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Obama appoints Patel to his inter faith council

Washington: The US President, Barack Obama, on Thursday appointed an Indian American to his new advisory council on inter faith relationships.

Eboo S Patel, founder and executive director of the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Corps, would be a member of the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The council announced Thursday it would have 25 members, who will be appointed for a one-year term. However, fifteen members to the council were announced today.

The announcement came after Obama signed an executive order establishing the new faith-based council.

This office will work on behalf of Americans committed to improving their communities, no matter their religious or political beliefs, Obama said.

Joshua DuBois, a former associate pastor and advisor to Obama in his US Senate office and campaign Director of Religious Affairs, would lead this office.

"Joshua understands the issues at stake, knows the people involved and will be able to bring everyone together from both the secular and faith-based communities and from academia and politics around our common goals," he said.

EBOO PATEL, Founder and Executive Director

Eboo Patel is the founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit working to build mutual respect and pluralism among religiously diverse young people by empowering them to work together to serve others. He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Eboo holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He writes "The Faith Divide", a featured blog on religion for The Washington Post and has also written for the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, the Chicago Tribune, The Clinton Journal, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, The Journal of College and Character and National Public Radio. Eboo serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA, the Advisory Board of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center, and the National Board of the YMCA. He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and at universities around the world. Eboo is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world; was named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America; was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch; and was given an honorary doctorate from Washington and Jefferson College.