Make family, not war: Int'l peace campaigner
Make family, not war: Int'l peace campaigner
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The national family planning agency may not like it, but a
controversial international peace activist has said that the way
to achieve peace is through propagation.
Addressing an inaugural peace convocation in Jakarta on Friday
evening, North Korean peace activist Rev. Sun Myung Moon said
that aside from loving your enemies, a family lineage was very
essential in pursuing peace.
"Without a lineage, neither life nor love can endure. Lineage
is the bridge allowing the parents' spirit to carry on through
subsequent generations," Moon, 86, said through an interpreter.
Moreover, another way to achieve and promote peace is through
an "exchange marriage" with someone from another race,
nationality or religion, he asserted.
Rev. Moon began his public ministry in Pyongyang after the end
of World War II, despite suppression of religion.
Moon gained quite a large number of followers in the North
Korean capital, although he was tortured by the Communist
authorities.
He survived however, and formally began the Unification Church
(The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World
Christianity) in Korea. It has now many branches in around 40
countries and centers in more than 120 cities across the United
States.
Rev. Moon also travels around the world to promote peace.
He founded the Interreligious and International Federation for
World Peace (IIFWP) in 1999. Moon established the Universal Peace
Federation in September 2005 as a global alliance of religious,
academic, political and civic leaders, as well as organizations
to join forces to promote peace.
The peace federation provides a mechanism for joint peace-
building efforts among government, religious, cultural, education
and civil society representatives.
Former Indonesian president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid,
himself a noted pluralist Muslim cleric, said that people can
learn a lot from Moon's very long struggle for peace.
"People use religion in a wrong way. They tend to fight other
people," Gus Dur, who formerly chaired the country's largest
Muslim organization -- Nahdlatul Ulama, told the audience.
Moon said that the peace federation's role was like the United
Nations in the past; it served as a peace police and peace army
to safeguard global peace.
"The United Nations has made important contributions for
peace. But on its 60th anniversary, it has yet to discover the
way to fulfill its founding goals."
Critics of the Unification Church and Rev. Moon have accused
Moon of brainwashing young recruits, fleecing his flock to line
his own pockets, and making a mockery of the institution of
marriage by organizing arranged mass marriages.