Latest / America's Why Project / Episode 14: How Religion Shapes the Way Americans Listen - Listening Across Religious Divides

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Episode 14: How Religion Shapes the Way Americans Listen - Listening Across Religious Divides · America's Why Project

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I really think that in society today we need that.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: We need to be able to have these conversations in a safe way and ask difficult questions.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the America's Why Podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm your host, Matt Levinger.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Today, as part of our chapter on learning to listen, we are welcoming to our podcast a beloved professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, Dr.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Raleigh Lall.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Lall recently founded an organization called the Global Affairs and Religion Network, or Garnet.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I found particularly intriguing about this project is that her prior work has focused principally on issues of transnational security.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically, she works on issues like organized crime, terrorism, human rights, and other hard security topics.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now she's moving very much into the issue of how conversations about religion can make our world more secure.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Raleigh, welcome to our show.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to have you here.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to just start by asking you to talk a little bit about your own trajectory of how you moved into this field of religion and security.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thanks.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's funny because um often people think that it sounds so disparate and removed from each other, but in actuality, it is my work on extremism and terrorism that brought me straight to this door.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was many years ago, actually, right before the pandemic, I would say.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had been teaching this for a long time, and every year, every semester, we would be talking about terrorism and extremism and Islamic jihad, uh, Christian fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalists and extremists, uh, Buddhist nationalists, uh, Israeli nationalism, I mean, you name it, we would be discussing it in my classes and how extremism was forming, what we can do about it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized that over and over again, you know, the students had questions and I needed to have answers about how religion was playing into this.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Why, you know, students wanted to know why uh why are religions pushing people to be extremists?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, no, that's not the way it is.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I had to explain the difference between what the religions were saying, what the religious books were saying, and what the extremists were saying, so that I could actually correct the students and correct ourselves and our approach and and be accurate as much as possible.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized when doing this that, you know, most of the people working in security are not accurate.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: They're making terrible generalizations about extremists and mixing together religious people with extremists.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, okay, we we need to straighten this out.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how best to straighten this out?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: But by asking the actual religious experts.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought to myself, well, while I'm, I feel that I'm relatively knowledgeable on certain religious topics on Islam because I'd been studying it for a long time or Hinduism.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I said, you know, I need I need more.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, how do I do this?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh my goodness, I'm part of a university.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: George Washington University has a religion department.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I reached out to Irene Oh, Professor Irene O, the chair of the religion department.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Irene, would you guys be interested in having conversations with us at the Elliott School and discussing how religion and international security intersect?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Amazing, we'd love to.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we formed this group where we met monthly and um and and one faculty member would present and then we would discuss.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: And by doing this, I was able to educate myself and have a jolly good time at the same time.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I would connect students with the appropriate faculty.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it ends up being a really great knowledge base that we can tap into.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: For any religion, we can find the actual accurate representation of what scholars of that religion really believe and really believe the interpretation should be, and then compare and contrast that with what the extremists are saying.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So this sounds like a real listening project where you're bringing together experts, you're bringing together students, you're bringing together community members from various faith traditions, and you're learning to listen to each other.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, um I'll add in there that the students got so into this they wanted to join the faculty group.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I can't do that, but I formed a separate group.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we actually have two groups now.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Garnet has a student group with master students who one of them presents every month, and the rest of students discuss, and it's a way for everybody to learn more about how religion and extremism intersect.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And absolutely, it's a listening, it's a listening project.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons why it's so important for us to be talking about religion is that this podcast has as a central focal point the question of how can we learn to solve hard problems together.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And to solve hard problems together, we need to work together.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We need to have better ways of cooperating.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Historically, virtually every human civilization has been uh founded on religion or has religious identity as a central component of its origin.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Religion is among the most powerful connecting forces in humanity.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, as your own work illustrates, it has also often been among the most divisive forces in history.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: What accounts for these two contrasting elements of religion?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Its capacity both to connect people in profound ways and its capacity to divide?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I wish I could say that yes, it's obviously just been a connecting force, but as you have astutely mentioned, it's it's actually been horrific in terms of wars and its creation of conflict as well.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot lies in here, and it's the same force.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the same force that brings people together in a sense of identity, religious identity, that they then maybe tie to national identity or ethnic identity.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's drawing people together.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happens is you have a group of people that also encompasses some people who believe that their concept of the truth and their concept of the universe and God and the spiritual world is the correct one, and it is the only correct one.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when we find that particular thought process, and we then intersect it with the fact that there may be a territory next door who doesn't agree, that is when we find the same connecting force becoming a divisive force.