Archive for the ‘Interreligious Movement’ Category
Artists from Three Different Faiths Promote Respect for All
by Brenda Suderman
from Winnipeg Free Press
For 11-year-old Camryn Kangas, compassion is as simple as being friendly to her classmates, and as involved as caring about people who are completely different from her.
“It’s a really big part of life, and you really need compassion in the world for people to be equal and get along with each other,” explains the Grade 6 student at St. John Brebeuf School.
In addition to that eloquent explanation, Camryn and her classmates at the Roman Catholic elementary school in River Heights are dancing, singing, chanting and even rapping their feelings and thoughts about compassion.
With the help of their teachers, the dozen grade 5 and 6 girls created a five-minute mini-musical about compassion, based on a poem by Winnipeg artist Manju Lodha.
“It reaches the soul of the listener,” Lodha says of the mini-musical, which includes a rap about human rights.
“I only put the words to it, and the students invoked the life in my words through their talents and the directions of their teachers.”
Lodha and fellow Winnipeg artists Isam Aboud and Ray Dirks spent the last two months leading workshops on compassion in eight Winnipeg public and independent schools for a project sponsored by the Manitoba Multifaith Council.
Called the Art of Compassion, the project culminates with a week-long student art exhibit, which opens 7 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 1 at Canadian Mennonite University, 500 Shaftesbury Blvd., and features the St. John Brebeuf students and Hindu dancers.
Since 2007, the three artists, representing three different faith traditions — Hinduism, Islam and Christianity — have led workshops for schoolchildren and adults on topics such as multiculturalism, respect and more recently, compassion.
African Interfaith Group Calls for End to Violent Protests in Senegal
By Fredrick Nzwili
2 February (ENInews)–With less than a month to go until elections on 26 February, faith leaders in Senegal are uniting to urge peace after President Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to gain re-election sparked violent protests across the country.
The protests follow a 30 January ruling by the Constitutional Council, the country’s top legal body, that Wade, 85, could seek a third term in office.
“In the midst of chaos and confusion, we heard the clarion call of some of the leaders, when they appealed to their faithful saying ‘Murids [one of the largest Islamic orders] are instructed to embrace peace and peaceful behavior’ and another said ‘We call upon all Tijaniyas [another large Islamic order] to refuse to go and destroy institutions or property,” the Rev. Ishmael Noko, president of Interfaith Action for Peace in Africa said in a 31 January letter.
At least four people have died and scores were injured in the protests which began on 27 January. On 1 February, one person died after youths armed with stones clashed with security forces in Dakar, the capital.
Noko, who heads the grouping comprising of leaders from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Baha’i and African Traditional Religion, said the deaths were unacceptable and cautioned against the exploitation of youth and other vulnerable groups in the conflict.
“It is our hope that through you religious leaders, we can extend a call to all political formations not to exploit or take advantage of fellow citizens for personal gain,” he said.
He said violence will neither explain the reasons nor ask the question why the court ruled in favour of the third term.
According to Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Wade’s third term bid is considered illegal by the opposition since the constitution allows only two terms. But the president and his party argue the new constitution was adopted after he was elected and that it is legal for him to seek the term.
Ahead of the ruling, Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore Sarr of Dakar had said the elections should be held in an atmosphere of peace, just like the others in the past. “The citizenry should respect the constitution and commit themselves according to the law,” Sarr said, according to media reports.
In Dakar, Sheikh Saliou Mbacke, coordinator of Interfaith Action for Peace in Africa in an email interview with ENInews said some religious leaders were calling on Wade to withdraw for the sake of peace. “The leader is from the Niassene family [a branch of the Tijaniya],” Mbacke added.
Amidst growing poverty and unemployment, Wade has been criticized for excessive spending on projects such as the African Renaissance Statue, a 160 foot bronze structure that cost US$27 million.
Dialogue in Nigeria: Muslims & Christians Creating Their Future
This hopeful documentary gives voices and faces to 200 courageous Muslims and Christians – diverse young women and men – who unite successfully in Jos, central Nigeria.
Refusing to be enemies, they are together during days and evenings of the 2010 International Conference on Youth and Interfaith Communication.
They are tense yet excited to finally cross lines of religion, economics, tribe, and gender to transcend the status quo and discover empathy for each other’s personal life experiences.
Together they realize that “an enemy is one whose story we have not heard,” while listening-to-learn and thus dignifying themselves and the “others.”
Face to face and in small circles, they begin with ice-breakers and continue in depth to discover one another’s equal humanity – fear, grief, needs, hopes, and concrete plans for a shared future.
These determined young Nigerians illustrate how others worldwide can successfully connect and communicate to create authentic community.
Women, Spirituality and Transformative Leadership: Where Grace Meets Power
by Harvey H. Guthrie
from Episcopal News, Los Angeles
This is a book by women, addressed to women. This male reviewer is related to it as a visitor is to the House of Representatives: as one not on the floor but in the gallery. I did not, nevertheless, feel at all an unwanted voyeur. The spirit of what is going on makes transparency and openness natural and necessary. It is a hundred and eighty degrees opposite the old boy, insider vs. outsider, secretive, male arena in which my early formation took place. The spirit of what is there is also a hundred and eighty degrees opposite the traditional masculine hierarchical models of leadership and process (to lift a line from page 4).
The editors, all from the United States, came together at the 2009 Parliament of World Religions in Australia, each having been impressed by how that gathering was “bursting with feminine energy,” about how “People everywhere were talking about Earth-based spirituality, the Sacred Feminine, feminine principles, the full inclusion of women, women’s leadership, and the critical global issues facing women and their children.” (Page 3) The book originated in the large “we” of a global gathering, in the global feminine “we” so present in that gathering, and then in the fourfold “we” of the editors, who are a consultant to women’s organizations not currently affiliated with any religion, a pioneer in the interfaith movement and founder of the Listening Center, a Lutheran lay teacher, and an ordained Mahayanna Chan Buddhist nun.
As they reflected on where to go from there in the United States, they saw an opportunity to build a larger field of collaboration and action with bridges of understanding between the many and diverse feminist networks and women’s leadership initiatives including bridges between secular and religious/spiritual initiatives, and to enable a leadership style embodying the deepest feminine wisdom and catalyzing social change through sharing and listening. This led to the founding of Women of Spirit and Faith in 2010, and to a gathering in 2011, the theme of which was The Alchemy of Our Spiritual Leadership: Women Redefining Power. The book points to “a sense of mystery wrapped around the word alchemy, an invitation to surrender to the unknown together and be changed.” (Page 5) The book is an exploration of that mystery, of where it might lead, and of aids to surrendering to it – all based on the concrete experience of women and on the redefining power of the Sacred Feminine.
Becoming a Welcoming Nation: It’s Good for the Economy!
by Abdul Malik Mujahid
from Huffington Post
Kim suddenly started hitting his chest. I thought he had a medical emergency but before I could call the stewardess, he explained that he was just nervous after watching a video about the immigration process before landing in Chicago. Kim is a junior at a high school in South Korea and was visiting the United States for a couple of months. He was sitting next to me on an American Airlines flight from Tokyo.
Kim was not the only one subject to the bad treatment. Hundreds and thousands of people go through this every day including diplomats, businessmen and journalists. The same week, former Indian President Abdul Kalam was frisked for explosives and humiliated by airport security in New York — a violation of an established protocol. He was fully identified and this was not his first time either. A couple of years ago he went through the same problem.
Kim’s nervousness is not unfounded. Seventy percent of mostly Western European travelers also showed extreme levels of anxiety saying when traveling to the United States; they fear U.S. immigration more than terrorists or criminals. It is then no wonder that travel from Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom has actually dropped during the last ten years. These three countries along with Canada and Mexico account for about 75 percent of all travelers to the United States.
Being a Muslim and Being a Feminist Are Not Mutually Exclusive
By Fatemeh Fakhraie
From Common Ground News Service
Portland, Oregon – People, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, often tell me that I can’t be both a Muslim and a feminist. At a recent book reading in Oregon, for example, a male audience member asked me, “How does that even work?” These questions demonstrate some of the rigid misconceptions individuals have about Islam and feminism; many people think that they’re mutually exclusive categories. In fact, as a Muslim feminist, I have found them to have more in common than people realise, especially when it comes to social justice.
Ethos – the fundamental spirit that guides my faith– is more important to me than edicts, or strict dogma, and so when religious questions arise, I defer to big-picture themes. One of Islam’s major themes is that of equity and justice. The Qur’an details equitable divorce proceedings, fair treatment of orphans and just conduct when it comes to prisoners of war — situations that differ in details and circumstances in our modern times, but which are often fraught with unfairness and injustice. When I read the holy book, the themes of justice and dignity for humanity stand out to me.
These themes are the same ideals I take from feminism. Some assume that feminism is concerned only with the protection and advancement of women. But as a bi-racial Muslim woman, I can’t ignore the ways that different socially constructed categories, such as gender and race, interact and interrelate. My feminism is concerned with the dignity and rights of every person. Regardless of gender, race, religion, ability, or anything else, we all deserve to have control over our own destinies, earn equal compensation for our work and have the same chances at happiness and success.
