ISNA UNITES WITH CHRISTIANS AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Muslims, Christians United Against Nuclear Weapons

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Zainab Cheema
Muslim Link Staff Writer

Nuclear weapons pose one of the most contentious issues on today's political stage. The unrivaled destructive power of nuclear weapons means that their manufacture and use is as much a moral issue as it is a security one. Accordingly, many believe that faith-based groups are uniquely suited to bring change in a political culture of escalation. One of the most earnest examples of interfaith cooperation on the nuclear weapon question is the Muslim Christian Initiative on the Nuclear Weapons Danger.

This Initiative, also known as MCI, is grounded in a 2 year-old partnership between the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Church Centers of Theology Public Policy (CCTPP) to unite the Muslim and Christian communities in the United States on a platform of awareness and activism on the nuclear weapons threat. The vision is for these communities to work together and to mobilize their moral and political power to pressure the US government to lead the way in dismantling the nuclear regime by reducing its own arsenal of nuclear weapons, give incentives for other nations in the nuclear club to do to the same, and reinforce the choice of non-nuclear states to refrain from producing weapons grade plutonium. 

As noted by the MCI handbook, the blast effect of discharging a nuclear weapon "can level cities, contaminate countries with radiation, and generate deadly firestorms." The devastation wreaked by Hiroshima and Nagasaki lives on in human memory as the epitome of evil that man can do to man. Scientists estimated that the radioactive fallout from the 1985 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion in Ukraine contaminated one third of the earth.

Other facts supporting MCI's case are equally stark. Radiation poisons living tissue, water, earth, and air. There is no cure for radiation poisoning. The survivors of nuclear disasters live with raging cancers, tumors, intense psychological devastation, and genetic mutations in children that turn them into caricatures of human beings. There are 16,7000 nuclear warheads in the world today, and 95% of these are possessed by Cold War rivals, the United States and Russia. The Department of Defense estimates that a limited nuclear engagement between India and Pakistan would kill approximately 12 million people. During the cold war, the hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union raised the specter of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. MCI draws the urgency of its platform from the fact that nuclear war can potentially annihilate life on earth.

This state of affairs has alarmed Muslims, Christians, and indeed, men and women of conscience all over the world. On May 23-25, 2005, ISNA, the Managing the Atom Project of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the CCTPP convened a delegation of Muslim and Christian leaders and scholars to discuss the possibility of uniting the two faith based communities on a program of action for this issue.

Members of the steering committee included Dr. Jamal Badawi, Polly Duncan-Collum, Rabia Harris, Dr. Sohail Hashmi, Reverend Amanda Hendler-Voss, representatives from the United Church of Christ, Reverend Mark Koenig, Dr. Jim Walsh, Mohamed Elsanousi, Dr. Louay Safi, Reverend Barbara Green, Reverend Richard Killmer, and T.C. Morrow. The result was a statement on the nuclear weapons danger that has now been signed by more than 2,400 Christians and Muslims.

The statement highlights the common items of beliefs in the Quran and Bible that lead both faith communities to reject nuclear weapons. Both the Quran and the Bible subscribe to the concept of man as God's vicegerent on earth, and as such, responsibilities of stewardship of earth and the life it sustains. Both the Quran and Bible also believe in safeguarding non-combatants. Given that nuclear weapons threaten all of the above, the MCI believes that taking a stand is a matter of principle for the two faith based communities. The statement then outlines a common position that shapes a policy platform for lobbying members of Congress.

"We believe that chemical, biological and particularly nuclear weapons do not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants and inevitably destroy innocent human life . . . We further agree that the possession of nuclear weapons is an unacceptable risk for the human community in these times and is a continuing threat to the entire planet and its fragile ecosystem. The risk of theft of nuclear weapons or materials by non-state actors for nuclear terrorism as well as the continuing risk of accidental use of nuclear weapons by nations states themselves makes even the possession of nuclear weapons a danger to God's creation.

We therefore believe that the common position held by both of our traditions, expressed as the sanctity of human life, leads us inexorably to say that the only real security for the world and the most responsible position for people of faith in our two traditions is to call upon the United States and other countries of the world to, gradually and in a verifiable manner, finally eliminate these weapons from the face of the earth." The full text of the statement can be viewed online at www.mci-nwd.org.

Coordinators of the MCI are currently touring 12 major US cities to reach out to Muslims and Christians, create an anti-nuclear network from the two faith groups, and to enroll committed individuals as facilitators who will spread the message through grassroots activism.  At the November 30, 2007 facilitators' meeting at Washington DC's Wesley Theological Seminary, MCI Coordinator Patricia Anton and her colleagues, Reverend Tyler Wigg Stevenson of the National Religious Partnership on the Nuclear Weapons Danger, and Reverend Amanda Hendler-Voss of Women's Action for New Directions Education Fund (WAND) demonstrated how the model of interfaith discussion can be used to align people to the platform.

The Facilitator's meeting outlined that working between faith communities on an issue so intertwined with international politics can be complex. Some Muslims present noted that the United States' political discourse on nuclear weapons exclusively focuses on the danger of Iran or a Muslim terrorist possessing nuclear weapons, while the only country to actually deploy a nuclear weapon is a Christian one: the United States on the civilian populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during WWII. Reverend Stevenson also noted that the US continues to let Israel stockpile nuclear weapons in secret, while turning the floodlights of scrutiny on Iran.

The United States is also a factor in the prevailing regime of nuclear insecurity by threatening nations with annihilation if it does not align with its agenda, as when recruiting Pakistan for the war on terror. Clareen Menzies, Project Manager of Islamic Relief, noted that the United States often practices the tactic of "guilt by association", using the example of suicide bombers to broadly tar Muslims as irrational and trigger happy and hence, unworthy of wielding nuclear technology.

The question of hope is also important. Many believe that a nuclear apocalypse is a foregone conclusion when nations like the US and Russia, or India and Pakistan have their warheads on 24-hour alert. However, the MCI believes that the US should lead the way in changing the international security regime by reinforcing the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which nuclear nations refrain from transferring nuclear weapons to other nations, and non-nuclear nations ban the domestic production of nuclear weapons. The issue is creating an atmosphere where nations feel secure in dismantling their nuclear weapons programs or refrain from developing such programs.

Reverend Stevenson also highlighted a January 4, 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed penned by former US government officials such as George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, advocating for the US to take the lead on worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. If there is a group of influential policy makers and politicians who realize the scope of the nuclear threat, it suggests that political will in Washington may not be lacking after all. 

The issue of nuclear weapons demands everyone to take a stand. "The Muslim Christian Initiative offers the invitation and the occasion for Muslims, Catholics, and Protestants to come together to talk about how our respective religious traditions inform our understanding of one of the most urgent moral issues of our day: nuclear weapons," notes Reverend Hendler-Voss. "In the midst of authentic dialogue that honors our commonalities and respects our differences, we are dismantling the misunderstandings that bar the path of reconciliation between Christians and Muslims."