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is when you have a group of religious individuals who believe that their way is the only way, and that others may must follow the same way.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: That urge to convert, that urge to take over with your worldview, with your religious worldview, is what causes the divisiveness and something that needs to be avoided.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, so many religions have both factions.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that the entirety of the religion feels that.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, usually I would say the majority, maybe even the vast majority, of people who believe in a certain religion are absolutely fine with other people of other religions doing their own thing and and following on with their own beliefs.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: But there is the minority, there is the faction in most religions that says no.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um I fundamentally am not okay with the fact that other people are believing something different than myself.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I must change that.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that thought process is the one that I would say actually leads very much towards extremism.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit about religion in America.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: The United States Constitution establishes a strict separation between church and state.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in that way, America is very different than many, many countries that to this day have established state religions.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: But historically, many immigrants to America have been members of persecuted religious groups.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the quest for a place where people could freely practice their religion was uh a fundamental motivator for many people coming to the United States.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And today, levels of church attendance in America are much higher than in many countries that do have established state churches, such as in Western Europe.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do you account for this kind of paradoxical nature that a nation founded on the separation or that has a foundational principle of the separation of church and state is actually a highly religious country?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's it's it is a fascinating aspect of America, isn't it?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's a few things, there's a there's actually multiple um issues at play here.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: One of them is uh it's it's actually very fascinating.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: In Europe, the fact that the church and state were not separated to a certain extent led to, I would say, the degradation of the power of the church.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because people really felt that um their church wasn't independent, people felt that it was kind of political, um, the the state was also able to meddle with the church, the church meddled with the state.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I would say to some extent, this actually led to people having less of a religious feeling when connected to their church in many European countries.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: On the flip side, in the US, the church actually being very distinct from the state helped people feel that, oh, well, this is something that is truly mine and something that the state is not going to interfere with.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: To the extent that in the US, it's almost more that people find their church so powerful that they would prefer to try to influence the state with the powers of the church.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this is exactly what Europe tried to avoid, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um church the the the Europeans were very concerned in France and Britain that you know the Pope or whoever would be getting into the affairs too much.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, in many ways, they detoothed, they defanged the church in Europe because they said we don't want that type of influence.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um there is that one, though those aspects, in addition to the fact that some of the people that came to America initially came here because they were considered religious radicals in Europe.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so that uh that faction, that set of factions of religious radicals who were expelled from Europe, but not just from Europe, we are now seeing the same thing coming from Muslim countries today, that people who are sometimes considered religious radicals in Islamic countries are rejected and ejected and end up in the US and other European countries because they could be imprisoned or persecuted in their own country for being religious radicals.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the US being a center of religious freedom does tend to attract religious radicals.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's that's so interesting because it seems like you're you're pointing to certain aspects of religion as publicly practiced in the United States and and in some other countries as well, that you know, point in two contrasting directions.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh on the one hand, it sounds like you're saying that the principle of religious freedom is actually vitally important for helping religious groups to flourish independent of the state.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you're also saying that when religious groups become very powerful in their beliefs and in their capacity to mobilize their adherents, they may actually try to influence the state in ways that that may not be entirely positive.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I I believe that this is something that needs to be looked at, observed, and um thought about in a deep way in terms of the relationship of the religion and the state in the United States.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the sense that I think that they're having debates like this also in Europe today.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I think around the world this is something that hasn't been taken seriously enough in the modern day.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell So part of any community is defining who's in the in-group, who's like us, and who's in the out-group, somebody who's very different uh and perhaps opposed to our interests.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: How does this play into the role of religion?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what role can religion play in creating and reinforcing these kinds of boundaries between in-groups and out-groups?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that religion could play a very uh good role.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, often when those boundaries that people are building around their own group become very strong, then it can be a hindrance to having a sense of community.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, right now, I I would say that religious communities, the building of religious communities is excellent.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a way for people to feel that they have family, that they have people around them that they can trust.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: It helps build social fabric, peace, um, all of these things which are very good.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Economic support, even if someone is not doing well within a religious community, usually the community will come together to help support them.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that is very positive.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now, um, when you start getting into issues like um where you meld the issue of ethnicity with religion, now you have combined two disparate aspects of identity.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're just saying, okay, all Christians are loving and we all love each other and we're quite happy together, this is beautiful.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now you have possibly, potentially, a group of white Christians, black Christians, Korean Christians, you know, and so forth, and Latin American Christians all together in one beautiful community.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: But now if you start throwing into that the fact that you might have white Christian nationalism or anything like that, now you have the in-group-out-group problem of, you know, okay, now is it the white Christians against the black Christians?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Are we, you know, how are we dividing ourselves?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that is something that the churches themselves should be involved in, avoiding.