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Peace, it has been aptly observed, is more than just the absence of conflict. But absence of conflict is a necessary beginning of peace. Thus any discussion on peace must first address conflict and ways of eliminating it, for only then can a discussion on peace be meaningful. Conflict, It has also been aptly observed, is more in the minds of men (and women) than in the nature of things. To address conflict we need to first look at the minds of men (and women); to construct peace, enduring peace, we must first construct it in the minds of men (and women). This calls for a good understanding of the minds of men (and women), something which the combined disciplines of philosophy, psychology, physiology, particularly endocrinology have been battling with for as long as we can remember. This is not to discourage our search for peace but to dissuade us from the temptations of oversimplification and complacency. The costs of conflicts in terms of human suffering, underdevelopment and thwarted dreams are so enormous that we cannot continue to treat the issue of peace with levity. In Africa we only need to look at the conflict in the Sudan to see both the costs and complexity of this tragedy. This is the longest conflict in the continent spanning well over a quarter century, claiming the lives of millions, condemning the lives of many more millions to abject misery, dashing the hopes and dreams of many generations of young men and women and stunting the growth and development of a country with such potentials as to feed the whole of the continent. When we reduce this conflict to what it really is, it revolves around three key issues, Power, Wealth and Religion. While it is easy to work out a formula to share power, and another to share wealth, it is not easy to find a way of sharing religion. This is what made religion to hold the key to the resolution of this conflict. This has led to many to rush to the cheap conclusion of blaming religion for conflicts in many such situations around the world. But as Alister McGrath, a professor of historical theology at Oxford University and former atheist has amply demonstrated this propaganda can no longer hold water. “Once”, McGrath argued, “it was possible to argue that religion alone was the source of the world's evils… wherever religion exercises power, it oppresses and corrupts, using violence to enforce its own beliefs and agendas. Atheism argued that it abolished this tyranny by getting rid of what ultimately caused it – faith in God”. “It was credible in the 19th century” McGrath continues to argue, “Precisely because atheism had never enjoyed the power and influence once exercised by religion. But all that has changed. Atheism's innocence has now evaporated. In the 20th century, atheism managed to grasp the power that had hitherto eluded it. And it proved just as fallible, just as corrupt and just as oppressive as anything that had gone before it. Stalin's death squads were just as murderous as their religious antecedents. Those who dreamed of freedom in the new atheist paradise often found themselves counting trees in Siberia – and they were the fortunate ones.” (1) To be sure the atheists are no longer the problem in this 21st century, if only because they realise that their prediction that religion is dead has failed to come to fruition, if anything the failure of atheism has given a new impetus to religion. It is, not entirely surprising, believers who are cashing in on the post communist vacuum and playing on the fears of their communities to rise to academic prominence or access research grants that are otherwise inaccessible. These are the Huntingtons and the Fukayamas who aided by a sensational media have succeeded in creating an enduring perception of a militant Islam on an onslaught against the West. Many here have already seen through this Clash of Civilisation thesis and I don't need to detain you on this point. I may, however, refer you to a recent volume assembled by some of the best scholars in the field today published by Columbia University Press. (2) Some of the contributors include the late Professor Edward Said who dismissed Huntington's claims as a clash of definitions and Professor Fatema Mernissi who made the important point that so called Islamic fundamentalism is the creation of Western liberal democracies which made fortunes out of the Arab World. Let me turn to what I am perhaps suppose to be doing, pointing to those areas we should be looking at if we are to work together for peace in Africa. I can immediately think of five such areas without being exhaustive:
1.
