Living and thinking in the first person plural

At Rome's Gregorian University, an Australian Jesuit priest has set up a new Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures, which many now consider a milestone in inter-religious dialogue. The priest, Fr Daniel Madigan, was in Malta to give a lecture on the theme Is Dialogue With Islam Possible In Europe? Herman Grea caught up with him to try and figure out whether this was just wishful thinking.

Do you believe some people may be using religion as a convenient excuse to fuel their wishes of conflict?

Religion is not usually the problem. The conflicts by and large arise because of economic, ethnic, social and geo-political issues. If you look at Nigeria, it's not a question of Islam and Christianity that has led to the clashes but a tribe with one language which feels excluded from the wealth of the country.

To what extent do you believe the September 11 attacks triggered off a clash of religions?

I think the September 11 attacks were in part religiously motivated. The Muslims behind them had a very polarised view of the world. But we've allowed that sense of polarisation, which leads to violence, to become the norm. I've lived in various Muslim countries and most Muslims I know don't fit into that mould. We've allowed ourselves to get terrorised by the hugeness of the attacks.

Do you think we're actually getting closer to Osama Bin Laden's wish of starting a clash of religions?

I would think he's quite happy with the way things are going. It seems to be his wish to polarise things as much as possible where the Muslims start to believe that the West is against them and the West feels the Muslims are against them.

But do you blame Christians for pointing fingers at Islam when it appears that radical Muslims are instigating most of the terrorist attacks?

Yes, the ones that instigated the attacks recently could be called real Muslims, the same way the IRA bombers were real Catholics. I live in Italy now and I remember opening the newspaper a couple of years ago and reading Terrorism Alert In the Capital, but what they were talking about was this super left-wing, anarchist group called Brigate Rosse.

Spain has ETA and Ireland has the IRA. According to the ideals of Islam, people carrying out such horrific executions in Iraq would be excommunicated. To kill another Muslim, to trigger off an attack which kills women and children is actually against Islamic law. Therefore, no, I don't see the prime motivation of these attacks as being Muslim.

So why doesn't the Muslim world make a loud and determined call for a stop to this fundamentalism?

There are an awful lot of Muslims who do speak about it but they never get any press coverage.

Are you saying that the press is manipulating what is a potentially very dangerous issue?

No, I don't think it's a case of manipulation. I don't think it makes particularly interesting reading. What makes front-page news is someone who makes a violent threat and not someone who makes a moderate bridge-building statement. Go to the internet and you will find volumes of articles and appeals written by Muslims calling for an end to the violence.

We saw some examples in Italy recently when two Italian women were taken as hostages in Iraq. Dozens of Muslim groups made their own appeals to the hostage-takers. But this is ultimately part of the manipulation of Bin Laden and company because they know such peaceful messages will not get any coverage on Al Jazeera, CNN or Fox News.

Do you believe some political leaders are fuelling this divide, perhaps unintentionally?

Yes, it's mostly unintentional and partly because of incompetence. For example, after September 11, US President George W. Bush said he was waging a crusade, which in English doesn't mean much but with Muslims it's got a significant meaning.

Despite the attempts of bridge-building, I think it's perfectly evident that people will always feel aggrieved, angry and hatred towards the perpetrators and all that they stand for. Isn't it a lost battle?

John Kerry put it quite well: "You will never get rid of it (terrorism) but you can reduce it to the point where it becomes a nuisance rather than a constant preoccupation".

There seem to be completely different interpretations of what Islam stands for. Some would even say that Islam does in fact justify the killing of non-Muslims.

The Koran justifies the killing of some non-Muslims under some conditions.

Doesn't that give a lot of leeway?

The Koran is much less violent than the Bible. A violent scripture does not make you violent. The Koran almost has no stories of violence even if it has threats of divine punishments. For example, the stoning of an adulteress is not in the Koran. Yet, you will get the Taliban who, I might add, were created by a pathological situation after years of war and who give rise to pathological interpretations.

Is there such a thing as a Christian extremist?

In the past various Christians justified violence. But even in today's world, you still find different factions in different parts of the world which are extraordinary in violence and which justify their behaviour by recourse to Christian talk.

In Burma there is this movement called the Lord's Resistance Army, with two kids as leaders, and which claims to have Christian inspiration. It's madness.

You go to the north of Uganda where they are butchering people while appealing to Christian scripture.

The Rwanda genocide, just 10 years ago, was started mainly by the Catholics who killed 800,000 of their fellow Christians and maimed thousands of others.

There are movements in the US which gave birth to persons like Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma bomber). We don't think of them as Christians because as Christians by and large we think of our religion as an authority structure.

Maybe we Christians have selective hearing.

We're not the angels we sometimes think we are.

How do you judge the aftermath of the Madrid bombings last March?

Half the people were hoping it was ETA, the other half wanted it to be the radical Muslims.

I think most of Europe was scared when it was established that the radical Muslims were behind it.

I would say most people were relieved to know it was the Muslims because they could then associate the "evil" with them and not us Christians. The issue is complex. We have to take into consideration the fact that the majority of Muslims live in Third World countries and so it's no surprise that there's a sense of resentment. The resentment that's been tapped into has its secular side; it's not just religious. Take the situation in Palestine, you've got the radicalisation of the whole population because of the pathological nature of the situation. They've been living in camps for 50 years now.

After September 11 and the Iraq war, can you ever see Islam and Christianity living in the same world?

We only have one world. One of the options is to build more walls and create more barriers. Europe has millions of Muslim citizens. Are we going to create concentration camps? We have to live and think in the first person plural. It's "us" rather than "them". We have to learn how to speak to each other, to listen and learn how to say that we respect each other's religion. Unfortunately, we have the example of Theo Van Gogh (the Dutch film maker who was gunned down by a Muslim a few days ago) who didn't know how to speak to them. He once said that Muslims have sex with goats. If you want to do something constructive that's hardly the way to do it.

But eliminating him in such a barbaric manner was hardly constructive.

If you really want to express your preoccupation about what's going on and question these people about the way they are treating women in their culture then you should try something a little bit more sophisticated than calling them names. You can easily deport those that don't have their papers in order but we have to look at the way we in the west are somewhat ruling over a global economic system that is forcing people to emigrate from their countries because they don't have the basics of life. Even if we wanted to get back to a world where they are safely "over there" and we are living safely "over here", we've got a lot of work to do to make "over there" liveable for them so they don't need to come over here. But you can't turn the clock back.