Diana Eck Quotes
Those are big challenges in our age, not just how we live as co-citizens in societies with people of different faiths and different cultures - I mean, that's a big challenge itself - but how we think about all that as Christians, or as Jews, or as Muslims, or as Hindus. How do we think about the religious other? There's a theological dimension as well as a civic dimension to our pluralism.
Fiji is a nation which at the time was beset with ethnic strife and tension. In addition to the religious tension there were Indian immigrants who tended to be economically more successful than the indigenous Fijians. There was an English tradition from the days of being a British Colony and the traditional tribal leaders and chiefs were being disenfranchised by modern democratic structures. The military was not under the control of the civilian government and coups pitted some ethnic groups against others.
The Ottoman Empire was a word Superpower for over 1,000 years, longer than any other in history, One of its great strengths was its pluralism and ability to not only absorb and assimilate people from other nations, cultures and religions, but also to utilize those people in key positions and contributions to their society. Christians and Jews rose to the highest positions under the Sultans. They became Governor’s of Provinces, manages of departments and even Grand Vizier to the Sultan himself. Jewish and Christian physicians, attorneys, traders were all valued in the Empire even though the had a second class status relative to Muslims. The opportunity was always there to convert to Islam and many did, but many did not and thrived, The Ottomans saw Christian Europe, not only in continuous religious conflict, but individual nations were never able to use the talents of the religious minority, the way that the Ottomans did, and later the United States did. Not only did the Ottomans allow immigrants from all over the world to become part of the Empire Government or Economy, but they actually send agents throughout the empire to find the best and the brightest of young men—regardless of religion or nationality—and bring them to the Sultan’s court for education, training and service. IT should be noted however, that the motivation was in no way moral or a desire for fairness. It was totally pragmatic. Exceptional manpower was not to be wasted.
Diana L. Eck (born 1945 in Bozeman, Montana) is a scholar of religious studies who is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University, as well as a former faculty dean of Lowell House and the Director of The Pluralism Project at Harvard. Among other works, she is the author of Banaras, City of Light, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, and A New Religious America: How a Christian Country Became the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation. At Harvard, she is in the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, the Committee on the Study of Religion, and is also a member of the Faculty of Divinity. She has been reappointed the chair for the Committee on the Study of Religion, a position which she held from 1990 to 1998. In March 2012, Diana authored her book India: A Sacred Geography. She also served on the Humanities jury for the Infosys Prize in 2019.
