Mennonite
Central
Committee

Opening Comments from MCC Leaders

 

Comments By Rev. Ronald Flaming Comments By Albert C. Lobe

 

Address to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran At the East West Dialogue September 26, 2007, Tilman Chapel at the United Nations, NY

By Rev. Ronald Flaming, International Program Director,
Mennonite Central Committee

Mr. President, this is the third opportunity we have had to gather with you as people of faith to discuss issues of concern between our peoples and our countries.  We look forward to our time together and hope that today we can build on our previous conversations.

MCC approaches this conversation from a perspective of nearly 60 years of work in Muslim contexts and a 17 year presence in Iran.

We are motivated to this work by our faith convictions that call us to the kind of neighborliness that our moderator has already spoken about. 

We believe it is critical to engage the Iranian people at all levels in an attempt to build bridges of understanding between our peoples.  Direct people to people encounters and relationships are transformative. It is hard to demonize people who you know by name, or with whom you have shared a meal—and I have had some marvelous meals around Iranian tables. 

We build bridges when we work together in specific projects like humanitarian aid to earthquake victims.  In the larger scope of things, the Red Crescent Society does not need the limited resources we are able to bring.  But they recognize the power of working together in this way and have warmly welcomed us.  This is a bridge.  

Our faith is strengthened by the theological encounter with those that are different from ourselves. To listen to Arnold Snyder from Ontario, engaged with Dr. Shomali of Qom during the recent Muslim/Mennonite theological dialogue, is to begin to understand that these conversations matter.  This is not just a theological exercise.  It is about people who are seeking to live out their faith more fully.  They are looking to each other for help in that process, seeking to understand and clarify our distinctiveness and our commonalities, with respect.   These are bridges. 

For us this meeting is part of a larger journey we are on with the Iranian people.  We believe this journey can lead to a future based on mutual understanding and respect between our peoples.

At this moment this meeting seems particularly urgent.  This is a time of heightened tensions between Iran and western countries, particularly the US.   We hear rumors of war.   Many of us are very concerned because we do not believe that armed conflict will solve the problems between our countries.  We believe that we need to engage each other—not because we agree with each other, but precisely because there are fundamental differences and perspectives that need to be addressed.  We need to build bridges. 

There are three areas in particular that we have talked about in earlier meetings that I want to note at the outset of today’s discussion. 

1. The unjust treatment and suffering of the Palestinian people in the current Palestinian/Israeli conflict is utterly deplorable. We know because our people have worked in Palestine and with Palestinian refugees for almost 60 years now. At the same time there is no question in our minds that the Holocaust is a historical fact and one of the great tragedies of human history. In the spirit of this conversation, you need to know that we are deeply disturbed when your comments about the Holocaust seem to minimize or question this dark chapter of the 20th Century. Yes, let’s study the Holocaust, but let’s study it in a way that recognizes the genocide that it was, and let’s study the conditions that led to this catastrophe so that it is never again repeated.
2. Many persons around the world have interpreted your public rhetoric as a threat to destroy the state of Israel. This does not match what some of us have heard you say privately, where you stated that there is not a military solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. If it is not your intention to destroy Israel, for the sake of understanding, for the sake of peace, for the sake of a bridge, we urge you to clearly and public say so.
3. When we returned from our visit to Iran in February our delegation called for three things of the US and Iran.
   • When we returned from our visit to Iran in February our delegation called for three things of the US and Iran.
   • Cease using language that defines the other as “enemy”
   • Promote more people to people exchanges, including religious leaders, members of Parliament/Congress, and civil society

We continue to advocate these as reasonable next steps toward a more secure future. We affirm the conversations that have since taken place between the US and Iran in terms of Iraq. These conversations need to be expanded to a comprehensive level. We have not seen much reduction in regards to the use of inflammatory language from either country. Also, both the US and Iran have denied visas for learning delegations to each others’ countries. Much of our effort to create bridges between our peoples is dependant on whether or not our governments will grant visas for this kind of activity.

Today we renew our call to both the US and Iran to move forward in these areas.

Mr. President, from our perspective the situation is urgent.  This conversation is urgent.   We need to build bridges while we still can.

When we met with you in February, I noted that the Christian scriptures instruct us to
pray for the leaders of the world.  As a symbol of our commitment to pray for you and for our own leaders, we gave you a lantern similar to the one that is burning here today.  Today, we light this lantern in this setting as a reminder of this commitment.  We also light this lantern as a way of committing our time together this morning before our almighty and merciful God.

Mr. President, we look forward to your comments.

