Peace on Earth? Increasingly, Yes.

by Andrew Mack

Wednesday, December 28, 2005; Page A21

Seen through the eyes of the media, the world appears
an evermore dangerous place. Iraq is sliding toward
civil war, the slaughter in Darfur appears unending,
violent insurgencies are brewing in Thailand and a
dozen other countries, and terrorism strikes again in
Bali. It is not surprising that most people believe
global violence is increasing.

However, most people, including many leading
policymakers and scholars, are wrong. The reality is
that, since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict
and nearly all other forms of political violence have
decreased. The world is far more peaceful than it was.

Why has this change attracted so little attention? In
part because the global media give far more coverage
to wars that start than to those that quietly end, but
also because no international agency collects global
or regional data on any form of political violence.

The Human Security Report, an independent study funded
by five countries and published by Oxford University
Press, draws on a wide range of little publicized
scholarly data, plus specially commissioned research
to present a portrait of global security that is
sharply at odds with conventional wisdom. The report
reveals that after five decades of inexorable
increase, the number of armed conflicts started to
fall worldwide in the early 1990s. The decline has
continued.

By 2003, there were 40 percent fewer conflicts than in
1992. The deadliest conflicts -- those with 1,000 or
more battle-deaths -- fell by some 80 percent. The
number of genocides and other mass slaughters of
civilians also dropped by 80 percent, while core human
rights abuses have declined in five out of six regions
of the developing world since the mid-1990s.
International terrorism is the only type of political
violence that has increased. Although the death toll
has jumped sharply over the past three years,
terrorists kill only a fraction of the number who die
in wars.

What accounts for the extraordinary and
counterintuitive improvement in global security over
the past dozen years? The end of the Cold War, which
had driven at least a third of all conflicts since
World War II, appears to have been the single most
critical factor.

In the late 1980s, Washington and Moscow stopped
fueling "proxy wars" in the developing world, and the
United Nations was liberated to play the global
security role its founders intended. Freed from the
paralyzing stasis of Cold War geopolitics, the
Security Council initiated an unprecedented, though
sometimes inchoate, explosion of international
activism designed to stop ongoing wars and prevent new
ones.

Other international agencies, donor governments and
nongovernmental organizations also played a critical
role, but it was the United Nations that took the
lead, pushing a range of conflict-prevention and
peace-building initiatives on a scale never before
attempted. The number of U.N. peacekeeping operations
and missions to prevent and stop wars have increased
by more than 400 percent since the end of the Cold
War. As this upsurge of international activism grew in
scope and intensity through the 1990s, the number of
crises, wars and genocides declined.

There have been some horrific and much publicized
failures, of course -- the failures to stop genocide
in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Darfur being the most
egregious. But the quiet successes -- in Namibia, El
Salvador, Mozambique, Eastern Slovenia, East Timor and
elsewhere went largely unheralded, as did the fact
that the United Nations' expertise in handling
difficult missions has grown dramatically.

A major study by the Rand Corp. published this year
found that U.N. peace-building operations had a
two-thirds success rate. They were also surprisingly
cost-effective. In fact, the United Nations spends
less running 17 peace operations around the world for
an entire year than the United States spends in Iraq
in a single month. What the United Nations calls
"peacemaking" -- using diplomacy to end wars -- has
been even more successful. About half of all the peace
agreements negotiated between 1946 and 2003 have been
signed since the end of the Cold War.

With the Security Council often reluctant to act --
the abject failure to stop the Rwandan genocide
remains a key example -- and with too many missions
having been denied adequate resources, appropriate
mandates or properly trained personnel, these
successes are all the more remarkable.

In the wake of last month's global summit at the
United Nations, many critics wrote the United Nations
off as an institution so deeply flawed that it was
beyond salvation. The analysis and the carefully
collated data in the Human Security Report reveal
something very different: an organization that,
despite its failures and creaking bureaucracy, has
played a critical role in enhancing global security.

The writer directs the Human Security Center at the
University of British Columbia. He was director of the
Strategic Planning Unit in the executive office of
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan between 1998 and 2001.

A Double Standard in Human Rights

by Edmund R. Hanauer (as published in the Cleveland, OH Plain Dealer)

On Dec. 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a major step in the struggle to protect the rights of all humanity. The United States played a key role in the passage.

