By Tara Bahrampour
From Washington Post

On a balmy November night, a busload of eighth-graders spilled out onto Massachusetts Avenue NW, the girls tentatively pulling on head scarves they had been instructed to bring.

“Does mine look normal?” one asked, cinching it tightly under her chin.

“Mine looks really ugly, doesn’t it?” said another, tugging at a billowy confection of material.

Suitably attired, more or less, they trooped into the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. Many of the students, who belong to an after-school Hebrew program at Congregation Beth El in Bethesda, had passed by the large mosque with the columns and minaret, but they had never gone inside, until now.

The youths are part of a cultural exchange between Beth El and AFS Intercultural Programs (formerly the American Field Service), which brings teenagers from all over the world to live with host families in the United States and sends American teens abroad.

For the program, in its fourth year, eight foreign students being hosted in the Washington area were teaching the Beth El students about Islam, the religion of four of the exchange students; Hinduism, the faith of two of the students, was added this year.

The students — from Indonesia, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, Armenia, India and Germany — are here on State Department scholarships and had visited Beth El last monthto give a classroom presentation. Later in the month, the Beth El students joined them on field trips to a mosque and a Hindu temple.

Inside the mosque, the girls and boys removed their shoes and were separated in different rooms. Cucut Syati, 16, a student from Indonesia wearing a purple satin tunic, showed the girls the elaborate pre-prayer washing ritual — hands, mouth, nose, face, arm, head, ears and feet.

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By Sally Quinn
From Washington Post

It was five years ago this month that we launched “On Faith.” The idea was to inform and educate about all faiths (and no faith) and to initiate an ongoing discussion about the role of religion, values and ethics in our daily lives. I hoped that after learning more, people would become more accepting of those who held different beliefs. Pluralism was the goal.

The discussions we have had over the years have far exceeded my expectations. What I find most gratifying is the inspired contributions from the subjects of our interviews, our contributing writers and our readers. From the volume of e-mails and comments, I know that others find the site as informative, provocative and entertaining as I do.

Since the time we launched I have never been so enthralled, learned so much or been so fulfilled by a subject. It has changed my perspective on life. It is clearly what I was meant to do.

Here are five things I have learned in these five years:

1. Nobody knows.

My favorite bumper sticker and the guiding wisdom for me every day is this: “I don’t know and you don’t either.”

An atheist father was trying to explain to his son that there was no such thing as God. “But Dad,” asked the boy, “how do you know?”

“You’ll just have to take it on faith,” said the father.

That says it all.

We are all taking our beliefs or lack of beliefs on faith.

Although I called myself an atheist when we started this site, I no longer do, thanks to Jon Meacham, the religious scholar and former Newsweek editor who helped launch the site. He also served as co-moderator until last year, when The Washington Post Co. sold Newsweek.

We were having an argument over whether or not I was an atheist. Finally, Jon said something that resonated. He said, “You don’t want to define yourself negatively, and you know nothing about religion.” He gave me a list of books to read and told me to go study religion. If afterward I insisted on calling myself an atheist, he argued, at least I would know what I was talking about.

I was astonished, engaged and finally enlightened by what I read and ashamed at how little I really knew about religion. I’m still reading and still learning, and it seems the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.

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From Washington Post

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking said in an interview with the UK Guardian published Monday that he rejects the idea of heaven, calling it a ’fairy story’ for people afraid to die. Hawking also wrote in his 2010 book The Grand Design that he believes God was not ‘necessary’ for the creation of the universe and that ‘spontaneous creation‚’ instead explains existence. Hawking seems confident in his conclusion about God, but then again so do believers. Who is right? Can God and science co-exist?

Among the many respondents are Muqtedar Khan, Christopher Stedman, and Susan Brooks Thislethwaite.

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From The Washington Post

The sympathetic coverage of the devastation wrought by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has overwhelmed the nasty little story of Rep. Peter King’s loyalty hearings aimed at American Muslims. Both news events, however, raise the compelling question of what it takes to turn a group perceived as alien and threatening–whether across the ocean or down the block–into people Americans see as neighbors, fellow citizens, and fellow human beings.

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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!”

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From The Washington Post

The dramatic images streaming out of Egypt over the past week suggest that the 30-year dictatorship of America’s close ally, Hosni Mubarak, might be coming to an end.

