Faith forum has come not a moment too soon if racial intolerance is to be curbed

A recent picture of Imam Yaya al Hussein greeting Kosovo refugees reminded us that the victims of the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo are overwhelmingly Muslim. The refugees' arrival means further growth in Ireland's large and diverse Muslim community, for one way or another some of them are certain to stay.

To attend Friday prayers at the striking new mosque in Dublin's Clonskeagh Road is to see a cross-section of the Muslim world, from Bosnia to Pakistan.

The contrast with Ireland's refusal to accept Jews after the second World War is striking. Then, only national considerations carried weight; now, willingness to accept refugees, however grudging, is part and parcel of belonging to Europe. The fact that this latest group of refugees is Muslim makes Irish society that much more multicultural, even as it struggles to put an end to its own history of sectarian strife.

It also has implications for the Christian traditions represented here and for the dwindling Jewish community. Not just the fact of being multi-faith, but the need to forge relationships between the faiths is the significant new reality.

Though some asylum-seekers come in search of better career prospects and social conditions, as the Irish have done abroad for generations, it is those seeking refuge from persecution and torture who make the most immediate moral demands.

They are the local manifestation of a global phenomenon, which the Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington has called "the clash of civilisations". In his book of the same title, he says that in the post-Cold War world the most pervasive, important and dangerous conflicts will not be between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities.

These Huntington calls "civilisations", identifying Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Latin American and Western (there is apparently no Buddhist civilisation, and Africa is acknowledged only hesitatingly).

Though many would disagree that ethnicity has displaced economics as the determinant of international tensions, we may indeed see the return of the "politics of identity", in which the most crucial question will be not "Whose side are you on?" but "Who are you?"

The present conflict in Kosovo, like its predecessors in Bosnia, Croatia, Chechnya and Tajikistan, as well as those in the Philippines, the Sudan, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tibet and East Timor, is an example of the "fault line wars" continually being sparked along the ancient boundaries of great civilisations or within the artificial boundaries left behind by retreating colonial powers.

These "identity wars" generate a "hate dynamic" which inexorably involves sympathetic neighbours and culturally related regional powers. On closer reading, however, it emerges that Huntington's real purpose is to insulate the United States, as the core state of the West, from the influence of other cultures. For him, a multicultural America is as unthinkable as a multicultural world is inevitable. But how can we envisage global multiculturalism without learning painfully, from the ground up, in our local communities, cities and polities, how to live alongside people of other cultures?

In a recent TV programme on the New Right in Europe, a German neo-Nazi said: "A multicultural society means genocide." Does anybody dare to assert an ethical idealism in the face of this ethnic "realism"?

Since September 1997, members of Dublin's Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities have been meeting regularly to explore the possibilities of dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths. This year an Irish Three Faith Forum, loosely modelled on its British counterpart, was launched by the former lord mayor of Dublin, Cllr Joe Doyle, in the Mansion House.

In the presence of Orthodox and Reform Jews, Sunni and Shia Muslims and representatives of most of Ireland's Christian churches, Senator Doyle spoke movingly of faith as a precious but endangered heritage which binds together all the children of Abraham.

Canon Desmond Sinnamon, Rector of Taney and secretary of the new forum, said that although "deep hostility and suspicion" have characterised relations between the Peoples of the Book, "it is vital to address our fears. We have a responsibility to set an example of friendship and to find opportunities to enter into the experience of others so that incipient hostility based on fear is disarmed".

At the same time, he said, "We can uncompromisingly hold fast to our own belief without diminishing our willingness to listen, learn and grow." Besides promoting education and providing information about the three faiths, the forum aims to help break down prejudice and take common action on issues where justice and peace are at stake.

As Canon Sinnamon said, this is indeed "something new and different" in Ireland. It is an attempt to put inter-religious relationships on a firm footing, thereby anticipating the misunderstandings and hostilities that have already manifested themselves in racist attacks and hate mail sent to the lord mayor.

In the light of such discrimination arising from nothing more than people's religion, skin colour and mode of dress, the Three Faith Forum comes not a moment too soon.

Dr John D'Arcy May teaches Inter- faith Dialogue and Ethics at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Dublin. The Three Faith Forum can be reached through Canon Desmond Sinnamon, Taney Parish Centre, Dundrum, Tel/Fax: 01 298 5491.