This weekend, the Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston along with Christian communities in Atlanta, Seattle, and Detroit will initiate a series of sermons that have been designed to produce an ecumenical reconciliation between Christianity and Islam.
In addition to the sermons, the Sunday school lessons will center on the inspired teachings of the Prophet Mohammad.
Qurans will be placed in the pews next to the Bibles.
The concept of Chrislam, now embraced by such preachers as Rick Warren and Robert Schuller, appears to have emerged from a program on the meaning of “love your neighbor” at Grace Fellowship Church in Atlanta, Georgia
“In 2001, like most Americans, we were pretty awakened to the true Islamic presence in the world and in the United States,” says Jon Stallsmith, the outreach minister at Grace Fellowship. “Jesus says we should love our neighbors. We can’t do that without having a relationship with them.”
Stallsmith maintains that a rapprochement between Muslims and Christians can be achieved by the fact that Jesus is mentioned twenty-five times in the Quran.
The Chrislam movement has gained impetus by statements from President George W. Bush and that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same God and by Rick Warren’s reference to Isa (the Muslim name for Jesus) in his prayer at the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Only 30 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Muslims, according to a Pew Forum poll. At the same time, more than half the country says they know “not very much” or “nothing at all” about the Islamic faith.
“The recent political developments and the fact that we’re fighting two wars in Muslim countries should sharpen that need to know how to talk to these guys,” Stallsmith insists “We want to find peace, reconciliation around a scriptural understanding of Jesus.”
Jesus in the Quran is neither the only-begotten Son of God nor the Messiah who was divinely appointed to restore the House of David. He is rather viewed as a prophet who was appointed by Allah to prepare mankind for the coming of Mohammad.
In the Quran, Jesus neither suffers nor dies on the cross but is rather raised alive into heaven:
“That they said (in boast), “We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of God”;- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:- Nay, God raised him up unto the himself; and God is Exalted in Power, Wise” (4: 157-158)
The victim at Calvary, Islam teaches, was either Simon of Cyrene or Judas Iscariot.
The Quran mentions that Jesus was born of the virgin Maryam – - not by an immaculate conception but rather the will of Allah and that He performed miracles to show the Jewish people that He was a maseh in the manner of Moses and Ibrahim (Abraham):
“In blasphemy indeed are those that say that God is Christ the son of Mary. Say: “Who then hath the least power against God, if His will were to destroy Christ the son of Mary, his mother, and all every – one that is on the earth? For to God belongeth the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all that is between. He createth what He pleaseth. For God hath power over all things” (5:17).
Belief in the divinity of Jesus is condemned in Islam as shirk (filth).
Tags: Apostasy, Barack Hussein Obama, Chrislam, Going to hell, Heresy, Islamic Conquest, Joel Osteen, Post-America, Rick Warren
Cohen illuminates controversial relationship between Jews and Muslims
Posted February 7, 2011; 12:00 p.m.
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by Jennifer Greenstein Altmann
Princeton professor Mark Cohen has spent his 40-year academic career in a quiet corner of Jewish scholarship, studying the daily life of Jews who lived in the Muslim world 1,000 years ago. But in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, his once-obscure area of expertise has been catapulted into the limelight.
After decades of guiding students through the historical relationships between Muslims and Jews, Cohen has seen his profile rise outside of academic circles as he has added his voice to the vociferous discussions in the media and on blogs about the historical relationship between Islam and Judaism.
"As a medievalist, I never dreamed I would ever be involved in something with so much contemporary relevance," said Cohen, the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East. "But I think I have something to say."
Cohen has waded into controversial debates -- such as whether the Muslim religion is fundamentally anti-Semitic -- and forged a reputation as a voice of reason in a highly charged atmosphere. Last year Merrimack College's Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations awarded him the first Goldziher Prize, which recognizes scholarship that promotes understanding across religious faiths. Throughout his career, Cohen has used rigorous research to offer insights into medieval history to scholars and students, and to explode commonly held myths regarding Jews, Muslims and Christians.
"Consistently over the decades he's stood for a very sane, balanced attitude on the position of Jews in the medieval Islamic world, and for careful scholarship based on documentary sources," said Michael Cook, Princeton's Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies.