The world is watching closely to see what kind of country may emerge from the latest popular revolt to rock the Arab world. Yet in the United States, the conversation– as usual when it comes to the Middle East–seems fixated on the singular issue of Islam, and more specifically, on the role that the Muslim Brotherhood may play in Egypt’s future. GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is already drawing parallels between the young protesters calling for an end to the brutal and repressive Mubarak regime, and the popular protests that, three decades ago, brought down another despicable dictator and former American ally, the Shah of Iran. “We abandoned [the Shah] and what we got in exchange was… a radical Islamist regime,” Santorum said. Mike Huckabee, another GOP presidential hopeful, joined in the hysteria, warning Americans that, “if in fact the Muslim Brotherhood is underneath much of the unrest [in Egypt] every person who breathes ought to be concerned.”

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by Chris Stedman

from the Washington Post

Is the Internet destroying our morals?

Earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI issued a warning that the Internet was “numbing” young people and creating an “educational emergency – a challenge that we can and must respond to with creative intelligence.”

Speaking at a Vatican conference on culture, Benedict also expressed concern that “a large number of young people” are “establish[ing] forms of communication that do not increase humaneness but instead risk increasing a sense of solitude and disorientation.”

Benedict’s comments created an uproar, but he has a point. Studies show that Internet addiction is linked to depression; in 2007, the comedy website Cracked offered a surprisingly moving take on this phenomenon titled “7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable.”

It’s tempting, knowing this, to suggest that we all take a step away from our keyboards, turn off our computers, and go find a field to frolic in.

As much as I love the instant gratification of being able to download the latest Kanye West album the moment it is released and being able to stay connected to my family back in Minnesota through Facebook, I also know that the Internet has created a new kind of culture in which the rules of engagement have shifted dramatically. The rise of cyberbullying in recent years demonstrates that our more-connected world comes with new moral and ethical questions that we must respond to with creativity and acumen.

As we saw with “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” culture wars are born online. But I also believe that the Internet has created opportunities to open channels of dialogue that were, previous to now, next to impossible. Where culture wars are born, so too can we build bridges.

With this conviction, I am excited by the launch of State of Formation, a new online forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders from around the world, founded by the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue and run in partnership with Hebrew College, Andover Newton and collaboration with Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.

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From The Washington Post

Aside from the obvious jokes about how crowded it can get when God joins us in the voting booth, many religious people bring their faith with them when they cast their ballots. In fact, how could it be otherwise? Voting shapes the culture and society in which we live. For people whose religious beliefs are not simply about personal salvation or getting into heaven, but actually have aspirations for how life in the here and now is shaped, turning toward their chosen tradition is a given, as it should be.

Religion is not something we check at the voting booth door and it would be oddly oppressive to ask people of faith to do so. What is not oppressive is insisting that those same religious people not demand that all people follow their chosen faith.

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From The Washington Post

By Brad Hirschfield

Like pretty much everything else, God can be found on Google. And this week, with the help of Google Street View, you don’t even have to search for images of the Divine to find you.

This image, captured by the Street View feature of ubiquitous searcher (a fact about Google which may hint at the search engine itself is increasingly God-like, if not actually God) has been interpreted by thousands as a glimpse of God captured on camera. Of course others have suggested that it is more likely bird poop on the camera lens. Whatever it is, there is a lesson here in when and why we see/think we see God.

It comes down to admitting that we all find the God or no-God for which we are looking. There is proof of either the existence or the non-existence of God. Their constant debating to the contrary, that is something upon which both deep believers and ardent atheists ought to agree.

When believers in the infinite insist that there are scientific proofs for the existence of the God in whom they believe, they are reducing the object of their faith to something whose existence can also be disproved. Is that really what they want? Is the God in whom they believe really so small as to be disproved? Maybe, but that’s no god worthy of one’s faith.

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From The Washington Post

Two weeks ago the French Senate passed a piece of legislation 246 votes to one to outlaw the face veil worn by a small number of the country’s Muslim women, with President Nicolas Sarkozy stating, in no uncertain terms, that the face veil is “not welcome” in France.

The law follows at the heels of the Belgian parliament’s ban on the full face veil–known as the burqa or niqab–in public places. “It is necessary that the law forbids the wearing of clothes that totally mask and enclose an individual,” said Daniel Bacquelaine, who proposed the bill, adding that he was not targeting the classic headscarf worn by many Muslim women. “Wearing the burqa in public is not compatible with an open, liberal, tolerant society,” he declared to the press.

Although the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights can challenge such a ban as a violation of international human rights laws, Italy and the Netherlands have not been dissuaded from considering joining the fray. The hostility towards Muslims, in particular Muslim women and their garb, appears ubiquitous in Europe these days and can only be described as a step backwards for Western society.

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