The Twenty-fifth Niwano Peace Prize Commemorative Dialogue between His Royal Highness El Hassan bin Talal of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Rev. Nichiko Niwano

The twenty-fifth Niwano Peace Prize was awarded to H.R.H. Prince Hassan of Jordan. Prince Hassan's tireless interfaith advocacy and leadership in the promotion of peace based on his profound faith in Islam has won him recognition around the world. In this commemorative dialogue with Rev. Nichiko Niwano, president of the Niwano Peace Foundation, on the theme "recommended peace education for young people," held on May 7, 2008, in Tokyo, he emphasized the importance of focusing on human security and cohesion with the poor.

Editor: First, we would like to begin by asking President Niwano to comment on His Royal Highness Prince Hassan's devoted work in various fields.

Niwano: On behalf of the Niwano Peace Foundation, I would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere appreciation to you for having undertaken the long journey from Jordan to come to Japan. I also feel very deep appreciation for your superb leadership as a moderator of the World Conference of Religions for Peace for seven long years. Your Royal Highness has devoted your life to achieving conflict resolutions, human rights protection, and environmental protection. And your wise leadership has been very widely appreciated and supported by people around the world. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to express our deepest respect to you. In Buddhism we have a very special bodhisattva with a thousand arms and a thousand eyes who hears the cries of the world and acts with true compassion, and you have truly acted like this bodhisattva.

Based on the Islamic faith, you have especially continued to exert efforts in order to realize in the actual world the essence of religion, that is, the protection of the dignity of all human beings and the dignity of life. For a world that finds itself in a state of crisis arising from division and confrontation, your work can be seen as a beacon light in which all can find courage and hope.

In this context, it gives us very great pleasure to extend to you our sincere congratulations upon your receipt of the Niwano Peace Prize this year. It is an especially auspicious time for both of us to get together for this interview, for, though we were born in different years, we share the same birthday.

Editor: Your Royal Highness, could you kindly give us your impression or thoughts on Rissho Kosei-kai?

Prince Hassan: It is important for me to note that Rissho Kosei-kai and Buddhist organizations are doing so much all over the world for people of different denominations. The organization founded by Rev. Nikkyo Niwano in 1938 emphasizes the innermost spirit of compassion, and in that context I want to say that what is important in the world of the Internet today is not the Internet but the "inner net."

Editor: We are facing various challenges that are very difficult. I would like to ask Your Royal Highness to outline your expectations of youth or to evaluate the future potential of young people.

Prince Hassan: My question today is this: Can we live up to the challenge of the International Declaration of Human Rights' sixtieth anniversary this year? And can we place as a strategic target in our minds a referendum for a coalition for common global issues, interconnecting society and nature by 2010, or maybe even serving as the basis for a law of peace?

First, I must refer to the report of the Independent Commission on International Human Issues entitled Winning the Human Race?, on which Professor Sadako Ogata and I worked in the 1980s to present a New International Humanitarian Order to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Since 1988, the General Assembly has reiterated its interest in this appeal, addressing the subject of human security, speaking of the world's uprooted refugees, displaced persons, statelessness, and mass expulsions.

Human beings are taken in the context of victims of neglect. And these victims, as we search for the ethic of human solidarity, fall into the category of neglected refugees, for whom no formal educational system is recognized. Neglected people, indigenous people, and those who have disappeared are one subject of concern for the Asian Muslim Association. And according to the Catholic Bishops' Councils, in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, one and a half million children have disappeared or entered into the domain of criminal practice.

As you know, from the experience of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and from the experience of Afghanistan through Iraq and Palestine, and from Somalia, the level of psychological trauma is serving the hatred industry, through poor governance or the failure of the patriarchal system to assist everyone in need. We are building the platform of the hatred industry with fear. The suicide bombers of tomorrow are between ten and fifteen years old today. So when we speak of youth as an agent of change, I would like to comment on the work of the Human Development Group in Geneva, which has assisted our Voices from Southeast Asia meetings, and social organizations and NGOs, to develop a citizen's charter, a social charter, and a cohesion fund.

