(Host) A Christian theologian who immigrated to the United States from Croatia in the early 1990’s brings his perspective on regional conflicts to St. Michael’s College tonight.
Miroslav Volf now teaches at Yale Divinity School and will speak about "Identity and Otherness in a Fractured World."
Volf says the sectarian violence in Iraq bears similarity to what he saw in the Balkans, when ethnic hatred was stirred up by a deliberate effort to emphasize differences among people with a shared background:
(Volf) "That’s what happened in Croatia and in Serbia, although these two people speak a language that’s very similar, although they have a very similar heritage, but suddenly it was very important to draw very sharp lines. I think we’ve seen that also during the war in Iraq, especially in regard to Muslims."
(Host) Noting that Vermont has the highest per capita death rate of all US states for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, Volf says Vermonters who peacefully opposed the war stand in stark contrast to what he saw in the rest of the country leading up to the invasion of 2003:
(Volf) "I think non-violent protest can still work in the world. I was surprised-a person who was very opposed from the beginning to the War in Iraq-how little of protest there was in the US, how little students protested on college campuses. Sure, we had protests in Europe, that’s one thing, because the US was the prime mover of the invasion. I think if we had a very robust protest, I think we might have achieved something."
(Host) Volf says for the war on terror to be successful, governments must seek not just obliteration of the enemies of western democracy, but a strategy for helping them join the world community. He speaks at St. Michael’s College tonight at 7:30.