A-Z of Believing: L is for Land

There are dangers in laying claim to holy land... Ed Kessler, head of the Woolf Institute, presents the twelfth part in a series on belief and scepticism

In reality conflict over land, however sacred, is simply a clash of different opinions (Shutterstock)

Written and presented by Dr Ed Kessler MBE, founder and director of the Cambridge-based Woolf Institute, this compelling guide to religious belief and scepticism is a must-read for believers and nonbelievers alike.

Founded in 1998 to explore the relationship between religion and society, the Woolf Institute uses research and education to foster understanding between people of all beliefs with the aim of reducing prejudice and intolerance.

Says Dr Kessler: “Latest surveys suggest that 85 per cent of the world’s population identify themselves as belonging to a specific religion, and in many parts of the world the most powerful actors in civil society are religious. Understanding religion and belief, the role they play and their impact on behaviour and decision-making is, therefore, vital.”

Dr Kessler – who was awarded an MBE for services to interfaith relations in 2011 – is an affiliated lecturer with the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, a principal of the Cambridge Theological Federation and additionally teaches at the Cambridge Muslim College.

He says: “This A-Z of Believing aims to show how the encounter between religions has influenced and been influenced by the evolution of civilisation and culture, both for good and for ill. I hope that a better understanding of believing will lead people to realise that while each religion is separate, they are also profoundly connected.”

L is for... land

A story is told about an Israeli and a Palestinian leader meeting with God and asking whether there will ever be peace in the Middle East. ‘Of course’ God tells them. They looked relieved. ‘But,’ God continues, ‘not in my lifetime.’

It may surprise you that religions sometimes play down the sacredness of a particular land. Christians have as often been interested in the heavenly Jerusalem as the earthly one. And Muslims point out that Muhammad said “the whole earth is a mosque” – that is, a place of prostration in worship of God. This has something to teach us in a religiously diverse world: whilst sacred space focuses on the divine presence, it does not exhaust the presence of transcendent reality, which is found in all places. Even so, Christians, Muslims and Jews have built churches, mosques and synagogues everywhere, sanctifying them, not least by ritual practices, and implying that there we meet God. Similarly, in many Hindu temples, you ring a bell when you arrive to remind God that you have come into his or her presence.

Religious places are also the focus of community life, not only to worship God and be educated into the ways of the religion, but to meet and converse and even to do business. For others, buildings are less important than natural places where the divine presence makes a land sacred. Even in Buddhism, without a divine creator, a place like Sarnath in North India, where the Buddha preached his first sermon, is holy because it brings alive to the believer the way she supposes the world really is. Rivers can also be holy, such as the Ganges, regarded by Hindus as mother and nurturer. To die at its bank liberates one from the ceaseless round of rebirth into moksha (liberation).

In October 1984, the prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, demonstrating that holy land has power of life and death. She had ordered a military operation to remove Sikh militants from Amritsar – who had wanted an independent country called Khalistan (the land of the khalsa, “pure” or “ordained by God”) – and she paid for this decision with her life. Another prime minister, this time Yitzak Rabin, was killed by Jewish extremists. His sin? Being willing to give up holy land. His killing made poignant the psalmist’s prayer for the peace of Jerusalem, a place claimed by Jews, Christians and Muslims, in contrast to violent bloodshed.

Muslim claims derive from the story about the night journey of Muhammad. The mosque of Umar – commemorating the caliph whose forces seized Jerusalem from Byzantine rule in 637 – was built on the site of the biblical Temple and has become one of only three mosques to which Muslims should travel. For Muslims, Jerusalem is al-Quds (“the holy place”).

For Christians, notwithstanding the heavenly Jerusalem, the fourth-century church mother Eigeria wrote a famous diary of her pilgrimage, and medieval knights hundreds of years later sought the conquest of the earthly Jerusalem, not least because Jesus lived and died there. Christian pilgrims have visited ever since. For Jews, Jerusalem is the site of the biblical Temple, destroyed twice (in 587 BCE by the Babylonians and in 70 CE by the Romans) and remains the primary place of Jewish pilgrimage, and the city to which worship is directed.

But these claims cut no ice with one another, even though, in our interconnected world, it makes better sense to see through the others’ eyes and to make space for one another than to insist upon one particular claim which leads to dispute and even violence.

There are many dangers in laying exclusive claim to a holy land but I’d like to describe one. What happened a hundred years ago is considered by some as historically remote compared to ancient sacred events, which are viewed as almost contemporary. The present becomes transformed and places are given metaphysical meaning. And the radical interprets ownership of land (think Israel and India, or Mecca and Amritsar, and so on) in terms of a divine gift, bestowing divine importance to a land and his vocation becomes a dedication to the restoration of the cosmic state.

In reality, conflict over land, however sacred, is “simply” a clash about different claims. This story was once told to me by an Arab in Jerusalem. “There were two brothers,” he said. “Each owned half a field, but each wanted the half he did not have and neither would give up his half. They called in a man known for his wisdom. He lay down with his ear to the ground under a tree in the field and appeared to fall asleep. After a time the brothers grew impatient, complaining that he was wasting their time. But he told them that he had been listening to the ground. It had told him that neither of them owned the ground. It owned them. And one day, he said, they would be inside it.”

Next week: M is for Martyrdom

Listen to each episode of An A-Z of Believing: from Atheism to Zealotry on the Woolf Institute podcast site or wherever you get your podcasts