Defense of human rights is often given as a basis for U.S. foreign policies. President George W. Bush argues that a major reason for invading Iraq was to liberate Iraqis from oppression. The State Department issues yearly reports on the status of human rights around the world.

While the United States raises human rights issues when governments involved are "unfriendly," it remains largely silent when it comes to friends. Washington has even sought to subvert democratic governments deemed unfriendly: Iran, Chile and Guatemala, among others.

The United States has supported, even helped to power, brutal but friendly dictatorships. Saddam Hussein was a friend of the United States during the 1980s. The excuse was the Cold War; now it is terrorism, even though the state terrorism of pro-U.S. regimes kills far more people than do terrorist groups seeking state power.

A glaring example of Washington's double standard is U.S. support for Israel in the form of financial and military aid totaling nearly $3 billion a year, along with U.S. vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of Israel's denial of the human rights of Palestinian Muslims and Christians. The United States has refused to pressure Israel to remove Jewish settlements built on confiscated Palestinian land, settlements illegal under international law.

There are three categories of Palestinians:

About 2.4 million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel seized in the 1967 War. After Israeli settlers and troops left Gaza this summer, 1.3 million Gaza Palestinians are largely, but not entirely, free from Israeli occupation. B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights group, reported in 1998 that Israel was violating 29 of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its treatment of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. The situation has worsened under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

In recent months, Amnesty International deplored Israel's unwillingness to stop settler violence against Palestinians. Human Rights Watch accused Israel of failing to protect Palestinian civilians from unlawful attacks by Israeli soldiers. And the European Union criticized Israel's violations of the rights of 200,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem.

Human Rights Watch took the unusual step of publicly criticizing Sen. Hilary Clinton for defending the separation wall Israel is building, since 80 percent of it is in the West Bank, rather than on the Israel-West Bank border. The International Court of Justice declared the West Bank portions of the wall illegal. The wall limits or denies tens of thousands of Palestinians access to jobs, agricultural lands, hospitals, schools, families and friends, and even water. Palestinians trapped on the "Israeli side" of the wall must obtain special permits from Israel to reside in their own homes.

Close to 1 million Palestinians are citizens of Israel (Israeli Arabs). They are second-class citizens when it comes to education, housing, the right to own land, social services, employment and political rights. This systemic discrimination is amply documented by reports by Israeli and U.S. human rights groups, as well as by the U.S. State Department. Similar governmental policies toward Jews or blacks anywhere are rightly denounced as anti-Semitic or racist.

The third group of Palestinians is made up of 3 million to 4 million refugees whom Israel does not allow to return. In 1948, close to 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes during the Arab-Israel War, many forced out by Israeli terrorist tactics.

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right of people to leave or return to their homeland and was cited in support of Russian Jews seeking to leave the Soviet Union. On Dec. 11, 1948, the United Nations passed Resolution 194, which supported the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. While the United Nations has yearly - with U.S. support - reaffirmed that right, President Bush recently opposed it.

Washington's policies toward Palestinians make a mockery of U.S. claims to uphold human rights. It tarnishes our reputation among citizens of other democracies. It makes it easier for anti-U.S. terrorist groups to find recruits: They argue that the United States hates Muslims and Arabs and cite U.S. support of Israel's displacement of Palestinians. It betrays the values of millions of Americans who expect our elected leaders to support human rights, including freedom and self-determination, for all peoples.

But the worst result of Washington's blanket support for Israel is that by supporting Israel's occupation and gradual takeover of Palestinian lands, Washington prevents the creation of a viable Palestinian state and a just and lasting peace and strengthens the hawks and weakens the doves among both Israeli Jews and Palestinians. This means more needless Israeli and Palestinian deaths.

[Hanauer, an American Jewish human rights activist, is director of Search for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel, a Boston-based human rights group.]

Politicians Hear What They Want to Hear, by Molly Ivins

The Lord Impersonator is back again. This fella reappears every couple of years and causes no end of trouble. The jokester goes around persuading feeble-minded persons he is the Lord Almighty and that they are to do or say some perfectly idiotic thing under his instructions.

