission to Islam's outreach; the society whose misogynistic treatment of women keeps them socially enslaved, and which has traditionally outlawed other religious symbols from its territory, has embarked on a quiet mission of inter-faith dialogue.

Well, certainly not the entire society, not those hidebound fanatics that preach fire and brimstone against infidels and insufficiently pious Muslims.  But, amazingly, out of the moral conscience of an 89-year-old man whose heritage has been the anointing as monarch of the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has come the determination to modernize the social life and the religious convictions of the people of Saudi Arabia.

This is, of course, the same Saudi Arabia that spawned most of the martyrdom-inspired jihadists that attacked New York's World Trade Centres, the Pentagon, and planned to go for the White House as well but were deflected in Pennsylvania.  This is the same Saudi Arabia that still funds al-Qaeda-affiliated fanatics.  And that would include the terrorist group Hamas that governs in Gaza, and whose primary goal is the destruction of the State of Israel.

We are, then, as mystified and perplexed onlookers, to come to the conclusion that a very small elite of rational mind and executive station have inextricably committed to transforming the House of Saud and with it, the population of oil-wealthy Saudi Arabia to become reasonable inhabitants of the world of the 21st Century.  Ah, too, is the age of the monarch.  Those of his exalted kin who stand next in line to the throne, are they to be assumed to be similarly committed to this reform?

Saudi Arabia has funded a centre for interfaith dialogue, in a baroque palace on Vienna's Ringstrasse boulevard.  Saudi Arabia bought the building and has committed to fully funding its operation for the next three years.  People in Austria and elsewhere in Europe can be forgiven for viewing this initiative with more than slight suspicion.  Calling it hypocrisy, calling it an underhanded covenant to plot radical Islam.

In the light of current realities, it is likely both.  But the centre for interfaith dialogue funded by Saudi Arabia also has its supporters.  "This is the first multifaith initiative from a Muslim source and not just any source, but from the very hardcore heartland of Islam.  It is an essential stage in King Abdullah's efforts to change Saudi Arabia itself.  If there are possibilities of good things coming from this, we have to give it a try."

And who might it be that would give such an unhesitating, hopeful spin on the initiative?  How about the Jewish member of the centre's multi-faith board of directors who claims this to be an issue of grave importance, an opportunity the world's religions cannot forego.  Rabbi David Rosen, international director of interreligious affairs of the American Jewish Committee, Jerusalem, puts his stamp of approval on the enterprise.

It has for some time been bruited about that King Abdullah has been attempting to change the social direction of his kingdom, convinced that Saudi Arabia can lead the way to providing an antidote to intolerance.  Hosting a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Mecca in 2005 to endorse interfaith dialogue addressing "the existing lack of mutual understanding among cultures and civilization", began the initiative.

If so, its progress has been glacially slow.  In 2007 he visited Pope Benedict at the Vatican.  In 2008 he convened 500 Muslim religious leaders to offer blessings to talks with leaders of other faiths.  To date, we've seen nothing of any lasting value come out of these seemingly tepid advances.  Did we miss somehow hearing any of these exponents of interfaith dialogue pledge to an alliance with Judaism?

Did any of them indicate in any way that it is intolerable that an Islamist group violently assault a Jewish state as Hamas does with Israel?  "If God had so willed, he would have made you a single community but (He willed it otherwise) in order to test you in what He has given you: so strive as in a race in all virtues", for the Holy Qur'an points out that human diversity is of Divine origin, all humans have a common origin and this diversity is a source of richness in the human family.

Or so we are led to believe.