RECONCILIATION: The World's Governments
President Bush And President Putin Form A New Global Harmony
The Crawford, Texas summit between President Bush of the United States and President Putin of Russia produced some dramatic progress toward world peace. President Bush announced during Putin's visit to the U.S. that the U.S. would reduce its stockpile of nuclear weapons from 7,000 down to between 2,200 to 1,700 within ten years. This is a greater reduction than was attempted by the Start III treaty proposals. President Putin turned on the oil flow from Russia at a time the OPEC nations were trying to restrict supply to drive up prices. Americans now enjoy much lower gasoline and heating oil prices, partly due to Russia's action. The two Presidents are acting together for the good of their countries and the world.
A dramatic area for strengthening world peace and international cooperation toward global harmony is the war on terrorism lead by a determined President Bush after the September 11th attacks on the United States. Here too, Russia, under Putin's leadership, has contributed in many ways, including intelligence and assistance with bases in countries which were in the former Soviet Union. The Taliban have lost Afghanistan to a combination of American air power and special forces and local Afghan fighters, such as the Northern Alliance and other groups. The Al-Queda network is in disarray, with many members killed, and cell members arrested around the world, such as in Germany and Spain. President Bush has established a policy of destroying the terrorists and those that harbor them, or provide weapons of mass destruction. The world waits anxiously to see if Saddam Hussein will allow U.N. inspections in Iraq to determine if biological, chemical or nuclear weapons are being developed. The war on terrorism will be long and will ferret out terrorists around the world as criminals.
Whether the Muslims of the world will participate in the global knowledge economy, with its freedom and creativity by all, has been answered. They will. Bin Laden gave them a choice, to join him in rejecting the modern world for an Islam-only region of the world, which had little or nothing to do with the rest of the world, and its way of life. Muslims around the world have universally rejected that call. The pictures from Kabul, Afghanistan after the Taliban had left were eloquent. People dug up their buried television sets to watch again. The movie house was jammed with the first showing in five years. The risky culture of freedom, with its good and its bad, is a risk Muslims, and the rest of the world, are willing to take. Now all of us must learn how to decide what to do with our lives in the midst of this constant flow of new opportunities, good and bad, and live our respective fulfillments as a whole person.
The constant pressure of the war on terrorism will have a double benefit for global peace and harmony. First there will be a constant reminder that the world will no longer tolerate violence, which will deter many from violent expeditions that lead to war. Secondly, in order for the war on terrorism to work, something must replace terrorism as an outlet for frustration of peoples from oppression, violence and injustice. The leading nations in the world will have to learn how to nurture people, individuals, families, tribes, ethnic groups, cultural groups, whole nations and global regions toward fulfillment as whole persons. The key will be to find ways to bring them into being creative participants in the global knowledge economy. Once that avenue is opened up, their natural creativity will take over, they will earn money in the global market place, their standard of living will rise, they will see the need for education, and all the pillars of peace and prosperity will be nurtured and built. In the meantime, the capitalists who build the infrastructure that allows the global knowledge economy to work, will be making more money, because millions more people will be using their networks and machinery as the global knowledge economy expands and becomes robust. World leaders will be motivated to nurture the people of the world to be creative participants in the global knowledge economy, which will require global peace and harmony among people and nations.
October 10, 2001
RECONCILIATION: The World's Religions
Osama Bin Laden Loses The War
Osama Bin Laden called for a Jihad, a Holy War, and called for all Muslims to join him in the Jihad. If they did, he might succeed in throwing the Western countries out of the Muslim countries, one of his stated goals. President Bush, relying on the goodness of the Muslim people around the world, said this was not a war on Islam, but a war on terrorism. Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center twin towers and the Pentagon, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIS), a meeting of 56 Muslim nations, issued a communiqué condemning the terrorist attacks. Bin Laden and his Taliban associates gave taped statements to television praising those who committed the terrorist attacks. The contrast could not be more stark. Islam rejected Bin Laden. At that point Bin Laden had lost the war. Everything from then on would be a mopping up operation of international terrorism. It would take a long time, but the outcome was not in doubt.
This was not something the Americans or the British did. This was something the Muslims of the world did. They sided with peace and life, instead of terror and death. There were other significant results for world peace, the global economy and the global knowledge civilization a well.