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Address to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran At the East West Dialogue September 26, 2007, Tilman Chapel at the United Nations, NY

By Albert C. Lobe

Introduction and Welcome (The President was met and welcomed at the door by Ron Flaming and myself)

1. Good morning and welcome. My name is Albert C. Lobe and I serve as the Executive Director of the Mennonite Central Committee.
2. On behalf of Christian leaders in the United States and Canada I am pleased to extend a warm welcome to you, Mr.Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. These have been intense and important days for you and your people. We are grateful for your interest in this conversation. Our religious cousins, the Amish, tell us that conversation is essential to unity, to us holding together as a community. So we are here, grateful to be here with you.
3. We have described this as “an interfaith encounter”, a time of dialogue, of conversation and prayerful reflection among the children of Abraham. We meet in this Chapel, this sacred space, and we believe that God is with us in this encounter. This space calls forth, indeed invites extraordinary honesty, graciousness and respect, and reminds us of the sacred traditions and texts which under gird our faith. Perhaps our particular narratives can provide the framework within which we address our differences; perhaps our “religiousness” can serve as a bond for this conversation. There are those in our communities who say that we are naïve, that this dialogue holds no hope for peace.  We believe they are wrong.
4. Mr. President, we are not only Americans and Canadians, we are a people that worship the God of Abraham, and we speak with that voice. We, like you, are concerned about matters of peace and justice. We, like you, are persons of deep faith; we understand, as your poet Saadi says that “human beings are like parts of a body…when one part is hurt and in pain, the other cannot remain in peace and be quiet.”
5. We are the kind of people who do not permit our national leaders to define for us who our enemies are, and in so far as we have enemies, we believe that we are called to love them, rather than destroy them.  It is with deep sadness that we observe that the governments of the United States and Iran appear, at this point in time, very much in an enemy posture and we are worried. We are people who call our own nations to be instruments of God’s peace; we criticize our governments; we believe that under God the Creator, we must call all nations to the same common task. And so we are here, together, Mr. President, to talk about peace building.
6. Jelaluddin Rumi, your wonderful poet, describes well the anxiety and the hope of this time:
   • Today, like every other day, we wake up empty And frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
7. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that “God will judge between the nations and settle disputes between many peoples. They will beat their swords into plough shares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”
8. I want to situate this conversation in another place and I suggest that it be our starting point. Responding to the question of “What must I do to inherit eternal life” Jesus said “you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.”  The organizations and churches represented here this morning are committed to neighborliness! How, concretely, can we together move towards greater neighborliness? Mr. President, we mean to extend to you the hospitality which a head of state deserves and we regret that it is not always so!  When we are at our best we are respectful and rooted in a natural sense of awe and gratitude; when we are respectful we serve our neighbors with love and pleasure, and we are a people of welcome and embrace. We understand that before gracious Christianity is public, it must be intensely personal. The church at its best brings the world before God and intercedes for it. We are not always faithful, but we try hard.
9. Please refer to the March 5, 2007 news release about Maryam Daneshwar, who moved to Canada in 1998 with her parents, Yousef and Masoumeh and her older brother Mojtaba. Yousef, Maryam’s father, was the first Iranian scholar selected to study in Canada as part of an exchange program between MCC and the Imam Khomeini Institute in Qom, and is currently completing his Phd in the Philosophy of Religion at the Toronto Mennonite Theological Center. The family lives in Kitchener, Ontario, where both children studied at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate. Maryan graduated from high school there this past June; she is a stellar student!! In her 9th grade she was invited to draw a large mural for the Rockway Chapel. Her mural, a collage of images symbolizes, she says, the similarities of the three Abrahamic religions – Islam, Judaism and Christianity and includes a rock to symbolize the stability of God’s love, roses to symbolize love, books to represent the scriptures and a dove to symbolize peace.  Let us not miss this opportunity to identify concrete things we will do together.
10. We are in the sacred space of this chapel and I thank Ms Harriett Olsen, of the Women’s Division of the Methodist Church for their kindness in making Tilman Chapel available for this conversation (Ms Olsen made a brief statement of welcome).
11. Before we invite you to address us, Mr. President, I want to outline the format for this dialogue:
• President Ahmadinejad, we invite you to address us for 20 minutes. We will ring, respectfully, a soft bell at 18 minutes, asking you, Mr. President, to conclude your comments at 20 minutes. Mr. President, please speak to us from your heart, for when the heart speaks, everyone takes notes.
• Following your address, the first member of the panel will have 5 minutes to respond and ask a question. Mr. President, you will have 5 minutes to respond to the question before the second panelist responds and asks his/her question.
• We will watch the time carefully; each speaker will be reminded at the four minute mark by a soft bell.
• After each of the 5 panelists have responded and asked their question and the President responded, we hope to have time for a number of questions, gathered on these cards, from the floor. One question per card…please be short and to the point wit your questions.
• I am pleased to welcome the five panelists: Ms. Mary Ellen McNish, General Secretary, American Friends Service Committee; Dr. Glen Stassen, Professor of Christian Ethics, Fuller Theological Seminary; Father Drew Christianson, Editor of the magazine “America”; Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton, General Secretary, Canadian Council of Churches; Rev. Chris Ferguson, Representative to the UN for the Commission of Churches on International Affairs.
• One question: Please help us understand who the real Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is and tell us what you are passionate about other than politics. When the heart speaks, everyone takes notes.
• Let us gather our thoughts around these words from the New Testament and Koran (brief readings from Romans and from the Koran).
12. Welcome Mr. President. You are among us, in sacred space (The President spoke for 20 minutes, followed by the panel discussion).

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