All They're Focusing On Is God

By Ashna Imad, "The interfaith dialogue in Kurdistan" - The Kurdish Globe - Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq
Thursday, August 28, 2008

"...we can take our seat at the table of humanity with a voice of love, humility, and faith."

A little over two months ago, I took a trip to Kurdistan with my relative, Lanka, and we visited most of the districts. But we mostly stayed in Suleimaniya, which was once the Babban Emirate capital and is currently Kurdistan's cultural center.

Now known as the "town of revolts and sacrifice," we toured Suleimaniya's sub-districts. One stop included the town of Tawella in the Hawraman territory villages, an extremely important figure for Sufis all over the world.

Sufism (the divine mysticism) is not a sect of Islam, but rather a broad tradition that tends to be more esoteric and places love, peace, and tolerance at the center of the practice of Islam. Every year in December, thousands of people travel to Konya, Turkey, for the Rumi Festival, whose highlight for many followers is the performances of the Whirling Dervishes. I won't even attempt to explain the spiritual and liturgical complexities of the Dervishes' dance.

The Dervishes Gathering, which we joined in Hawraman, was slightly different than anything else we incurred in other parts of Kurdistan, and more ceremonious. The Gathering is basically a series of prayers and whirling dances to sacred music. Each of the dervishes sheds his black cloak to reveal white robes, and enters into a spinning dance like that of a child spinning round and round in the middle of a field. As the fluid, smooth, graceful motion picks up speed, he raises his arms, pointing one hand to heaven and one to the earth, and spins in a deep euphoric state of prayer.

The goal of the dancer is to be lifted from this world into a state of union with the divine. All of the dancers are spinning while rotating in patterns around the arena. From afar, it looks like a meticulously rehearsed and choreographed performance. In reality, however, the movement of the Dervishes, individually and as a whole, happens naturally and organically. The never-to-be forgotten, awe-inspiring moments we spent there were absolutely beautiful. The questioning "Easterner raised in the West" that I am was a little perplexed by the mechanics of it, so I turned to one of our local guides who was formerly my online friend but now one of my comrades and best travel mate. I had more questions to ask, which at this point on the trip had begun to try her patience! "How come they aren't getting dizzy? How come they aren't running into each other? How do they know where to go and when to start and stop? How does it work, Lanka?"

She patiently replied: "They just do, Ashna. They are not paying attention to anything around them. This is prayer for them, and all they're focusing on is God."

It seemed so complex to me and so beautifully simple at the same time. Since the beginning of our trip, I was excited about seeing the Whirling Dervishes. Honestly though, I thought it would be more of a fun, touristy thing to see. It turned out to be a much more poignant experience than I bargained for. Like much that I saw and see in Kurdistan, I spent a great deal of time processing the experience, letting it really sink in, and figuring out what it meant to me. I saw this experience as a powerful metaphor for the wider communion of God seekers, attempting to live together on a world stage. Each of us as individuals and as units-places of worship, denominations, religions-is spinning in a hungry drive to experience the divine, to understand and be part of the mystery and magnitude of God.

But we are too often distracted by the distances between the dancers, the different ways of spinning-insecurities in our own movement. We are colliding with one another in a clumsy, chaotic mess. If we could lift our eyes and arms to God and just spin, moving in the ecstatic reality of God's love, not only would our personal spiritual experience be enriched, but we would begin to spin together, to fall into one beautiful, cosmic dance of peace and harmony. The question then comes: How do we do that?

This place of peace and harmony, quite frankly, seems distant and illusory. Humanity is a diverse assortment of people, trying to live together in an increasingly small world. There is a startlingly prevalent tone in the world arena of intolerance, judgment, and hatred. Humankind is tragically plagued with violence, hurt, oppression, conflict, and war, and too much of this takes place in the context of religious differences. Our differences aren't going to dissipate anytime soon, nor should they. What has to happen is dialogue.

We have to learn to love one another, to respect one another, and to communicate with one another. As people of God, we can do one of two things. We can couple our religious identity with that of a soldier, armed and ready for the clash of religious empires, or we can take our seat at the table of humanity with a voice of love, humility, and faith. Religious tolerance is a huge first step that we much take, first in our personal lives, then toward a peaceful world communication.

Religion is one of the most deep and penetrating faces of the human condition. It bears in it an energy of passion and intensity, a power that little else in the sphere of human existence does.

We are inherently driven with something that's greater than ourselves. While I personally believe that this hunger is universal, a natural core of our being, it undoubtedly manifests itself in infinitely varying ways. There is no ignoring the fact that there are huge differences and points of separation between the world's religious nomenclatures. There are points of convergence and divergence on every level, from East to West, Jew to Buddhist, Episcopalian to Baptist, and from me to you. The only way to love all in the context of this diversity is to acknowledge and respect those differences.

