What follows below is an edited and somewhat altered transcript of remarks I made at a Ramadan open house/Iftar meal at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California on May 26. –Ben Daniel
A few years ago, Maha Elganaidi[i] and I were in Sunnyvale, doing an onstage conversation about Islam together, and at that event, a significant portion of the audience became openly hostile toward us. They were angry and loud and I was afraid, and Maha’s calm strength and wisdom guided us through those stormy waters.
I’ve thought a lot about that angry and hostile crowd over the years, and I’ve come to believe they were motivated by fear, and that makes sense. Usually we name such hateful hostility “Islamophobia,” which means “a fear of Islam”.
And I think that addressing hateful fear is an important part of what happens when people of different faith traditions get together for the purpose of knowing one another. By knowing one another we learn not to be afraid of one another, and in the process we come to recognize one another as children of God.
In the New Testament book of Romans, St. Paul writes assuring us that we have not “received a spirit of slavery, to fall back into fear, but we have received a spirit of adoption, such that when in prayer we cry out to God saying, “Abba! Father!” It is God’s spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” I take this to mean that the opposite of fear is not just courage, but it is the courage we receive from knowing that we are children of God.
Now, it is significant to note that when it comes to interfaith understanding and good will, food is one thing upon which we all agree. Food is something that truly has the power to move us past the slavery of fear and into the secure knowledge that we are God’s children, and food does this both when we share meals together—something we will do in the not too distant future[ii]—and food moves us past fear when we work together to address issues of hunger and food insecurity.
The importance of feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty is something upon which people of goodwill from every faith tradition (and non-faith tradition) agree. Each one of us has a unique set of opinions and perspectives and traditions and prophets and holy books, but we all can come together around making sure we’ve done everything in our power to see that no child of God goes to bed with an empty stomach.
When we do the work of addressing issues of hunger and of food insecurity together, we are learning to set aside fear and to embrace our identity as children of God.
But as a Christian I would say that it is not enough to recognize ourselves as children of God, rather as we feed the hungry and as we work to change society so that everyone has access to food, we must understand that the beneficiaries of our efforts are not just random strangers. Rather, when the New Testament speaks of the poor, it uses words like “neighbor,”[iii] “brother and sister”[iv] and “saints”[v], and it instructs us to think of the poor among us in such familiar ways. In one particularly powerful passage, Jesus tells us that when we feed the hungry stranger it is as if we are feeding Jesus himself[i].
The true work of addressing hunger and food insecurity then, begins not when we hand out the first hot meal and not when we vote for politicians who will dispense their duties with justice and equity. Rather it begins when our hearts are changed and we recognize the humanity of and maybe even the divinity within those we are helping.
A big part of that involves losing our own fear of people—neighbors, brothers, sisters, saints—who are desperately poor, and when we lose our fear of the poor, the homeless, the hungry, we will recognize that we are children of God and so are they.
And speaking of fear, let me close by saying that I have never been hungry and I’ve never been “food insecure”, but I imagine “insecure” is not a strong enough word. To me the thought of not knowing if I could put food on the table for my family actually sounds terrifying. When we address hunger and food insecurity—through acts of personal kindness and at a structural, economic level—we are not just feeding people, but also we are helping people set aside fear, which is to say we are helping the saints who are our neighbors, our sisters and our brothers, to embrace their identity as children of God. This is where the spiritual and the practical come together, and there is no better place for people of faith to be, no better work for us to do.
Warmly,
Ben
i Maha was the evening’s keynote speaker. She is the founder and executive director of Islamic Networks Group, a San José-based Muslim educational organization that does work globally. Their efforts focus on educating public entities like schools, law enforcement organizations, and medical providers about Islam. www.ing.org
ii An Iftar meal—a meal breaking the daily Ramadan fast—followed the evening’s program.
iii Luke 10:29-37
iv James 2:14-17
v 2 Corinthians 9:12
vi Matthew 25:37-40