Archive for the ‘eboo patel’ tag
Martin Luther King’s Legacy: How MLK Continues To Inspire Religious Leaders Today
from Huffngton Post
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was many things to many people, yet central to his identity was his role as a Christian pastor and religious leader.
Rev. King practiced his faith in a way that was both personal and public, pious and prophetic, and his commitment to pluralism and justice has influenced a generation of religious leaders from all faiths.HuffPost Religion is proud to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by offering these testimonies from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhists religious leaders on MLK’s influence upon them, and how he might influence all of us as well.
Read articles by:
Roshi Joan Halifax
Rasanath Dasa
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield
Eboo Patel
Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell
Varun Soni
Imam Mohamed Magid
Bishop T.D. Jakes
Dirk Ficca Featured on CBS Documentary
from CBS News Religion and Culture
This program airs throughout December and will be online after Dec 18.
FINDING COMMON GROUND: TODAY’S INTERFAITH MOVEMENT looks at how the interfaith movement has evolved over the years.
The program visits with Rev. Dirk Ficca, Executive Director of the Chicago-based Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. The Parliament hosts the world’s largest interreligious gathering, meeting every five years in a different part of the world. People of every faith are invited to share their religious identities, dialogue and voice their hopes and concerns for the future.
One of the most interesting things about the modern interfaith movement, according to Rev. Ficca, is that cooperation among people of different faiths is more mainstream than ever. He says, “For me, it’s when a local imam and rabbi and Catholic priest in Downers Grove meet every Thursday for lunch and talk about how to get their three communities to know each other, and somehow replicating that all over the United States, all over the world. That’s where I put my hope.”
We also hear from Dr. Eboo Patel, founder and president of the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) based in Chicago, Ill. This nonprofit organization was founded in 2002, based on the idea that the most powerful common ground between all faith traditions is the inspiration to serve others. Dr. Patel and his organization are working with the youth of today as a means to thwart religious extremism and encourage interfaith understanding and leadership. “I think the world looks different,” Dr. Patel says, “if America’s college campuses become models of interfaith cooperation and graduate a critical mass of interfaith leaders.”
When the White House announced the President’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge in March of this year, IFYC worked as an advisor and partnered to craft the nationwide program.
One of the schools participating in the President’s challenge is Albright College, a private liberal arts school in Reading, Penn. Rev. Paul Clark, the school’s chaplain, will be shepherding the project with a group of interfaith student leaders. He says, “If we can apply this kind of model of talking to one another, and then reaching out to the larger community, then something really important could happen here.”
Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Reading, Penn. has the largest share of residents living in poverty per capita. In an effort to help the marginalized, the religious community of Reading has come together and worked in partnership to help alleviate the symptoms of poverty. We hear from Rabbi Brian I. Michelson, Rabbi of Reform Congregation Oheb Sholom; Elsayed [Steve] Elmarzouky, President of the Islamic Center of Reading, and Michael J. Kaucher, Executive Director of the Reading Berks Conference of Churches, about how working together to serve their community has reinforced their belief in the need for interreligious dialogue and cooperation at the local level.
John P. Blessington is the executive producer and Liz Kineke is the producer. FINDING COMMON GROUND is produced in cooperation with the National Council of Churches, Consortium of Roman Catholic organizations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Union of Reform Judaism and the New York Board of Rabbis.
Religious and Spiritual Leaders Reflect on 9/11
Obama’s Middle East Speech: Religious Leaders Respond
by Jaweed Kaleem
from HuffingtonPost
Religious leaders are responding to President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated speech on the Middle East, in which the president said that “all faiths must be respected” and suggested “bridges be built among them.”
Much of the sweeping speech addressed political and economic issues in light of recent democratic movements in the majority-Muslim region. Obama promised U.S. support for democracy, human rights and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But Obama, who famously addressed the Muslim world from Cairo University in two years ago in a speech focused on Islam, also discussed religion several times in Thursday’s comments.
“We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech; the freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule of law; and the right to choose your own leaders — whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus; Sanaa or Tehran,” Obama said in the hour-long speech.
The Egyptian Revolution: An Interfaith Movement
From The Washington Post
Today’s guest blogger is Frank Fredericks, executive director of World Faith, co-director of Religious Freedom USA, and president of Çöñàr Records.
Seeing the Egyptian protests on American media may lead you to believe that this is an Iranian-style revolution, with a probable result being an Islamic regime. However, when you look at the details of what is happening on the ground, this is an interfaith movement.
