On the whole, I don’t believe in direct prophecy or in seeing the future. But, this past Sunday evening, at the Dr. Hassan Hathout Foundation annual gathering, where I was humbled and privileged to be a speaker, I met and learned from a man who made me feel like I was seeing the future. And it was a future of peace.
The featured speaker on the panel, which was held at USC, was Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, who just completed a four-year term as South Africa’s ambassador to the United States. He is a Muslim, born in Capetown in 1962, telling us that his ancestors 300 years back were brought from Indonesia as slaves. His resume is extensive, notably head of the ANC at one point, governor and was jailed several times, one of which he spent with Nelson Mandela in 1987. He is a global leader and a Muslim, yet not a cleric. He is a scholar (he will begin a post at Georgetown now for 15 months), and he was talking about a paradigm shift. Shifting how we see the world, how to believe that peace is possible in overcoming hate and destruction. Some of my fellow clergy on the panel (there was a Catholic chaplain and a retired minister, along with Dr. Eba Hathout), spoke out against militarism, and when we were asked on the panel if we thought that the military industrial complex was a direct blockade to peace, we all said yes. Period.
So, Ambassador Rasool made me feel like I could see a future where people of good will can get along, disagree, but respect and care about one another. We let go of suspicions, we realign our priorities, and we create a new world, one that we all want but can’t seem to find. This ambassador, one man in a sea of people, trying to tip the scales toward justice and righteousness. And the most exciting thing was that he is a politician, a successful one in his country, and one of the crafters of their constitution. He spoke of Muslim cooperation in South Africa, how extremism is snuffed out by ending conflagration. I would urge you to visit the website, That was the glimmer of hope for me, the “seeing the future” moment. A South African, Muslim politician is on the dais with a Catholic priest, a minister, a Muslim woman, physician and medical expert, president of this foundation, and me, a rabbi. I felt the palpable presence of something greater than ourselves. I felt, after talking with many energized people after the panel, that burst of hope, that rush of shalom, the explosion of peace and possibility. Everything doesn’t have to be what it seems; war, conquering and perpetual hatred are a choice we make. I was inspired by Ambassador Rasool, who risked his life for freedom and succeeded, and I want the world to know this man. With leaders like this, and like Pope Francis, the inevitable and never-ending march to war need not be; with leaders like these, we can march toward peace, which while harder to achieve, is in the long run much more cost effective, and might actually change the world. “If you will it, it is no dream.”
