During the morning, 'Fear of the Other' considered fear as something internally generated within any individual. It may be projected inwards, making an other within the self. It may be projected outwards to an external other. Following question and answer, the plenary session then divided into small groups for discussion. Each group then reported to the plenary session.

The morning session considered fear as personal experience. It asked participants to consider how they had come to terms with their own fear and moved from it.

During the afternoon, the focus moved towards the relationship of applying personal experience of fear and means of moving from it, to public situations. The balance thus shifted towards the approaches to considering different aspects of fear in the public sphere. This reflects an emphasis likely during the final two seminars and conference. Throughout the afternoon session, the group stayed as a plenary.

We must first thank our three speakers, Miriam Logan, Jude Lal Fernando and Edward Horgan, for the focus and hard thought, which their discourse gave us. We must also thank the forty-two individuals who came and contributed their perceptions to this seminar.

The texts below are taken from detailed notes made as speakers were talking, except for Jude Lal Fernando, who wished to provide his own text. These notes were made by Irene Ni Mhaille and Damien Wedge. Notes were edited by Sean McCrum. Each text was then sent to the relevant speaker for their comments and any alterations.

Miriam Logan is a professional mediator, working in private practice in Cork. She is a founding member of Mediation Service in Ireland. She is currently writing a book on staying creative with difference.

She has been sustained and enabled by Friends for 22 years. She first encountered Friends through her brother-in-law's research, when he found an entry in a diary, about how Friends had settled a land dispute by stressing fairness as part of the process of settlement. The offended party was encouraged to become a part of this process and consider what was a fair and just price in that situation. Those involved were able to find individual dignity through taking personal responsibility for a just resolution. Quakers endeavour to cut away what is not important in order to get to the essence of a situation and thus to find the beauty of balance and harmony within it.

All of our life energy goes into finding balance and equilibrium. Nature shows that existence is not about denying and exclusion, but about cross-fertilisation, connecting, innovating.

Beyond theory, Miriam asks "what is at the kernel of settling differences"?

Our major personal challenge today is the fear of "other".

Fear of Other is Fear for Self. When someone is afraid, they enter a space which feels dangerous, threatening. Our instinct must decide to run or fight: fight-flight. We go into high arousal in a stressful situation, we are on 'red alert'. We react in various ways. In the fight mode, our drive is to expel the perceived threat. We may also go to the opposite extreme: avoiding, shrinking, fearful.

We should try to recognise these two extremes. We can learn to take care of the self without feeling threatened: we need to connect with ourselves and others in positive ways. We need to sit with fear, gaining some idea of whether that fear may be real or imagined.

When we enter threatening space, we need to ask at what level the threat really exists. We need the ability to assess what is happening, both subjectively and objectively.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a useful tool in this context. These needs are universal. To be fully creative and healthy, we need to have success in meeting these five levels of need. Maslow identifies:

(1) Need for food, shelter: basic needs
(2) Need for safety: we need to feel protected from threat
(3) Need for esteem: we feel understood and respected, valued for who we are.
(4) Need for belongingness: we feel included; taking one's space in a group.
(5) Need to be capable, to have skills.

We need to know how to negotiate when our needs are threatened in any of these. Going through such an experience, helps us understand the experience of the other: for example, that of foreigners in Ireland today.

Individually, how can we empower self and empower others? As we learn to identify and understand our fears, rather than try to deny or project them, we learn to empower ourselves. As we do this, we pass on empowerment to others: so it grows. It is a very simple operation that doesn't need rocket science. This puts us in touch with what is real and helps us to be focused. As we become empowered, we can discern what is needed to handle fear as it arises.

When we are physically wounded, the result may be painful for some time. When people are mentally wounded/traumatised, with needs withheld, that also may take time to heal. Sometimes people do not recognise wounds that arise from being threatened in any of these needs.

There are five resources to assist us in moving through fear:

(I) that we have enough basic needs;
(2) that we experience safety;
(3) that we accept ourselves as we are, that we matter;
(4) that we can take our space and belong;
(5) that we learn and become capable.

Cycles of fear become encoded across generations. We are very porous as people: we can sense and absorb fear. We need balance and awareness of how fear plays out in our lives. We need to enshrine rights-based fairness, equity, build holistic interconnectedness. By growing though small steps, we can become more sturdy. If we keep fear on the agenda, we can be empowered to deal with it and grow through it.

Jude Lal Fernandois Sinhalese. He is a PhD student in peace studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Dublin. His MA was on Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh. He supports a negotiated settlement in Sri Lanka.

Fear of the other is predicated on the construction of the other. The separation between self and the other is the assumption on which such a construction takes place.