One of the worst cases we've had in Texas was the time the Lord Impersonator convinced 20 people in Floydada to git nekked, get into a GTO and drive to Vinton, La., where they ran into a tree. Seein' 20 nekkid people, including five children, come out of a GTO startled the Vinton cops. The nekkid citizens all said God told them to do it.

Quite a few people have been mishearing the Lord lately. The Rev. Pat Robertson thinks the Lord told the people of Dover, Pa., they shouldn't ask for His help anymore because they elected a school board Robertson doesn't like. And Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana said right after Hurricane Katrina that "we finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did it."

I kind of doubt Katrina was designed by the Lord as a form of urban renewal. I think it's a big mistake for us to go around putting our own puny interpretations on stuff that happens and then claiming the Lord meant thus-and-such by it. It is my humble opinion that some folks should do a lot more listening to God and a lot less talking for Him.

In that category, I put a whole passel of politicians -- including that God-fearing professional patriot Rep. "Duke" Cunningham of San Diego. Cunningham resigned his office after pleading guilty to having accepted $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. "Duke's" big cause in Congress was to get a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. Which do you think is more unpatriotic: burning a flag to indicate desperate dissent against American policy or getting elected to Congress and selling out for a Rolls Royce and some antique commodes?

Rep. Tom DeLay, who is under indictment in Texas, is another fine parser of the Lord's intent. According to Mother Jones magazine, DeLay appeared at a prayer breakfast just after the tsunami that killed 240,000 people. "DeLay read a passage from Matthew about a nonbeliever: '... a fool who built his house on sand: the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined.' Then, without comment, he righteously sat down."

Some Christians seem to me inclined to lose track of love, compassion and mercy. I don't think I have any special brief to go around judging them, but when the stink of hypocrisy becomes so foul in the nostrils it makes you start to puke it becomes necessary to point out there is one more good reason to observe the separation of church and state: If God keeps hanging out with politicians, it's gonna hurt his reputation.

I've always hoped that people like Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham (and Reps. Bob Ney, Richard Pombo, Dana Rohrabacher, John Doolittle and William J. Jefferson (a D) and Sens. Bill Frist and Conrad Burns) were really stonewall cynics at heart, secretly sneering at the rubes who buy into their holier-than-thou posturing. But I'm afraid they're not.

I'm afraid one actually has to allow for the denial and self-delusion that make it possible for people to be both self-righteous and sleazy at the same time. We are all capable of fooling ourselves in a grand variety of ways.

Another reason why religion and policy make such a bad mix is that religion brings the dread element of certitude into what needs to be a constant process of questioning. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh quotes a former Defense Department official who served in Bush's first term: "The president is more determined than ever to stay the course. He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'"

Look, certitude is the enemy of clear thinking. "Never be absolutely sure" is a useful motto, and sailing through our current policies in Iraq without a shadow of a doubt is both foolish and dangerous. I would be far more reassured if I thought the president were second-guessing every move we make than I am to find out he hasn't a shadow of a doubt. For one thing, it shuts him off from considering alternatives, and boy do we need some alternatives.

So here we sit, watching a great, stinking skein of corruption being fished to the surface of Washington, while the town is simultaneously filled with a great babble about God, prayer and morality. Corruption trails head off in all directions -- lobbyists, wives, jobs, perverting intelligence, outing agents for petty revenge -- all this and a Prayer Breakfast every day.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

Why Hasn't Congress Done Its Duty on Iraq War?

by Joan Chittister, OSB / December 1, 2005

That this country is divided over the situation in Iraq is not new news. But why the country is divided is new indeed. The rift is a serious one.

Polling results are clear: The U.S. population has lost its commitment to the war in Iraq. People, in general, are sorry it began or doubt its value or want it over. But that is not what's at issue.

When and how U.S. troops are removed from Iraq, after almost three years of bombing, fighting, destroying, dying, are now the basic issues. The answer to those questions may expose some fissures in our own country as well as in Iraq.

Some people think U.S. troops will need to stay in place there until the country is both reunited and reconstructed. After all, this group argues, we ruined the place, we need to put it back together. The control question here has become, "What kind of country are we going to leave for the Iraqi people?"

If the question seems to lack meaning, think Hurricane Katrina -- the damage it did, the money it is costing, the social insecurity it has spawned, the dispersion of peoples it has generated, the years of recovery it presages, the change it implies for the rest of the country as well as for New Orleans itself.

