4. URI Founder Treads Softly on Islamic Excesses, Despite Opposition

[David Virtue]

URI Founder Treads Softly On Islamic Excesses, Despite Opposition To
"Fundamentalists"

Two Former URI Backers Became Taliban Supporters

Report/Analysis By Lee Penn

The Christian Challenge (Washington, DC)
December 13, 2001

THE MESSAGE OF TOLERANCE AND PEACE brought by California Episcopal
Bishop William Swing, founder of the United Religions Initiative (URI),
obviously did not take with two radical Muslim leaders who had earlier
stated their support for the URI.

Both leaders, Syed Ahmed Bukhari of India and Qazi Hussain Ahmed of
Pakistan, who offered help to Swing's interfaith venture in 1996, have
since become outspoken supporters of the Taliban regime.

Canon Charles Gibbs, URI Executive Director, said nothing came of the
two Muslim leaders' interest in URI after their initial contacts with
Swing a few years ago; they have no current involvement with the
organization.

But their support of the Taliban, which sheltered Osama bin Laden's
terror network, may make little difference to Swing, who recently
blamed all religions alike for the September 11 terrorist attacks on
New York and Washington.

It was the latest in a series of remarks soft-pedaling the excesses of
Islamic fundamentalism made by the bishop, who, however, has emerged as
a stern critic of Christian evangelism and "fundamentalists" generally.

Swing had reported receiving some surprisingly positive responses from
radical Muslim leaders while on a global pilgrimage in 1996 to solicit
support for the (then) year-old URI, envisioned as a sort of United
Nations of Religions comprised of representatives of the major world
faiths as well as pagan and New Age systems.

It was then that Swing encountered Syed Ahmed Bukhari, Imam of the Jama
Masjid (India's largest mosque) in New Delhi. Bukhari asked at that
time to be involved in writing the URI charter. (He was not, though "a
Muslim teacher connected with [Bukhari]" attended an early URI summit,
Gibbs said.)

Since then, Bukhari told 200,000 worshippers at his mosque that the
Taliban "has not done anything wrong" in destroying the Buddhist
statues in Afghanistan, which had been considered ancient treasures.
Since the attack on America started, Bukhari has repeatedly supported
the Taliban jihad against the U.S.-- which he describes as the "biggest
terrorist," a deserving target for "divine wrath."

In 1996, Swing also visited Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of the
Islamic fundamentalist party Jama'at-e-Islami in Pakistan, a party
later reported to have "close ties with the Taliban." Swing said that
Ahmed "kindly outlined a plan for approaching Islam worldwide on behalf
of United Religions. He also encouraged me to visit his closest ally,
who is the head of Islamic Fundamentalism in Egypt."

The advice to Swing came from a man who, though not involved with URI
since then, believes that Pakistan should keep its nuclear weapons, and
favors the imposition of strict Islamic shar'ia law. His party boasts
of Ahmed's ties with Afghanistan's radical Muslims: "Even before the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Qazi Hussain Ahmed was in close
contact with Afghan muhajideen and had personal terms with top Afghan
leaders. He played a pivotal role in introducing the Afghan jihad to
the foreign world and by doing so, gained countrywide favor for the
movement." Since the attack on America, Ahmed has sided with the
Taliban against the U.S.

Gibbs stressed that the URI's work is "antithetical to terrorism of any
sort. The URI as a whole and Muslim members of the URI as a group
universally condemn the distortion of religion for violent ends so
tragically manifested in the actions of September 11," he told TCC.

But Bishop Swing contended October 10 that the hijackers did not hold a
corrupted version of Islam, because all religions are guilty of
fostering terrorism.

"There is a lot of terror and violence in a lot of scripture," he told
a URI-sponsored meeting October 10 at the UN Church Center. "There has
to be a critique of that. We have to hold the religions' feet to the
fire for the violence and terror within them," Swing was quoted as
saying in a report by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute
(C-FAM).

Swing says the same in the October issue of Pacific Church News, his
diocesan magazine: "So much harm is done worldwide by so many
religions, e.g., poisoning the wells of spirituality and teaching
adherents to marginalize, paganize, and plain old despise people of
other beliefs, that interfaith becomes a practical necessity. If people
on this planet are going to have life and an earthly future, religions
have got to be part of the solution rather than central to the
problem."

Swing's attempted evenhandedness on the responsibility for the terror
attacks contrasts, though, with his longstanding tendency to be more
accommodating toward Islamic fundamentalism than toward Christian
evangelism.

In a speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco last April, Swing
made consistently negative references to Christian evangelism, and
spoke of the persecution only of non-Christians. But he offered excuses
for the Taliban's destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, and
could not say whether force should be used against those who commit
violence in the name of religion.

Swing thought that the Buddhist statues "bring up the whole question of
idolatry...There are a lot of things that have the potential to be
idols," he said, "and some of them need to be blown up." Swing
insisted, though, that he was not "taking the side of the Taliban."

Asked in April whether strict Islamic governments should be forced to
secularize, the bishop carefully cited reasons why he thought outsiders
had to accept that such countries were not about to change.

Swing is not the first URI leader to play down the crimes of Islamic
states. In February 1999, William Rankin (URI vice president from 1998-
2000) told the Center for Progressive Christianity that Sudan's brutal
Islamic regime "in some measure, is forced into strong Muslim identity
by the history of overthrows when a more tolerant attitude was
promulgated."

