Faiths converge to talk text

Jeff Benson

The Torah, the Bible and the Koran may tell people to worship in

different ways, but local religious leaders believe they’re

contextually quite similar.

Orange County religious leaders Rabbi Robert Altshuler, Father

Raphael Luevano and Muzammil Siddiqi, representing the Jewish,

Catholic and Islamic faiths, told nearly 200 UCI students Tuesday at

the university’s Student Center that each of the sacred texts should

be taken for the time period and cultures it was written for, and not

as so absolute.

The religious mini-summit was presented as the fifth installment

of the “Jews/Christians/Muslims in Dialogue” series as part of the

UCI Community Forum.

The leaders explained the history of their religions and their

texts and problems they’ve encountered. They said the respective

texts are still used as a basis for modern life, but they felt

revisions and commentary are necessary for changing times.

“To me, as a rabbi, I can’t understand the texts without a full

scrutiny of modern life,” Altshuler said. “I came from a secular

Jewish home, so I took advantage of every possible viewpoint I could

find. The Torah should be based on traditional commentary and full

scrutiny of what we know.”

The speakers added that each religion is dependent upon other

religions. Luevano reminded students just how much the Catholic faith

derives from Hebrew Scriptures.

“Christianity and other religions interpret the Hebrew Scriptures

and the prophecies as the coming of Jesus Christ,” Luevano said. “On

the other hand, it’s good to know what is a dogmatic institution with

regard to Jewish people -- that all promises made to Jewish people

will be fulfilled. God does not lie.”

Luevano said he’s begun long-term dialogues with members of the

Muslim and Jewish communities to discuss Scriptures and the authority

of each religion’s traditions.

Muslims don’t question the authority of their holiest book, the

Koran, Siddiqi said, but there is a range of skepticism in the

authority of other Islamic holy texts.

The prophet Muhammad never arranged the Koran in chronological

order or according to subject matter, he said, so he advised reading

the entire book before jumping to conclusions.

“This is the issue -- how to understand the Koran and interpret it

by understanding its proper context,” Siddiqi said. “Read the entire

text, because text taken out of context is pretext.”

For students, it was a one-stop, one-hour crash course in

religious fundamentals.

Sophomore Greg Anderson, an agnostic, said he attended the

presentation as a mandatory part of Daniel Schroeter’s history of

world religions class.

“I thought it was a good presentation,” Anderson said. “Over the

last three weeks, each speaker came in independently. For some

students it was review, and for some it was new. But I thought it was

a little bit short.”

Each of the speakers emphasized the importance of being sensitive

to others’ religious practices.

“As I’ve noted many times in our conversations [with Siddiqi], we

talk about how profoundly similar the religious systems of Islam and

Judaism are,” Altshuler said. “In a larger sense, here are two

faiths, which started with two texts. The terms are very

interchangeable, and that’s important to our continuing dialogue,

which should be taking place around the world.”