Economically, politically, socially, Iraq has become a desert in the desert. Water is undrinkable. Whole neighborhoods are decimated. Refugees are everywhere. Medical services are scant. The number of wounded, the number of widows, the number of orphans rises every day. Insurgent attacks, Representative John Murtha tells us, have increased from 150 to more than 700 a week in the past year.

Point: Three years later and things are not better there.

The only problem is that this time a hurricane didn't do it. War did it. What Saddam Hussein didn't manage to ruin in Iraq, we did.

The writing of a constitution is no substitute for the reconstruction of the country. What good is a new constitution if the seeds of civil war -- or worse -- are embedded in the social environment in which it is meant to function.

Other elements of the U.S. population, on the other hand, want U.S. troops brought home now. They argue that the war has been a mistake from the beginning. The reasons for which we invaded Iraq never existed -- no weapons of mass destruction, no alliance with Al-Quaeda, no relationship to the toppling of the Twin Towers on 9/11/01. However, now that we are in Iraq, there is no definition of "victory," they tell us, and no plan for getting out. Worse, the war itself has made Iraq a training ground for terrorists and the United States the prime target. Every day, that part of the world sees the United States as more enemy than friend.

From this perspective, we are creating what we say we are resisting.

No wonder we're confounded. No wonder we're divided. Both arguments are cogent. Each argument has its point, its truth, its valor -- whatever a person's personal reaction to war in general or this war in particular.

But that mental disarray is precisely what may finally bring us to the real question. The White House may have been wrong from the very start of this debacle but where was the Congress?

Everything in the country is being investigated these days: campaign finances, public security, immigration policies, the intelligence community, violations of confidentiality at the highest levels of the government. Maybe it is time to investigate whatever has happened to the whole concept of "checks and balances," of congressional debate, of political perspective.

While millions of people around the globe marched in the streets against the invasion of Iraq -- millions in the United States itself, while the British Parliament split over the decision to declare war on Iraq and two cabinet members resigned over the decision, while France and Germany, the United Nations and most of the rest of the world asked for more time, more involvement, more assurance, more proof to justify an assault on a sovereign nation, the Congress of the United States steadfastly saluted in front of TV cameras and hummed "Hail to the Chief." No cautions given. No conditions defined. No real debate mounted.

But the American people don't elect Boy Scouts, they elect Senators and Representatives to scrutinize national legislation, to examine national policies, to consider national alternatives, to declare wars.

"Patriotism" is no substitute for Congressional responsibility. Loyalty does not supercede accountability. We do not elect senators and representatives to "get behind the president in times of war." We elect them to get behind the Constitution, to get behind the country, to get behind the arguments, to get behind the administration spin on whether we should be in a war or not. And when. And how. And for what real purposes.

"Victory will be achieved," the president said again at the Naval Academy and on national TV this week. "We will not cut and run." But we still don't know how anyone in Washington is defining "victory" in a situation where what we said we were going to war about does not exist. Nor do we know whether "we will not cut and run" may not simply be jargon for "we will not admit we were wrong."

Heaven forbid. If it is "unpatriotic," "political," "un-American" to even suggest that war is not a proper course of action when a president suggests a full-scale invasion of another country, it must surely be treasonous to suggest it four years, billions of dollars, thousands of dead, and hundreds of thousands of wounded and displaced later.

It is now clear that George Bush wanted a war with Iraq. But it is equally clear that the Congress that is supposed to be the voice of the American people simply rolled over and let it happen -- and all in the name of patriotism, Americanism and political unity. What is not clear at this point of the debacle is whether or not either Bush or Congress really want peace even now.

Where is the Congress now?

Someone, somewhere ought surely to investigate why it is that our vaunted "system of checks and balances" did not work in this case, in fact does not even seem to attempt to work even now.

From where I stand, it looks as if the millions of citizens who stood in the streets in an attempt to stop this war simply went home far too soon.

The Catholic Church and Discrimination

by Ellen Goodman / Syndicated columnist

[Perhaps someday even the Catholic Church, now led by Pope Benedict XVI, will see the light. As Ellen Goodman points out, neither women or gay priests can serve the church now in its godly positions. The ultimate patriarchy is "reserved for celibate and pure males?" ... David Enroth (Sky)]


A tendency to discriminate

BOSTON -- Somewhere along the way, the dividing line over gay issues picked up and moved. It's no longer between red and blue states, or left and right wings, but between nature and nurture. Or to be more precise, between those who believe that homosexuality is a choice and those who believe that homosexuality is innate.