Cohen Geniza Project synagogue
The Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo, which recently was renovated, is where a trove of documents dealing with Jewish life in the Middle Ages was found in the 19th century. Cohen co-founded the groundbreaking Princeton Geniza Project, which has built a database of transcriptions of more than 4,000 of the documents, searchable in Arabic, English and Hebrew by keyword and available to scholars all over the world. (Photo courtesy of Mark Cohen)
Opening debate on divisive issues
Cohen first became interested in Middle Eastern studies in 1964, when he spent a year in England as a Fulbright Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He later earned a Ph.D. and became an ordained rabbi, both at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, never intending to lead a congregation but instead to broaden his understanding of Jewish scholarship. He arrived at Princeton in 1973 as one of the few scholars in the world focusing on the history of Jews living in Arab lands in the Middle Ages.
Cohen's 1994 book, "Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages," broke ground by dispelling myths about the historical relationships between Jews, Muslims and Christians. The first in-depth study of its kind, the book meticulously compared how Jews fared when living in predominantly Muslim countries and predominantly Christian countries in the Middle Ages. Cohen tried to explain in new ways why Jews were treated oppressively in Northern Europe and ultimately expelled, whereas they fared much better in the lands of Islam.
André Aciman, a professor of comparative literature at the City University of New York who has written a memoir of his own life growing up in Egypt, wrote of the book, "Cohen's is a polemical text in the best sense of the word; it tries to open debate, not stifle it, and asks questions where they are traditionally shouted away." Aciman called the book "a reassuringly balanced and judicious assessment of Jewish life in the Middle Ages."
Cohen strove to be excruciatingly evenhanded in the book, he said. "I do not condemn, and I do not take sides. I talk about persecutions in the Islamic world as well as in the Christian world, and I do not cover up anything. The book was written against a stream of literature claiming that Islam was a persecutory religion, that it had treated Jews miserably and was in its origins anti-Semitic," he said.
The book has been translated into Arabic, French, German, Hebrew, Turkish and Romanian, with a Spanish version forthcoming.
Cohen Geniza Project document
This letter, from a cache of medieval documents found in a synagogue in Cairo, catalogs the inventory from an estate in Cairo during the Middle Ages. It is part of the Princeton Geniza Project co-founded by Cohen. (Image courtesy of the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary)
Another major scholarly project of Cohen's has helped illuminate the early relationship between Jews and Muslims. Cohen and his now-retired Princeton colleague Abraham Udovitch founded more than two decades ago a groundbreaking project in Jewish-Muslim studies: building a database that catalogs a unique cache of documents about daily life in Cairo's Jewish community during the medieval period.
The Princeton Geniza Project grew out of the discovery, in the late 19th century, of hundreds of thousands of documents from the Middle Ages that had been buried inside the walls of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo. The term Geniza refers to the Jewish custom dictating that any document with the word God was to be buried so it could decompose naturally. In the dry Egyptian climate, the centuries-old texts were preserved. While the majority of the 300,000 documents were liturgical, rabbinic and other literary texts, some 15,000 were business contracts, letters, wills and other documents that dealt with everyday life.
"The Geniza documents tell us an enormous amount about Jewish commerce and commercial cooperation in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries," Cohen said. "It's extremely important because it shows Jews living in a Muslim society as second-class subjects, but nonetheless interacting more or less easily with Muslim neighbors, not only in economic endeavors but in social settings."
Following the discovery, the synagogue's documents were dispersed and ended up in libraries all over the world. The Princeton Geniza Project, which was launched in 1986, has created a database of transcriptions of more than 4,000 of the documents, searchable in Arabic, English and Hebrew by keyword and available to scholars all over the world.
Sasson Somekh, professor emeritus of Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University, called Cohen one of "the foremost scholars on the Geniza, which has showed us how people lived in those remote centuries, what they did in their daily lives. We had a picture in black and white before the Geniza. Now we have it in Technicolor."
'My silence would be deafening'
Increased interest in the Islamic world since the terrorist attacks has meant more newspaper articles and blogs about Islam, with some writers promulgating the notion that anti-Semitism is rooted in core Islamic beliefs. As he saw this idea repeated in the media, Cohen felt he had to act.
"I decided that as an authority, if I didn't speak out more publicly, my silence would be deafening," he said.
His article "The New Muslim Anti-Semitism," which stated that Muslim anti-Semitism was a recent development, not a foundation of Islam, was published in the Jerusalem Post in January 2008. Pieces in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and The Jewish Daily Forward followed, with several focusing on the controversy over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.
