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The violent attacks in Paris that resulted in seventeen deaths last week and prompted millions to march for unity in the Paris streets are symptomatic of the new type of confrontation that has disrupted lives, politics, and economic systems. Stark differences in religion, culture, and the way we seek to live our lives has caused many around the world to perceive their lives at odds with others, with strict adherence to ideology playing a role for all involved. Fear, pessimism and a lack of trust describe daily interactions in many parts of the world as well as our international politics as well.
When it began 25 years ago today, the Global Forum for Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders in Moscow symbolized the beginning in a new era of openness and optimism as much as it closed a dark period of distrust and disagreement. The Berlin Wall had fallen only two months before, and the Soviet Union and the United States were seeking a way to cooperate after the Cold War. President Gorbachev, leading the opening of the Soviet Union, agreed to host more than one thousand religious and political leaders at the Kremlin for a multi-day dialogue on the pressing global issues of the times. In contrast with today, leaders were seeking new ways forward, making inroads with new conversation rather than closing off avenues of dialogue.
People chose to trust and engage across cultural and political divides. At the Global Forum, more than one thousand religious and political leaders from around the world met as equals and individuals to discuss the great challenges facing all humans. President Gorbachev’s hopeful opening declaration was echoed by all participants including:
- Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary General of the UN,
- Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway,
- Senator Claiborne Pell,
- Senator Albert Gore,
- Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, Grand Mufti of Syria,
- Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of the UK,
- Dr. Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate,
- Dr. Carl Sagan,
- Rev Theodore Hesburgh and many others.
The substance and tone of conversation changed. Conversation shifted to regional cooperation, disarmament, and the environment. In his keynote speech, President Gorbachev introduced the idea of the International Green Cross and supported a nuclear test ban for its environmental benefits.
Most important, people were willing to take risks to realize a better and more optimistic vision for the world. President Gorbachev was aware of the risks he needed to take to change the course of the Soviet Union. With Perestroika underway, he was willing to overcome the religious taboos of the atheist, Communist state and host a large conference of members of many faiths and politics in the Kremlin. Still, when an emergency Party Meeting came up and coincided with the Global Forum’s closing ceremony – slated for 2 pm on Friday, I was informed the Global Forum’s closing ceremony would have to be canceled.
After backchanneling with Dr. Velikhov, President Gorbachev’s key advisor, we succeeded in convincing President Gorbachev that compromise was possible: the Kremlin could host both meetings that day, but the Forum’s closing ceremony would simply be postponed. When I relayed the good news to our participants, I was quickly surrounded by a number of Jewish participants, all very frustrated. “But Akio,” they said, “You’ve moved the closing ceremony after sunset on Friday. We cannot attend during the Sabbath! You’ve excluded us from the closing ceremony.” It was quite clear that this was an extraordinary circumstance and that the Communist party had made a political compromise to allow us to proceed. So, our Jewish friends sought a new interpretation for the circumstance, forming a minyan and praying to act toward our common goal. The conference finished successfully that evening with all participants in attendance.
This small miracle of overcoming a traditional barrier for the larger good captured the spirit of the Moscow Conference and the optimism we used to begin a new decade of life and a new era of international politics. Only the unity of a minyan could allow the Jewish participants to attend the closing ceremony during the Sabbath, but each man in the minyan had to decide for himself whether to join and pray for that possibility.
Today, I am greatly concerned about the growing territory of the Islamic State composed of the different political and religious ideology groups. They are efficiently recruiting young fighters from many countries through social media, and they are targeting oil-rich Middle East nations, unstable parts of Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. This is a new type of war between nations and non-nation groups. In particular, Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, is a particularly worrisome target for ISIS. Where is the line between the economic need of a country and the potential risks of terrorist attack to hundreds of nuclear power plants?
We are not prepared to respond to malicious networks on a large scale. We need, much as we had at the Moscow Global Forum, individuals to take risks for a greater good, to seek to transcend historical barriers rather than reinforce them, and ultimately reform and reshape the institutions that guide our lives.