We have now started with West Asia, where Israelis, Pakistanis, and Turks--people of different religions and different backgrounds--are meeting in the context of the Middle East Citizens' Assembly.

On November 27, 2007, representing six regional interreligious youth networks, the members of the International 2007 Youth Committee of Religions for Peace successfully concluded the International Youth Committee and shared their insights. Our problem, as I see it, is that we are focusing on what is possible, which means projects, and not a concept. But if we want to build long-lasting peace, youth are the silenced--not the silent but the silenced--majority. It is for this reason that I call on Rissho Kosei-kai and the other international networks to assist in coming together in order to focus on shared consciousness--on universal consciousness and shared values.

Editor: His Royal Highness has alluded broadly to the critical situations young people in the world are facing today and how important it is to share universal values. President Niwano, would you please share your views on the fate of the youth of the world today, as well as on how a universal sharing of values among youth can be accomplished?

Niwano: Your Royal Highness, your words describe the global situation and the very real circumstances in the world today very well. My respect has deepened by listening to you.

Rissho Kosei-kai also promotes several projects overseas, within the limits of its ability, connected with peace activities. By considering types of cooperation and aid that meet the needs of local people, and also by putting ourselves within those stark realities, we have promoted such programs in the spirit of sharing "the same sadness and the same suffering." Furthermore, we believe that such programs will become much more successful when we can work in collaboration with other groups or organizations with which we share a common goal, and can thus form together a network of cooperation. Through your words, I can confirm the importance of that.

The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore left behind the words, "Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man." It is very sad to see pure and innocent youth think that they are being given up on or neglected, which is why they harbor a sense of hopelessness.

The doctrine of dependent origination teaches that all that comes into being is interrelated, and thus there is nothing that is unrelated. This is at the center of the universal truth, or Dharma, preached in Buddhism. I keenly feel the need to promote a religion-oriented education, in which we are obliged to assist not only the youth but also the adults to realize such things.

Furthermore, Buddhism teaches us that everyone is the Buddha's child, and we are all brothers and sisters. I guess that there is nobody who would not care for a brother or sister. In order to build up a peaceful world in which there are no more people who lose hope and become lost in the depths of despair, I think that it is necessary for us to be considerate of others and support them in a viable way. And at the same time, unless we promote across every generation a religion-oriented education that forms the basis of building human character development, the various problems arising across the world will not be thoroughly solved. As Buddhists, we learn that true compassion can be found in conveying the universal truth to many other people. I believe that the very starting point for making our world harmonious lies therein.

Editor: Your Royal Highness, could you kindly comment on what type of common ethic is capable of becoming an important part of the peace education of youth?

Prince Hassan: I would like to thank you for speaking of the universality of human ethics. And I would like to refer to ethics, models, and values by saying that in each family of each culture or faith, there is a different interpretation of all three of these words. It is for that reason that thirty years of conversations with people of monotheistic faith--not all monotheistic faiths, but Judaism and Christianity--have focused on building a bridge between theology and practicality.

Recognizing noncompulsion in religion and recognizing the importance of compassion on the basis that there are at least three forms of dialogue with our Creator (or creators, in the case of other faiths in the Asian historical context), all of us--Christians, Muslims, and Jews--share a belief in a dialogue of beauty, a dialogue of conviction, which means respect for human dignity and respect for others, which means teaching by analogy, putting ourselves in the place of others, and even revisiting our texts, heritage, and history, and also recognizing the life situation, the economic and social conditions underpinning the interfaith dialogue among the adherents of different faiths. But in the age of the Internet, we have also discovered the importance of containing the dialogue of ugliness--the dialogue of hatred between conflicting groups.

