Ingrid Mattson – Indwelling Spirit Festival of Faiths
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AI: Transcript ©
Sometimes these days, I feel like disappearing.
It would be much more comfortable to stand
behind there or maybe even hide behind the
couch, like, when we were kids and watch
The Wizard of Oz. And when we knew
the witch was coming on, we'd duck behind
the couch.
If only it was so easy to avoid
those evil and upsetting and distressing things in
the world, but it's becoming harder and harder.
I'm often described as a very peaceful person,
and I really don't can't take credit for
it. I'm blessed with,
an ironic character,
great medieval scholar named Ibn Hazem,
in his book, the book of character and
good behavior,
speaks about how
he used to be proud
of his good character,
but then he realized what an illusion that
was
to take credit for something that
he had not created.
One day, he felt sick,
Trouble in his spleen, he said, and he
became so grumpy, and irritable,
and overly sensitive, and he said,
what's wrong with me? Why have I lost
my good character? And then he realized that
it was just an illusion that he had
any control over it in the first place.
It's very easy for a person like me
to be peaceful.
I'm an Americanized Canadian.
I live have always lived my adult life,
and in fact, I was born in a
country Canada, where I was protected by the
rule of law.
I'm a white person,
you know.
I
had
a family that was well off.
I
had good health care,
education.
I mean,
it's very easy for me not to be
disturbed.
What really amazed me when I met my
first Muslim friends when I was studying in
Paris
was how peaceful they were,
and they were black
West African Muslims from Senegal,
who as I
wandered through the streets of paris with them
were subject to the most overt kinds of
racism that I had never experienced.
Maybe some of you are familiar with it,
in America and past days or maybe even
sometimes these days,
but I hadn't been exposed to that and
I was amazed by
their sense of
equanimity
and how they still treated people kindly and
I really wondered where that came from.
And of course not everyone was that way,
but I learned that those who had been
raised and formed
in,
an Islamic spiritual tradition and a Muslim community
that emphasized
good character
and control of character because we're not all
born that way. So if you're born with
a propensity
towards irritation and getting angry, there are things
that you can do,
disciplines
to
work on that reaction,
And they taught me that, and when I
left them and I was so sad, they
taught me the most important thing which is
Allah has destined
and he will do
what he wills.
And they said that in response to my
sadness about
being separated from them.
And they taught me
that we have to see everything in life
as an opportunity for learning, which is what
it means when we say it's all good.
Even when it's evil,
even when there's a clear evil,
it's an opportunity
for us to learn
about Allah's creation,
about God's
power,
about
God's justice,
about what it means to want mercy,
all of these
attributes
of the creator
that are placed within creation,
the reflections, we come to know something about
that. And so every
time of suffering,
even
it's true, suffering is real
yet it's also an opportunity
to learn.
When,
in the early 2000,
I was at the World Economic Forum,
it's a place of trials and temptations, if
there is any place.
And when I met senator Patrick Leahy,
who is a great hero of mine
and he knew I was from Canada,
he asked me
about what I thought about the Maher Arar
case and actually I've been so focused on
other things I didn't know, but he had
been advocating
for this Canadian
of Syrian origin,
who in 2,002
had been seized
at JFK Airport on his return to Canada,
hooded, put on a plane
and rendered
to Syria.
He spent 10 months
in what he describes as a grave like
cell,
horizontal,
3 feet by 6 feet,
where he could hear the screams of people
being tortured.
He was taken out only to be beaten
and further tortured.
His family advocated for him and finally
he was released and brought back.
Now
after many years in a judicial inquiry, the
government of Canada
apologized
and said that
it never should have happened.
They should that there was no evidence that
he had ever done anything wrong. The Syrians
claimed he was a the Syrian regime claimed
he was a terrorist sympathizer
involved.
The government of Canada, the prime minister apologized,
and this is before the Trudeau era. It
was our previous government, which was on the
other side of the political spectrum, yet the
prime minister apologized to him in front of
the whole nation
and awarded him compensation
of $10,000,000
which, you know, is saying you really were
innocent and this really was wrong.
And Senator Patrick Leahy is the only one
who stood up again and again and said,
rendition is wrong.
We cannot
collaborate with torturers
for our interests. What are our interests after
all?
And until now has argued that there should
be an apology.
I say this so that we can understand
a little bit about what this regime, the
Syrian regime is,
that
ordinary people,
Christians,
Muslims,
secular people, in 2,011
stood up
and peacefully protest against.
Everything that's happening there began with peaceful
protest
and those protesters
said,
we need
to show the world
the violence of this regime and we're going
to do it peacefully. We're going to do
it like Gandhi
and we're gonna do it like Martin Luther
King. We're going to do it with people
of all face and on all people of
conscience.
And when the world sees
the truth they will come in and help
us.
That didn't happen.
Their protest were met with violence, which is
predictable.
It happened to Gandhi and it happened to
Martin Luther King,
but the world didn't come in to help
them and they were left alone.
So the peaceful protesters
then
were left with a dilemma and some came
in and used the chaos and the violence
of the government
to now
also commit some violence. And some of them
said, you know, there is a justification
in
the situation where people are being oppressed
to fight an oppressive regime.