Now, it's important to note that religious tolerance is not a failure to stand up for what one believes. It isn't a weak cop-out. It begins with a security and understanding of one's own identity, one's spiritual core. An awareness of and conviction to one's own beliefs allows for calmly, strongly held, but permeable boundaries. Tolerance does not require abdication of those boundaries, but neither does it call for a relentless defense of those boundaries. Stopping at tolerance in not enough, though. There is no room for growth in just recognizing differences and agreeing to respect one another from a distance. If we as individuals seek growth, and if we as a global religious community seek movement toward a peaceful existence together, we have to take it further.

We have to have dialogue, to engage in a meaningful conversation with one another. Dialogue is a two-way sharing between different sides. This means through love, you share your faith with others. But it also means that through love you seek a better understanding of those whose faith is different from your own.

Interfaith dialogue is an extremely powerful, highly underestimated tool for achieving peace in such a deeply divided world. Globalization is rapidly and forcefully changing the way we live our lives, whether we realize it or not. Every day, technology, transportation, and communication get better, placing the entire world within our reach. Geographical separation is becoming much less significant. The cultural and religious separations, however, are not narrowing. I live in a tiny global neighborhood with Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Methodists, and the like. We are neighbors who don't understand one another and don't talk to one another; we just stay at home, separated by high fences. The fences are there for a reason, we tell ourselves. Better yet, let's build them higher, and let's build some more.

How much energy have we spent on building these barriers? We have to be intentional about breaking down those fences and living out the inclusiveness and universality of God's immeasurable and unconditional love. This doesn't mean losing our identity or abdicating our beliefs.

It means making love, compassion, and understanding a priority.

One of Christ's major endeavors as a social activist was to tear down the walls that separate humanity in order to unite all of humankind under the banner of divine love. The Jewish community during his time was in a tumultuous state of tension between its religious identity and a growing Roman presence. Among the varying responses from the Jewish community, one of the most prevalent was that of the Pharisees. They believed that the redemption of Israel would come from a strict adherence to the complex codes of holiness and purity. Christ made clear, though, that it's Yahweh's love, compassion, and the mercy that supersede the walls that we build to separate and compartmentalize ourselves.

He wanted to override the barriers that separate the Jews and Greeks, the slaves and the free, prostitutes, and tax collectors, Pharisees and Sadducees, rich and poor with divine love. We are called to do the same. While there are very real issues that separate the religions of the world, our points of commonality are far greater. In loving one another we must understand and dig deeper into our differences. We must move away from a polemic approach to one another and toward a respectful appreciation for religious diversity. We must come to a table with humility and a sincere desire to grow.

In my thesis entitled "The Dialogue Decalogue," I listed some commandments for effective interreligious dialogue:

1. The purpose of dialogue is to increase understanding.
2. Participants should engage in both interfaith and interreligious dialogue.
3. Participants should be honest and sincere.
4. Participants should assume that other participants are equally frank, obvious, honest, and sincere.
5. Each participant should be allowed self-definition.
6. There should be no preconceptions as to areas of disagreement. 7. Dialogue can only occur between equals.
8. Dialogue can only occur where there is mutual trust.
9. Participants must be self-critical of their religious traditions.
10. Participants must attempt to experience how the traditions of others affect them holistically.

Basically, interfaith dialogue brings people of faith together, created a loving, respectful relationship between them, and offers immeasurable growth to every party. I know I'm running on some really broad, abstract ideas, so I want to offer my real and personal experience with interfaith dialogue.

My interest in dialogue between religions and within my own faith goes far back, but my recent trip to Kurdistan transformed that interest into something much deeper and more passionate. We traveled all over the region, visiting important cultural and religious sites and spending time with people who were a part of this gigantic movement in Kurdistan and within Islam.

The movement stems from the teachings of Biyara and Tawella sheikhs who are not only divine and mysticism-leading people, they are also religious leaders, social activists, Islamic scholars, and literalists, among them the late Sheikh Osman of Biyara who was a great poet with wisdom implicit in his eloquent text of poetry that mainly turns around religious and divine subjects.

I also left with a massive charge on my heart to bring Christianity to the table with equal fervor and conviction. We need to step it up and join our voices in this exciting and hopeful journey toward peace through understanding and education. We have so much to gain and so much to offer.

I want to leave you with a quote by Huston Smith:

"What a strange fellowship this is, the God seekers in every land lifting their voices in the most disparate way imaginable to the God of all life. How does it sound from above? Like Bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange, ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead, or do the parts share counterpoint and antiphony where not in full-throated chorus? We cannot know. All we can do is try to listen carefully and with full attention so each voice in turn addresses the divine."

The moments I spent there with the Sufis' fascinating dance, the ceremonious occasion and ritual gathering of sheikhs are the most missed memories of my life and also the nicest moments. Hopefully, no one will remain pointless.

The author, Ms. Ashna Imad, is a political science student at George Mason University and lives in New York City.


[Picture: A shop sells fresh juice in downtown Sulaimaniyah in the Kurdistan region of Iraq Friday, Aug. 22, 2008. AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed].