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TRANSCRIPT:
Episode no. 508
October 26, 2001
BOB ABERNETHY (anchor): Coming up, countless Afghans already destitute are now being displaced by war. What's being done for them?
And in mostly Hindu India, moderate Muslims worry about pro-Taliban extremists.
SALMAN KHURSHID (Congress Party Leader): They're destroying the basic links between the majority and the minority by taking these extreme positions.
ABERNETHY: And mourning the loss of a loved one. Vanished with no remains, a victim of terrorism.
CANON ROBERT WRIGHT: There's not sort of a stone, a memorial that we can go to and rest for hours at and just visit the loved one.
ABERNETHY: Welcome. I'm Bob Abernethy. It's good to have you with us.
BOB ABERNETHY: As the U.S. focussed on anthrax investigations and the war against terrorism continued in Afghanistan, new violence in the Middle East came to the front door of one of the holiest places in Christianity. Bethlehem, believed to be the birthplace of Jesus, became a battleground this week. Israeli troops entered Bethlehem and several other Palestinian cities to search for the assassins of Israel's tourism minister. A 17-year-old altar boy was shot and killed near the Church of the Nativity. Christian leaders from several denominations marched for peace on Manger Square. They were joined in prayer by local Muslim leaders.
BOB ABERNETHY: In Washington, in an address to the American Jewish Congress, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Israel was forced to take action because the Palestinians had refused to arrest and extradite the assassins.
SHIMON PERES: If the Palestinians will not do it, the force has to do it, because we can not live with bomb carriers next to our door.
BOB ABERNETHY: At the Vatican this week, a statement from the world's Roman Catholic bishops condemning terrorism under any circumstance. That message as bishops from around the world ended their month-long meeting called by Pope John Paul II. The bishops also debated and made recommendations on a broad range of issues, from how to best distribute Church power to how to recruit new priests.
BOB ABERNETHY: Meanwhile, the military campaign continues in Afghanistan and so do warnings of a looming humanitarian crisis. Relief officials say, as winter approaches, millions of Afghans are in danger of starvation. This past week, Ken Hackett, executive director of Catholic Relief Services, one of the largest international relief groups, was in Pakistan inspecting camps there for Afghan refugees and assessing future needs. Mr. Hackett is with us now.
Welcome.
KEN HACKETT (Executive Director, Catholic Relief Services): Thank you.
ABERNETHY: There have been a lot of estimates all over the place about the extent of the need within Afghanistan. What's your estimate?
Mr. HACKETT: Our take on the situation is this is the poorest country in the world and it's suffered years of war and now three years of drought. So before the current situation these people were in tragic circumstance.
ABERNETHY: So what now? People are leaving their home? They're starving? What's going on?
Mr. HACKETT: Now we face a winter and some of the people are starving. They're starting to move their -- move around the country. The bombing has caused people to move. And we could see a situation this winter that, if we cannot get enough food assistance and other winterization material in, the people could starve in their homes.
ABERNETHY: Is there a choice to be faced between continuing the military action on the one hand, trying to drive out the Taliban, and on the other hand providing the humanitarian aid?
Mr. HACKETT: I don't think the choice is that clear. We want to stop the support for terrorism. We firmly agree with that and I think everybody agrees with that. But at the same time, I think if we put our will to it, we, as a group of nations and a group of agencies, can get food assistance in there, get blankets and material to help that people really recover this winter.
ABERNETHY: And the situation in Pakistan, let me take you back to what you saw there in the refugee camps. How many people overall do you think are in Pakistan, refugees?
Mr. HACKETT: Well, there's over two and a half million. Many of them are not registered. Some live around camps, but most live in camps. We visited two camps. Both had about 60 to 70 thousand people. In one of the camps the population had been there for about 10 years, and they're a fairly stable, living on the margins of existence, but stable. The second one was somewhat troubling in the sense that people didn't have adequate tenting and temperatures are dropping. People are going to die in that camp unless something is done within the next week or so. We hope we can.
ABERNETHY: Can you meet that need?
Mr. HACKETT: We're ready to. We're in negotiations with the government.
ABERNETHY: What's the problem?
Mr. HACKETT: You've got to deal with the government. You've got to deal with the bureaucrats. You've got to deal with the security considerations. We're on it. I think we are putting our will to it, now that we've had a chance to get into one of the camps, we can make a difference.
ABERNETHY: What did you hear about the politics in the Muslim world about what's going on in Afghanistan, quickly?
Mr. HACKETT: You know, the people I met with, Muslims and Christians, were a little bit perplexed about the bombing and about what the motives were. And basically they're saying to us, "You know, we're looking for peace here. We're not looking for a further military action."
ABERNETHY: Many thanks. Ken Hackett of Catholic Relief Services.
Mr. HACKETT: Thank you.
BOB ABERNETHY: The country in the world with the largest number of Muslims is Indonesia. The country with the second largest number is India. When the Indian sub-continent was divided in 1947 into predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, many moderate Muslims stayed in India. But as tensions continued between India and Pakistan, especially over control of Kashmir, which both countries want, India's Muslims have been caught in a precarious position, and that position has been aggravated by the U.S. campaign against terrorism. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's become a familiar sight across the Muslim world, worshippers fired up by Imams after Friday services, chanting slogans against America, against Israel, for the Taliban.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Osama bin Laden was a creation of America. Now he's turned against them and they are crying. I think the whole thing is against Islam.
DE SAM LAZARO: We spoke to this man outside Delhi's main mosque, built at the same time as the Taj Mahal , about 400 years ago. Like the surrounding Muslim community, it is the legacy of the Mughals, who reigned here for three centuries before the British colonized India. In numbers, India has one of the world's largest Muslim populations. At 130 million it's second only to Indonesia. More than any Arab country.
But many Indian Muslim leaders insist this fiery rhetoric reflects only a small minority of their generally liberal community. In 1947, the departing British partitioned the country to create the Islamic state of Pakistan, but many Muslims, by choice or circumstance, stayed on in India.
SALMAN KHURSHID (Congress Party Leader): If their forefathers decided they wanted to stay with 80 percent Hindus rather than 100 percent Muslims.
DE SAM LAZARO: Meaning, go to Pakistan and partition.
Mr. KHURSHID: Go to Pakistan. If they have decided to stay here it means they're liberals. It means that they want a secular country. It means they want a country that is not dominated by religion.
DE SAM LAZARO: India is a democracy with no official religion, but it hasn't been free of religious strife. In spite of their large population, Muslims are outnumbered six to one by Hindus. In recent years, the country has seen a rising influence of Hindu nationalist parties who want more Hindu, less secular India.
And when nationalist Hindu see these fundamentalist Muslim demonstrations, they brand all Muslims as unpatriotic or sympathetic with Pakistan, leaving moderate Islamic leaders in the middle, according to Salman Khurshid.
Mr. KHURSHID: We get rapped from the majority saying, "This is what your Muslims are saying." We come to their defense, we become targets ourselves. If we don't defend them we become alienated from our community. They're destroying the basic links between the majority and the minority by taking these extreme positions, positions in which they cannot achieve anything. And if they wanted to do this they should just get together and go to Afghanistan and fight the Americans. They only make speeches in the streets in Delhi.
DE SAM LAZARO: On most days life on the streets of Delhi's Muslim quarter goes on as it always has. Opinion we sampled randomly seemed no different than that heard generally in India, cautious support for the U.S. and opposition expressed in anti-war rather than Islamic terms.
(to Unidentified Man) What was the reaction here to the World Trade Center bombing?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: It is not a good thing. We cannot support it.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: I say this war should be stopped for the civilians, for the peace people, because American people are also very peaceful people. That's why I said, 'Please stop the war.'
