Media is key to understanding religions

By Mary Fowles

The power of the media to educate about religion was a thread running through a Peace and Conflict panel discussion held Jan. 8 in the Peace and Conflict Resolution series.

Catholic theologian Gregory Baum said, “We shouldn’t only complain about the media. We have on television excellent documentaries on religious movements, debates and developments, and in newspapers, there are some excellent articles being written. We can’t afford to be ignorant about the world religions any longer.”

Moderator Ian Speigel disagreed, saying that the chasm between different faiths seems to be getting wider, not narrower. Spiegel, 24, represents Canadian Endeavour for Moderation (CEMOD), four Jewish and Muslim students from Egypt, Israel, Turkey and Canada who are responding to deteriorating relations between Montreal’s Jewish and Muslim communities. CEMOD hosted the discussion in co-operation with Concordia’s Department of Religious Studies.

“Events like this serve to shine a spotlight on where a lot of good work is being done that doesn’t often get reported on.” He added that interfaith discussions allow people to share knowledge and insights that can lead in the direction of peace and understanding.

The panellists were Baum, who is a professor emeritus at McGill, Avrum Rosensweig and Moin Kermani. All agreed that education and the media are strong forces that can perpetuate discord or influence understanding between faiths and cultures. They also agreed that some positive change is already occurring.

Professor Kermani is a leader in the Muslim community in Montreal and a part-time faculty member at the John Molson School for Business at Concordia.

“The solution lies in neighborliness,” he said. “The global village means we now live with people of different colours, beliefs and languages. We live amongst strangers, and strangers live amongst us, but we still have the opportunity to be good neighbors and learn about others.”

Kermani added that moderation is central to Islam, along with justice and tolerance,“but unfortunately, these themes are not very well known” because the media features news stories that involve Islamic fundamentalism.

Rosensweig is the director of a Jewish humanitarian relief committee in Toronto called Ve’ahavta that distributes medicine in impoverished nations and develops literacy programs for refugees in Toronto.

“I’m not sure that the chasm is getting bigger,” he said. “I’ve seen some beautiful movements going on in the midst of everything.

“We have to stop yelling and shouting and put our arms around each other, literally and metaphorically. We should be very loud about our tolerance and justice and what some might even call love.

“I’m aware of the fact that mothers are losing their children all over the world every day, but I also think that if you open your eyes you will see so many cracks in this violence and hatred, and the light shining through.”

CEMOD reports on examples of Jewish and Muslim political moderation. A moderate, as defined by CEMOD, is “one who rejects extreme or radical political and religious views,” values “democracy, the rule of law, universal human rights and equality of men and women regardless of ethnicity or religion” and is “eager to listen to opposing arguments, and ponder their worth before adopting a particular position.”

The panel discussion was titled “Frontlines: Community Peacemakers Report.” Ian Speigel may be contacted at editor@cemod.ca or go to www.cemod.ca.

The next event in the Peace series is "When Humanitarian Organizations Go Bad," a lecture by political scientist Michael Barnett (University of Wisconsin-Madison), on Monday, Feb. 2, from 2:45-5 p.m., in the D.B. Clarke Theatre. For updates about the Peace series, contact Laurie Lamoureux Scholes at peace@alcor.concordia.ca or (514) 848-2424 (ext. 3816).