And those people, they cited
the Quran
that revealed the permission
to use force
for the defensive people with this verse.
Permission to fight is given to those against
whom war is waged because they are oppressed.
And verily God is all powerful to help
them, those who have been expelled from their
lands without just cause only saying, our Lord
is God.
If God had not allowed one group of
people defend themselves from another, surely there would
have been destroyed monasteries,
churches,
synagogues and mosques where God's name is extolled
greatly.
So this revelation was not for the defense
of Muslims.
It was for the defense of religious freedom
and all those people
wherever they worship in whatever house of worship.
But many of the senior scholars says it
won't said it won't work. This is there
are rules and limits
to using
any kind of force and one of the
conditions is that there has to be a
reasonable chance of it working and that the
harm
will not outweigh the benefit. So it was
a question of
judgment,
and some people went ahead and fought, but
most of them said we will withdraw
and chaos ensued
and it got worse and worse.
And so what was the response
then?
The vast majority of people,
they followed what the Quran says when the
2 sons of Adam
disputed
and the one son went
to kill his brother and his brother responded
in the words of the Quran, if you
will stretch out your hand to kill me,
I will not stretch out my hand to
kill you.
He would rather be an innocent victim
than to have any chance of being an
aggressor,
and so the vast majority withdrew to their
homes and until today
are being subject
to absolute destruction. Just yesterday, 10 children died
in,
building that was bombed.
These are
peaceful people who have decided to put their
fate
in their faith in God
that
if they can't change the situation at least
they will will not be aggressors.
And others,
they did this. They followed the statement of
the Quran.
As for those who are taken in death
by the angels where they are harming their
well, they are harming their own souls.
They will say as an excuse,
but we were weak on earth
so this is why we're doing evil.
This is why we're responding with evil.
And the angels will say, was not God's
earth expansive enough for you to migrate somewhere?
And so in this case they left.
100,
thousands,
100 of thousands, 1,000,000,
They're
picking up their children.
They're picking up
a little bit of food, a jacket,
a blanket and
walking
is their trust in God,
is their peaceful
protest
saying I will not be part of this
violence.
Do we see them?
Do we see them?
Do we see that or do we
do we just ignore that?
We think of Syria, we think of Islam,
we think of Muslims, and we just think,
look at that violence, these people are out
of control, but the millions who are passing,
we ignore
their dignity,
the human dignity that they are expressing
by refusing to be part of it, by
saying this is God's earth and it's wide
and I'm going to find a refuge.
What is our response?
Where is our violence?
Where is our peace?
My former colleague at Hartford Seminary, who's
a Christian theologian, he's a Christian Syrian, Najeeb
Awad
recently
expressed absolute despair. He said, it is obvious
the world has decided that we, the Syrians,
are not part of the human race, but
just
rats worth worthy of extermination.
This despair,
And in the end, when we despair, we
do
what the prophet Mohammed, may God's peace and
blessings upon him, taught us
when there's nothing we can do, when no
one will come to our help,
when he
in a situation
of intense persecution
in the city of Mecca
and his followers, the slaves,
Sumayya
and Yasir and their son Amar were being
tortured
brutally.
And Sumayya was
subject to sexual violence
before she was killed,
in front of her husband, in front of
her son.
And when they were killed and the prophet
Mohammed had no
political
authority to intervene,
he stood by their side and he said,
patience, family of Yazid,
indeed paradise is yours,
that in the end when we are not
able to do anything about evil,
we trust
that our end is with God, the creator.
And when the prophet Mohammed came upon
a man who was beating his slave
and at that time he had no political
authority
to intervene
in these situations of power, he said to
the man,
know that God has more power over you
than you have over him. Know that God
has more power over you than you have
over him.
Know that God has more power over you
than you have over him.
It really comes down to power.
People talk about violence
arising out of fear,
but the fear is a lack of power
that we truly have over our lives and
none of us have any power.
I mean, if success in life is determined
by having power, then we're all losers
because in the end we will all lose
any power we have.
We feel vulnerable
and there's no guarantee of security and that's
why
I stand before you here,
vulnerable
in front of you, like we all stand
in our lives where we walk, where we
go.
We
can try to protect ourselves from all sorts
of risks and we should. We use our
God given reason.
We work together collectively
to have a rational
and compassionate
society,
but in the end there is no guarantee
and we have to accept that vulnerability
and when I feel especially vulnerable and when
I feel especially insecure
and a little bit troubled,
then I say the words that the prophet
Mohammed, may God's peace and blessings be upon
him, taught me.
There is no power and there is no
strength except through God
and I remember that each one of us
is determined by that
and that everyone will do what they will
do
and that my job is to learn
in that situation.
My job
is to see the opportunity
for me
to express
my reliance and awareness of God's power
or to understand
what it means to be in need of
mercy, to be in need
of compassion,
to be in need of justice,
and that vulnerability
allows me
to have the courage to go forward
and try
to exemplify
and and put those
virtues in action with others
for the sake of all of those
whose peace is constantly
being disturbed.
Thank you very much.