Remembering "Peace Be Upon You!' - September 11, 2011

Our Peace Be Upon You! event on September 11 may not have been profoundly noticed in the press, but its impact on the wider interfaith community has been recognized in a number of settings. 

Publicity and posters were distributed throughout the St. Louis area, to churches and other faith-based groups and organizations, and leaders of numerous communities have expressed their regret that they were unable to attend.  However, there were a lot of activities scheduled for the day by a number of different institutions, organizations, and faith communities.  In addition to our own event on the tenth annual observance, there were two major sports events occurring, a community remembrance service sponsored by Gerber Chapel, and, scheduled at the same time, concerts at Webster University and Sheldon Auditorium and a United Way day of service attended by numerous members of the St. Louis Muslim community.

So, attendance at afternoon workshops stood at about 40, including presenters and the participants in their opportunities for children, youth, young adults, and adults. 

Children explored the ideas of kindness, cooperation, and peace with First Congregational Director of Religious Education Tracey Harris.  Youth heard from representatives of Cultural Leadership, a program for African American and Jewish students in our area to unite them on the common ground of Civil Rights.  Young adults and I considered the commonalities and differences of Christianity and Islam.  And keynote speaker Dr. Khaled Abdel-Hamid, a popular Islamic lay leader in the St. Louis area who is well-versed in Qur’anic studies, shared with adults his insights on current events and Islam.

For the keynote address, entitled “Peace Be Upon You!” and attended by about twice as many people as the afternoon’s workshops, Dr. Hamid walked listeners through passages from the Qur’an which encourage cooperation and understanding especially between the Abrahamic “people of the Book” who practice the faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  He sought to offer hope for a more enlightened culture, like that of 10th to 14th Century Spain, for which so many moderate and liberal Muslims are nostalgic.  During that period in history, the Moors – a North African Islamic people – ruled Spain and permitted religious freedom and citizenship for Jews and Christians.

The time for questions included an objector of Egyptian origin, like Dr. Hamid, who challenged the speaker’s interpretation of the Qur’an, which in its second chapter allows destruction of nonbelievers and is used often by oppressive Islamic governments to practice cruelty against non-Muslims.  The objector, who may have been a Coptic Christian remembering persecutions in the land of his birth, refused to assent to Dr. Hamid’s sympathies that attacks on Christians and Jews by Muslims are criminal even according to the Qur’an.  But he also raised the awareness of the group about just how polarizing the malpractice of religion can make the oppressed as well as their oppressors.

In a more relaxed conversation after the conclusion of the event, Dr. Hamid noted that, if the objector was in fact a Coptic Christian refugee from Egypt, then the two of them had much more in common than they had separating them.  “I came to America,” he said, “because of the way I saw my religion being misinterpreted and misused in my homeland.  I prefer to be the citizen of a country where religious freedom may be practiced by all, rather than religious tyranny practiced by a some.”  (Some participants believed that they had heard the man say he was a convert from Islam to Christianity, which, if his conversion happened while he lived in Egypt, would have made him even more likely a victim of persecution than had he been born into a Christian family.)

Concluding the event, I observed that I am disinclined to continue Peace Be Upon You! as a September 11 observance.  I then referred to a community service event sponsored by the United Way on September 11, and populated strongly that day by supporters of the St. Louis chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).  I suggested that September 11 might more suitably become a day of service similar to the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday in January, and urged First Congregational and other Christian communities to partner with CAIR and Jewish community service groups on both those days, for the sake of bridging interreligious divides.

Peace Be Upon You! as an annual discussion about interfaith concerns for peace and justice may continue, hosted by our church, but maybe we can find a less potent day.

The text of Dr. Hamid’s keynote address is available from the media table in the Narthex or by clicking here.  A copy of his English and Arabic parallels of the second chapter of the Qur’an, are also available for download here.