Religion, Conflict and Kitchen Diplomacy: Where My Divinity Education is Taking Me

Pastor James and Imam Ashafa, Nigerian peacemakers

“You know you are everything that’s wrong with this nation. It’s people just like you, with your liberal thinking and compassion and nothing bad to say about anyone that is going to get the rest of us killed,” he said hovering a foot and three decades above me. I ran my fingertips along the grout between countertop tiles, trying to trace the way back to calm. The conversation had escalated far too quickly after I had poised what seemed an innocent question: “What are you passionate about right now?”

Roy had popped into my aunt and uncle’s home during my weekend stay, an aunt and uncle with whom I was joyfully reconnecting after the 15 years that followed my parent’s divorce, and consequent familial separation. More than anything I wanted to keep peace in their kitchen. I had had plenty of battles in my own kitchen, resulting in a deep aversion to conflict. The question itself, about Roy’s passions, was inspired by a friend who insisted it was a much more generous conversational entrée than, “So, what you do for a living?” Instead my question became the launch pad for an unforeseen political diatribe, in which Roy lambasted Jews for claiming excessive victimhood and for their desire to take over the world. Red flag, anyone? He then went on to explain how Islam was an inherently violent religion because of the Qur’an’s injunction to kill infidels and wage jihad against the unbelievers. “Have you actually read the Qur’an?” he exclaimed, “There are no passages in the Bible that even come close to that kind of violence.”

“Well, I’m afraid there are,” I replied. “Before ‘turn the other cheek’ we had ‘an eye for an eye,’ and a psalm that promoted the smashing of one’s enemy’s babies against a rock. Even Jesus has some frightening things to say about ‘coming not to bring peace, but the sword.’ Christian scripture is uncomfortably riddled with violence, but that doesn’t mean that every Christian has resorted to these passages or a fundamentalist reading of them to justify bloodshed.”

“No, I don’t think you’ve read the Qur’an and you don’t know how much they hate us,” he presses, speaking now in generalizations that would make any religion scholar squirm. However, his generalizations are well-rehearsed and interspersed with Qur’anic extractions I have not studied in their full context. He has clearly read much on the subject (though I would dispute his sources) and if I do not respond within a half a second of his remarks, he calls me uninformed.

Acutely aware of how volatile the conversation has become, I reach desperately in my bag of mediation tricks to recover some kitchen diplomacy. “I think I hear you saying…that there are Muslim extremists who abhor everything the West stands for, and will detonate their own bodies to destroy it. I can only imagine how strong your memory of 9-11 is here in New York.”

“Yah, you’re from California, you have no idea what I’m talking about,” he interjects.

“Yes, that may be partially true, ” I inch forward, “But I do know too many peace-loving Muslims who are motivated by the scripture and teachings of Islam to create a more just and humane world. To call every Muslim a terrorist is to simply reverse the narrative that Al Qaeda used to attack the United States.  It means that we are allowing ourselves to be defined by the worst thing that has ever happened to us, and to be perpetually governed by trauma and the impulse to retaliate.”

The words did not come smoothly. Mostly in fits and starts from a jaw I kept locked so that it would not tremble. I watched waves of tears rise and fall within me, inwardly begging them to subside. Because the last thing I wanted was to confirm this man’s image of me as a hopelessly fragile idealist who could not stand the heat of a debate, much less stomach the brutality of which he spoke.

I wished that after six years of studying religion and this summer’s internship in conflict resolution, I could render a stronger, wittier, mind-blowing argument in defense of religious tolerance. But in truth I do not study religion to acquire talking points that will ultimately win me kitchen debates.  For one, I would rather spend my energy practicing the most basic, but no less challenging, commandment to love my neighbor. That principle alone keeps me quite occupied. And from most of the debates I have witnessed, talking points usually only equip people to talk past one another in futile rounds of vitriol.  And then of course, there’s the queasy sensation all conflict produces in my gut.

But in this moment standing across from Roy, hearing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia mistaken for patriotism, I felt, as a student of religion and personal friend to many Muslims and Jews, an ethical obligation to respond. To be silent would have implied consent, and how many horrors have been committed against humanity because of our collective silence?

After my conversation with Roy abated, I made my way straight to the shower, to the private release of long-held tears. Why are you crying? You are fine, you can handle this, I negotiated with my injured self. This only occasioned more sobbing. 

Finally it occurred to me that self-flagellation was itself a form of violence and that perhaps the most peaceful way of proceeding would be to accept both my proclivity towards tears and the courage to speak through them. Because to enter authentically into dialogue I cannot carry an artillery of talking points, and to mediate conflict, I risk my own vulnerability, and with that the occasional emotional hemorrhaging. So what if I cry? The important thing, I am learning, is that I dared to speak. And with that I washed my hair.