Democratisation of Knowledge – I have earlier said that in many conflicts in Africa, religion holds the key or has a key role to play. A key factor here is the interpretation of the religious texts, which is often the preserve of a handful of religious elite, who admittedly have trained in the science. Too often, a poor understanding of the context or implications of pronouncements by religious elite, who while learned in the texts are not necessarily appreciative of the socio-political environment, provides the excuse for conflict. Religious elite should be encouraged to open up and debate rigorously interpretations and positions, especially those with the potential to trigger conflicts either within or without the community. As Professor Abdulkarim Shoroosh has argued, for a believer the text is no doubt divine, but the interpretation of the text is human and therefore fraught with all the human exigencies. It is in curtailing the power of interpretation of the religious elite and the democratisation of the process of the generation of knowledge that we can enrich and update our understanding of the texts. I am not unaware of the weight of the implication of this suggestion, for it can easily be seen as an attempt to curtail the power and influence of the clergy. But many will also agree that the religious elite have not always behaved responsibly; not only in Rwanda, where clergies lured flock into church only to get them slaughtered, but also, if not as graphic, in Nigeria. Rwanda is too well known to warrant any further detail, but perhaps not many here will remember the brazen manner in which successive military rulers, General Abacha in particular, went about stealing public funds and arresting and killing citizens perceived to pose one threat or the other to their rule. Muslim scholars and traditional rulers, who pretend to represent Islam, continued to express support for him interpreting texts to suggest that General Abacha was there at Gods pleasure and any challenge to his rule is a challenge to God Himself. The danger of allowing such religious elite to monopolise the interpretation of the texts is obvious.
2.
From What to Who – A recent study of the conflict in India discovered that searching for what causes conflict has not always explained the level and scope of the destructions that followed these conflicts. When however the search light shifted to who causes conflict it became fairly clear that there are vested interests in society who benefited from such conflicts and these interests will continue to fund and fuel crises and conflicts. It is important therefore we look beyond the simple question of what causes conflict to the often more important question of who. Many a conflict that will take the colouration of religion delivers some dividends to certain interests. Politicians in particular have records of instigating conflicts for some immediate gains.
3.
Bad Governance – Bad Governance impacts directly and miserably on the wider society. The resulting misery often accentuates a sense of God and tendency to find refuge in religion, thus raising the threshold of conflict around religion. We don't need to read Robert Kaplan's ‘The Coming Anarchy' to appreciate this point, but reading Kaplan will certainly bring to the fore the explosive mixture of poverty and ignorance that is ever ready to blow up with any spark and the religious spark appears to be the easiest or is the cheapest? Bad governance is not necessarily a product of autocratic regimes, even democratic regimes do unleash bad governance. For the avoidance doubt many democratic regimes in Africa have unleash such bad governance as has led to conflicts of disturbing proportions, the Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ivory Cost are clear cases in point. There other countries like Nigeria were democracy has failed to take proper roots and bad governance has so thwarted the aspirations of citizens that has raised the social irritability and lowered the threshold for conflict that there is hardly a month that passes without some skirmish of some sort. This should not surprise us for, as many will recall, Hitler was also democratically elected.
4.
The Challenge of Values – It is trite to mention that the rabid individualism and materialism of the modern times coupled with the more recent advances in science and technology, especially the conquest of distance and the genetic revolution have combine to destroy our cherished and shared human values. As Paul Valery has occasion to observe, our conception of moral or ethical values is increasingly influenced by the model of the stock market. “There is no longer any fixed standard of value, any stable and absolute measure, but rather all values fluctuate in vast market, their quotations rising and falling according to wholly subjective crazes, panics and wagers.” (3) The need for a stable consensus on shared human values as a bench mark for contemporary human societies as a pre-requisite for peace should not be difficult to see. We have sought to develop similar bench marks for human rights, and have aspired to achieve higher standards of human development indices; we should have no difficulty in seeking to do the same in the field of values.
5.
Communication – At the root of all conflicts is the problem of effective communication. We need to explore more creative and more robust means of communication across religions and cultures. Such inter-faith summit are perhaps one avenue, I must say, however, I am not sure how much communication takes place in these nice environments, where like a meeting of in laws, everybody is eager to be nice to the other. In any case, the calibre of the people that attend such meetings are the least of our problem. We must ensure that we take into consideration the religious, cultural and ideological peculiarities of the people we are communicating with; otherwise we will be surprised to find out what is being received at the other end. We also need to ensure that there is a constant communication which breaks down barriers, challenges stereotypes and builds confidence across the wider society. I will end this address on a note of hope. A substantial part of our differences and the suspicious that accompany them is the product of the distance between us. This distance is daily being conquered; we are unwittingly, even if grudgingly, being brought together by forces that are beyond our control. We shall soon discover the folly of our views and thoughts about each other.
2. Emran Qureshi and Michael Sells (Eds.), The New Crusaders: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, Columbia University Press, 2003 3. Jerome Binde (Ed.) The Future of Values, UNESCO Publishing, Paris, 2004.
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