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the churches, the heads of churches should be involved in saying, hey, you know, this religion is meant to bring us together.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the fact that these religions, for hundreds of years, uh, for a long time, have had their own divisions doesn't help because now you have the issue of the Protestant churches and the Catholic churches or the Shias and the Sunnis, and you know, you have the divisions within each religion that also create this sense of divisiveness.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I can only say that this is something that really we should endeavor to try to overcome as a country.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and in whatever way possible, political leaders should try to encourage going through those barriers and trying to say, okay, not only should we not deal with this sort of inter-Christian rivalry or inter-Muslim rivalry, but we should even be looking at Christian-Muslim friendship and across, you know, Jewish and Hindus and Buddhists and everybody, looking at how we can make this a positive force.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then beyond that, even, we have to think about the fact that many, if not most, Americans may consider themselves uh non-religious but spiritual at this point.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: We have men, uh a very significant portion of the population who are not church going or say they may not even believe in God.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and we need to make sure that everyone is part of the same community.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: It shouldn't be a community of, oh, these people believe in God and these are the godless people.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we need to make sure that we don't fall into that trap, which in the past we did very easily during the Cold War, with, you know, these are religious countries and these are atheist communist, you know, pinkos, and we need to kill them all.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we need to think very deeply about what we mean by community, who is part of a community, and how do we build that community, despite the fact that we have different beliefs.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like part of the work you're doing with the uh Garnet organization is to be thinking about how these divisions come into place, and what are some practical strategies that we can use in making religion more inclusive and building communities of shared purpose.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there are many things that can be done that I recommend to the students and the students themselves come up with.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: One of them is, of course, getting religious leaders involved, moderate religious leaders who have the faith of their communities and getting them on board with this type of interfaith community building, and get them involved in making sure that they're spreading sort of moderate interpretations and educating their communities on what are the moderate interpretations of the religions that we're dealing with.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there's all of that, and then of course, you have the students themselves and the faculty and everyone around us making sure that we educate ourselves to know what it is that uh we're talking about.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when we watch the news, I often tell my students, these are students at the graduate level, and I believe that they're very knowledgeable.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, when I tell them at the beginning that Hezbollah and Islamic State are not the same, are very different.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: They are of different religious backgrounds and they probably hate each other.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: The students are often surprised.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: They don't understand the difference between Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, you know, what what is the ideological difference between these groups and how does it differ from the typical person on the street?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I do believe that educating people, educating our neighbors, our families, our friends about what we're talking about so that they have better knowledge and don't have these biases against other groups.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that will help as well.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, Raleigh.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I want to hear a little bit more as we get into this conversation about listening across religious divides, of how Garnet itself has brought together students and professors from a wide range of faith traditions, and what you've learned about listening to each other.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been um super exciting actually.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Garnet is one of the most fun things I do every month, um, whether it's the meeting with the faculty where we all discuss or with the students.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: What it's been able to do is often, you know, in the classroom or every day when we read the news, something will pop up, whether it's you know, Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar attacking Rohingya communities or the Israel Palestine conflict.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is that's coming up, we often find that there are not enough comfortable spaces where we can discuss this just in everyday life and not.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Enough places where someone is knowledgeable enough to give proper insights about these things.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And what's great about Garnet is that this is the space.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's a safe space.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's an intelligent space where everyone has done some readings in advance, so they all have something thoughtful to say.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a space where we know no one is going to go and, you know, post about it afterwards online and say, oh, so-and-so said this.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a safe space.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I really think that in society today, we need that.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: We need to be able to have these conversations in a safe way and ask difficult questions, you know, like, what does this mean?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this group doing that?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why did this happen?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Who's at fault?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody wants to know.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: And in the Garnet group, you know, we have someone, whether it's a faculty member or a student, will explain the situation in a clinical fashion, you know, giving the facts, giving the data, telling some stories, and they'll say, This is what's happening.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: These are the two sides of the dispute or of whatever it is that we're talking about.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's discuss, let's come up with solutions.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think we should do?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think they should do?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I have found that to be really lovely.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a great source of information.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's been the moment where we can dig deep and discuss with others, not just in our own head.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and again, discuss in a way that no one is going to feel offended, that you can say, oh, well, you know, I came up with this idea, and someone says, Well, you know, that doesn't seem like a very good idea.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you say, Oh, yeah, you're right, that's not a very good idea.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Glad that we talked about it here right now before anyone said it publicly.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, those are some of the really um great, I would say, aspects of having a group like Garnet.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how do you avoid giving offense and how do you avoid taking offense?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the rules in the group, and I would say is good for general society as well, is that, you know, when you're saying something, and don't say anything insulting, don't use derogatory terms, you know, and and simply say things in as factual a way as possible that, oh, well, this group, you know, uh killed a thousand people and uh says that they're evil human beings.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, who's wrong?
