World Social Forum

2007 January 20-24 | Nairobi, Kenya

Background note

Different Beliefs, Common Struggles:
Solidarity in the Face of Empire and War

Peace for Life (PfL) describes itself as a global multi-religious movement for peace and justice engaged in building people’s solidarity and in mobilising faith-based resistance to the ‘war on terror’ and destructive forces of corporate globalisation. It came about in response to the felt need to take urgent action in a world that has become enmeshed in geopolitics dominated by a lone superpower determined to strengthen its political, economic, and cultural hegemony. The beginning of the 21st century has seen a more aggressive American Empire, ushering a new era defined by a borderless ‘war on terror’ that legitimised pre-emptive attacks, unilateralism and the privatisation of war; a new era of the neo-liberal globalisation agenda that blatantly employed military action at the service of capital. It found its cassus belli in 9-ll, and henceforth, divided the world between those “for us or against us”. What ensued were the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the repudiation of the rules of civilized warfare, which make clear distinctions between military and civilian personnel, respected rights of prisoners and safeguarded the sanctity of civilian population. Indeed, the nexus between militarisation and corporate globalisation has never been more apparent.

The ‘war on terror’ has replaced the Cold War as the signpost for U.S. foreign policy-it is no longer an ideological war against the ‘evil empire’ but a ‘clash of civilization’ with the ‘axis of evil’. The new rhetoric places ‘Islamic radicalism’ (or ‘militant Jihadism’ or ‘Islamo-fascism’) as the new enemy and like communism it is postulated to be ‘dismissive of free peoples’; its adherents turn to terrorism because they would like to stop the spread of freedom and democracy. This new paradigm has the effect of an indictment against Islam-as corollary, against non-Western ethos-and has polarised communities, even recrudesced violent religious conflicts in some areas. Never before since the last century has religion been so implicated in social upheavals, and no modern war has been so couched in religious symbolism as the ‘war on terror.’

Religion today, more than any other time within the last century, has become a major justification of social and political action. The fusion of religion and politics that has all been legislated away in the last centuries, at least in the West and in western-style governments, has reasserted itself, a logical accompaniment of an upsurge in religious revivalism-which, sadly, leaned toward the more political kind-that has been going on since the last decades of the 20th century, about the same time when free-market globalisation has become the dominant doctrine adhered to by nearly all state governments.

Interfaith Solidarity

Peace for Life considers it a principle that all religious faiths espouse peace and goodwill. That throughout history religion has been implicated in so many conflicts was not a matter of doctrine but a case where the powerful use religion to meet their requirements. It is also a case where the powerless in their outrage and despair summon the strength of their faith to strike back-though, tragically, more often than not, not at their real oppressors. PfL also asserts that the struggle against empire and its global projects is a struggle for peace and justice, which requires unmasking the powers, their religion, systems and institutions that perpetuate war and injustice.

Peace and social justice are universal aspirations and the struggle against all forces of injustice and exploitation is a common struggle for people of all faiths. Thus, it is an urgent challenge for multi faith peace initiatives to mobilise faith communities in a spirit of solidarity and work with people and people’s movements in the resistance against imperial globalization and work for life-enhancing alternatives.

WSF-Nairobi 2007

Peace for Life’s First People’s Forum held in December 2004 addressed the theme “Sowing Seeds of Peace in the Era of Empire: Christians in Solidarity with Muslims.” It pointed to the direction in which PfL’s interfaith agenda should proceed. In December 2005, in time for the World Trade Organization (WTO) 6th Ministerial Conference, it organised a roundtable on the theme, “WTO, the Empire and Religious Wars: Taking the Faith Communities to the Front Lines.”

The forum/round table to be held in the 2007 WSF on the theme “Different Faiths, Common Struggles: Solidarity in the Face of Empire and Injustice” (the same theme PfL attempted to deal with in the 2006 WSF in Karachi) is part of this continuing discourse on the role of faith communities in making a much better world possible. The World Social Forum-Nairobi offers a unique opportunity of being situated in a continent where some of the most serious conflicts are said to have (or claims to have) religious dimension. It is deemed to provide an opportunity to better situate the idea of inter-religious and inter-ethnic solidarity in the context of war and peace and in the kind of concrete realities that PfL hopes to address as a peace movement, and to initiate closer links with African groups with strong community base that are into these conflicts whether as victims, participants or as peace advocates.

Prepared by Vivian S. de Lima, 2007 January 8

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