So I would like to say that we do not have one citizens' conferencing facility--we are speaking here as a privileged few with an outlet to the general public. But citizens from Asia--East Asia and West Asia--are not speaking to one another. So we are not promoting an understanding of identity and movement. When you speak, the spirit of Dharma finds an echo; the spirit of truth finds an echo in the Muslim statement in the Holy Qur'an: "Oh, human beings, you are struggling to meet your Creator and you will meet Him." Please note that the reference is to "human beings," not to Muslims, Christians, Jews, or those of any other faith. And in the words of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet's son-in-law, the fourth caliph of Islam, and one of the greatest experts on Muslim jurisprudence, "The human being is two sides of the same coin, or twins, brothers in faith, direct counterparts in creation--not God's creation, but human creation." Direct counterparts in human creation. So two virtuous people from the East and the West from different cultures and backgrounds can be direct counterparts of each other.

So when you ask me what kind of ethics we can discuss with the Catholic Church, we come to the conclusion that we can go on talking about ethics, morals, and values with reservations within each of our textual contexts--to put the text in context. Or we can take the courageous step advocated by a previous awardee of the Niwano Peace Prize, our mutual friend Professor Hans Kung, and start speaking of shared standards.

When we come to the table on the sixtieth anniversary of the International Declaration of Human Rights, we will have to express what is uncontroversially, unambiguously our position on human dignity, on civil liberties, on the sanctity of human life, and so on. So I would like to say that participation in our collective wisdom is interconnected in Islam as it is in other faith groups. In education, for example, we say, cherish your children until they are seven, educate them until they are fourteen, and help them to mature until they are twenty-one, and then you have fulfilled your responsibilities. Thus we can feel that they are responsible for contributing to a better world when they are participating in all cycles of life. But our basic lack of a model, for example, of an international, nondenominational peace corps, is one of the major challenges--the lack of knowledge of one another can be bridged by young people working together to construct a better future for the less fortunate.

I have, for some time, been promoting the idea of a nondenominational peace corps, which would create an alliance between scholarship and the media and would promote better understanding--but there is very little comprehension of this by Muslims or Buddhists and vice versa. This has to be addressed.

Editor: President Niwano, could you please comment on His Royal Highness's comments and express your own view?

Niwano: Actually, there is a faith community of Muslims living in Japan, and as you know, we also have some Japanese leaders representing Islam as members in the Japanese Committee of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. Therefore, I think that we have opportunities to learn from each other. But our efforts to promote a better understanding do not seem sufficient on the whole.

Nikkyo Niwano, the founder of Rissho Kosei-kai, taught us the importance of taking action from global points of view and opened up a path that we can follow through his actual actions. The spirit of the One Vehicle that the founder preached embodies our stance, which is to develop our ideas or projects based on the viewpoint that because Earth, the world in which we live our lives, is a common vehicle, we are all brothers and sisters. In that sense, the founder's spirit should not be forgotten, and we will have to cope with the actual problems through a more and more globalized perspective.

So I feel that by listening to you, we of Rissho Kosei-kai must continue to strive for that purpose.

Editor: Now, Your Royal Highness, we would like to ask you to comment on how we can overcome through peace education the deep resentment that has been nurtured by various suppressions.

Prince Hassan: A World Bank report titled "The World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation" focuses on youth transitions. The report discusses priorities for governmental action across five youth transitions that shape young people's human capital--learning, working, staying healthy, forming families, and exercising citizenship. Countries need programs specifically designed for young people who have fallen behind because of difficult circumstances or poor choices. And the report also identifies three strategic policies that may assess priorities. However, priorities vary across developing countries.

In February 2006, the Association of Psychologists of Iraq released a study based on interviews of more than a thousand children countrywide. Among those examined, 92 percent were found to have learning impediments that can be connected to the current climate of fear and insecurity. As to the mental condition of Iraqi youth, I would like to tell you an anecdote. I was invited to dinner at the Swiss Embassy in a rich suburb of Amman where at least six European ambassadors at the dinner were all talking about investment. My wife said, "Would you please show them the real Amman?" So I took them down in the early hours of the morning to a popular coffee shop. Many of the Iraqi street children came into the shop immediately. I bought them dinner and they went to sleep comfortably in the warmth of the coffee shop. I said to the ambassadors, there are other parties that are giving money directly to these children, without asking for collateral. When they ask them to sacrifice their lives, they will give their lives because they have nothing to lose.