'I and You' and 'We and They' are the clear expressions of this construction. Violence is not only what we do to the other, but the very construction of the other. Violent conflicts and wars have erupted on this assumption. Fear of the other increases as the conflicts and wars continue and thereby making the other the 'eternal enemy' whose very existence is seen as a threat. Such tensions operate on personal, social, cultural-religious, economic and political levels. The fear of the other can be seen between individuals, within a family, between families, between groups and parties, and between cultures, countries and regions.

Does diversity ranging from sexual diversity to bio-diversity cause fear and division? Difference arouses curiosity and the need for exploration. Our humanity is constantly enriched by our encounter with the different 'other'. By discovering the difference in the other we discover ourselves and we come to terms with the richness of our own humanity. In other words, I cannot talk of my humanity without the 'other' or there is no 'me' without the 'other'. Our destinies are interrelated. The key to overcome the fear of the other lies in this realisation of interrelatedness.

Why, then, we tend to construct the other spreading fear and making life and our societies miserable? How do the differences become causes for division though they should not necessarily be so? The answer could be found on the psycho-social and political levels. We are born into particular structures that carry historical memories and mechanisms. However, we often forget that we are born anew to the history of humanity and that we have an invitation to question such stories and structures. We are also born to a history that has questioned the stories about the 'other' and struggled to change the ways of relating to the 'other'. In that sense, we are not alone though we are born anew.

It is by constant questioning of the construction of the other that we can inherit the richness of diversity of humanity within us and among us. The role of both religious and secular humanist traditions is to help people to liberate themselves from the constructed repressed fears by bringing them to an awareness of interrelatedness of each other and the richness of diversity. The historical memories and mechanisms of power, prestige and wealth or the future ambitions for such glories have put us in competition with each other and bar the vision of interrelatedness. It is fear and anxiety that rules the day as polarisations between individuals and communities become the norm of human progress. It is important to examine the reasons corrupted by interests that lie beneath the construction of the fear of the other. Such soul-searching exercises need to be carried out both personally and on the level of communities; locally as well as internationally.

The birth of the child is painful for both the mother and the child. The physical separation of the two causes this pain and we are born as individuals. However, this physical individuality that we receive at our birth is an invitation to enter into another level of relationship with the 'other' and the world. An individual becomes a person only in relation to the 'other' or the world. This new space of encounter is a never ending process. Coming to know the 'other' can be a painful process as the pain of the child birth, but the hope of the new birth brings excitement and joy opening up new horizons. The way to overcome the fear of the 'other' lies in the attempt to cross the constructed borders between 'You and I' or 'We and They'.

When I was a child I was afraid of my mother and father who were strict to me and I had a feeling of 'They and Me', but later, as I realised that they were a hardworking couple who wanted me to study, my fear began to diminish. When I first went to school I was scared of the new faces and therefore was reluctant to go, but as days went on I befriended the 'others' and discovered that they are like me. When I got the privilege of going to the city school through a scholarship, I was doubly frightened because of its wealthy background. I did not know my English well and I was bullied on the first few days. However, as there were some 'others' with whom I could enter into relationships, my fears passed away soon. The fear of the city was decreasing. There were colleagues here whose faiths were different from mine. It was my first encounter with different faiths. Initially, we were distant from each other, but our day to day interactions in the class room and the playground brought us together. What united us most were our shared grievances against the school administration.

My privileged position as a youth who was educated in an English Catholic institution was shaken when the Sinhala educated unemployed youth took up arms against the government, calling for structural changes. My clandestine attempts at crossing the borders to speak with them made me understand them deeply and the constructed fear of the other diminished very soon. As a matter of fact I had given up learning English for ten years in solidarity with them. The privileged position of my Sinhala ethnic community is derived from its majoritarian strength by which the governments are formed. The demands by the Tamil minority for equal rights disturbed initially my majoritarian privileged position and made me afraid of them, but once they were massacred in thousands something within my being moved me to cross the borders to listen to their stories of oppression. As I listened to them I began to learn their language and the constructed fear faded away. Today, I have become an ardent supporter of their rights.

One of the recent crossings of borders was the constructed barrier between East and West. In my historical upbringing the East has been glorified and romanticised and the West has been demonised and rationalised. As I began to encounter more and more courageous journalists, human rights and peace activists, and movements for justice and peace in the West, the fear of the West has begun to decrease. However, I have not been able to overcome the fear of the immigration officers who always keep me longer than the EU passport holders at the border controls at the airports here in the West! My most recent crossing of borders is in the area of my relationship with a woman. The puritanical upbringing of my adolescence had kept me away from such relationships which I was afraid of starting. As I met her and struggled with myself to relate to her, I began to discover the richness of our humanity. I am overcoming the fear of women, thanks to her whose name signifies the meaning 'river'.

