On Saturday, November 11, the Universal Peace Federation (Dutch Chapter) held a one day conference, "Inter-religious Cooperation for Peace: Reversing the cycle of mistrust, prejudice, alienation and extremism" at Hotel Huize Glory, Bergen aan Zee, Nord Holland. - see photos at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/upfnl/album?.dir=/e28ere2 - click on Slideshow, above top right photo.)

Drs. Willem Koetsier, Secretary General, UPF-The Netherlands, opened the conference with "Welcome Remarks". He suggested that a major contributor to mistrust, prejudice, alienation and extremism was simply a lack of communication and he hoped that the day’s activities would help communication.

If we said we knew all there was to know about a person or a problem, it showed that we actually did not know very much. In the late 1930s, there were many in the Netherlands, as well as in Germany and other countries, who thought all Jews were evil. Actually, they were really projecting their own evil thinking on others. He mentioned there was a restaurant in nearby Bergen called Nero’s Place; Nero blamed the Jews for burning Rome; he wondered why the restaurant was so named!

Today, many people in Europe thought that asylum seekers were the source of problems in Europe; and that they could be treated differently from others. Even the Dutch Prime Minister made little of the fact that there were children in detention centres, often in worse conditions than those found in prisons. He had said that it was by choice that they were there: the mothers had to stay there, but the children could stay with friends.

But when a woman placed her child with friends so she could take part in a TV "reality" show, it was discussed in the Dutch Parliaments’ Second Chamber (Tweede Kamer). The Netherlands liked to lecture other countries, for example, in the United Nations, about human rights, but did not uphold human rights at home. If we were serious about "fighting terrorism", the first thing was to get rid of double standards. If we treated asylum seekers badly, we were creating conditions for terrorism to flourish. If you made a small hole in a tyre, the whole tyre would go flat; human rights were universal.

Human Rights was a major aspiration of the United Nations at the time of its creation. One reason for major peace keeping failures of the UN, UN soldiers, ‘peace keepers’ standing by while they saw people massacred, was the UN not keeping human rights in the first place. (The peace keeping failures were not the fault of the military, but of the UN).

He hoped the conference might help in some way, that we could learn from experiences and not blame people for the past.

Mr. Abdullah Haselhoef, an Islamic counsellor and publicist, since the tragedy of 9/11, a national spokesman for the Moslem community in the Netherlands and currently the president of the Dutch Moslem Council, spoke on the theme "Heavenly ways to God". He greeted his audience with "Peace, Shalom, Salaam", then commented how there were many words for peace, but did we really feel peace. He had come to talk about "heavenly ways", not those of September 11 (presumably in reference to the planes being in the sky) , but to those that did not cause harm to others. If you wanted to follow those heavenly ways, you had to die: to your old ways. Jesus came with a sword, not to fight other,s but within yourself. Most conflicts in the world were with "others", the Jews blamed "others", the Palestinians blamed the Jews; but when you pointed a finger, there were three pointing backwards, and your thumb somewhere in between. To have peace, you had to battle yourself.

When the Prophet Mohammed was attacked, he had fought back, he was defending women and children. After his victory, he said "we are coming back from a little struggle, now there is a big struggle." He meant coming from the external to the internal battle. Who were our real enemies?

One was a "longing for this world". St. Paul was often misquoted as saying "money is the root of all evil", but he actually said "the love of money is the root of all eveil". It was the "longing" that caused us to run after materialism. It was strange: the more you ran after something or someone, the less likely you were to catch it/them.

We might also long for "recognition, of being an esteemed member of society; how many were content, for themselves, to just sit down and pray with God?

We also had to be careful about our ego. We absolutely needed it, it was like our horse, or today one might say car, and if we mistreated it, we would have no drive; but if it was too great, we might not be able to control the horse and it might panic and take us over a cliff.

In the West, people talked a lot about freedom; but one was better giving freedom to others than claiming it for oneself. One of the reasons for getting up early in the morning was to train oneself; to overcome laziness.

The ego needed discipline, by working – and praying: if you didn’t pray and only used your intellect, you were killing something in yourself. Before the intellect was created, the heart was already beating. When you were inlove, your heart beat more strongly; when you lost someone you loved, you might even feel a real pain in your heart. Prayer could discipline the ego.

