Len in Abu Dhabi : A Reflection of his Attendance at the Sixth Assembly of the Forum for Promoting Peace 

Dialogue Institute/Journal of Ecumenical Studies Founder and President, Prof. Len Swidler, attended the Sixth Assembly of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Abu Dhabi from December 9th to 11th in 2019. The topic of the Assembly was “The Role of Religions in Promoting Tolerance: from Possibility to Necessity”. This assembly was an intellectual platform dedicated to spreading the message of peace, a message nurtured in the womb of Islam, and the result of years of human thought, in addition to the assembly, intended to build bridges of communication and cooperation among those who, regardless of religious or cultural background, desire to do good for world peace.

Scholars, religious leaders, educators, political actors, researchers and media professionals were among the audience of the Sixth Assembly of the Forum for Promoting Peace. This theme comes in response to the recent surge of global intolerance with the goal of transforming current public perspectives. The goal of this conference was to come up with ways of releasing this Alliance at a practical level and find institutional formulae to help activate the network by discussing how to overcome tolerance and implement positive change as a community. Professor Len Swidler reflects on his participation at the Sixth Assembly of the Forum for Promoting Peace in the following paragraphs.

The “Alliance of Virtue” is an Association of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars, thinkers, leaders “of good-will for the benefit of humanity. It is an effort across religions to enable their members to live side-by-side in peace and happiness.” (www.allianceofvirtues.com) At the invitation of Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, Chairman of the United Arab Emirates Fatwa Council, Co-Moderator and Executive Committee Member of Religions for Peace, and Chairman and Founder of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, Abu Dhabi, hundreds of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers, scholars, leaders gathered in the gleaming Arabian seaside city of Abu Dhabi to encounter each other, listen to, and discuss with scholars, leaders, and activists of the three Abrahamic religions. The Dialogue at the podium, and between the podium and audience was fundamentally dialogic, and at times, intense.

Many things can be said about the formal and informal encounters and exchanges that took place. To name a single point that struck me most: There were not only Muslims in Arab dress, and Westerners in their shirt/tie “uniforms”—there were also many with Jewish Yarmulkes! I also learned that there is a vibrant Jewish community in the Arabic oil country Abu Dhabi—butted up against Israel’s bête noire, Saudi Arabia!

The Muslim world has been increasingly joining the “Abrahamic Trialogue” in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. It, in fact, had already started at least as early as 1978, when Sargent Shriver (first Director of the “Peace Corps,” under President Kennedy, and founder of both the “Job Corps,” and “Head Start”) invited Eugene Fisher (an Associate Editor of JES) and myself to launch a very early, if not the earliest, “Trialogue.” 1

1 See Eugene Fisher, “Kennedy Institute Jewish-Christian-Muslim Trialogue,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies,19 (Winter, 1982), 197–200; and Leonard Swidler, “Trialogue: Out of The Shadows Into Blazing ‘Desert’ Sun!” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 45:3, (Summer 2010), 493-513.