Life is like a river that is called to flow in human history breaking constructed fears while nourishing the richness of soil and quenching the thirst for relationships as we all move towards the beautiful ocean as drops of water. Each drop of water does not have a meaning unless it joins with the river of innumerable, immeasurable and invaluable 'other' drops. Nature is not a part of us, but we a part of nature. It is also of utmost significance that we come to a realisation of our interrelatedness with nature in this age of global warming. It is the awakening to the interrelatedness of reality that is the key to overcome the fear of the other.

Edward Horgan was a soldier in the Middle East and Cyprus with the Irish Army as part of UN Peace Keeping. He is now a peace activist.

Killing people to make peace is contradictory.

Prior to the war in Iraq, he predicted that 100,000 Iraqis might die. He was accused of scare-mongering. He underestimated. He recently put a figure of 620,000 on the number killed in recent wars in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan,. In fact, we know now that this figure is probably an understatement, probably 650,000. How many of those 650,000 killed were guilty of anything? 40% of them were children. We need to do something about this violence perpetuated by the West. We, in Ireland today, live in a hugely privileged society, with a history of oppression that we can choose to ignore. We have this violence done in our name. Governments involved in war don't want to hear reality.

Like the first speaker, Miriam Logan, he stressed individual responsibility. We would do better to become goats rather than sheep who follow the leader. Goats are individual, often wayward, animals. He expressed concern about mass movements - Hitler, Stalin, Mao. We should behave as individuals rather than as a mass. We need to challenge others. Society tries to control us if we don't challenge our government. The very act of challenging is a valid experience. Being a pacifist is also about being an activist e.g. Martin Luther King advocated. We must act to prevent what is clearly wrong through active pacifism.

As a UN Peacekeeper in the Middle East and Cyprus, he came to the view that war is counterproductive because it never makes or brings peace. Military peace keeping is a contradiction in terms. The idea of dying for a nation, for any flag whether national or UN, or for a state, is useless; there are too many deceptions behind these terms. Dying for an individual is different. We must look at the individual.

Only individuals can be tortured - not states. We are actively complicit in the use of Shannon. We allow what we know: that people renditioned through Shannon are being tortured in Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, on our behalf. In another type of situation, the war in Kosovo, NATO was given a new role after the Cold War. This war was provoked by the USA to justify the existence of NATO. We have a duty to seek knowledge then to act on it.

There have been many instances of the mass murder of others - the Holocaust, Cambodia, East Timor, Rwanda. We need to get rid of the concept of others, get rid of borders flags. Edward has worked in Bosnia, Croatia, Zimbabwe and East Timor. People are the same as we are in Ireland. There is no basis for the concept of racism. Difference is literally only skin deep, if even that. We are One World. There is no justification for otherness. We must act. First we must arm ourselves with knowledge of what is happening. We need to get rid of the concept of The Other.

Intelligence is on every side: so is corruption. As someone who was a soldier, he knows the reality of what a bomb does when it explodes. Instead, we only see edited images and sounds - a lovely fireworks display above Baghdad. Journalists, commentators and editors sanitise the reality of war. That reality is children who are shredded, half killed and left to die for weeks, even months. Politicians explain our involvement, by saying that we are "friends of the US" - warn us about losing US investment here, to excuse half a million people killed. Sweden and Switzerland have maintained neutrality and it has not affected their economies adversely. The EU over the last sixty years has shown what peace can do instead of war.

Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main engineers of the Iraq war, is now Head of the World Bank. He wants to spend the money, which he now controls. Through making our views clearly known, we can push our governments to control him. As individuals, we must and can exercise personal responsibility as citizens and control our government.

In the context of responsibility for supporting war when it is clear that it is useless, Ireland owes its part of a debt of reparation to the people of Iraq: 75%-80% from the USA, 5% from Britain and I% from Ireland. One hundred billion Euros is owed to Iraq in compensation. But after that, we can only build back the buildings but not the lives of the dead.

We are now one world and that world is at a crossroads.

Edward then listed some of his activities:
2001 Organised protest against Afghan War. Formed Afghan War Peace Camp. A High Court injunction was placed on him against trespass at Shannon.

March 2003 He took a High Court action against the Irish Government, risking the loss of his family home. He lost 2/3 case, won 1/3 and in the outcome did not lose his family home.

2003 Handed back army medals in protest at Ireland's abandonment of neutrality.

2004 Protest at Shannon on the occasion of President Bush's visit. Created an incident in a boat on the Shannon at the security cordon and was arrested. He now no longer fears arrest. Arrest was liberating. We need to challenge the system.

