Ethical Interfaith Is Not ...

What is this not? It is not what I call Ostrich Interfaith, meaning a group where there is an agreement (unspoken, usually) not to look at each other's faiths, and especially not the ethics conveyed in the religious texts of these faiths.

"We're all the same." "There's good and bad everywhere."

Nicety-nice. All sugar and spice. And don't you dare disturb the nicety-niceness with any nasty questions, anything unpleasant. Muslims take offense. Christians care about the poor Muslims. And no one cares about the truth.

Actually, I don't consider such a group just Ostrich Interfaith. Another term could be Snake Bite Interfaith.

Think of Sleeping Beauty, wide awake at the spinning wheel, then pricking her finger on the poisoned needle. The poison puts to sleep, not just her, but the whole courtyard - and not just for a moment, but for a full 100 years.

In the fairy tale, all is undisturbed for that century, until the spell is broken.

This doesn't happen with Snake Bite Interfaith. As the participants who favor equality between people (between women and men, people of all sexual orientations, people of all religions) are asleep, society keeps changing around them, often in alarming ways.

But they don't respond. They don't even see - or anyway, if they see, they don't dare let themselves recognize. They're held by the poisonous snake bite spell.



Right now, there's massive worldwide religious persecution of religious minorities in all Muslim majority countries. One Christian is killed for their faith every 5 minutes. No comment.

Instead blasphemy laws are being lobbied for to stop criticism of Islam. Alarms against the danger of such laws should be doing off everywhere. Instead, in most interfaith groups, the spell continues.


Yes, Christians have had witch burnings. Catholics have hunted down Protestants. On and on. If that were happening now, I would want to speak of it. And in fact, Christians do speak of this. I grew up knowing and talking about all the wrongs committed by Christians.

When Christians were massacring Muslims in Serbia about 20 years ago, this was spoken of. No silence.

Here's an image of the current situation:



We need to address this openly. "There's good and bad everywhere" isn't good enough.



Interfaith groups which claim to be "a space for dialogue for people of different religions" are very often anything but that. Those who would bring in disturbing facts are frozen out, or directly expelled.

Such groups are a powerful weapon against people of any faith who actually want to explore and talk about what they find - and stop persecution, religious and other.



Currently the most common victims of religious persecution are Christians and Jews, who are numerous in such groups and have the most to gain in seeing and acknowledging what they see.



It's only by seeing that they could protect themselves, and also act on behalf of those of their faiths persecuted by Muslims around the world, in all Islam-dominant countries.



Ethical Interfaith is an alternative to interfaith groups where there is silence around uncomfortable realities. It's a place where people can wake up from the poison trance of the so-called dialogue of most traditional interfaith groups. And it's a place for those who are awake, want to share and to work together. It's a place where people from all faiths (including the faith of atheism, and the many personal spiritualities) are welcome to truly explore and respond.



Ethical Interfaith - true deep and meaningful interfaith dialogue. Open, candid, honest, respectful. Truth centered.



Elsa
December 18, 2012

To go from the need to compare religions,
to the home page of Ethical Interfaith,
click here.



To go from this critical thinking
on religion and morality,
to my personal spirituality, click here.

Needed:
Compare Religions vs
Dishonest Interfaith Dialogue.
Religious tolerance: great.
Also vital:
knowing history of religion,
stopping religious persecution.

ABOUT:
compare religions, interfaith dialogue,
history of religion, religious persecution,
religious tolerance, religion and morality

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