URI leaders hold that "proselytizing" (which is what Swing calls
Christian evangelism) is the work of "fundamentalists," and Swing links
it with murder. He wrote in The Coming United Religions that
"proselytizing, condemning, murdering, or dominating" will "not be
tolerated in the United Religions zone."

He also appears to believe that claims to exclusive religious truth
need to be confronted and moderated in the interfaith setting.

"Maybe we have to take a deeper look at theology," he told The San
Francisco Chronicle's religion reporter in 1997. "I think that
religions are based on assumptions of truth being mediated from the
creator to the created. These truths are divinely inspired and sacred
for the people who hold them. I think all the religions of the world
have a blind spot. If there's a United Religions pursuing a dialogue in
depth, it begins to ask larger questions and force religions to make
larger statements."

The reporter asked, "Isn't a lot of the problem that many sacred
scriptures are full of violent, exclusionary rhetoric?" Swing replied:
"That's right. And it's taught all week long, every place we go. The
religions have to go back and read that one more time and ask if that
is really what they believe. If you're sitting there with people from
other religions at the table, you might come up with other
conclusions."

In his sermon to the September 12 "Interfaith Service of National
Mourning" at Grace Cathedral, Swing said. "We have to object when a
religious group announces its spiritual superiority over other
religious groups...On the other side, we have to come together to find
a common vocation for religions to work for the common good." He ended
the sermon by saying, "September 11, 2001, a 9-1-1 call to end the day
with a more united humanity, a wiser United States of America, and a
more resourceful United Religions.  Oh, One! Amen."

At the October 10 meeting at the UN Church Center, sponsored by
religious non-governmental organizations at the UN, Swing reiterated
that the URI seeks to create a permanent body of religious ambassadors
to address the problem of "fundamentalists in our own groups," an issue
that traditional religion "wimps out on." He declared that, in light of
the terrorist attack, "It's a new day for inter-religious activity in
the [U.S.]."

The C-FAM representative who attended the meeting reported that Swing's
audience--40 or 50 people, most of whom were over age 50--was "hanging
on every word" of the bishop's, and saw him as a hero. The observer
said that questions from the audience indicated broad support for
relativism and criticism of both religion and capitalism.

One person said, "The problem is religion--the whole concept of
religion that requires conformity. The truth is different for every
individual." Another claimed, "All religions have fanatical elements;
we must delete those elements from scripture." One sincerely wondered
"how we can have a heart-to-heart dialogue with the terrorists." Still
another said, "They underlying causes are economic. We want more oil
and bigger cars."

Swing agreed, repeatedly saying "we must address the brokenness at the
root of the terrorist attacks by bridging the chasm between the `haves'
and the `have-nots.'"

That was the implication as well of the post-September 11 statement
issued by the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops, whom Swing described
as having moved toward "full...interfaith awareness"--and new interest
in the URI--at their September meeting in Burlington, Vermont.
(Presiding Bishop Griswold had previously enunciated support for the
URI.) In a statement which attracted a good deal of criticism, the
ECUSA prelates responded to the terror attacks by calling on believers
to "wage reconciliation."

At the October meeting at the UN, however, former UN Under Secretary-
General Giandomenico Picco contended--apparently alone among the
participants--that the real "chasm" Swing referred to is not between
rich and poor, but between "those willing to kill innocent people" and
those unwilling to do so. He added that dialogue with terrorists often
results in death.

Picco--the personal representative of the Secretary-General for the UN
Year of Dialogue among Civilizations, who was featured at the meeting
alongside Swing--was speaking from his experience in dealing with
terrorists in Lebanon and Afghanistan (which included being kidnapped
in Beirut).

The terrorists, Picco said, are engaged in a "hijacking of Islam, a
hijacking of ideas." He added, "Collective responsibility is baloney--
there is individual responsibility for actions or no responsibility at
all. Blaming institutions, religious or economic, allows individuals to
get away with murder, literally. Why did they do it? Because they are
wrong, they are criminals. We should not look for profound
justifications."

Swing and other participants--and, apparently, the ECUSA House of
Bishops--remain unconvinced by such arguments.

The URI, which intends to include "all religions, spiritual
expressions, and indigenous traditions," was founded in 1995 and is
active in 58 countries. Along with liberal Protestants, Jews, Muslims,
disaffected Catholics, and numerous Hindus and Buddhists, the URI also
includes witches, Druids and members of New Age movements. The UN now
recognizes the URI as an official Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).
NGOs are private groups that have official approval to participate in
UN conferences and other activities; they inform their members about UN
activities, and build grassroots support for the UN.

The Roman Catholic Church and Evangelical bodies have rejected the URI
as syncretistic. But some global leaders with more influence than
Bishop Swing propose religious syncretism as an answer to the threat of
global war between Islam and the West.

One, Antonio Garrigues Walker, deputy chairman of the European branch
of the Trilateral Commission, told the International Herald Tribune in
October that "The basic problem resides in the claim by every religion
not merely to be the true religion but to be the only true religion."
But he added that: "Relativism, thank goodness, is advancing...Doors
are opening into a new philosophical era in which we will have to
survive without dogmatic bases and rid our minds of many traditional
`isms.' In the end, the idea will prevail that dogmatism is bad and
dialogue is essential for peaceful coexistence."

The title for the Trilateralist's article summed it up well: "Church
Dogma Harms Quest for Global Peace."

The account of the October 10 meeting at the UN is from the Catholic Family
and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM),  "UN Religious Meeting Blames Religion
for Terror
Attacks on U.S.," Friday Fax, October 12, 2001, together with
additional information provided by Douglas Sylva, the C-FAM
representative who attended the meeting.

END