BY PETER SMITH • PSMITH@COURIER-JOURNAL.COM • MAY 12, 2010
Buddhist and Muslim leaders are converging on Bloomington, Ind., on Wednesday for a series of statements recognizing each other's religions as valid spiritual paths.
The leaders — including the Dalai Lama and the president of the Islamic Society of North America — are drawing on a new book of scholarly essays published in Louisville that shows deep theological, social, historical and ethical ties between two world religions, which have nearly 2 billion adherents between them.
The two candidly acknowledge “unbridgeable” gaps in their doctrines and views of the world and the afterlife in the book, “Common Ground Between Islam & Buddhism,” published by Fons Vitae of Louisville. But they also cite strong areas of shared beliefs and practices.
“Clearly, compassion lies at the heart of the teachings of both Islam and Buddhism, as it also lies at the heart of other great religious traditions,” writes the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists and arguably the most recognizable face of Buddhism in the world, in a foreword to the book.
This, he wrote, should “be grounds for Muslims and Buddhists to overcome any sense of wariness they may feel about each other and develop a fruitful, trusting friendship.”
Added Ingrid Mattson, president of the Indiana-based Islamic Society of North America: “Muslims and Buddhists who live together, from America to Malaysia, will benefit from this scholarship and guidance.”
Among those scheduled to attend the Bloomington event, either live or by video are:
*Shaykh Hamza Yusuf , a scholar popular among younger Muslims and founder of Zaytuna College, a Muslim college in California. He was the keynote speaker at the 2009 annual dinner of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Kentucky in Louisville.
*Yusuf's mother, Elizabeth George Hanson , a Buddhist and longtime civil rights activist.
*Eboo Patel of Chicago, the Muslim founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, who in 2009 was the first Muslim winner of the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
*Plemon T. El-Amin , imam of a large mosque, Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam.
Most of the Dalai Lama's visit to Bloomington, where his late brother founded the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, involves two days of teachings at Indiana University on a Buddhist scriptural passage known as the Heart Sutra. He also will visit Indianapolis on Friday.
Relationship between two faiths strained
Strains between Islam and Buddhism, which predominate throughout much of Asia, have emerged in recent bloody conflicts in Thailand and Malaysia and in the Taliban's destruction of giant, historic statues of the Buddha in 2001 in Afghanistan.
Those conflicts have been overshadowed by better-known ones that have led some to describe a “clash of civilizations” between Muslim-majority nations and the predominately Christian and Jewish countries of the West, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by Muslim terrorists.
Yet leaders of Islam and Buddhism cite Wednesday's gathering as evidence of a wider effort toward tolerance among the mainstream members of theirs and other world religions.
“It can be very helpful, particularly in Asia, but also in America,” said Mattson, citing the small but fast-growing populations of Muslims and Buddhists in the United States.
She said progress has emerged through a similar effort, “A Common Word,” in which a group of Muslim leaders and scholars sent an open letter to their Christian counterparts in 2007. That followed Muslim protests, some violent, over Pope Benedict XVI's quotation of a medieval emperor's harsh criticism of Islam.
“A Common Word” says Christians and Muslims can cooperate around their shared values of love for God and neighbor. While it emerged from leaders, it is now being used as a study document by Christians and Muslims throughout the world, Mattson said.
Quran seen as open to Buddha
Attempts to build positive relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims have often drawn on their strict monotheism and shared claim to the heritage of the ancient patriarch Abraham and other biblical prophets. The Quran, the Islamic holy book, explicitly calls Jews and Christians “people of the book” who worship the same God.
Yet in “Common Ground,” several Muslim scholars say that in both history and theology, Muslims also have recognized Buddhists at that level. The book says the Buddha, who founded the religion in India a millennium before Muhammad, can be honored among a series of unnamed prophets the Quran says were sent by God to other people.
“The Buddha, whose basic guidance one in ten people on earth have been in principle following for the last 2,500 years, was, in all likelihood — and God knows best — one of God's great Messengers,” wrote Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan, who has been developing a Muslim-Buddhist dialogue in recent years with the Dalai Lama.
The notion of “Abrahamic” religions is “helpful to the extent that it makes Islam less alien to Christians and Jews, but at the same time, we don't want to limit Islam to the Abrahamic box,” said Mattson, professor of Islamic Studies at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.
Islam also “came out of environment influenced by Eastern religions and Buddhism in particular,” she said.
Islam has an estimated 1.5 billion adherents, while Buddhists number close to 400 million, surveys say.
In the United States, each have at least tripled their populations to roughly 1.5 million since 1990, according to a 2008 survey by Trinity College of Connecticut.
Book gives tools for dialogue
Gray Henry, who directs Fons Vitae out of her Louisville home, said representatives of the Dalai Lama and Prince Ghazi asked her to publish “Common Ground” based on her decades of experience in researching and publishing books on Islamic and other spirituality.
Henry readily acknowledged the book won't convince hardliners on either side to respect the other, and that nobody is talking about blending the two religions or pretending their big differences don't exist.
But it should give words and tools for those interested in dialogue, she said.
For example, she said that for Muslims, the declaration of faith in one God is central, whereas Buddhism is silent on the existence of a God. And whereas Muslims believe in heaven and hell, Buddhists speak of cycles of rebirth while souls aspire for peace in nirvana.
Yet both believe in an absolute truth, which for Muslims is part of the nature of God, and in people being held accountable for their good and evil deeds after death.
The main section of the book is written by Reza Shah Kazemi, a Muslim scholar and managing editor of the Encyclopedia Islamica in London.
Both religions, he writes, believe in “compassion and mercy to all,” not just as social ideals, but as a central part of relating to that absolute truth, Kazemi writes.
“We are aiming here at commonalities on the level of the spirit of the two traditions, rather than pretending that any unity on the level of the ‘letter' of the formal dogmas can be achieved,” Kazemi added. “It would be a mistake to compare Buddhist doctrine to the Islamic creed as if the two were situated on the same plane of thought. They are not.”
Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469.
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