On October 10, CNN (www.cnn.com/2001/COMMUNITY/10/10/volker/index.html) conducted a chat session on the Internet with Dr. Perphes Volker, Director of the Middle East program at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, an author, political scientist and expert on Islam. He pointed out that now the Muslim countries feel a new urgency to find a common position on both the Muslim world and the world as a whole. One issue is settled. World Islam does not support Osama Bin Laden and the extreme interpretation of Islam practiced by the Taliban. On a broader scale, Islam must find a way to lead its faithful successfully into the global community.
The Role Of Religion Is Not To Lock Up The People In
Their Fear,
But To Guide The People Through Their Freedom To Full
Life As Whole Persons.
Here the answer that all seek is to have the people have a reasonable and secure means to participate in the global knowledge economy and live a fulfilled life as a whole person. That is a tall order, since the global knowledge economy cannot yet support six billion people in that life style. However, a concerted effort by all the nations of the world to bring that sort of opportunity to people in well run nations, will increase the value in the global knowledge economy, so it can support the people. Certainly progress is being made, and more progress can be made. Muslim countries can lead the way for their people.
The New Role Of Islam Is Not To Force People To Be
Sinless, But To
Guide People In Their Freedom To Full Life.
The challenge for Islam is to adjust to the necessary changes for Muslim people to succeed in the global knowledge economy, and to emphasize those aspects of Islam that help people succeed in such an economy. Freedom, equality and individual creativity of all the people, men and women, are necessary to keep a nation and its people competitive in the global knowledge civilization, as well as to allow people to find and live their personal fulfillment as whole persons. Islam is central to teaching its faithful how to guide their lives to live righteously and successfully in the constantly changing and challenging global knowledge civilization. Islam and Muslim practices can be a steady guide to help the individual make righteous decisions and take righteous actions in the whirlwind of new opportunities for good and evil created every day. The role of Islam is not to curb the freedom of its faithful, but to guide their decisions to successful life, not deciding for them as of old, but providing guidance for them as they decide for themselves in a free and creative world. How Islam will work this out is up to the leaders of Islam. Apparently one answer that will not be followed is the tight control of the Taliban over the people. On the contrary, Iran (see below) is reaching for a more moderate approach which keeps the basic tenants of Islam and lets people participate creatively in and succeed in the technological world.
On a more immediate, practical level, Volker pointed out that Muslim leaders are going to want the United States and other Western nations to work to find a peaceful solution to the struggle between Israel and Palestine. Yassar Arafat is trying to make a distinction between good terrorism and bad terrorism depending an whether the cause is just. If the United States is going to continue its war on terrorism, and keep the support of the world, it is going to have provide leadership to find solutions to the political situations around the world that foster terrorism as one of the few means of rebellion against an intolerable political situation. Peaceful solutions mean solutions that do not involve force, but address the fundamental needs of the people involved on all sides. The U.S. and its allies, including the Muslim countries, will have to get very much better at this.
However, it is the struggle for justice, equality and fulfilling lifestyle among the world's people in the global knowledge civilization that is the concern of history and not war with Bin Laden. That war is over. Now constructive struggle with poverty can begin using a global knowledge economy that has the potential to eliminate poverty.
September 15, 2001 (The world comes together to eliminate terrorism, and violence against the world economy and the world's precious people (all the people of the world).) (Information gathered from watching live television coverage by many news groups and channels)
RECONCILIATION: The Global Harmony
The Global Harmony Forms, Is Disturbed, Heals, Is Restored And Is Stronger Than Before. The Strength Of The Global Harmony Protects The Global Knowledge Economy On Which All Nations and Peoples Rely For Their Sustenance.
"We all eat from the same bowl, so we cannot let anyone break the bowl."
With Few Exceptions, All The Nations Of The World Agree To Join The United States Of America In A Global Movement To Eliminate Terrorism, The Supporters of Terrorism And Those Nations Or Groups That Harbor Terrorists.
At the beginning of the Millennium with the year 2001, a new atmosphere of harmony engulfed the Earth. The world settled down into a new global harmony, driven by the need to keep the necessary peace to protect the global economy, from which most nations directly or indirectly gained their sustenance. A former head of state for the first time in current times, who was a warmonger, starting wars for his own selfish purposes, including to stay in power, in spite of being voted out of office by his people, and who ordered thousands of innocent civilians raped or killed, because they were of a different ethnic background ("ethnic cleansing") was arrested to be tried for war crimes by the World Court, and faces life in prison. Before, a head of state would have been immune to such a fate.