Since 2006, I have been frequenting Egypt, spending a month or more at a time staying and working with locals in Cairo and Alexandria. It was in Egypt when I got inspired to found World Faith, and it’s become a second home for me.
Broken messages from my Egyptian friends spiked an unparalleled mix of awe, fear and excitement. While a popular revolution was only a matter of time, the somewhat minute ignition was surprising to say the least. As we’d say, if Egypt was full of Iranians, they would have revolted 10 years ago.
But it’s not, and as my friend Haroon Moghul outlined, it is not Iran nor an Islamic movement. Whether the restrictions put on Christians for interfaith marriages or conversion, or the government’s strong crackdown on devout Muslims are an attempt to punish the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), religion has oftentimes stood as a tool of division in Egypt.
Many assume that the Ikhwan would become the dominant player in the protests, they were slow to formally join, recognizing that their explicit support would damage the movement. They even went so far as to release a statement Saturday explicitly stating that they have no desire to lead an interim government, but would rather participate in a multiparty democratic political system. Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mohammed el-Baradei has become the inpromptu voice of the people, who stated that Egypt needs a new government “based on freedom, democracy and social justice.”
The protests have demonstrated explicit interfaith components. It was only a few weeks ago that Egyptian Muslims attended Christmas mass with their Christian neighbors and friends as human shields after the deadly attack on a Coptic church. Mohamed El-Sawy, whose cultural center has hosted World Faith Cairo events, said of faith relations in Egypt, “We either live together or we die together.” Returning the favor, Christians stood guard at mosques across Egypt while their Muslim friends finished their Friday prayers before the day’s protests. When a few demonstrators began chanting “Allahu Akbar,” others convinced them to join together: “Muslim, Christian, we’re all Egyptian!”
White House Hosts IFYC Interfaith Leadership Institute
From IFYC
On October 22-24, 2010, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will host a two-day intensive training facilitated by Interfaith Youth Core for 100 interfaith student leaders and 50 campus staff allies in Washington, D.C. The program is designed to equip interfaith student leaders with the skills to lead IFYC’s campaign for interfaith cooperation on campus, “Better Together.” Student participants will learn how to speak out on the importance of interfaith cooperation on their campus, mobilize their communities to take action, and sustain their efforts to create a lasting impact on campus. In a concurrent training track, campus staff will be equipped launch new or build on existing interfaith programming on campus as well as support student leaders in these initiatives.
“The Talking Cure” and Interfaith Dialogue
From America Magazine
The subject line of the e-mail read: “Ten reasons Muslims can’t be Americans.” The young Christian woman, who had received the chain message from a fellow member of a church committee, knew the content of the e-mail was full of lies. She chose to respond—kindly, respectfully—with the truth. As she typed her reply she drew on her experience working at the Interfaith Youth Core. As an intern with the organization she collaborated with Muslims on a daily basis, befriended Muslims, and participated in dialogue and service with them. She clicked “send” and hoped for the best.
The response from her fellow committee members was not as kind, however. Many were angered by her response and told her so. The young woman now attends a different church, but she doesn’t regret her actions.
The courage and commitment to truth displayed by the young woman is the kind Eboo Patel hoped to foster when he co-founded the Interfaith Youth Core in 1998, at the age of 22. The Core—spelled this way to represent its place at the center of a larger movement—works to provide the tools and support college students need to become leaders in interreligious dialogue. These leaders, Patel says, are young men and women “who have the framework, the knowledge base and the skill set to bring people from different religions together to build understanding and cooperation.” In light of the ongoing and much-publicized controversy surrounding Park51, the proposed Islamic center a few blocks from Ground Zero in New York City, as well as the anti-Islam protests popping up in cities across the country, these skills are especially needed today.
California School Hopes to Be First Accredited Muslim College in U.S.
From CNN
As controversy swirls around a proposed Islamic center near New York City’s ground zero and a handful of other mosque projects around the country, students will arrive this week at a California school that is aiming to become the country’s first accredited Muslim college.
Zaytuna College hopes to the train a generation of Islamic clerics and professionals in a Western Islamic tradition that school officials say is ill understood by many of the foreign-born imams currently working in the United States.
“There’s a triumphalist view that’s not conducive to the type of religion we need to see,” said Hamza Yusuf, chairman of Zaytuna’s trustees board, describing many foreign-born imams. “American Muslims can help change a lot of the Muslim world to create the potential for conviviality.”