"I saw the blatant abuse of history in the service of political ideologies on both sides of the fence," Cohen said. "There are readers out there who don't know much, and they're being exposed to points of view without solid historical basis. They hear that Islam is the new devil, and they believe what they hear. People are inclined to believe the worst about Islam. I just hope I can bring a little bit of balance to the discussion."
Wading into current debates about Islam "is very daring of him because he will always find people who don't like what he's saying," Somekh said. "But it's important that he do this."
Cohen's current emergence in the media is an "example of how a respected scholar of the medieval period can play an important role in enlightening public opinion on a policy issue that is being exploited by politicians and others," said Joseph Montville, who served as the chair of the jury that selected Cohen for the Goldziher Prize. Montville, a retired Middle East specialist in the American foreign service, added, "Mark is a meticulous scholar who is well respected. He does sober work that sober people can rely on."
Cohen Geniza Project document
This letter from an aspiring businessman is one of the documents transcribed in the Princeton Geniza Project. (Image courtesy of the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary)
Making difficult texts accessible
In the classroom, Cohen uses the Geniza documents and other historical materials to bring to life a long-ago period, and to relate that period to the contemporary world. Enrollments in Cohen's classes, which draw students from a wide variety of religious backgrounds, rose following Sept. 11.
Jessica Marglin, a graduate student in Near Eastern studies who is writing her dissertation on Jews in the Moroccan legal system in the 19th century, said one of the reasons she came to Princeton was to study with Cohen. She has taken Cohen's course "Readings in Judeo-Arabic," which introduces students to Arabic texts written by medieval Jews, especially documents from the Cairo Geniza.
"He knows how to make difficult texts accessible by building up to them slowly and making sure students have the foundational tools they need to move on to harder texts," Marglin said. "Even though I am not a medievalist myself, his comments are always incredibly helpful and his guidance invaluable in my work. His breadth is also quite impressive -- he knows so much about the modern period while being an expert on the medieval period."
In his undergraduate course "Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages," students study primary-source documents to gain an understanding of the interrelationship of the three religions.
"I feel extremely privileged to have been able to take a course with Professor Cohen," said freshman Sheeba Arif. "Not only have I learned a great deal from him, but his class has also piqued my interest in Near Eastern studies and given me some insight into what Princeton really has to offer."
Coupled with his academic work and the recent emergence of his more public voice, Cohen says his work with students is rewarding because in most cases they come with little knowledge of Islam or Judaism. He enjoys introducing them to what would otherwise be a completely obscure period of history.
"After decades of teaching a subject that was purely historical, I now find I am talking about something that has distinct contemporary implications," Cohen said. "It makes my work more challenging, because there is always the risk of seeming to lean in one direction too strongly."
Cohen class
In his class on "Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages," Cohen uses primary-source documents to help undergraduates gain an understanding of the interrelationship of the three religions. Cohen is joined by (from left) sophomore Ammar Ahmed, senior Hannah Rich, sophomore John Musick and freshman Sheeba Arif. (Photo by Brian Wilson)
Cohen plans to teach his undergraduate course twice more before retiring in 2013. "I hope my students will come away from the class with a sober understanding of the contentious issues that hover around the history of Jewish life in the medieval Islamic world," he said.
Accepting the Goldziher Prize at a ceremony last October, Cohen spoke of his hope that Jews and Muslims put aside their differences.
"In the dust of the conflict between Islam and the West today, Jews and Muslims have lost sight of the similarity between their two faiths," he said. If Jews and Muslims better understood the common ground they share, he said, that knowledge would "stem the tide of mutual fear that is today spreading across the globe."
Communities of the Abrahamic traditions join their musical voices
Learning how to play the Pakistani Rubab. Photo: Naveed Osman
On 29 January at Cadogan Hall, Councillor Richard Barnes, the Deputy Mayor of London, greeted an audience gathered for a unique concert that represented the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Though each faith carries its own distinctive identities and practices, their origins are found in the religion of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and share traditions of peace, humility and brotherhood.
The concert, titled 3 Faiths: Expressions from the Abrahamic Traditions, stemmed from an idea of the organising team of the Ismaili Community Ensemble (ICE) conceived early in 2010, with facilitation from the Three Faiths Forum — a UK-based organisation that seeks to foster friendship, goodwill and understanding amongst Muslims, Christians and Jews.
