Mote and Beam

I really, genuinely try my best to look at both sides of every subject and keep a cool and level head but there are some things that just get my Irish up. With apologies to my friend John Burgess, from whom I got the links that appear in this post, I refuse to be lectured on religious tolerance by King Abdullah, who reigns over a country notable for its lack of religious tolerance.

From the Washington Post:

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 12 — World leaders, senior diplomats and religious figures condemned extremism and terrorism Wednesday at a U.N. conference on interfaith dialogue that brought Israel and Arab countries together to promote tolerance.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the event’s chief sponsor, opened the meeting with a call for greater understanding in the Middle East, saying that religious and cultural differences in the region have “engendered intolerance, causing devastating wars and considerable bloodshed.”

Here’s the text of the king’s speech.

In my religious tradition there’s a saying with which the king may not be familiar (Matthew 7:5): “first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye”.

A good place to start encouraging greater religious tolerance might be in his own country in which Christian guest workers are not allowed to practice their religion freely, without persecution or hindrance.

5 comments… add one
  • I’m afraid you’ve missed the point of Abdullah’s speech.

    You are not his intended audience. Saudis in Saudi Arabia are.

    He is attempting to demonstrate by example that talking is better than violence. This is consistent with his meeting the Pope, holding the Madrid Conference, establishing the series of National Dialogues (starting in 2002) to get Saudis to talk with each other rather than hector and condemn each other.

  • I don’t know who the audience for the king’s speech is, John. Has the king no forums in his own country for being heard by his own people?

    How much attention did the speech receive in the KSA? How would the people there who did pay attention to it interpret it? I have no idea whatever on these subjects.

  • He does, but as I pointed out in my blog, the response seems to be either silence, or “We heard you the first time.”

    Clearly, prominent Saudis (and other Muslims) want to avoid actively engaging the substance of the Saudi King’s initiative. By pushing interfaith dialogue repeatedly in different forums the King both highlights this failure and attempts to make discussion of it unavoidable.

    If it works, it won’t work quickly. For that to happen, IMO, the King would have to do something shocking to jolt his people out of their social inertia. However, it is precisely the resistance to such shocks that is the foundation of stability in Saudi Arabia and thus makes such an approach unthinkable.

    Hence the repetitive approach. Learning by rote. But us Westerners aren’t really the audience.

  • Fletcher Christian Link

    “A good place to start encouraging greater religious tolerance might be in his own country in which Christian guest workers are not allowed to practice their religion freely, without persecution or hindrance.”

    And a good way to make a start on that might be to make Barad-Dur (AKA Mecca) into a glass-lined parking lot.

    “He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword”. Sorry, I don’t know the Biblical reference for that.

  • His visit is receiving wall-to-wall coverage (not surprising when the government has significant influence over the media).

    Solomon’s right that not everyone is buying it back home. But even that’s not the point. Having some buy it is better than leaving them at the mercy of the zealots. He is telling his people that it’s not just him, but the entire world that wants an end to religious bigotry and extremism.

    Bush, in his speech, made the point that freedom of religion is just one aspect of freedom of speech, without which there are few tools against extremism.

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