Karen Armstrong: Prejudices Will Be Shaken by This Show
By Karen Armstrong
From the Guardian
Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith – even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. Recent terrorist atrocities have seemed to confirm this received idea. But if we want a peaceful world, we urgently need a more balanced view. We cannot hope to win the “battle for hearts and minds” unless we know what is actually in them. Nor can we expect Muslims to be impressed by our liberal values if they see us succumbing unquestioningly to a medieval prejudice born in a time of extreme Christian belligerence.
Like Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Sikhs and secularists, some Muslims have undoubtedly been violent and intolerant, but the new exhibition at the British Museum – Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam – is a timely reminder that this is not the whole story. The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith. Equating religion with “belief” is a modern western aberration. Like swimming or driving, religious knowledge is practically acquired. You learn only by doing. The ancient rituals of the hajj, which Arabs performed for centuries before Islam, have helped pilgrims to form habits of heart and mind that – pace the western stereotype – are non-violent and inclusive.
In the holy city of Mecca, violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home, pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons, to swat an insect or speak an angry word, a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living. At a climactic moment of his prophetic career, Muhammad drew on this tradition. Fleeing persecution in Mecca in 622, he and the Muslim community (the umma) had migrated to Medina, 250 miles to the north. Mecca was determined to destroy the umma and a bitter conflict ensued. But eventually Muhammad broke the deadly cycle of warfare with an audacious non-violent initiative.
First Mosque Part of the Heritage of all Canadians
By Daood Hamdani
From Common Ground News Service
Ottawa – This May, as Muslims mark the twentieth anniversary of the induction of Al-Rashid mosque in Fort Edmonton Park, the country’s largest living history museum, the spotlight will be on the leadership role of Muslim women in this historic event.
Fifty years after they burst onto the front line to help complete the construction of Canada’s first mosque in 1938, Muslim women took over a floundering campaign to save it from demolition. They surprised many by not only preserving this irreplaceable piece of Canadian heritage but enshrining it in the history museum. Al-Rashid, once a bustling hub of community life, started drifting into disrepair after the congregation outgrew it and moved to a new Islamic centre in 1982. Numerous efforts to raise money and find a new location for the old structure failed. Al-Rashid was set for demolition in 1988. Out of options, the Muslim community could only hope for a miracle.
To many, including Canadians of other faiths, the loss of the country’s oldest mosque and a Canadian heritage building was unthinkable. Al-Rashid was more than a place of worship. It was also the story of the struggle, adjustment and integration of early Muslim settlers.
While the community braced itself for the inevitable, the Terrific Twelve, a group of twelve women who belonged to a relatively new and untested organisation, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW), which was founded in 1982 to speak for Muslim women, defiantly dug in to save the mosque. Led by Lila Fahlman and Razia Jaffer, founder and president of CCMW respectively, these young, highly educated women of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds included second-generation Canadians and new immigrants, working moms, full-time homemakers and single professional women.
Places of Faith Tells What Really Goes on in America’s Temples Mosques and Churches
By David Briggs
From Huffington Post
What do Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, Hispanic Catholics in central Nebraska, megachurch evangelicals in Houston and South Asian Muslims in suburban Detroit have in common?
More than many people could ever imagine.
Forget the popular cultural images from shows such as HBO’s “Big Love” that revive stereotypes linking Mormonism with polygamy or the ubiquitous images in the news associating Islam with terrorism. Look past the cultural crossfire that lumps religious liberals and conservatives into separate boxes defined by extremist political and social agendas.
The reality, as presented in a new book by two respected scholars, is that if you walk into a mosque, synagogue, temple or church next weekend, you will most likely find groups of believers in prayer and meditation seeking spiritual growth.
For six weeks, Pennsylvania State University sociologists Christopher Scheitle and Roger Finke traveled nearly 7,000 miles across the country visiting diverse religious communities. What they report back in “Places of Faith: A Road Trip Across America’s Landscape” is a portrait of people of faith sharing many of the same aspirations across theological and denominational divides.
They encounter members of a black church in Memphis and a Mormon congregation in a small Utah town giving personal testimonies amid Sunday worship and religious education classes lasting three hours and more. In both the Friday prayer service at the Islamic Center of America in Detroit and the Saturday morning Shabbat service at B’nai Avraham in Brooklyn, the authors find immigrants from Africa, Asia and Europe praying for the well-being of humanity.
These straightforward observations of faith groups at worship have a critical role to play in public discourse on religion especially when an increasing body of research reveals sharp declines in religious prejudice, the more people of different beliefs get to know one another.