The school, located in Berkeley, will offer just two degrees – Arabic, and a combined Islamic law and theology major – when it opens its doors Monday to the 15 students in its first freshmen class. The class includes eight women and seven men.
But its leaders say they plan to expand to around 150 students in the school’s first four years and that they want to eventually train young people for careers in U.S. law, journalism, academia, and other fields.
First year tuition is $11,000 plus room and board, according to the school.
The school has yet to generate much controversy, but Yusuf, a co-founder who is the public face of the school, said he expects such criticism will come.
“I think the American people that are criticizing the ground zero mosque… are also criticizing us,” he told CNN’s Don Lemon on Sunday. “It’s par for the course right now. Islam is an acceptable target. To be prejudicial towards Islam is politically correct.”
But experts on American Islam say that the strain of modernist, mystical Islam espoused by Yusuf, which draws on Sufi traditions, might be more controversial among conservative Muslims.
“The young look up to Hamza almost as a sort of pop star,” said Akbar Ahmed, an American University professor who has just completed a nationwide study of Muslims in the America.
“But he has expressed discomfort with some of the things that immigrant Muslims do and say,” Ahmed said, “and many of the literalists see people like him as compromised or as having crossed over.”
Ahmed said the failure of many foreign-born imams to relate to a younger generation on issues such as drugs and sex has provoked some Muslim young people to seek guidance from radicals abroad, feeding the phenomenon of homegrown American terrorism.
Zaytuna’s website echoes that concern.
“There are very few Muslim scholars who can meet the religious and pastoral needs of a rapidly expanding Muslim community in the West,” the site says. “…much of our younger generation has become alienated from the mosque and from religious culture.”
Yusuf said he expected some criticism from fellow Muslims. “This is a growing pain for our community but it’s a step in the right direction,” he said.
The Stranger as Neighbor
From Sojourners Magazine
By Eboo Patel
When David Fraccaro preached his first sermon to his first congregation—a small United Church of Christ flock in New Jersey—a man got up halfway through and walked out. Needless to say, that was not the reaction this son of a UCC minister hoped for.
Religion Today: Bomb, Barrier, or Bridge?
From The Huffington Post
By Eboo Patel
…
Once considered a ceremonial activity reserved for leaders of religious denominations or experts in theology, interfaith cooperation is fast becoming a movement focused on social impact that involves everyone.
In the twenty-first century, faith can be a bomb of destruction, a barrier of division or a bridge of cooperation.
The stories of religion as a bomb of destruction are on the front pages of the newspaper every morning. The suicide attacks in Baghdad and Kabul are examples of religion as a bomb of destruction, as is the violent tension between faith groups from Northern Ireland to Nigeria.
Those erecting the barriers of religious division are less dramatic but still dangerous. Their work moves a diverse society in the direction of conflict instead of cooperation. The ‘new atheists’ like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens build barriers by claiming all religious believers are poisoned and intent on poisoning others. Those who hold with Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations build barriers by advancing the idea that different religions are inherently and inevitably at odds with one another. Those who draw a straight line between the violent actions of a few extremists and an entire religion build barriers by telling people that every Muslim — their neighbor, their taxi driver, their friend from the PTA — is a potential enemy.
The materials that make up the bombs of destruction and the barriers of division are not just physical; they are also theological and intellectual. They include advancing theologies that require believers to suffocate or marginalize those who are different; emphasizing the stories of conflict between religious communities instead of the stories of cooperation; holding up the worst examples of the other community and saying that these examples define the whole group; and paying heightened attention to the differences between groups while proclaiming that there is no possibility of common ground.
The forces building bombs and barriers are strong. If the idea of faith as a bridge of cooperation is to win out, interfaith work has to expand from a small niche of enthusiasts to a social norm that involves everyone. Indeed, just as it is now status quo for universities, cities, civic groups and houses of worship to “go green,” so should it be the new norm for these entities to build bridges of interfaith cooperation.
President Obama knows the potential impact of interfaith cooperation, not just as a policymaker but also from his personal history. As a young community organizer in Chicago, Obama worked under a Jewish mentor to bring together Catholic, Protestant and Muslim groups to launch job training centers and educational enrichment programs on the south side of Chicago. He has lived the mission statement of the first Parliament of the World’s Religions, which took place in his home city over a century before he became President: “From now on the great religions of the world make war no longer on each other, and instead of on the giant ills that afflict humankind.”