Vocalists from the Morley Chamber Choir, Pandemonium and ICE exchange ideas. Photo: Naveed Osman
“We cannot live as a divided London,” continued Councillor Richard Barnes. “We have to understand each other. We have to appreciate the cultures, the music, the literature, the backgrounds that makes us who we are as individuals, and understand what we bring to London, to make this city the glorious kaleidoscope that it actually is. And it is, truly, a glorious kaleidoscope.”
ICE collaborated with musicians from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Pandemonium (under the auspices of the Jewish Music Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies), and Morley Chamber Choir of Morley College, to present a cornucopia of beautiful music evoking the heritage of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions.
The saxophonists rehearse ahead of the big concert. Photo: Naveed Osman
Cadogan Hall erupted with a punchy echo, reverberating around the auditorium: “From one seed many fruits, To one light many paths…” It continued with new music — inspired by the three traditions — that was created by ICE specifically for the concert.
The voices of Pandemonium, the Morley Chamber Choir and ICE vocalists captivated the audience, as each performed their own repertoire of Jewish, Christian and Ismaili Muslim traditional renditions. ICE delivered recitations of qasidas and ginans, reflecting a diversity of tradition within the Ismaili community.
Vivienne Bellos conducts the Pandemonium singers at Cadogan Hall. Photo: Naveed Osman
“We felt such warmth from all your participants,” said Viv Bellos, Director of Music and conductor of Pandemonium, of having worked with the Ismaili Community Ensemble. “I would love to collaborate with your group again.”
Andrea Brown, Director of Music Morley College said: “It was wonderful for our students to work with ICE and Pandemonium to create such an exciting event. It was also good to get to know the Ismaili Centre and get an insight into your culture and ways of life through a shared music project. I do hope we can work further together!”
Andrea Brown conducting the Morley Chamber Choir singers at Cadogan Hall. Photo: Naveed Osman
The spectacular grand finale titled “You” brought all the musicians on stage, playing and singing in unison under the leadership of ICE artistic director Paul Griffiths. Vocalists intermingled without boundaries or separation — it was simply music in perfect harmony.
“Concerts like this…it pulls us together,” said Councillor Barnes. “And for you all to be here in peace, love and harmony, celebrating each other, and our glorious culture, I thank you, and I thank the Ismaili Centre for its initiative. It is glorious.”
Pandemonium, the Morley Chamber Choir and the Ismaili Community Ensemble perform together at Cadogan Hall. Photo: Naveed Osman
ALEXANDRIA, VA- Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) welcomes Dr. Hussein Rashid to campus this week as the Center for Anglican Communion Studies’ (CACS) Visiting Muslim Scholar. During his eight week stay at the Seminary, Rashid will teach a course entitled, "Not so Common Stories: Prophets in the Qur’an and the Bible.”
Rashid, a teacher at Hofstra University and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, was invited to VTS through the Luce Grant housed within CACS. His appointment is part of the Seminary’s continuing effort to encourage deeper cross-cultural conversations within the VTS Community and to equip students to envision new and creative ways to undertake ministry in the world.
“Dr. Rashid’s enthusiasm for interreligious engagement, vast experience, and engaging demeanor will make him extremely popular with our students,” said the Rev. Robin Razzino, interreligious officer for CACS. “Having a scholar with his background will allow VTS to continue to offer students opportunities to be in conversation with others who can help inform their ministries."
Rashid received a Ph.D. from Harvard University's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, which focused on comparative Muslim-Hindu theologies in South Asia, and a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University. He is the convener of islamicate and a contributor to Talk Islam and AltMuslimah, and is an occasional speaker for the Interfaith Alliance, Faith in Public Life, and a teacher at Quest: A Center for Spiritual Inquiry at the Park Avenue Christian Church in New York City. His work has appeared at City of Brass, Goat Milk, and CNN.com. He has appeared on CBS Evening News, CNN, Russia Today, Channel 4 (UK), State of Belief - Air America Radio, and Iqra TV (Saudi Arabia).
Stated the Rev. J. Barney Hawkins IV, Ph.D., associate dean for the Center for Anglican Communion Studies, “Dr. Rashid’s experience and insight will help us to more fully understand the deep theological debates that exist between Muslim and Christian communities. Such understanding is critical, if you are going to be a faith community leader in today's world."
Founded in 1823, Virginia Theological Seminary is the largest of the 11 accredited seminaries of the Episcopal Church. The school prepares men and women for service in the Church worldwide, both as ordained and lay ministers, and offers a number of professional degree programs and diplomas. Currently, the Seminary represents more than 42 different dioceses and 5 different countries, for service in the Church.
