The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and Interfaith Dialogue: What is it Good For?

Abstract

The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) was founded in 2005, following the devastating attacks by al Qaeda on the United States on 11 September 2001 (‘9/11’). The article examines the UNAOC’s involvement in interfaith dialogue by focusing on three faith-based entities with which the Alliance regularly cooperates in joint interfaith events: The Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, Religions for Peace, and United Religions Initiative. The article concludes by suggesting that, while such cooperation is no doubt well-meaning and probably does no harm, it is unclear whether it actually advances the goals of interfaith dialogue and cooperation: reduced tensions and conflicts.

Keywords:

• Civilizations
• United Nations
• interfaith dialogue
• conflict
• religion

ORCID

Jeffrey Haynes http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8434-6951

Notes

1 In this article, the “West” refers to the following regions and countries: Europe, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. The term is used to refer to any country and/or geographical region whose culture is “western”, that is, historically and culturally heavily influenced by western European cultures. In this chapter, the “Muslim world” is synonymous with the notion of a transnational community of Islamic believers, the ummah, suggesting shared religious, cultural and civilisational characteristics.

2 António Guterres, appointed in January 2017, has not publicly made known his views about UNAOC and the value of its work.

3 There is of course a problem with comparing like with like here. While the “West” is a geographical area—albeit a dispersed one, that is, if Australia and New Zealand are included along with North America and (Western) Europe—the “Muslim world” is often thought of as a “religious” entity. On the other hand, Huntington (1997) and others have sought to identify Western civilisational characteristics which are said to differ from those which the Muslim world exhibits. Chief among these is the issue of individual versus collective rights and responsibilities.

4 Membership of the HLG and its 2006 Report are available at http://www.unaoc.org/repository/report.htm

5 These terms are often used synonymously in the UN and scholarly literature. See Haynes (forthcoming) for a lengthy and detailed discussion of the problems and challenges of trying to find and use an appropriate term for both scholarly and policy purposes which can encompass both the faith-based and non-faith-based elements of “cultures” and “civilizations”.

6 There is an informative 2015 interview with Al-Nasser at http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/talk-to-al-jazeera/articles/2015/2/9/nassir-abdulaziz-al-nasser-talks-to-antonio-mora.html In the interview he talks about what the UNAOC seeks to achieve.

7 It should be noted that the UNAOC does not define what it means by use of terms such as: “civilization”, “culture”, “the West”, or the “Muslim world”. Part of the reason may be that, following UN norms, potentially controversial discussions about such issues are avoided in the interests of sometimes bland and uninformative consensus.

8 The relationship between “the West” and the “Muslim world” is not the only “civilisational” relationship which the UNAOC might be interested in. For example, there is that between China and the West or Russia and the West which are also controversial. Yet, the fact is that the UN has been focused on—some might say obsessed with—this issue since 9/11. Interested states fund the UNAOC’s activities voluntarily and those states are overwhelmingly interested in dealing with “Islamic radical terrorism”—to use President Trump’s preferred designation—rather than focus on any other potentially problematic civilisational issue. See Haynes (forthcoming) on this issue.

9 “All members of the Group of Friends have been invited to appoint a Focal Point for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in their capitals or headquarters. Focal Points are officials working in Governments and international organizations who coordinate the UNAOC’s related work in their institutions, facilitate and coordinate regular communication between each member of the Group of Friends and the Office of the UNAOC in New York. Through the network of Focal Points, the UNAOC benefits from national and international inputs and contribution to its strategic orientation, programs and initiatives. The High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations convenes Focal Points annual meetings and working sessions in the framework of the annual forums of UNAOC” https://www.unaoc.org/who-we-are/group-of-friends/

10 The UNAOC Group of Friends is a 140+ member body comprising 120 states and 26 significant NGOs. Details at https://www.unaoc.org/who-we-are/group-of-friends/

11 Given that there are c.350 FBOs registered with ECOSOC alone, it is clear that the achievement of bringing together 38—that is, c. 11 percent—in a UN-focused umbrella body is a work in progress.

12 The CRNGO was non-active for some years due to a lack of interest from faith-based NGOs at the UN. Why this was the case is hard to be sure about, other than to mention that until the 1990s the UN more generally had little interest in faith-based actors and that in this context it may have seemed futile to try to organize. (Interview with Revd. Dr Liberato Bautista, head of CRNGO, January 2017).

13 “About”, The Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations, accessed 3 April, 2017, https://rngos.wordpress.com/about/.

14 Beittinger-Lee (2017: fn 31, 255) reports that “[a]n older membership list from 2005 showed 108 members, however those reflected organizations on CRNGO’s mailing list and not paying members. The membership fee is US$25 and is payable in June of every year.”

15 The designation is in quotation marks as the author, who has recently written a book on the UNAOC, is unclear what “the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Council” is. There is no mention of such a Council at the UNAOC website, nor has the author come across it in interviews or discussions for this article, or more widely, in the context of two years (2015–2017) of research into the UNAOC.

16 Like Dr Vendley, Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah was a speaker at UNAOC’s 7th Global Forum, Baku, Azerbaijan, 5-7 April 2016. Details at http://baku.unaoc.org/wp-content/uploads/Forum_booklet_web.pdf.

17 The 2014 event was followed by similar events in 2015 and 2016. Details at http://peacems.com/?events=religions-taking-action-together-to-counter-violent-religious-extremism&lang=en.

18 Abu Dhabi-based, Forum for Prompting Peace in Muslim Societies, works “mostly towards resolving civil strife that in the majority of cases is dressed in the cloak of religion. Those who use religion to validate and justify their violent acts rely on their own flawed understanding and interpretation of religion. Hence, we refute them with a scholastic approach by providing not a counter narrative, but rather the primary narrative of peace and prosperity that relies upon sound religious texts in order to provide the antidote and to provide them with the correct interpretation and understanding” (http://peacems.com/?banners=national-dialogue-conference-house-of-state-address-by-shaykh-abdallah-bin-bayyah&lang=en).

Additional information

Funding

The Enhancing Life Project, under auspices of Profs. Bill Schweiker, University of Chicago, and Gunter Thomas, University of the Ruhr at Bochum (http://enhancinglife.uchicago.edu/). The funding came from the John Templeton Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Jeffrey Haynes

Jeffrey Haynes is emeritus professor of politics at London Metropolitan University. He is the author or editor of 45 books, 80 peer-reviewed articles and 120 chapters in edited books. His most recent book is The United Nations Alliance of Civilisations and the Pursuit of Global Justice: Overcoming Western versus Muslim Conflict and the Creation of a Just World Order, New York and Lampeter, Edwin Mellen Press, 2018.