Brought a case as an individual to the Oireachtas on the criminal torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

Made a submission to the European Parliament on.the rendition for torture of prisoners. In relation to making the verbal submission, he was warned not to mention the war. Despite this, he began his statement by saying that the USA and Britain were two rogue states, Sweden and Poland were two European rogue states, all for allowing rendition. Ireland was a rogue neutral state for allowing the same.

Evil is being perpetrated in our names.

Edward feels that, given the level of knowledge which he has, he should have done more. Knowledge carries a heavy responsibility. The more knowledge we have of what is happening, the more responsibility we carry. The fear of doing something wrong, or of a situation becoming violent, can be an excuse for doing nothing about what we know.

200,000 people protested against the war in Dublin. Then the war went ahead and we accepted it. We were not powerless - we should have gone to Shannon, not gone home. With models like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, there is much we can do as individuals: the individuals who damaged the plane at Shannon were acquitted. This has been a vindication of their position. Damaging a plane may be counter-productive, but it may also be the only action that speaks. Unless we stop wars now, our grandchildren will face nuclear war. Our children's future is at stake.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Challenge the government to justify what it does.

Germans don't like the Jews, Sinhalese don't like the Tamils, and Turks don't like the Greeks. These divisions are false. We are all brothers and sisters. We need to control society, not have society control us. We need to create peace only by peaceful means. Be Active Pacifists.

We must thank our speakers, Hassan Mansour, Martina Weitsch and Mannete Ramaili and the participants from northern and southern Ireland who were present.

We thank Irish School of Ecumenics, Belfast, for their assistance and the use of their premises and facilities to allow us to hold this seminar.

Fear of the Other, the first seminar, considered fear as generated within the individual and how that can be projected upon the self as other or another individual or group as other. It moved to the experience of people who had worked through this problem for themselves and used this experience in the sphere of public action.

Power and the Other moved to considering the relationship between individuals and small interest groups and large structures. What balances exist? Who defines the source of power, why do people feel disempowered or empowered? How to build some alternative sense of empowerment to the assumptions of owning power, which majority power structures assume?

These questions carry problematic relationship at every level. This seminar approached the problem from three viewpoints:

1. Islamic belief and its expression as a minority part of a larger western European culture in N. Ireland;
2. peace building within the power structure of a large political phenomenon, the EU, in which seeking peace is broadly regarded as a nuisance and eccentric other, related to policy and special interest structures;
3. the building of self-worth by a small country, Lesotho, within regional African and wider international power and economic structures.

In each case, it was important that lack of basic knowledge amongst participants was addressed. Each speaker spoke both from their situation within a wider structure, and from the need to provide information. Hence participants were able to begin making informed assessments - demonstrating that knowledge is an important part of empowerment.

Hassan Mansour discussed the situation of Islam in N Ireland, but put emphasis on the nature of Islamic belief as experienced by him. He initially set his experience as Islamic, in the context of having lived in Canada and N Ireland. He pointed out the relationship of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. He came from the direction of believing that the Koran is the word of God and the basis of his beliefs and practice, which he outlined. He discussed the ill-informed current misuse, often within Islam, of the term "Jihad". He outlined the situation of women in Islam. He discussed Sharia law and its direct implementation, which he felt appropriate as part of his beliefs. The logic of practice drawn from his beliefs was coherent and caused very difficult examination of participants' views. It raised the complexity of relating self to other and who is the other to whom.

Martina Weitsch, of Quaker Council for European Affairs, Brussels, approached the problems of placing peace-related concerns in legislation and power block international negotiations. She noted individuals' perception of power as being within the EU/ Brussels institutions, with a feeling of personal and regional powerlessness. For individuals, there is a sense of being themselves seen as the other by the EU, which they also regard as the other. She noted the sense in which peace-related thinking has to deal with being regarded as a nuisance by this structure: again, the other and the other.

She discussed the EU as an effective model for the reality of peace-centred thinking as valid and necessary for international problem-solving - Europe has overall had peace for 60 years, something which had not happened for centuries.

However, QCEA and other peace-centred non-governmental organisations [NGOs] are confronted with a power structure and regional special interest groups, including militarisation and armaments industries. She then presented a detailed summary of the EU's current complex structures.

Part of these structures relates to the EU's and individual member countries' often-contradictory relationships with non-EU regions and countries. It involved international crisis and longer-term situations, where support was often fragmented to the point of dysfunction. Such situations often sought to combine immediate "damage limitation" with long-term political and legal stabilisation and economic reconstruction.