A current example of that phrase and what we seek to highlight here going forward, is from Teju Cole, who this week in the New Yorker challenged the immediate Western reaction to the violence in Paris:
France is in sorrow today, and will be for many weeks to come. We mourn with France. We ought to. But it is also true that violence from “our” side continues unabated. By this time next month, in all likelihood, many more “young men of military age” and many others, neither young nor male, will have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. If past strikes are anything to go by, many of these people will be innocent of wrongdoing. Their deaths will be considered as natural and incontestable as deaths like Menocchio’s, under the Inquisition. Those of us who are writers will not consider our pencils broken by such killings. But that incontestability, that unmournability, just as much as the massacre in Paris, is the clear and present danger to our collective liberté.
As we continue with this blog, we will discuss how to persuade leaders to transcend barriers, what factors and situations foster trust, and the agenda for common political and religious leadership in the 21st century.
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I understand your past, but I don’t understand what you plan for the future. What is your intention? Another such meeting of good hearted minds? I agree this is most needed. Mr.Gorbachev is still alive and speaking, perhaps he could convene? Please give more information.
Thank you for your concern and effort, many millions, perhaps billions of peoples of the world feel the same way, but few are coming forward with tangible ideas.
Sharon Tennison
Dear Matsumura-san,
Thank you for sharing the latest reflection on the new type of confrontation and the 25th Anniversary of the Moscow Global Forum.
I was also worrying about the recent developments in the countries and regions you mentioned. In fact, I am of the view that Muslim-side will have to raise their voice more to the world that such acts of terror are not at all acceptable and not right in light of any religions. I am writing this, being well aware of the extreme difficulty. However, if their voices were kept low, the gulf between the Muslim society and non-Muslim ones could further spread. In the country like Japan, especially where people are not so familiar with Islam, some negative image and fear to Muslims can further be escalated due to misunderstanding. The news came in a few days ago about the two captured Japanese journalists by the Islamic State may only help spread the negative image.
Your message came at such a time I was thinking as above. In retrospect, the Moscow Global Forum indeed was a significant event in that those eminent religious and political leaders, renowned scientists, journalists, etc. got together in the Kremlin, Moscow in the late cold war period to discuss global issues, especially, those of the environment. At that time I also felt some optimistic atmosphere as they all tried to go beyond the boundaries for the common good as members of the planet earth, making efforts to overcome the differences and confrontations between the West and the East.
I remember you told me when you visited Okayama several years ago that the words “individual self” would become keywords in the coming years. As you said, for the past years we have found the power of “individual self” is getting stronger. The Islamic State has been utilizing social medias to appeal to “individual” youth in the world, which is worrisome. During the cold war main concern was the confrontation of two different political system and/or political ideologies. And in the Global Forum we tried to overcome them and work together for brighter future, but now the situation has become too complicated to see any breakthrough or recommendation to address the issue at hand.
I wrote at the beginning that Muslim-side will have to raise their voice more in the world. I think they will need to or dare to do it, especially in the non-Muslim countries that they are absolutely against the terrorism and Islam is fundamentally a peaceful religion. A symbolic fact was that one of the two policemen shot dead by the terrorist attack in Paris was a Muslim. This should also be known more widely. It is not the confrontation between Muslims against non-Muslims that has caused the terrorism. Both sides should make more efforts to fill the gap for solidarity against terrorism. Because of such time we are in, I will personally continue maintaining my ties with Muslim friends and make them even stronger.
Under such circumstances I naturally expect your influence, utilizing your unique and long-cultivated personal network.
Munemichi Kurozumi
Vice Chief Patriarch
Kurozumikyo Shinto
Thank you Akio for your work past and present.
As you and I know the world is drawing lines, not just a line, in the sands and the seas and the good earth but cris crossings and intersecting lines and lines parallel and lines on lines . Humankind hangs itself upon the same old hooks of hatred and fear and more hatred and more fear until enough people are so disturbed the armies march and fanatics begin to lead the disturbed into their crusades of chaos.
It is a marvel that most of us at one time in our lives wore military uniforms, three out of the four in foreign lands, one in four in the carnage of open war. Imagine what is awaiting those now of that age now when they must serve in warfare. People will literally rip their hair out of their heads in the madness and no place safe will make madness common.