But prayer was not the destination, as some religious people seemed to think, it was merely a tool to help one get to heaven. If it was just a ritual, it was dead; on the other hand, one needed to be regular in prayer, even if one felt nothing.

Our soul should be or best ally, our horseman or driver; but it could be our enemy: many diseases of the spirit came from depression. When God created us, he blew in us and we became a part of God. Everything came into existence only because God gave His love to it. But what we were now was only a small percentage of our total soul.

People took medicine when they were sick; but that might only be covering up the cause of the illness. Say there is a hole in the roof. If you got an umbrella and boots you might not get wet, but it didn’t solve the problem.

Feeling unhappy was not bad: it should be something to push you to find out more. When our soul was getting ill, it was often from ego.

He concluded that "heavenly ways" means internal struggle with yourself; and that if you did not engage in this struggle you would find many enemies outside.

Jhr. Dr. P.A.C. Beelaerts van Blokland, a former Minister of Planning and former governor of the Province of Utrecht, still very active in public service and, in reference to the theme of this conference, in the 1980s, a member of the advisory commission "Government, Religion and Philosophy of Life", spoke on "Steps toward Peace in a World full of Diversity and Commotion". Although someone whose work is in the political, secular arena, he spoke in a more spiritual, personal manner, sharing how he personally sought to live his life. He started talking of how he had been walking outside, listening to the birds, "in a crowded, high density country, you need silence, to remember the Lord was there.

It reminded him of a time he was outside his home, in a riverside area, with his wife at midnight. The moon was full and laid out a carpet for them on the river, almost like a VIP red carpet; "and we fell silent, sometimes that’s best, also with your wife!"

That morning, the birds had been singing, but then fell silent. He heard bells, but it was not Sunday, could it be connected with the sea? He thought of the international distress signal SOS, Save Our Souls, note it was save OUR souls, not mine alone.

He quoted from Ecclesiastes 3: "there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" -http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%203%20;&version=9;, dramatising it with a bim/bam church bell imitation, and said we should not forget the philosopher; but we also needed a target.

He had developed a number of steps, "not as many as John Bunyan’s 49 steps" (his talk was full of amusing asides and anecdotes, that cannot be adequately reported, certainly not without making this report into a small book) that he had consciously developed when he was the Queen’s Representative/Governor in Utrecht, "I took inspiration from Joseph in Egypt, but he was governor for 14 years, I only 12 – and I didn’t have a food problem."

"Jesus said ‘peace be with you’ and it’s very important for people to live in peace. As mayor, I was presented with many neighbours’ quarrels, and one must always aim at things that mak e for peace. Jesus says ‘God has called us in one body’, but it must start in ourselves. In the Netherlands, we often point at others, as 'being like God or as being wrong', but we should see God is the best guide for our steps."

He added that, after seeking peace in ourselves, we should seek to spread it in our families, in our community, at our work and ever further, always remembering our responsibilities. How could we hope for a peaceful meeting if we were thinking of how to get rid of the chairman? Many people sent money abroard, but we should first seek to do good nearer home, that way we could also better ensure that any gift we made was not misused.

Discussing inter-religious cooperation, he suggested that cooperation involved having the same goal. This should also be the case in politics. When he had been in the Dutch Cabinet, the leader of an opposition party had refused to shake hands. He had been shocked by this: it showed there was no respect or trust and thus there could be no cooperation. He also urged his listeners, "never forget that real peace is connected with God and Jesus", and, as a gesture of 'inter-religious respect and copperation', turning to acknowledge Mr Haselhoef, he added, "or whomever is your prophet".

"In the Netherlands, we worked for four centuries to try and get Protestants and Roman Catholics 'on one line', but from what we see in the media, there now seems to be an increasingly bigger wall between those of differing religious convict ions." Like Mr. Koetsier earlier, he suggested that more dialogue was necessary, and opined that the problems that came from the recent speech by the Pope and the 'Danish cartoons ' were due largely to 'isolation' and "fundamentalists are sitting on an island - and they like to be on that island".

The difficulty with cooperation was that if one person was driven by ideology, he would always drive those only with opinions to "give, give, give - and then I swallow you".

After talking further about how he sought to bring peace to people and situations presented to him, he closed by approving Rev. Moon’s proposal that an inter-religious council be established at the United Nations.