Remember the moment in the 2004 debate when CBS' Bob Schieffer asked Bush and Kerry whether they thought homosexuality was a choice? The president answered, "I don't know," and the senator replied, "We're all God's children."

Well, it turns out that the more you believe homosexuality is innate, the more accepting you are of gay rights. A full 79 percent of people who think human beings are born with a sexual orientation support gay rights, including civil unions or marriage equality. But only 22 percent of those who believe homosexuality is a choice agree.

The same line can be found in the religious world between those who regard homosexuality as a (bad) choice and those who see it as (biological) trait. The most conservative Protestant churches that talk about the homosexual "lifestyle" prohibit gay ministers. Religious liberals, who see sexual orientation as an inborn trait, are more open to gays in the pulpit.

All and all, Americans seem reluctant to condemn people for who they simply are.

What then do we make of the Catholic Church's banning — and perhaps purging — of gay priests? On Tuesday, the much-leaked and much-awaited document from the Vatican said the church "cannot admit to the seminary or to Holy Orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture."

What was painful to many Catholics was the obvious scapegoating of gays for the church sexual-abuse scandal. But there was something less obvious.

Thirty years ago, the Catholic Church accepted the view that some were definitively gay. Church teachings said "they do not choose their homosexual condition." Nevertheless, the new document doesn't just ban gays who "practice" homosexuality, breaking the vows of celibacy. It bans all those with homosexual "tendencies."

In the strange new backsliding language of the Vatican, homosexuality is a "tendency." The church doesn't define tendency, nor does it say whether such a tendency is biological. Voluntary or not, it marks a man permanently. As Matt Foreman, a gay activist raised Catholic, says, "Doesn't matter what you do or believe or practice. If you are gay there is no making that better in the eyes of the church."

Ironically, the only exemptions are offered to men who were not "real" homosexuals but "transitory" ones. They're given a pass, in the words of a Vatican cardinal, for "some curiosity during adolescence or accidental circumstances in a state of drunkenness or particular circumstances like someone who was in prison for many years." A drunk or ex-con is OK; a chaste, gay seminarian is not.

The same cardinal said that banning gays from the priesthood was no more discriminatory than "if a person who suffers from vertigo is not admitted to a school for astronauts." Such a dizzying analogy overlooks the fact that gay men are already among the stars of the priesthood.

The document does more than denigrate the priests who have given their lives to the ministry. In the face of a conflict between biology and sin, the church has labeled homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered."

Let's remember that the evidence is with those on the nature side of the dividing line. While we don't know the precise biology, the weight of research suggests that sexual orientation is indeed something we are born with. Perhaps there is a "gay gene." Perhaps the Japanese scientists who found how a gene alters the sexual orientation of the fruit fly will find a similar switch for people.

Science may well offer some future shocks. Imagine, for a moment, we could tweak the "gay gene" in a petri dish or a womb. What would the religious right, which opposes both homosexuality and embryonic research, say about eliminating the "sin"? What would the left, which favors reproductive choice but is appalled at the idea of "curing" a population of homosexuals, say?

For now, however, the church has run directly into a conflict. Increasingly, Americans accept homosexuality as something that isn't chosen and cannot easily be changed. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has moved in the opposite direction, rejecting men with "deep-seated tendencies."

Once, even the most conservative and patronizing churches proclaimed they could love the sinner and hate the sin. The new pope's Vatican has labeled homosexuals themselves as the sin. The case is closed and so are the doors to the seminary.

[Ellen Goodman's column appears Friday on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com]

2005, Washington Post Writers Group

The heresy of national narcissism

by Joan Chittister, OSB

[Joan Chittister has writen a profound personal reflection about American narcissism. What else is there to say? ... David Enroth (Sky)]

On the flight back from England yesterday, two fleeting memories played around the edges of my mind, small capsules of the entire Chautauqua interfaith conference "Building Civil Society: Faith, Diversity, and Pluralism," of which I had just been a part. There had, of course, been great speeches and intimate conversations among the Muslim, Jewish and Christian delegates there. But it was two tiny slivers of time, in the end, that really said it all. On the one hand, the two scenes were completely unrelated. On the other, they were intimately linked. And, by the end of the conference, they said it all in living color.