We are now the old and expected to be the wise. What is wise; is it no more than recreating the same solutions and nothing more than being outside of being ready while being informed that all past wars were utterly insane and led at best to the foes ceasing the killing and resuming their lives prior to the destruction? We will probably find a very great desire to jump start resolution now if this present fomenting becomes a global nightmare. We are now defining who is on what side and who is not by listening and believing or not believing whoever is doing the defining. It is the same process that had people hate and kill in the past I am glad for Munemichi Kurozumi Vice Chief Patriarch Kurozumikyo Shinto’s comments. The voice of Muslim righteousness has grown too loud as has the righteous clamoring of others. Jesus, whom Muslims also claim will be returning, put the righteous pharisee and the pauper (publican) in the same room and led us to believe that humility and understanding of one’s reality was a best path for us all. The pharasee was busy thanking God he was not like the publican never realizing that the pauper-publican was truly pleasing to God because the publican knew the universal truth about his human condition.
I think one day we shall all see ourselves exactly as God sees us. It will be miraculous and youth will respond globally with prodigious rapidity to those truths and they will insist on a better world. All the fanatics of hate and violence will be stunned.
It will, at some time, take this Divine intervention to bring peace. Divinity, it is rumored, is within us. The hope is that human beings will be participants in the Divine intervention in such a way that we will realize how precious we all are.
Thanks again, Akio and the noble Vice Chief Patriarch.
John
Well, first, I want to thank you, Akio, for your passion for healing humanity’s woes by bringing people together, one to one. May you continue to do so for many more years.
The honorable Patriarch wisely points out that without moderate Muslims raising their voices against terrorism, that more and more people in the non-Muslim world will perceive Islam as something evil, when in fact, if that religion is properly followed, peace should be the result. Ironically, when I showed the Patriarch’s message to a moderate Muslim, his reaction was that he is tired to death of having to defend his faith because of the actions of people he views as radicals who aren’t true Muslims. I empathize with him, but I fully understand the Patriarch’s point.
John points out that when people recognize the divine in each other, perhaps a path out of our mess may suddenly appear. Along those lines I’d like to offer a poem (or prose, if you prefer) on this theme. Perhaps when people see things through this lens they may no longer be willing to fight wars.
THE TREE OF LIFE
by yours truly, with help from Creator
I want you to picture a lovely blue sky.
God created this sky, and the sky…is a part of God.
The air is very thin, and God is present in this thinness.
Beneath the sky lies a grassy field.
The soil is rich, moist, full of minerals, nutrients, and water;
all the things necessary to nourish life.
God created this soil, and the soil…is a part of God.
God is present in its richness. The soil…is the sacred Earth.
In the center of this field is a very special place,
a place where the God essence has gathered very densely.
This special place is a tall and magnificent tree.
Its stout trunk is filled with a pulsing vitality.
The sap flows up from the roots, through the trunk,
up through the limbs to the slender branches,
and outward to the twigs.
At the tips of the twigs are the buds,
and we … are the buds.
The sap is the essence of God; pure love and life.
If the buds could look back from where they came
they would see they are all interconnected,
directly connected to God,
and that in each of them there is divinity.
God’s purpose for the bud is to drink of this essence,
open outward to the sun,
and perform the dance of photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis is creation, freedom of expression,
loving and living.
When the bud does this it nourishes itself,
and invigorates the entire tree.
As your eyes drink in the beauty of the tree,
the field, the sky,
you notice a subtle change.
A soft golden glows radiates from within all that lies around you.
You see this because your spiritual eyes have opened,
and it is with spiritual eyes that this light is most visible.
Waves of rippling light, in all the colors of the rainbow,
and of rainbows you’ve never imagined,
wash down over your head, upon your shoulders and body,
filling you with the most delightful warmth you’ve ever felt,
the warmth of unconditional love,
because you… are in the presence of God.
Your soul is in rapture,… bliss.
And as you gaze out upon Creation, you are filled with love.
You love the blue of the sky, the velvet green of the grass,
and the glorious beauty of the tree–
and now you see humanity through God’s eyes.
Welcome Home.
It’s so important issues, religious and political issues. Thank you for these knowledge.