“Places of Faith” allows “students and people in general to look over our shoulder and to find out what these communities are like and how similar they are in many ways,” said Finke, who is also director of the Association of Religion Data Archives.
KidSpirit: Where Youth and the Spirit of Pluralism Converge
by Elizabeth Dabney Hochman
Take a moment to look back on your youth. Do you remember being 12 or 14? That awkward age on the cusp of adulthood, when you were neither a child nor yet an adult, but alternately identifying with both? Imagine your deepest held values and beliefs at that age; your fledgling sense of self and vulnerability. Did you have opportunities to share what mattered to you? To listen to voices different from your own and marvel at their unique worth and beauty? Flash forward a few years to your late teens and early twenties. How do you recall that sense of self now? Stronger? More settled? Perhaps a bit less open-minded than before?
We know that traits we develop as children become the basis of the adults we will become. If a child develops empathy, for example, early in life, we know they are more likely to be empathic later on. Conversely, what happens with negative traits? What about intolerance or its cousins, aggression and fear?
As supporters of interfaith work, we know that building greater understanding and dialogue among diverse groups is a crucial aspect in creating a more peaceful world. We know listening to each other and educating ourselves about our neighbors is central in our interdependent world. Although there are myriad ways for adults to enhance their inner development and pluralistic understanding, there are surprisingly few outlets for youth to develop these same skills, and fewer options still for young teens. How can we hope for a world with greater compassion and understanding without nurturing these qualities in youth?
KidSpirit, an organization I founded in 2007, is an online magazine and social networking community that empowers youth from all backgrounds and traditions to tackle life’s big questions in a spirit of openness. The magazine is a nonprofit, ad-free quarterly, written and edited by youth. It embodies a vibrant dialogue between an all-youth Editorial Board based in New York, and kids ages 11-16 around the world who send us their poetry, original essays and artwork for our quarterly themes. All youth, regardless of background or location can participate fully in this forum free.
Our complimentary group guides for teachers and mentors working with youth augment any curricula from religious education to creative writing and are available for download.
My hope in founding KidSpirit was to create a non-commercial platform for youth to share their beliefs, values and creativity and to support their development into becoming world citizens with strong inner grounding. Over the last five years, KidSpirit’s issues have had themes ranging from conflict-resolution and peacemakers and mourning rituals around the world, to moments of transcendence, analysis of materialism in culture and reflections on creativity and meaning (you can see an archive of all of our issues online by clicking here). Our young contributors span many parts of the world and they shine as brilliant examples of the honesty, joy and poignant questioning that so often characterizes the shift from childhood to adulthood.
Our all youth Editorial Board has read essays, poetry, journalistic articles and reviewed original artwork from kids from India and Great Britain to Ukraine and the United States, all based on open exchange on probing topics they choose. The cultural and religious dialogue has taken our editors and readers in unexpected directions that would have been almost unthinkable a generation ago.
In one recent meeting, we were fortunate to have a visit from a new young contributor from Afghanistan. This girl, just 15 years old, was in New York to give a speech about the extraordinary circumstances of her life, and was able to share in the editorial process. Nilab sat on the floor with a dozen or so teen editors, each scribbling on their own copy of an article in the process of being edited for publication. After a period of intense concentration, conversation erupted about the piece in question. The dialogue was vibrant but open and constructive, and as usual, the meeting concluded with cookies. Nilab’s fascination with the proceedings was palpable and she contributed much to our afternoon. It was incredible to witness her joy at the experience and the deep respect that her American peers felt for her.
Another ongoing relationship has come from a writer named Prerna who found KidSpirit from a web search while in her home city of Kolkata, India. Over the years, she has shared her views on Gandhi, written about the festival of Diwali and crafted a piece about meaning in life. Each of her submissions has been through a vibrant and interactive process with the editorial board, resulting in growth on all sides.
In many ways, KidSpirit is a reflection of our increasingly pluralistic world. It welcomes kids who identify themselves as belonging to a church, temple, or synagogue, as well as those who don’t. But most importantly, it offers an oasis for youth to pause while in the maelstrom of adolescence and to connect with each other respectfully on questions of meaning. To observe and facilitate that process is to be filled with wonder.
Elizabeth Dabney Hochman is the Founding Editor of KidSpirit Online and KidSpiritMagazine, a nonprofit web community and magazine that empowers teens to explore life’s big questions in a spirit of openness. A graduate of Princeton University, with a Masters in Music from the Mannes College of Music in New York City, she has over fifteen years’ experience as an opera singer. She and her husband live with their two daughters in Brooklyn, New York.
