WASHINGTON, DC: After more than six decades of conflict in the Middle East, all the king's horses and all the king's men still can't find the right formula to bring about an end to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. And neither could the United States, Russia, the Europeans and the United Nations. Nor could the Arab League or individual Arab states, from the richest to the not so rich. So, perhaps it's time for the king's men to allow the bishop's men to try their hand at peacemaking - or in this case, the rabbi's men and the imam's men. In the six decades since the state of Israel was formed in 1948, there have been seven wars - more than one every decade. It appears obvious that after all this time, wasted efforts and billions of dollars spent on armaments, politicians are still unable to come up with a viable answer to the Middle East riddle. And it's not for lack of attempts. At last check there have been more than 20 different peace initiatives since the start of the conflict. All have failed. Starting with efforts by Sweden's Count Folke Bernadotte, the special UN envoy to the Middle East in 1947-48 at the time of the British Mandate in Palestine (Bernadotte was later assassinated by an extremist Zionist group), right up to the most recent Arab Peace Initiative - not one of the plans has produced a general and lasting peace between all the Arabs and the Israelis. This may well be because so far the only tool deployed has been secular politics. Religion, a major component in the conflict has been kept out of the peace-making process, although it is very much a part of the conflict. One person who has been working to bring together bishops, rabbis and imams is himself an imam: Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Born in Kuwait and educated in England, Egypt and Malaysia, Imam Feisal, who holds a Master of Science in plasma physics, believes that religion can be turned into a tool to help resolve the current conflict. Ali Bardakoglu, president of the Diyanet, Turkey's highest religious authority, told me during an interview a few years ago that "there are a lot of problems within Islam to resolve. If religion leads to clashes, then there is something missing . He said that the only tool that can be used to correct those who interpret and use religion in the wrong way, is religion itself. Indeed, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which initially began as a dispute over real estate - a struggle between two people fighting over the same turf - has over the years morphed into a religious war. And since God has been brought into the conflict, it has become much more violent. Religious wars tend, on the whole, to be much more brutal as more often than not each side believes - and one may add, wrongly so - that committing the worst atrocities will be forgiven because the slaughter is being done in the name of a supreme being. Each side believes it is killing in the name of its God. Imam Feisal is convinced that because of religion's powerful influence over many of the protagonists, if used in the right way, it would be possible to convince the antagonists to cease their aggression. The imam hopes to capture this audience (or at least their hearts) and show them how to accept the true face of their religion, whether they be Muslims, Jews or Christians. For this purpose, the imam established the Cordova Initiative, an organization that is using religion to try to solve the problems of the Middle East and promote reconciliation between the Muslim world and the West. The imam knows he has no small task ahead, but believes that through his initiative, he might just succeed. "With the help of rabbinical scholars to look at how we can take these verses which the (Israeli) settlers have used to justify the settlements (in the occupied West Bank) , says Imam Feisal, they can be shown that their particular interpretations of the Old Testament are not correct, he said. And with Muslim extremists, again, the imam believes he can use the same argument, showing those who resort to violence that it is counter to the very idea of Islam. Claude Salhani is the editor of the Middle East Times and a political analyst in Washington. This is an adapted version of an article originally published in the Khaleej Times. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from the Khaleej Times.