The global harmony was unsteady, with violence in the Middle East and in Ireland, in spite of valiant efforts at peace by all sides. A downing of an American surveillance plane by China was resolved when economy won over war, and the two countries decided to resolve the issue peacefully and keep their economies going and growing. Particularly in the Middle East, it was terrorists that broke the peace. Israel even tried not responding to killing of its people by Palestinian terrorists. This infuriated the terrorists. If the Palestinian terrorists do not have Palestinian deaths, the Palestinians will not support them, and the terrorists will have no reason to exist or ply their terrible trade. After Israel announced it would not respond, the terrorists panicked, and sent suicide bombers almost daily to kill Israelis, until the Israeli government finally relented and began responding in kind again. Now the Palestinian terrorists had achieved their tactical goal again, dead Palestinians killed by Israel. The lesson was not learned by the Palestinian people, so the violence went on. The Israelis did not take the opportunity to give the Palestinian people an alternative, an exceptable peace, so the violence went on.
With these sporadic incidents of violence, the global harmony went on, and most of the world enjoyed the benefits of peace and the growing global knowledge economy. The United States enjoyed a ten year expansion, primarily due to the growth of the global computer, communication and transportation networks - the infrastructure of the new global knowledge economy. Even a looming global economic decline did not seem hopeless, but temporary and manageable for a few more months.
Then a disturbance appeared in the global harmony. Terrorists, who seemed unaware of what was happening in the world, and how the world was changing, and apparently wanting to change the world back to where it was before the industrial revolution, struck at the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the symbol of American economic strength, destroying them with two hijacked airliners flown by suicide bombers. A similar hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon, the symbol of American military strength.
America reacted quickly and decisively, shutting down all commercial air traffic and apparently foiling more such suicide flights. An outpouring of compassion flowed from America and the world for the thousands of dead and injured and their grieving families and friends, and for thousands of courageous rescuers, hundreds of whom died as the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on top of them. These firefighters and police saved as many as they could, before these rescuers died.
America came together as one people, unified by the horror of what had happened to them and by the determination to stop terrorism. The harmony began to heal. The nations of the world, except Afghanistan, which harbored the accused terrorist leader, were united with the Americans in horror and determination. If it could happen to America, it could happen to them. The necessity for the global peace was now obvious. The global harmony grew stronger.
Pakistan (the origin of the Taliban religious movement, an extremist Muslim movement which took over most of Afghanistan, in spite of threats of religious terrorist retaliation by the Taliban against Pakistan) agreed to give the United States all the help it wanted, to fight the Taliban and capture the terrorist leader hiding in Afghanistan. NATO said the attack on the United States, a member of NATO, was an attack on NATO, and all the NATO countries would support the fight against terrorism. Russia pledged its support. China pledged its support. The President of France declared France would support the United States, even though Americans had been frequently disliked by the French when they traveled in France. The President had a recent poll after the attack, which showed that 90% of the French people stood with the Americans. The harmony grew stronger.
The global knowledge economy would have eventually established a strong world harmony to guard the necessary global peace. However, the terrorists, inadvertently hastened the process, much to the benefit of the people of the world, who now would live under the strong global harmony much sooner. Many of them would live longer, and more fully because of it. Sadly the terrorists have no idea of what is going on in the world, but can only see through their eyes of violence and revenge for past wrongs and envy for the success of others. They seem not to understand that different religions, even religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) can, and are taught by their respective scriptures to live in peace and mutual respect. (See the book L E T : A Path To World Peace For Christians for an example of how this can be done.)
Equally sadly, it is the very extremist policies of the government of Afghanistan that are preventing its people from having the success they might otherwise have. The government, focused on tightly controlling its people, has taken away their initiative and creativity, and ruined their economy. By not trusting the people, the government has crushed the people's chance for successful life. The government and religious leaders think they have all the answers the people need. That is an archaic view from the past in a world that thrives on the creativity and individual initiative of each individual citizen. Most of the Islamic world does not agree with the Taliban. While the Taliban is trying to turn back the clock to life before the Industrial Revolution, Iran is trying to show how Islam can lead a great nation successfully into the 21st century (See August, 2001 below). People of religion from all faiths see the hand of the Divine shaping the new world as the Divine wants, not as those would want who would exert iron control over a cowered, intimidated people. They cannot be doing Allah's work, except to provide a horrible example of what Allah wants the rest of the world to avoid, as the global knowledge civilization, the First Flower grows in strength and beauty to launch the era of the Flowers of the Universe. Perhaps Allah's plan is for the terrorists, misguided as they are, with their hearts hardened as they are, to unite the world against them as a means of uniting the world sooner, so the First Flower can blossom sooner. How sad for the terrorists. The global harmony is now much stronger.