These situations are, as a matter of very serious concern, indicating the potential for imbalance between military and civilian input in terms of numbers of EU staff and funding. The balance is currently in favour of military input by a factor of 6:1. It indicates a militarisation of attitudes and thinking towards habitual action, within an organisation, the EU, which has proved the effectiveness of peace as the core of its existence.

Within this complex scenario, QCEA and other peace-related NGOs work together as an advocacy group. They are able to build their negotiating strength, in part because EU structures prefer to negotiate with groups. They are able to bring peace-related concerns to legislators', bureaucrats' and negotiators' notice. Whilst their work related to specific legislation and negotiation is vital, it is equally important that they keep in the foreground peace-based thinking and intentions as a realistic habit of thought. Their work is difficult, slow and unglamorous, but is now very important within a structure, which could easily move towards militarisation.

Mannete Ramaili, the Ambassador for Lesotho, discussed the colonial background to current African cultural, political and economic problems. She pointed out the scale of Africa and its immense regional, cultural and political diversity. In colonial terms, it had been a large area of the earth exploited as a permanent other. Consequently, a significant part of how this continent rethinks its diversity concerns self-belief and its cultural integrity. In contemporary terms, she noted the North-South divide and the problematic situation of developing EU trade. She pointed out the problems for Lesotho of emigration to South Africa. She noted the effects of imbalance for developing countries caused by organisations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

She discussed the complex cultural, economic and social situation of Lesotho. The country became a place, not a mark on a map, because its complexity made it real. It has regional problems. Zimbabwe is not simply a moral problem but a complex political, socio-cultural and regional difficulty involving other neighbouring countries. When she was asked "What have you done about Zimbabwe?", she replied "What have you done about Sellafield?" The equation between Lesotho and this island becomes real.

Her country is small, landlocked and economically constrained. It is in the complex process of redefining itself and building its own integrity in its terms. Lesotho, southern Africa, indeed the whole continent, may be the other to Europeans, but Europe is the other to most southern Africans. It is economically powerful, but essentially outside most people's experience as they build their own definition of empowerment.

These three discussions raised a huge number of questions. For many participants, this was the first opportunity to build questions on information. Subsequently, they have been able to come to grips with three complex bodies of thinking and belief, all of which opened up the problem of who is the other, why, and how we can move from that mind-set of exclusivity, exclusion and down-grading, to inclusivity and rethinking. In many cases, this involves moving from otherness as a comfort zone, embedding other people in being the other. How do we develop our thinking from here to focused and positive action?

Religion and the Other

The Problem of relating to the Other is intensified when:

the Other to be acknowledged
the Stranger to be welcomed
the Enemy to be reconciled

are religiously different. Why is this? What is this 'ambivalence of the sacred' that gives religion its dual power to exacerbate conflict, but also to transform it?

A problem in itself is what counts as 'religion' in general and 'a religion' in particular. It is now becoming apparent that what is generally understood as religion is a Western invention derived from theism and imposed on many cultures which Christian missionaries regarded as 'irreligious'. Examples:

the missionary encounter with Buddhism in Sri Lanka;
the European appropriation of Buddhism,
nineteenth century phenomena which still cause conflict and misunderstanding today.

The problem of religion as the putative cause of violence has drawn alongside scientific rationality and the problem of evil as one of the main reasons for rejecting religion as such. Does this apply particularly to the (very different!) 'monotheisms' Judaism, Christianity and Islam? How, then, does one explain:

the involvement of Theravada Buddhism in the legitimation of violence in Sri Lanka;
the complicity of Mahayana Buddhism in the violence of Japanese militarism and imperialism?
Does this make religion necessarily alien, or can religion still be home to pre-modern, modern and post-modern people without alienating others whose spiritual homes are elsewhere?

John D'Arcy May, Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin.

Biographical Details

Publications include:

Meaning, Consensus and Dialogue in Buddhist-Christian Communication: A Study in the Construction of Meaning (Berne: Peter Lang, 1984) [ed.] Living Theology in Melanesia: A Reader (Goroka: The Melanesian Institute, 1985).
Christus Initiator. Theologie im Pazifik (Duesseldorf: Patmos, 1990).
[ed.] Pluralism and the Religions: The Theological and Political Dimensions (London: Cassell, 1998).
After Pluralism: Towards an Interreligious Ethic (Muenster-Hamburg-London: Lit Verlag, 2000).
Transcendence and Violence: The Encounter of Buddhist, Christian and Primal Traditions (New York and London: Continuum, 2003).
[ed.] Converging Ways? Conversion and Belonging in Buddhism and Christianity (St Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2006).