A Lesson from Kingdom of Heaven

Saladin: May peace be with you.
Balian of Ibelin: Alakum-al-salam.

This is dialogue from the movie Kingdom of Heaven. I think it is beautiful. Not the semantics. But what is behind the words.

See, Saladin is Muslim and Balian of Ibelin is Christian. They're exchanging their religious salutations and I just remember thinking how beautiful that was. There was no attempt at proselytizing because it's not going to happen in that encounter. There was no hatred. There was an understanding: "This is what is important to me. This brings me joy. I live my life by this. Let me greet you with this." And they did.

I remember thinking how wonderful it would be if we could live like that. I work at a Jewish agency. It would be wonderful if I could say Merry Christmas and in return I would hear Happy Hanukkah. If we could just get past this fear. Because what is "Happy Holidays"? It doesn't promote understanding. It is a fear-mongering statement. It hides what we believe in a murk of ambiguity. We fear what we cannot see. If we could live out in the open. If we didn't have to hide what we believe but if we could share that in small ways. Bestow it on people. At the very least, there would be much less hate.