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: India has already told that in Kashmir and other places so many terrorists are already coming. And nobody listens to it. Now, when things happen at the U.S., everybody is saying that there is a terrorist. "There is a terrorist."
DE SAM LAZARO: Many Indians see the U.S.-led war on terrorism as a vindication of India's long held position. Tens of thousands of Indian lives have been lost in various separatist conflicts, including the one over Kashmir, an area claimed both by India and Pakistan. India supports the U.S.-led military action, calling itself a victim of terrorism.
KULDIP NAYYAR (Columnist/Author): Terrorism, if it is allowed to breed in one country at one place, is going to spread. And this fundamentalism of any kind, of any religion, whether it is Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew, everything, that's not the thing because it does not fit into a democracy.
DE SAM LAZARO: Indo-Pakistani tensions flared up recently after suicide bombing killed 38 people in Srinegar, capital of Indian Kashmir. A Pakistan-based group was implicated in the blast. The U.S. urged India not to respond militarily, but last week Indian forces attacked Pakistani positions across the Kashmir line of control. Muslim leader Khurshid says India resents being asked to stand by helplessly.
Mr. KHURSHID: Somebody walks into your living room, you're told not to be on the doorstep. You can drive them out, not beyond the doorstep. And when the U.S. was hit it will cross seven seas to hit the enemy. And why these double standards? Why the double standards? We are perturbed about Pakistan harboring terrorists who will hit India. Everybody wants Osama. Nobody wants the people who inflicted pain and injury to us.
DE SAM LAZARO: In the end, many here say the force and length of the American-led action will determine if the pro-Taliban rallies remain relatively isolated or if they grow to a larger anti-American sentiment in an India frustrated that the global war on terrorism hasn't targeted groups it has labeled as terrorists. For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Hyderabad, India.
BOB ABERNETHY: In Washington, President Bush signed into law new anti-terrorism legislation. Among other things, it will greatly expand the wire-tapping and electronic surveillance authority of the FBI. Attorney General Ashcroft said the law will allow airtight surveillance of terrorist networks. Civil libertarians have expressed concern that the new law will lead to abuse of government authority.
BOB ABERNETHY: Meanwhile, in New York, more discussions about religion and violence. Representatives from the world's major faith traditions issued a joint statement condemning any terrorism done in the name of religion. But the religious leaders also said military action is, quote, "an inadequate instrument to fully address the challenges of terrorism." The two days of meetings and prayer services were organized by the World Conference on Religion and Peace. During an emotional visit to ground zero, participants paid their respects to those who died in the attacks.
BOB ABERNETHY: More than six weeks after September 11th, workers continue to remove the remains of those lost at the World Trade Center. But the bodies of many of the victims will never be found, which means for many families there can be no funeral. Deryl Davis reports on how the rites of mourning change when there's no one to bury.
DERYL DAVIS: Jeanine Boulanger spends a lot of time in her backyard garden outside Worcester, Massachusetts. She created it in memory of her daughter. It's named Nicole's Peace.
JEANNINE BOULANGER: Well, you know, Nicole loved flowers and she loved the woods and she loved places that were peaceful.
DAVIS: But Nicole's death was anything but peaceful. She was one of 259 people on board PanAm Flight 103 when it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The cause: a terrorist bomb.
MS. BOULANGER: The pain, the anguish, the questions. You know, how could this happen? This couldn't be. Why me? Why Nicole?
DAVIS: Jeannine's grief was compounded by the fact that Nicole's body was not recovered.
MS. BOULANGER: Well, at first I felt re-victimized again that there was no place to bring this lovely child home where she could be remembered.
DAVIS: There was a memorial service for Nicole, but no funeral and no burial rites. That will be the case for many victims of the September 11th attack. Ted Suarez, a Roman Catholic, lost his son David in the World Trade Towers.
(to Mr. Suarez) Your son's body has not been found. What difference does that make?