September 11, 2001 (A date which will live in infamy, and from which the global harmony was strengthened.)
RECONCILIATION: The Nations Of The World
Terrorists Make Major Blunder
NY And DC Attacks Wake Sleeping Giants All Over The
World
Nations Combine To Enforce Peace And Protect World
Economy
War Against War
World Becomes Unsafe For Terrorists And Rogue States
Nations Combine To Protect Global Knowledge Economy
By Banning War And Terrorists Attacks
September 11, 2001. The whole world watched on live television as two hijacked airliners full of passengers were deliberately crashed into the two World Trade Center Towers., The towers eventually fell to the ground killing thousands of people. A third hijacked airliner with innocent passengers crashed into the Pentagon wrecking one side of the five sided building, killing hundreds of people. The attack was compared to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It showed that any country any where, even the United States of America, could be attacked in a similar manner by global terrorists.
Rather than scare the Americans, it made them angry, filled them with steely resolve to find the attackers and those who harbored them, and to bring them to justice. President George W. Bush said that this was a test of American resolve, and that "We would pass the test!" Nations such as Libya, which had been attacked by the United States before for acts of terrorism, and the Taliban government in Afghanistan, quickly announced that they had nothing to do with it. President Bush counseled caution until the those responsible could be identified. Then they would be dealt with.
Messages of support came to President Bush from all over the world. Much early speculation centered on the Muslim terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, who is reportedly based in Afghanistan. Other terrorists had tried to destroy the World Trade Center Towers in 1993 with a truck bomb, but failed. Yassar Arafat deplored the action and sent his sympathy to President Bush. In Oklahoma City, where a terrible terrorist bombing destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995, the leader of a local Muslim group published a letter deploring the acts of terrorism in New York City and Washington D.C., and stating that not all Muslims want war. Most Muslims want peace.
The result of the Attack on America may well bring the world closer to the global peace toward which the growing global knowledge economy is driving the world. Muslims around the world may unite for peace, condemning acts of terrorism as selfish individual acts, not service to Allah, who loves peace, and condemning those who die in such fits of selfishness, recognizing that they do not serve Allah, but serve evil and that they will be condemned on the Day of Judgment. The small stream of suicide bombers may dry up, if the world's Muslims condemn such action in an era of peace in which Allah bans all war, so that the global knowledge civilization on Earth may grow into the First Flower of the Universe. The First Flower, the global knowledge civilization on Earth, powered by the global knowledge economy, will produce a continuous blossoming of new existence at ever higher levels of organization, and eventually launch the other Flowers of Universe throughout space, realizing the potential for the universe to exist, all according to the divine plan. What the divine will do with this existence, we cannot know. We can only do our part for our time. We can defend the world and the global economy against backward, misguided terrorists. Then we can use our creativity and nurture, in the global knowledge civilization, to each live our reward, our fulfilled life as a whole person now, and to live in unity and love with the divine forever.
President Bush should reach out in this time of tragedy, exert leadership in the peaceful world and honor the vast majority of Muslims who support peace. He should recognize Muslims as responsible, peace loving citizens of the world, embrace them, and pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, and all peace loving people of every religion, to form a united alliance to condemn terrorism anywhere in the world.
If the world's religions band together to support world peace, and the nations combine to protect world peace and the global economy, then the peace will become a reality. It will become a reality sooner than if the global economy had been the sole motivator.
The terrorists may have actually sealed their own doom by waking the sleeping giant, not only the United States, but also the other nations in the world, the global community, to focus attention and huge resources against terrorists and their supporters. Their blunder may have been enormous, a terrible example of what not to do, and a blunder that well served the divine plan for establishing world peace and a new stage in the history of the universe. All the scriptures of the Abrahamic family of religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) say that we cannot question the God of Abraham, or God's ways. Without this terrible example of terrorism, would the rest of the world be so anxious for necessary peace? Only time will tell the long term effect of today's Attack on America.
August, 2001
RECONCILIATION: The World's Religions
Islam Changes To Lead The People Of Iran Into The 21st Century
President Khatami of Iran, Reelected by 77%, Gives
His Inaugural
Address About More Reforms
"We must use all our strength to avoid doing anything against the Islamic Shariah - God forbid that day." "But we must do our best so that no one would accuse Islam of not being able to resolve economic, social, political and military problems." "We have no choice but to put the emphasis on the rights and demands of the people in order to make lawful progress and to resolve the country's various problems."
