Leaders of 5 faiths decry violence in name of religion

In a historic action, top leaders of five great religions met this month in Indonesia -- home to 200 million Muslims -- to condemn violence inflicted in the name of religion.

The leaders representing Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim traditions came from five countries and included former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid and Los Angeles Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The group said in a joint communique that the world’s spiritual leaders have a “special obligation” to denounce “horrific acts” committed in the name of religion. The Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center was a co-sponsor of the event.

“If we are honest with ourselves, we have not been up to the challenge,” Cooper said in an interview last week after his return from Indonesia. “Part of it is that we have to get by the [politically correct] and just deal honestly.”

The interfaith meeting was an important step toward that goal, participants said.

In the communique, the religious leaders said: “A blessing to all creation, religion is a constant reminder to humanity of the divine spark in every person. Yet, today the world shudders as horrific acts are justified in the name of religion. All too often, hatred and violence replace peace as religion is manipulated for political purposes.”

They also urged that their counterparts around the world follow their example and commit to mobilizing their communities to “not only respect, but also defend, the rights of others to live and worship differently.”

Political scientist Fred Balitzer, special ambassador to Brunei in the Reagan administration and an attendee at the meeting, called it an “extraordinary achievement.”

“It’s not exactly a Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham jail, but it’s kind of like that,” said Balitzer, who for 35 years taught political science at Claremont McKenna College. He referred to the passionate letter in which King called on the nation’s clergy to live out their Christian faith by fighting injustice, “not sit on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.”

Balitzer said the conference also made other important points: Major Muslim and Jewish leaders met in a Muslim nation to discuss the Holocaust and affirm that it happened. The meeting also showed, he said, that there are “moderate Muslims in the world.”

Meeting organizers said the event was partly aimed at countering a conference backed by the Iranian government last December that questioned the Holocaust. The organizers chose Bali -- the scene of nightclub bombings in 2002 that killed more than 200 people -- for its symbolism.

Called “Tolerance Between Religions: A Blessing for All Creation,” the event was also sponsored by the LibForAll Foundation, a U.S.-based group that opposes Muslim extremism, and the Wahid Institute, which advocates peaceful Islam. The institute was founded by Indonesia’s Wahid, who led the world’s largest Muslim nation from 1999 to 2001.

Wahid set the tone when he said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “falsifying history” by claiming that the Holocaust did not happen.

“Although I am a good friend of Ahmadinejad ... I have to say that he is wrong,” he said. “I visited the Auschwitz’s Museum of Holocaust and I saw many shoes of the dead people in Auschwitz. Because of this, I believe Holocaust happened.”

Wahid is thought to be the first major Muslim figure to publicly rebuke Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a myth.

In addition to his presentation, Wahid also co-wrote with Israel Lau, the former chief rabbi of Israel, a Wall Street Journal column in which they denounced the Iranian president and the December conference.

“By denying the events of the past, the deniers are paving the way toward the crimes of the future,” said the piece, which was read in its entirety at the conference. “Last year, Muslims from Nigeria to Lebanon to Pakistan rioted against what they saw as the demonizing of their prophet by Danish cartoonists. In a better world, those same Muslims would be the first to recognize how insulting it is to Jews to have the apocalypse that befell their fathers’ generation belittled and denied.”

Cooper, who moderated the plenary session, praised Wahid for “having the guts” to say what needed to be said.

An interfaith conference may not be news in L.A., he said, but convening one with top leaders in Indonesia and taking on “the most important questions of the day -- namely to have religious leaders say that terrorism is a sin” -- were significant, he said.

Security was tight, and not everybody who had been invited to participate in the all-day event at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel went.

Lau wanted to attend, but the Indonesian government wouldn’t let him because, as Israel’s former chief rabbi, he carries a diplomatic passport. Indonesia does not recognize Israel.

But Rabbi Daniel Landes of Jerusalem’s Pardes Institute was allowed. He began his presentation with a quote from Psalm 34 in Hebrew:

Which man desires life,

who loves days of seeing good? Guard your tongue from evil

and your lips from speaking deceit.

Presenters also included Hindu leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of India; Buddhist scholar Yoichi Kawada of Japan; Trahjadi Nugroho, president of the Indonesia Pastors’ Assn.; and Father Franz Magnis-Suseno, a Catholic leader in Indonesia.

Also speaking at the meeting were survivors of the Holocaust and terrorist attacks who choked up as they described their suffering to the predominantly Muslim audience.

Sol Teichman, 79, a Holocaust survivor from Los Angeles, tearfully recalled his family’s deportation to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and their demise in its gas chambers.

But Teichman, who said he was “blessed” with a family of his own after the war, urged survivors of terrorism to “never, never give up hope.”

He was deeply touched when, after his talk, Muslim students asked if they could take a photograph with him, he said in an interview. “Here I am, a Jew. Here is the Muslim,” he said.

For 90% of the people in the room, this was their first encounter with a Jew, let alone a rabbi from Israel, Cooper said. He underscored the importance of having religious leaders gather for such a conference.

“The truth is that we’re in this mess primarily because of religious leaders, and we’re only going to get out of it if we find religious leaders who will have the guts to change this. That’s the bottom line,” Cooper said.

Where do they go from here?

They need to replicate the Bali summit elsewhere, participants said.

“If we wait for governments to do these things, we may be waiting for a very long time,” Balitzer said.

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connie.kang@latimes.com