June 13, 2011
An Effort to Foster Tolerance in Religion
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
CHICAGO — For a guy who is only 35 and lives in a walk-up apartment, Eboo Patel has already racked up some impressive accomplishments.
A Rhodes scholar with a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, he has four honorary degrees. His autobiography is required freshman reading on 11 college campuses. He runs a nonprofit organization — the Interfaith Youth Core — with 31 employees and a budget of $4 million. And he was tapped by the White House as a key architect of an initiative announced in April by President Obama.
Mr. Patel got there by identifying a sticky problem in American civic life and proposing a concrete solution. The problem? Increased religious diversity is causing increasing religious conflict. And too often, religious extremists are driving events.
He figured that if Muslim radicals and extremists of other religions were recruiting young people, then those who believe in religious tolerance should also enlist the youth.
Interfaith activism could be a cause on college campuses, he argued, as much “a norm” as the environmental or women’s rights movements, as ambitious as Teach for America. The crucial ingredient was to gather students of different religions together not just to talk, he said, but to work together to feed the hungry, tutor children or build housing.
“Interfaith cooperation should be more than five people in a book club,” Mr. Patel said, navigating his compact car to a panel discussion at Elmhurst College just west of downtown Chicago, while answering questions and dictating e-mails to an aide. “You need a critical mass of interfaith leaders who know how to build relationships across religious divides, and see it as a lifelong endeavor.”
Until Mr. Patel came along, the interfaith movement in the United States was largely the province of elders and clergy members hosting dialogues and, yes, book clubs — and drafting documents that had little impact at the grass roots.
Meanwhile at the grass roots, inter-religious friction was sparking regularly over public school holidays, zoning permits for houses of worship and religious garb in the workplace. At many universities, there is open hostility over the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the failure to find a peaceful solution.
Mr. Patel, who is Muslim, is not saying that his plan will solve all those conflicts, just that the focus should be on what he calls “the American project.” Immigrants across the generations brought their faiths, their biases and their beefs and “built a new pattern of relationships” over here, he said, pointing out that English Protestants and Irish Catholics eventually overcame their enmity on these shores.
“When I go to a campus where the Muslim Student Association and the Hillel are not talking to each other,” he said (referring to the national Jewish student group) this spring in a lecture at Columbia University, “my question to them is, ‘Who did you feed in Ramallah by not talking to Hillel? Who did you keep safe in the south of Israel by not talking to the M.S.A.?’ ”
There are many interfaith groups, but none like Mr. Patel’s, where youthful idealism and spiritual searching have been channeled by pro bono consultants from McKinsey & Company into strategic plans, templates and spreadsheets. The offices take up a whole floor in a handsomely renovated industrial building. On one end is a small prayer room. On the other is a bulletin board where the manager of foundation development tracks grant applications worth millions of dollars.
At a staff meeting, which started and ended on time, two senior leaders in T-shirts emblazoned “Better Together” walked everybody through a PowerPoint presentation of the group’s recent expansion.
By the end of the school year in June 2010, the Youth Core had trained 18 “interfaith fellows” who each recruited about 40 students on their campuses. By this June, the Youth Core had trained leaders on 97 campuses, who engaged an average of 100 students, for a total of 10,000 participants — more than 10 times over the previous year. The leaders are undergraduates, religious and nonreligious, who attended summer training sessions led by Youth Core staff members, and then returned to their campuses to organize interfaith events and community service projects using the upbeat slogan, “Better Together.”
The meeting ended when the vice president for strategy and operations, Gabe Hakim, a former McKinsey analyst who wears a “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet, recited his signature send-off: “Let’s go make it a norm.”
Mr. Patel responded with his signature meeting closer, “Rock on.”
Mr. Patel started the Youth Core in 2002 with a Jewish friend, a $35,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and one full-time paid staff member, April Mendez, an evangelical Christian who still works with the organization as vice president for leadership.
Mr. Patel’s parents were Indian immigrants from the Ismaili Shiite sect (led by the imam Aga Khan IV), which is known for its philanthropic work. But Mr. Patel spent his days at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and afterward running away from his own roots, searching for spiritual identity and purpose.
