UK Church Offers Apology for Iraq War

LONDON, September 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) - Four Church of England bishops offered Monday, September 19, that the Church takes the lead in reconciling with UK Muslims by apologizing to their leaders for the US-led war in Iraq if the British government fails to do so.

"We do believe that the church has a visionary role for reconciliation, beyond that of any government," the Bishop of Oxford, Right Reverend Richard Harris, told BBC radio.

The proposal was contained in a report, entitled "Countering Terrorism: Power, Violence and Democracy Post-9/11,"written by a working group of the Church of England's House of Bishops, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Leaders of the Church of England, which lies at the heart of the worldwide Anglican communion, including Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, had been critical of the war, insisting the invasion failed to meet the criteria of a "just war", reported AFP.

The report will be submitted for debate within the church, but it was not clear what the next step would be, a church spokesman told AFP.

Political Repentance

As governments are unlikely to apologize, according to the Associated Press (AP), the report suggested a "truth and reconciliation" meeting between Christian and Muslim leaders for a "public act of institutional repentance" to apologize for the way the West has contributed to the tragedy in Iraq, including the March 2003 invasion led by the United States and Britain.

The bishops say to pull out of Iraq without a stable democracy being in place would be irresponsible and compound the misery of the Iraqi people. But to stay suggests collusion with a "gravely mistaken" war.

If collusion is a necessary evil, the report says, there needs to be a degree of public recognition of the West's responsibility for the predicament.

The report highlights a "long litany of errors" in the West's handling of Iraq which includes its support of Saddam Hussein over many years as a strategic ally against Iran , its willingness to sell him weapons and the suffering caused to the Iraqi people by sanctions.

"It might be possible for there to be a public gathering... at which Christian leaders meet with religious leaders of other, mainly Muslim, traditions, on the basis of truth and reconciliation, at which there would be a public recognition of at least some of the factors mentioned above," it said.

The report added that the invasion appeared to be "as much for reasons of American national interest as it was for the well-being of the Iraqi people."

Moral Dilemma

The bishops expressed concern about the "strong sense of moral righteousness" behind US policy in the Middle East , which is "fed by the major influence of the 'Christian right'," the report said.

"Not only is this political reading of current history in the light of apocalyptic texts illegitimate, but that those texts need to be read in a different way altogether, as a critique of imperialism rather than as a justification for it," it said.

The report's authors point to precedents where the church has said sorry for past injustices including the Vatican 's remorse over Christians' responsibility for the persecution of Jews.

The bishops accept that such a meeting is likely to attract widespread and harsh criticism and could easily be dismissed as "a cheap gesture" with little cost to the church.

But they argue that far from being an easy answer to a thorny question, setting up a meeting of this kind would present all kinds of difficulties, not least persuading Muslim leaders to attend in the first place.

The meeting is offered as a solution to the moral dilemma that members of the church who opposed the war find themselves in.

The US-led invasion of Iraq is believed to have given a momentum to Al-Qaeda's recruitment and fundraising and made Britain , Washington 's key ally in the war, more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, according to a long-planned report issued Monday, July 18, by London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, a respected British think-tank.

Within the same context, London Mayor Ken Livingstone wrote in a British daily Thursday, August 4, saying Britain must withdraw its troops from Iraq in order to prevent further terrorist attacks.