In the August 9, 2001 edition of the New York Times, Neil MacFarquhar wrote an article about President Mohammad Khatami's inaugural address on August 8, 2001, after a landslide victory in the presidential election in June. The above quotes are from the article. The people of Iran spoke loudly and clearly in support of Khatami's reforms. Khatami sees the modern world as a challenge to whether an Islamic government can govern the people of a great nation in the modern world. For example, in a global economy based on mass creativity, where a nation needs all its citizens to be creative in the global marketplace to be competitive with other nations, what will be the role of women in Iran. Will the Iranian government nurture all its people to be creative, or only half? Will women contribute to the economy or will they be kept in the home? How can Iran compete with half its creative people kept out of the market place? President Khatami did not address this issue directly, according to the article, but it is one of the problems facing the Islamic government in Iran. Khatami, as with his predecessors in office, was confident Islam could lead the Iranian people into successful life in the 21st century world. Looking forward to Iran's participation in the global economy and the global knowledge civilization as an Islamic state, he said, "We have a long and untraveled path before the government and the people." He warned that failure would reflect badly on the very idea of Islamic government.
RECONCILIATION: Different Cultures
The Internet Develops More Communities With Their Own Language As Well As English.
Imagine a round bowl filled with many stones. Each stone is a community, with its own language and its own people who are linked together by the Internet. In addition there are links between stones, so that anyone in any community can communicate with anyone in any other community. Here a common global language is needed. This is what is developing on the Internet. English is the global Internet language, and probably will remain so. However, many local communities using their own language as well as English are developing around the world. This allows people in a culture to interact with each other in their own language as they normally would. However, the great strength of the Internet is that it creates a global market place, with billions of creators and consumers. It allows communication among different cultures on an equal basis. One can offer one's product or idea to the whole world in English and the language of the local communities. It is likely that these language options will be normal on the Internet, until competent machine translation of most of the world's languages is available. The following story from Lycos Asia is presented as an example of the way the global knowledge civilization is growing by use of this multi-lingual approach.
"Lycos Asia And I-Email.net Launch Chinese Email Address Service For Internet Users In Hong Kong, Taiwan & China"
Lycos Asia, in a press release dated June 21, 2001, (found at http://sg.lycosasia.com/press/rel_20010621.html) with the above quoted headline, announced a new email service in the Chinese language. The new service offers users the option of having Chinese usernames in traditional and simplified Chinese characters. "They will now be able to create an online identity for themselves, interact with other users and access good quality local content using the web-language of their choice."
Lycos Asia believes that communities are the core of the hub. An internet community personalizes the Web, allowing people with common interests to seamlessly find, communicate and collaborate with each other, acting as participants rather than observers. An online community personalizes the Web, enabling members to have individual relationships in a global medium (Quoted from http://sg.lycosasia.com/misc/about.html).
July, 2001
The World Court was established many years ago. This important step has been a long time in coming, but is forced now by the growing world economy, from which most people benefit. Today's action signals that the world will no longer put up with warmongers. They are no longer immune, simply because they are heads of state. The world economy is now so strong and interconnected that peace is necessary. Economy won out over dictatorship and "dormant nationalist enmities", otherwise known as lust for revenge inflamed by Milosevic.
Finally it was the world economy that delivered Milosevic to the World Court. Over a decade of "ethnic bloodletting" had left the Yugoslavian economy only half of what it had been in 1989. Economic aid to rebuild a broken Yugoslavian economy would have been denied, if Milosevic were not turned over by Yugoslavia to the World Court. The attempts to keep him in Yugoslavia were termed by Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic as "an attempt to compromise the entire future of our country". United States President George W. Bush said, "The transfer of Milosevic to The Hague is an unequivocal message to those persons who brought such tragedy and brutality to the Balkans that they will be held accountable for their crimes".
