How the Hizmet Movement and partners are facilitating dialog

In an article in The Sunday India, Sauranh Kumar Shahi talks about the successes and challenges of bringing the Abrahamic faiths together in post 9/11 USA.

Leo D. Lefebure, a Catholic priest by training and Professor at Matteo Ricci Chair, Department of Theology at Georgetown University, who has been instrumental in the initiative of Abrahamic dialog, were in New Delhi to share their experience about their interaction with followers of Fethullah Gulen and his Hizmet movement in the US.

Lefebure said that while bilateral talks between Muslims and Christians and Christians and Jews were possible “a trilateral dialogue [between all three Abrahamic traditions] in the United States was sort of impossible just a decade or so ago.” This challenge was spurred because “dialogue between Muslims and Jews was either a non-starter or even if it started, it quickly turned into an emotional outburst” boiling down of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

All of this changed however when the Hizmet (or Gulen) Movement, specifically the Rumi Forum, started a “completely different kind of approach, mixed with the genuine urge to invite people of all faiths for dialogue” in the US. The Hizmet movement revolves around the teachings of Rumi and it uses this prism to enable and encourage focus on similarities and making understanding possible.

Lefebure shared, “Once a group of Whirling Darvesh came to our DC area and gave a presentation[... which] struck a resonance with both Catholic and Jewish audiences. It was shortly followed by the performance by the same group in a synagogue. That, I was told, was the first time in history that Darvesh performed in a synagogue.”

Those wishing to facilitate dialog between the Abrahamic traditions draw back on historical figures who represented similar values of compassion, understanding and dialog. “St. Francis of Assisi, a clergyman part of the Crusader Army, who dared to start a dialogue with the then Ottoman Sultan, becomes” a figure of a peacemaker in these times of confrontation. Drawing lessons from a volatile and polarized past for a volatile and polarized present remind us that dialog is possible regardless of the circumstances.

Posted in: Dialogue, Fethullah Gulen, Gulen Movement, Hizmet Movement, India, Leo D. Lefebure