UPF-NL Chairman M.K. Gautam summarised the talk and then moderated discussion

Following an excellent lunch, a video was shown, introducing the life and work of the founder of UPF, the Reverend Dr. Sun Myung Moon. Of note was a comment by an American Christian minister, praising Rev. Moon for being able to love others who did not agree with him: "there are very few people who are that big."

Hans Campman, Director of Education of the Dutch chapter of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, spoke on "Conflict Resolution- the Path to Peace and Cooperation".

He went back to the beginning of the Bible, to the conflict between the brothers Cain and Abel. Abel might feel wronged by Cain (who, as in Genesis, might atatck him out of resentment), but he needed to learn self-denial and forgiveness, realizing that Cain also had a deep desire to be of service.

The key to the solution was with Abel not Cain; talking from a deep religious point of view, he maintained that God relied on Abel to give – even when he had nothing left to give. The sorrow of God was to ask those closest to Him to love unconditionally, that was the terrible situation of God in history.

He cited the example of Jacob and Esau as a succesful Cain/Abel reconciliation and added, "you cannot avoid the Cain/Abel struggle, the question is how to avoid it".

In the last century, after World War 1, the victors sought to take benefit, imposing ‘reparations’ on Germany; but Germany rose up again. After World War 2, the Americans helped Germany and other countries with the Marshqall Plan and also helped Japan recover.

Rev. Moon had always warned of the dangers of Communism, but had also visited and befriended Pres. Gorbachev when he started to initiate reforms, and had met Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, even though he had almnost died in a North Korean concentration camp; and Rev. Moon had developed educational programmes in the ex. UUSR countries and China and numerous projects to help North Korea. Throughout his ministry he had also sought to unite Christians and all religious people to work together for the sake of peace and prosperity, even though he had been persecuted from the very beginning.

Prof. Gautam, chairman of UPF-NL, chaired the discussion that followed, urging that we all seek to come together and develop ideas of how we might develop and "move forward, stagnation is death.

Tim Miller, UPF-Europe Vice President, suggested that the only way to bring reconciliation was to stimulate a righteous attitude in others, "if we want to make the world a better place, we have to keep a righteous attitude even when persecuted – and then win the heart of those who oppose us, melt the heart of the enemy.

Prof. Gautam commented on problems created by "ego centred persons, even arguing over property when their parents died. A family-centred society was better.

David Earle, who is very active in interfaith work in the very multi ethnic city of Birmingham in England, said how shocked he had been when in Israel/Palestine as part of the Middle East Peace Initiative. He had seen the ‘gardens in the desert’ created by Israelis and heard of how their techniques were being exported all over the world; but over the "wall", the Palestinians were living in abject poverty. The Palestinians had nothing to give back – but they could give Israel its security!

Tim Miller summed up, "we need to see a higher purpose in our lives, to seek God’s point of view".

Ambassador for Peace certificates were then presented to Mrs Trudi Kag, a singer of classical music, who is married to a Czech and devotes much effort to social work, particulaly helping those less fortunate in her husband’s home country; and Siswo Pramono, Minister Counsellor, Information and Socio-Cultural Affairs at the Embassy of Indonesia in The Hague - www.indonesia.nl, for his work on behalf of inter-religious cooperation, including conferences he has organized.

A special ‘Crown of Peace’ award was also presented to Dr. Dr Mohammad Halim Tanwir, a journalist & historian, Afghan presidential candidate in 2004 and UPF Ambassador for Peace. He and his family have lived in the Netherlands since 1982, where he has established the Afghanistan institute in The Netherlands and become an esteemed adviser to the Dutch government. He has recently taken a position in the government of Afghanistan, with special responsibility for media and communication. He has a particular passion for integrating all the people of his homeland into cooperative nation building and spoke about this at the UPF Diallogcentrum in Amsterdam earlier this year - donderdag, 11 mei, 20.00 - Dialoogcentrum: "Formula for Peace for Af.

After dinner, there was a "Family Evening", where a number conference participants shared songs and experiences.

The conference was a part of a three day European UPF/IIFWP symposium on Leadership, Good Governanceand Innovative Approaches to World Peace (November 10-12). More at UPF conf., Nov.11, Glory House, Bergen aan Zee .

 Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Information
Tparents Home