Plenary, 11 Mar 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Official Report 342KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item of business is, as always on a Wednesday afternoon, time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Ibrahim Issa, the director of the Hope Flowers school in Bethlehem.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like first to express to you my deepest gratitude for giving me this chance to be with you today in this special place. I would also like to thank the Edinburgh festival of middle east spirituality and peace for hosting me and my colleague, Sheikh Ghassan Manasra.

I am director of the Hope Flowers school in Bethlehem. It is a unique Palestinian school, established in 1984 with a philosophy dedicated to peace and democratic education. The word "peace" is normally a charged word, and it may sound very political, but the school is providing a human-rights based education. Peace and the wellbeing of humans are the most basic human rights. Peace is an individual need; it starts from the inside out. Different faiths have called each human being to connect to him or herself and to find inner peace.

For many people, the Hope Flowers school has became a symbol, or unique example, of peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis, while others find it is the home for peace education in the middle east.

At the Hope Flowers school, Muslim and Christian students and teachers are studying together and working together, respectively. The school provides interfaith education instead of religious education. We do not split the students during religious lessons, but keep them together in the same classroom to learn about each other's religion. In this programme, we invite imams, rabbis and Christian ministers to speak about their faith.

The educational premise of the interfaith programme is that tolerance and mutual respect among people of different faiths cannot be taught without creating an opportunity for interfaith dialogue. In view of the many sharply divergent and strongly held opinions concerning the issues facing our region, we feel it is only through developing our tools of communication that we can peacefully confront our differences. Without dialogue, children as well as adults tend to understand "the other" in terms of stereotypes and generalisations. Fear is a natural outcome, and fear can easily lead to violence. The interfaith dialogue should reach not only students at schools, but the teachers and their parents. A successful interfaith programme should include not only the religious aspects, but the language and cultural aspects, in order to promote normative means of communication and understanding for the purpose of bringing together students from different faiths in direct dialogue and joint projects.

We teach our children about each other's faiths in order that they can find similarities in their faiths and, where there are differences, to accept them and to respect each other and become tolerant. The word "respect" is the key to tolerance. The word "respect" comes from the Latin verb "respectare", which means look again—and then have another look.

Again, many thanks to you for all your support for world peace. You are very welcome to come and visit us at the Hope Flowers school in Bethlehem. I appreciate this opportunity to be here with you. Thank you so much. [Applause.]