This is a victory for long term world peace. Dictators around the world who would start wars for their own selfish reasons now know that the global knowledge civilization will not permit them to go unpunished. One of the major pillars of the knowledge civilization is that it bans war as something that cannot be allowed to happen. The world's knowledge economy, based on an intricate global network of computer, communication and transportation machines, cannot be broken by war and violence. This need for protection from war and violence is the foundation for an era of necessary peace and harmony around the earth. People living in harmony and peace are free to be creative and to feed the great appetite of the knowledge economy for new knowledge, products and services. The mass creativity of billions of people is needed to provide for billions of consumers around the world with a great variety of tastes and needs. Peace allows the creativity that fuels the strongest economy the world has ever known. It is so strong, it will not permit war to stop it. One of the major threats to world peace is rogue states using war fueled by hatred as public policy. This is something the world can no longer afford and will not allow.
The end of Milosevic signals the beginning of a long era of peace.
The world is moving into this era, forced by the necessities of the growing
world economy. The world has climbed into the foothills of world
peace. It will take a while to establish the peace, to move through
the foothills to get to the mountain itself, but the path has been recognized
and an important step has been taken. The journey has begun.
A picture of the right side of the brain summarizes some of the findings. Different parts of the brain are labeled as follows: COSMIC UNITY: When the parietal lobes quiet down, a person can feel at one with the universe. RESPONSE TO RELIGIOUS WORDS involves the language centers. SACRED IMAGES involve areas that associate images (crosses and candles) with prayer and meditation, and help the person get into the religious experience. RELIGIOUS EMOTIONS such as joy and awe show activity in the right temporal lobe. ATTENTION: the frontal lobe, associated with concentration, is active during meditation.
The article concludes with the question of whether the brain creates God or God created the brain. A similar question is whether the brain by itself or some outside Divine Source gives religious messages and prophetic understanding. The answer as to which you believe is not based on absolute proof for certain. The last sentence in the article says, "Which you believe is, in the end, a matter of faith."
The next article is entitled "Faith Is More Than Feeling" by Kenneth L Woodword. He points out that faith, in addition to religious experience, involves ethics, self discipline and the need for Divine help to live successfully. Strongly religious people of different religions are known for their compassion, and how they treat other people, rather than their powerful religious experiences. He points out that candidates for sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church are measured by their charity, not their mystical experiences, and Buddhist bodhisattvas are distinguished by their compassion, not their spiritual athleticism, or how good they are at mediation.
Religion teaches us how to respond to live successfully, and how to get outside help, when we are too weak, or overcome by passion and desire, or fear, to decide correctly ourselves. By discovering new knowledge of how to cause change, science allows us to do new things. Science tells us what we can do. Religion tells us why we should do some things and not others in order to live a successfully as a human.
It is not a question of science or religion. Neither one can do the whole job for humans. Each has its limitations. Science can only speak about what it can measure. Religion can only speak in terms of limited stories humans can understand. Neither can see or prove the absolute truth for certain. Instead of science and religion fighting with each other to control all of human life from their respective points of view, science and religion are each limited in what they can do, both are vital to successful human life, and neither can do the other's job. We need them both, and we need to respect them both, and they need to do their work in their own ways, but compliment each other rather than fighting and disrespecting each other.
Science and religion form a vital partnership for humans to live successfully
in the global knowledge civilization. Each contributes in its unique
areas to the wholeness of successful human life. Neither can do the
other's job. We need both science and religion for successful human
life.
Sheik Kuftaro, focusing on war with Israel, instead of world peace, urged the Pope to "put pressure on Israel by every means to curb its atrocious aggression." The Pope, who was on a trip to retrace the travels of St. Paul, responded in the attitude of peace. "It is crucial for the young to be taught the ways of respect and understanding, so they will not be led to misuse religion itself to promote or justify hatred and violence." The Pope asked 40, 000 Christian and Orthodox believers to work to build a world "where everyone's human dignity and fundamental rights are recognized." Then he specifically sought healing in relationships between Christians and Muslims, who along with the Jews are the People of the Book and all believe in the God of Abraham. The Pope said, "For all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another, we need to seek forgiveness from the Almighty and offer each other forgiveness."
Forgiveness, mutual respect and quick reconciliation of future offenses are the formula for world peace, and the bed rock of the global knowledge civilization. The world's religions can lead the people of the world to global peace.
PEACE PROTECTS. Peace begins at home and spreads with mutual
respect and partnership around the global community of many religions and
ways of life. It is a complex world, unified by the powerful
global knowledge economy of plenty, which thrives on necessary peace and
vast variety. The global knowledge economy establishes the global
peace. The global culture of the global knowledge civilization
maintains the global peace by teaching and living the attitudes of peace.
The global peace secures the global knowledge economy and the global knowledge
civilization for many generations.
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