On the Middle East: A Call for Investment in Peacemaking
Marc Gopin Wednesday, 1 March 2006
In our violent world of distrust, it is ever more tempting to retreat behind literal and figurative walls, dealing with our adversaries only through disengagement and denunciation. This tendency has been escalating rapidly in relations between the West and Islam, and is particularly acute in the contemporary Middle East. In the face of enemies in a perceived civilization conflict, antagonists on all sides inevitably become skeptical empiricists. They say, "Show me proof that I can trust you, because I have plenty of evidence suggesting you want to wipe me off the map." Accordingly, in global inter-religious peacemaking today there is an urgent need to break the cycle of distrust through creative investment in gestures and justice.
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