KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: I was introduced to Lucas Johnson by the great civil rights elder, Vincent Harding. He told me that this young man embodies the genius of nonviolence for our century — nonviolence not as a withholding of violence, but as a way of being present. And it was a great pleasure to bring him together with Rami Nashashibi, a kindred force in the Muslim world. Lucas is based in Amsterdam. Rami’s center of gravity is the South Side of Chicago. They both are evolving the fascinating nexus of local and global. And they have much to teach us all about the lived practicalities and tensions of the “strong, demanding love” to which Martin Luther King, Jr. called the world of his time, a call I hear many of us longing to pursue in ours.
And what I think is interesting about the two of them is that each of you — thinking about elders and teachers and the lineage — for both of you — Lucas, you as a Christian, and Rami, you as a Muslim — both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X are really important teachers. You both look to both of them a lot. And I see that happening — I see both of their voices rising up — and yet, I think, in their lifetimes they were seen as — I don’t know if they were contrasting figures, but they were separate paths. And I feel like, for the two of you, this is also part of this wholeness that your generation is claiming.
MR. NASHASHIBI: Absolutely, the global piece, the ability to see struggles in others. The ways in which, I think, that still, till today, are really underappreciated about the larger Muslim tradition in the United States. And Malcolm and that legacy was kind of a portal through which — in many ways, it began to symbolize the utter defiance of “No, we are human beings. And we are full human beings. We are spiritually connected to a global history.” And that was powerful.
MR. NASHASHIBI: I think community organizing language has really informed a lot of the way I think about my own spiritual tradition and the work. And I’ve developed a course about community organizing as a spiritual practice, because I think there was a lot in this idea of beginning with the notion that we all have a stake in this, and the returning citizens, the brothers on the corners, the young — we have to see ourselves as collectively invested in issues that we’re dealing with. If you don’t begin to understand the connectivity between the migrant, the immigrant, refugee who’s coming to the inner city and opening up a corner store, and then contributing to a lot of the dynamics in the inner-city neighborhood, with the challenges that made that neighborhood what it was, then you’re just not looking at the whole picture. And I think, from the justice standpoint, one of the things that we think about a lot in the context of language is this idea of calling out and calling up.
REV. JOHNSON: Absolutely, and I think that our spiritual traditions give us resources for dealing with that, but it’s a hard thing to wrestle with. It’s a hard thing to accept and to believe. And I feel like that is a part of the tension of the spiritual discipline of nonviolence. But I feel like it’s far too often neglected, and people don’t really live with that tension, which means that they’re not really confronting the anger, which means that they’re not really taking themselves to that empathic experience of other people’s pain.
To read more of the transcript of an On Being interview between Krista Tippett, Lucas Johnson and Rami Nashashibi, please click here.
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