TED SUAREZ: In the traditional events you have closure by having a body that you see and that eventually you can want -- may want to visit.
CANON ROBERT WRIGHT (Pastor, Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine): It makes a huge difference, I think, to loved ones that there's not sort of a stone, a memorial that we can go to and rest flowers at and just visit the loved one. I think that makes a huge difference.
DAVIS: Canon Robert Wright is a pastor at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
CANON WRIGHT: These people have basically vanished. That's hard to get the mind around, that mom was here and then instantly gone. I mean, it's different than cancer. It's different than other illnesses and fatal illnesses.
DAVIS: Canon Wright has presides over a number of memorial services for victims of the World Trade Center attacks. He says it's important for families to commemorate their loss in a public ritual.
CANON WRIGHT: We need a ritual -- and certainly the church is the place where we would go for something like that -- a ritual that says, 'We loved you. We celebrate your life. You meant so much to us and now one aspect of your life is over."
(At pulpit) No matter your tradition this evening, no matter your faith, I hope you will allow yourself during this memorial to feel, despite everything, all that is good and holy and comforting.
DAVIS: But memorials are not a gravesite or a tombstone. And in some traditions, the absence of a body creates legal as well as emotional problems. Jewish law requires proof of death, such as a body, before official mourning can begin or a spouse can remarry. Rabbi Moshe Tendler is a member of a Rabbinical tribunal which rules on matters of Jewish law.
RABBI MOSHE TENDLER: The concern here is for hard evidence that the person was in the building and died. That is not too easy to come by. Here's where the tribunal must use its ingenuity to gather as much circumstantial evidence as possible.
DAVIS: Jeannine Boulanger didn't need evidence of Nicole's death. What she needed were rituals by which to remember her. Every day at 3:00, Jeanine drinks tea from a tea service made in Lockerbie, Scotland.
Ms. BOULANGER: My cup of tea is my sense of communicating with Nicole every day.
DAVIS: Is it still difficult not having a cemetery or gravesite to visit?
Ms. BOULANGER: Oh, there are days when I think about it, but I really think that the challenge is to feel the spirit of a person that you have lost. It's not the physicality of the remains that do that. It's the memories of that very special person.
DAVIS: Ted Suarez knows he may never see his son's body, but he believes David's soul is already in heaven.
(to Mr. Suarez) Do you sense that he is still with you in spirit, with your family?
Mr. SUAREZ: Yes. Yes, I do.
CANON WRIGHT: We want to say that people now are with God. We want to say now that they're in that place where there's no pain, no sorrow, no sighing.
DAVIS: Those left behind, such as Ted and Jeannine, may never achieve closure. But they say their children's deaths have reminded them of the sacredness of life.
(to Mr. Suarez) Has your understanding of God changed?
Mr. SUAREZ: It's brought me closer. I think it's strengthened my faith. It -- as it relates to my relationship with God, I think it's also a wake-up call.
Ms. BOULANGER: I thought I would never laugh again. I've learned to experience joy. Not the same kind of joy that I would have if Nicole was with me, but I learned to recognize that I could have a good life.
DAVIS: This is Deryl Davis reporting.
BOB ABERNETHY: Among the many memorial services taking place in and around New York City, Buddhists gathered this past week at New York's Riverside Church for a special service which they dedicated to all victims of terrorism worldwide. The service is a fire meditation called Goma, designed to bring peace to the suffering. The ritual is central to the Agon Shu Buddhist Association based in Japan. We spoke to Agon Shu practitioner Fukiko Kai about the fire ritual and its significance.
People from all faiths participated in this ancient ritual led by the Agon Shu Buddhist abbot Seyu Kiriama. Each guest received a wooden prayer stick, or gomagi, on which he or she wrote a prayer request. The sticks then fueled the fire during the ceremony.
Ms. FUKIKO KAI (Agon Shu Buddhist Association): When we put something in the fire a smoke arise in the heaven, our prayer and offering will reach to the heaven.