He read Dorothy Day and lived in Catholic Worker houses, volunteered in a homeless shelter run by evangelical Christians in Atlanta, practiced Buddhist meditation and made a pilgrimage to the Dalai Lama in India (which is chronicled in his autobiography, “Acts of Faith,” published in 2007 by Beacon Press). But when he visited his grandmother in Mumbai and saw her taking in battered women, he realized that his own tradition offered the ethic of service and humanitarianism he had been looking for all along.
Now, during the work day, Mr. Patel flies from speaking engagements to White House meetings to college campuses. Six university presidents have signed paying contracts to have the Youth Core assess the state of inter-religious relations and awareness on campus and devise proposals on how to improve them.
The Rev. Michael J. Garanzini, president of Loyola University, a Jesuit university in Chicago, said of Mr. Patel’s group: “They don’t have the knowledge base or experience in theology, but they have provided the data on where our kids are. The world we grew up in was all Irish, Italian and German. Now it’s Vietnamese, and Poles and Jewish kids from Skokie. We are not automatically able to reflect on their reality.”
The White House initiative is the biggest breakthrough yet. Mr. Obama sent a letter last month to 2,000 university presidents inviting them to sign up their campuses for the “Interfaith and Community Service Challenge” in the coming school year. So far, about 400 have signed on.
Joshua DuBois, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said Mr. Patel, who served on the president’s religion advisory council, and the Youth Core staff were “critical early partners” in developing the new initiative.
“You have people who can cast a vision but then not implement the vision,” Mr. DuBois said in an interview. “Then you have people who are great implementers but are not very inspirational. Eboo is a unique leader who can do both.”
At night, when Mr. Patel comes home to his apartment, his year-old son, Khalil, is waiting at the glass door.
Mr. Patel tries to live the philosophy that exposure to other religions enhances one’s own. He and his wife, Shehnaz Mansuri, a civil rights lawyer and a Sunni Muslim, have hired a South American nanny who sometimes recites the Lord’s Prayer to their two sons. They send their 4-year-old, Zayd, to a Roman Catholic preschool.
“When Zayd talks about saints,” Mr. Patel said, “I can tell him about imams.”
The world religion day was organised on January 16, 2011 at city hall in Ottawa. More then 9 faiths were represented with their presentations by performing their religious rituals and songs. The faith of Islam was represented by Ismaili council for Ottawa. The youth sibling Danyal and Saba Rawjani represented faith of Islam on behalf of Council for Ottawa, Canada.
Submitted by adrienne on August 10, 2011
Remembering Ramadan
August 10, 2011
Peter Dziedzic
I received strange glances and expressions of doubt when I said that I would be fasting for Ramadan this year. What business does a non-Muslim have in fasting for Ramadan? What is there to gain from depriving yourself of food and water during some of the hottest and longest days of the year? Why should I care?
This month, I will attempt to engage in routine prayer and meditation. I will abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, and will make an effort to quell hurtful thoughts and speech. I will attempt to read a significant amount of the Qur’an and New Testament and participate in volunteer and charity efforts that benefit the local or global community.
I have been reminded that I am a non-Muslim. Having been raised in the Catholic tradition, I am familiar with periods of reflection and abstention, and have fond moments of looking forward to Lent as a time to grow closer to God. I still look forward to Lent as a time to focus on the spiritual dimensions of life, but as I grow as an interfaith leader and as I grow to recognize the inherent wisdom in the diverse spiritual expressions of humanity, I see the value in reaching beyond faith divisions and embracing those elements that will guide me on my journey to the Divine.
My decision to fast is also a multi-faceted act of solidarity. In doing so, I am not only standing in solidarity with all the hungry and suffering in the world and with Muslim brothers and sisters. I am standing with all who face persecution based on their religious identities. As we have seen in years passed, Muslims face discrimination and persecution in the United States and elsewhere. As an interfaith leader, I take issue and fight to counter not only this faith-based division, but all acts of faith-based division around the world.
I am presented with an opportunity to grow in my humanity. This past year, I have constantly found myself over-committed and lacking time for proper reflection and growth. I look forward to taking this time to grow consciously – to nourish relationships, reflect on my goals and values, and grow in love, peace, and humility. In starving my senses, I become aware of the beauty of life that surrounds me. Participating in Ramadan is a test of my personal commitment and ability to set aside the year (and years) ahead for long-term and life-long inner transformation.
Ramadan, to me, is not a ritual shrouded in mystique, but a profound period of spiritual development and ascension that is practiced by dozens of my friends and colleagues, thousands of Chicagoans, and hundreds and thousands of Americans. In a society that often sets spirituality in the periphery of life, the chance to engage in a period of reflection and intention is an opportunity not to be missed.