The first scene took place in a London taxi cab.

London cab drivers are a rare breed. They are, I have decided, part baby-sitter, part tour guide, part philosopher. They care about seeing that you get where you're going by the best possible route, in the best time possible, with the greatest amount of information. Mine simply would not leave until he was sure that I was really at the place where I was supposed to be. I wasn't.

London cab drivers are fountains of information about the city. "The best play in town is "Billy Elliot," my man said, "and you might get in if you just go to your concierge and have them call twice a day, every day, to check for tickets that have been released." I did just what he said and I got them.

They are also, as a breed, a rare type of political philosopher. They see people from around the world on a daily basis. The foreign is not foreign to them. To the average London cabdriver, the world is a small one, indeed. They spot international accents easily and they mine them with zest.

Without even asking where I lived, the cabby launched into the conversation: "Your President ga'e a speech the other night, you know. Did you 'ear wha' 'e sayed?" (I admit to having felt a bit of anxiety.) "No, what now?" I answered him, a bit gingerly.

The cabby threw his head back and laughed: " 'E sayed," and he wrapped his left arm over the back of his seat and turned around so he could look me straight in the face as he went on, " 'E sayed that World War II started in 1942! 'E did. 'E actually sayed that!" And then he added, for good measure, "For them maybe, but not for the world."

Just in case you're a George Bush American, the point the cabby was making, of course, was that World War II started, actually, on Aug. 31, 1939, with Hitler's invasion of Poland and was declared by England and France three days thereafter. By the time the United States got into the war, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, thousands of Europeans had already died. By the end of the war four years later, between 40 million and 50 million people had died in the bloodiest war in human history. It is, in the European mind, no small date to remember in a nuclear age.

To the cab driver, Bush's statement demonstrated the ultimate in narcissistic Americanism. All time, all activity, starts here, the dates suggested. The message he got was a clear one: America is the only world Americans know. Or care about.

It's a sobering thought, indeed, this sense of detachment and distance from the pain of the rest of globe in an increasingly globalized world.

Which brings me to the second scene.

This one came from a Dutch rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Soetendorp, at the beginning of his presentation on "Faith, Diversity and Pluralism in Society." It brought me up straight in what might otherwise have been expected to be a very anemic academic moment.

The rabbi began: "I am a survivor child. My birth and the circumstances of my survival have forever determined my commitment to interfaith dialogue.

"When the Gestapo came for us, the captain looked at me -- a baby in a crib -- and said, 'What a pity this is a Jewish child.'

"But my father answered them: 'No, it is not a pity. He is blessed to be a Jewish child because he will not grow up a child of murderers.'

"The Gestapo leader was enraged. 'We will be back to take you in the morning. You are too dirty to handle now. Pack immediately.'

"But in those few hours, a pious Catholic family took me into their arms, hid me, raised me, saved me.

"So I am, you see, forever committed to interfaith dialogue. We need each other. Your faith is indispensable to my own. I understand very well what the Quran means when it teaches that 'to be good Jews and good Muslims, we must be good Christians.' We must each be the best of the other that we can be."

We simply do not have the luxury of national narcissism, of religious absolutism, of racial profiling and cultural stereotypes.

From where I stand, "faith," "diversity" and "pluralism" are only words to most of us. It's the London cab driver and the Dutch Rabbi who understand the real thing. It has something to do with the development of a world vision and a cosmic faith.

"Isn't it amazing," someone at the conference said. "All the religions of the world teach the same six basic concepts!"

I thought of the cab driver and the rabbi and smiled to myself a bit. "Amazing?" I thought. It's not amazing at all, is it, if we really believe what we say we do. After all, if there is only one God, why wouldn't that God be saying the same things to all of us?

Now if we would only join the human race, the community of nations, and listen.

[Comments or questions about this column may be sent to: Sr. Joan Chittister, c/o NCR web coordinator at the address below.

To receive an e-mail alerting you to when Joan Chittister's latest column has been posted to NCRonline.org, visit the following Web page and follow instructions: http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/signup.php]