ABERNETHY: Practitioners say, in addition to sending prayers and petitions to heaven, the Goma ritual offers a sense of peace to both Buddhists and non-Buddhists. They believe it can also be a cleansing experience, dispelling negative energy.
Ms. KAI: We all need to liberate from this destructive karma, which is trying to conquer this world at the moment. So this fire has the symbolic meaning of liberation from the karma, or from the fate.
ABERNETHY: Also featured in the ritual was a performance by traditional Japanese Taiko drummers. Agon Shu Buddhists believe the drumming brings together the body, mind and spirit. They say the goal of the ceremony is for participants to mediate on the drums and on the fire in hopes of achieving spiritual purification and wisdom.
Ms. KAI: After the ceremony -- fire ceremony, I feel I'm totally cleansed and purified because I'm able to wash out all my negative thoughts and energies.
BOB ABERNETHY: Finally, Howard Finster, one of America's best loved and most respected folk artists, died of congestive heart failure in Georgia this week. He was 84. For decades Finster was a country Baptist preacher. Then he turned to art. Finster created more than 40,000 pieces of art, virtually all with explicit religious messages. His works are exhibited in museums and collections around the world. Kim Lawton has our look back at Howard Finster.
KIM LAWTON: Family and friends said goodbye this week to Howard Finster, the preacher turned artist who referred to his work as sermons in paint. Finster's unique artistic style reflected his roots as a tent revival preacher who urged people to repent of their sins and follow Jesus. There were visions of heaven and hell, angels and the apocalypse, often scrawled with scripture and religious sayings.
EDWARD KNIPPERS (Painter): Howard was always a preacher. The way he got into art, he preached one Sunday morning and in the evening the people did not know what he had said in the morning, and he realized, "This isn't working." And so he -- the Lord really led him to art. He didn't think he was a painter. The Lord said, "Ah, but you've never tried." That's the way he talked about it. So he tried and he became world famous.
LAWTON: Prominent artist Edward Knippers knew Finster for more than 15 years and owns several Finster pieces in his private collection.
Ms. KNIPPERS: Now we have people that want to be artists running around trying to find something to say. Finster had something to say and then he invented a way to say it.
(Reading from Finster piece) "It will take a lifetime working day and night to reach the corners of this dark world with my little light. Some will close their curtains. Some will pull down shades. Some will hear my message and they will have it made."
LAWTON: Finster worked in Summerville, Georgia, in a place he created called Paradise Garden. His daughter calls it an abstract maze of sculpture and scripture.
BEVERLY FINSTER (Daughter): He built this place to honor God, but it's a connecting place for you and God.
LAWTON: He also had more earthly connections, designing album covers for top rock groups REM and the Talking Heads. He was sometimes criticized for his eccentricity and the commercialization of his work. But Finster always said he just wanted to spread his gospel message in any way he could.
Ms. KNIPPERS: Finster was a showman, but you pushed past the showman and you found a very wise man that was truly a prophet. A friend of mine wrote me an e-mail and says, "I don't know what in the world they're going to do with him in heaven."
LAWTON: His daughter says Finster is now with the band of angels he so loved to paint. She says he's more alive now than he ever has been. I'm Kim Lawton reporting.
BOB ABERNETHY: That's our program for now. I'm Bob Abernethy. To find out more about RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY online, log on to pbs.org or America Online, keyword: PBS. As we leave you, more from the sacred fire ceremony in New York.
 Back to Article Finder: Stories by Week
© 2001 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Prepared by Burrelle's Information Services, which takes sole responsibility for accuracy of transcription. No license is granted to the user of this material other than for research. User may not reproduce any copy of the material except for user's personal or internal use and, in such case, only one copy may be reproduced, nor shall user use any material for commercial purposes or in any manner that may infringe upon Educational Broadcasting Corporation's copyright or proprietary interests in the material.
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