Nearly a billion people entered the twenty-first century unable to read a book or sign their names. The Middle East and the North Africa region remain the regions with the highest unemployment rate in the world--12.2 percent in 2006, double the rate for global unemployment. The Middle East-North African region has the lowest labor force participation in the world--53.9 percent. Some sixteen thousand children die from hunger-related causes, one child every five seconds. And as you know, the AIDS epidemic claims more lives each minute. . . . So the lesson is very clear--we need to focus on human security and cohesion with the poor.

The Arab Thought Forum, of which I am the head, we will be holding their third youth conference this year. And we hope that we can encourage cooperation between the United Nations and the Arab League toward a new paradigm for development. Through listening to what people have to say, our National Center for Human Resources Development has developed the Al-Manal project, a beacon project to create a professional online career forum; it is designed to encourage young people to become active contributors to career development, to identify job-search skills or interpersonal skills, and to facilitate job hunting. So we need, especially from Japan and East Asia, the experience of those who have gone through postwar reconciliation and reconstruction.

We have a choice, either we continue with MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)--and who benefits? the weapons industry!--or we develop a new movement for MAS (Mutually Assured Survival) of the people. We have to be more proactively moderate.

Editor: President Niwano, could you comment on how you view the Japanese people's role.

Niwano: What is happening across the world has already flown to Japan. The point is that however much we empathize with the real situation facing the world, I regret to say that it is undeniable that the Japanese often lack a stance meeting the needs of the various issues occurring in the world today.

So, with this background, I think it is we ourselves, people of religion, who are required to positively keep our eyes upon those under hardship and take the proper actions.

Rissho Kosei-kai has promoted programs to send its young members overseas, hoping that such programs will allow the participants to learn more about the various problems our societies face and to find ways to promote global harmony as individuals. I believe that it is still necessary for such efforts to be furthered.

During the sixty-three years since Japan's defeat in World War II, the Japanese have become wealthy from an economic point of view. The nature of human beings is such that when they are poor, they can perceive the feeling of other people who are under similar conditions. However, as they become well-to-do, they become unable to perceive the sorrow and suffering of others.

As I said earlier, we all are children of the Buddha, and we are all brothers and sisters from the viewpoint of the Buddha's teachings. What is most important now is that we all regain the acute sense that we are all brothers and sisters, setting aside the differences in race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion, and also repeatedly make strong efforts to live together in peace.

Actually, it has been revealed through recent findings by scientists that the roots that cause us and all other living beings to live are one and the same. Some 3.8 billion years have already passed since life first emerged on the surface of the earth, but we are all still truly related to one another.

As we live our lives on the same planet, this Earth, we would like to value the feeling that we are one, and live up to the spirit of sustaining one another.

Editor: Would Your Royal Highness like to add anything further?

Prince Hassan: As I said at the Religions for Peace meeting in Jordan in 1999, when you visited us, we have to create an ark for the salvation of our common humanity. We must work to overcome egocentricism through compassion. We not only have to continue to fight against discrimination and intolerance, but we also have to struggle to build upon the existing structures of humanitarian and human rights laws. I would like to see cooperation on the one side from Eurasia--with West Asia and the Euro-Atlantic community, including the United States--and on the other side from the Far East, in terms of cooperation with the ESCAP (UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) region. So we stopped speaking of the East and the West as we used to speak of the North and the South. But this can only come about through opening our minds to all branches of science, including modern psychology, anthropology, and genetics, and not considering any field of study as off-limits, such as the question of astrophysics, for example. We are only guests in this world, and we have to do our best to earn the respect of future generations. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak on these matters.

Editor: President Niwano, would you care to make a closing comment?

Niwano: Please allow me to express my wholehearted congratulations and my respect once again. You have shared with us the belief that we should move forward in the direction of having broad perspectives and of joining hands with all people. I truly believe that this is in accord with the spirit of God and the Buddha. I would like to express to you my deep appreciation for your having reinvigorated our wish to create a world in which all people, from every corner of the globe, will be united at heart and act as one through assisting one another.