• 24:32
  unknown: You know?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Were those people behaving in an evil manner before they were accused of being evil?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then and then we we we just say, okay, well, let's look at the facts.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Someone else tell us, and someone else will say, well, you know what, before this conflict happened between the two groups, um, that other group, they were, you know, um, I don't know, um, being poor and uh looking bedraggled and looking like a shame on society.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and so, you know, we discuss, okay, well, what what could this mean?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are is this just plain discrimination?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Were they behaving in an offensive manner?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: What can we do?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Is this an economic situation that needs to be dealt with?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is this uh the fact that they're uh being discriminated against and so they're feeling angry and they lashed out by shooting someone?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so we kind of look at every angle of it.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And as long as people are looking at the facts and not coming up with insults, you know, um, and trying to think of this as a through a holistic lens, you know, what's best for the country, what's best for everybody?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the students are really good at doing that.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're thinking of what's best for everybody in either that country or the world or the region or something like that, you're going to end up having a constructive conversation.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you start the conversation with, well, this is what's good for our community, that's where things go down the wrong road.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this speaks to a broader question.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, if you take the lessons of this small, closed group and you're bringing it into the public at large, how can people talk about religion in public life without turning every difference into a political fight?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think again, I have to go back to the issue of bringing your religion to your public identity and what is the purpose of your religion.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when people start talking about religion, I think that quite frankly, outside of their religious community, they really just shouldn't.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, honestly, it's there is separation of church and state in this country, and they should really just keep it that way.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: People should keep their religion to their private life and not attempt to change laws and uh bring the religion and their religious code into the public moral code.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, certain things we know were religiously based possibly a long time ago, like we should not kill other people.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is true.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you don't want to kill other people.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um now you start bringing into the debate about whether that includes embryos or not.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, does this include the death penalty or not?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, should you kill people in war or not?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are so many aspects of this then that we start getting confused.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that in that sense, people need to say, you know what, I'm not going to try to make a decision for this for everybody else.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: We are going to leave our religion at the door when we leave the house, and then everything else can be discussed as a political issue, not as a religious issue.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: You should not say that, you know, my religion is the basis for all of our political decisions as a nation, especially since not everyone in the nation shares your religious views.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're saying that, then what's the difference between having uh, you know, this is a country that is based on religious freedom?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't plan on having Sharia as our law.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't want Islamic law as our religious law in the US.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why should we take Christian law or any other religious law as our law?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, in that sense, if we want to avoid going down that route of bringing ourselves into a religious state, um, then we really need to be far more vigilant about the overflow of our religious ideas into public life.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, in your experience, what makes you the most hopeful about the potential for religious communities to resolve conflicts and constructively address the hardest challenges confronting our nation and our world?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: We talked at the beginning about how religion has a tremendous capacity to connect communities, to define communities, and that it also is uniquely powerful in creating divisions among communities.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we push toward the more cooperative and constructive role of religion in helping build and strengthen communities in our country?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I believe we can really take a lot of help from religious communities.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the religious communities are our strongest weapon against religious extremism.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, we cannot use an atheist method of going to extremists and saying, hey, you're wrong.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't think that's going to work against religious extremists.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that the best way of moving extremists away from the edge of violence is by having proper religious leaders of moderate viewpoints come and say, hey, you're not taking the correct interpretation of these texts, of our history, of our community.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: And please correct your ways, right?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say that first of all, the religious leadership of the moderate communities can help us a lot in this fight for security that we're all looking for around the world.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I also believe that the um again, the moderate religious leaders have a role in helping guide the communities around the world in peaceful behavior.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, I very much admire the role that the Pope has taken, this Pope and the last Pope, in saying, hey, we need to have peace.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: We should move forward with peace and not war, and uh trying to admonish political leaders and their followers to not take on war as the path forward.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that this type of moral guidance is powerful and can help actual citizens around the world to say, hey, you know what, my religious leader, the authorities are saying that this isn't the right way, maybe I'll rethink my interpretation.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um because we have political leaders who are often using religion as a sword, as a fighting cry, a war cry around the world.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um we need to combat that as well.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I think if the religious communities can continue to try to guide us uh away from that and and correct the political leaders by saying, hey, this is not what we were saying, you know, I think that that will really help us resolve conflicts and uh constructively address some of these challenges that are facing us today, wherever we are in the world.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Raleigh Lall, thank you so much for your time.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: This has been an enormously stimulating conversation, and we hope to have you back on a future episode of the America's Wide Podcast.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: You're listening to the America's Wide Podcast.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Our music is by James Fernando.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: For more information and to join the conversation, please visit our website at America's Why Project.com.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: See you next week.