In fasting, I hope to make a conscious commitment to continue my work in the world. Thousands around the world not only suffer from lack of food and water, but from lack of acceptance, love, understanding, and a place to call home. Let us all, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, take time to remember this reality and remember our power to change the world for the better during this month.
The content of this blog reflects the views of its author exclusively.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama addresses members of the crowd during a public talk at Uniprix Stadium in Montreal, Wednesday, Sept., 7, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Updated: Wed Sep. 07 2011 5:11:35 PM
The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — The Dalai Lama warns that all religions -- including his own -- have faithful who carry the seeds of destructive emotions within them.
Speaking Wednesday in Montreal, the Buddhist spiritual leader said a key to promoting religious harmony after 9-11 is to stop criticizing religions based on the actions of a handful of "mischievous" followers.
He delivered his message at a conference examining how religions can foster peace in the post-9-11 world. The event took place just days before the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Logically, if you criticize Islam due to a few mischievous Muslims, then you have to criticize all world religions," the Dalai Lama told the packed auditorium.
"That, I think is totally wrong to create that kind of negative impression to one particular religion -- that is totally wrong."
He said everybody -- even himself -- has the potential to develop harmful feelings and it's the job of religions to try and reduce them.
"Through awareness. . . we try to minimize these destructive emotions and try to increase these constructive emotions," he said.
The one-day conference also featured a panel discussion by prominent religious scholars and spiritual thinkers -- including Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, Oxford University Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan and author Deepak Chopra, who acknowledged there is no easy solution to end violence.
"Religion can be a force for good when religions work together. The question is when have they?" he said.
Steven T. Katz, who directs the Elie Wiesel Centre for Judaic Studies and Professor of Religion at Boston University, said the belief in the tenets of a religion should not lead to bloodshed.
"Even if you believe in the universality of your own religion it doesn't require you to murder people who don't share your views," he said.
Ramadan said unity requires bravery.
"We have to be courageous. To work for peace today is not only to be a dreamer, it's to be courageous," he said.
Conference convenor and McGill comparative religion professor Arvind Sharma is to use religion to find peace worldwide.
"If religion is a part of the problem, then perhaps it can also be part of the solution," he said.
September, 21, 2011
Ministers meeting local, global religious leaders on new office
Baird and Kenney have met with the Aga Khan, Catholic leaders, Buddhist, Sikh, Bahá'í community members.
By Sneh Duggal
Published September 21, 2011
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Cabinet ministers spent the summer listening to Canadian and global religious representatives about how they should fulfill their campaign promise to open a religious freedom office.
It appears that Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and his staff have been taking the lead. The government says he's been meeting with like-minded countries and other stakeholders to discuss the office and protection of religious minorities.
To that end, it's released a series of photos of Mr. Baird smiling alongside religious leaders.
In June, he met with Canada's ambassador to the Holy See, Anne Leahy, in Rome. Then in early July, he talked to the Holy See's ambassador to Canada, Archbishop Pedro López Quintana.
He reiterated Canada's commitment to establishing the office while in Istanbul, Turkey on July 15 to attend a meeting on combating religious intolerance.
He met Suzan Johnson Cook, the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, on Aug. 3.
Then on Sept. 2, Mr. Baird met with the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the largest group of Ismaili Muslims, in Paris, France.
Meanwhile, the B.C. Catholic reported that Immigration Minister Jason Kenney chaired an invitation-only roundtable discussion with representatives of local Catholic, Buddhist, Sikh and Bahá'í communities in Vancouver, BC this summer.
The B.C. Catholic said Minister Kenney was reported to have asked for participants' feedback on the office's structure, programs, use of budget and whether it should pick countries or regions or have a global focus.
As part of their election platform earlier this year, the Conservatives included a promise to create an office of religious freedom. They estimated it would have a $5-million budget. After they won a majority, they reiterated the promise in June's throne speech.
The government has said the office, which will fall under the Department of Foreign Affairs, would aim to monitor religious freedom around the world, promote religious freedom as a key objective of Canadian foreign policy and advance policies and programs that support religious freedom around the world.
While further details about the structure and timeline of the office's creation have yet to be revealed, Chris Day, a spokesperson for Mr. Baird, wrote in an email to Embassy in late August: "This is a priority for the government and we remain committed to getting it right."
Mr. Day added, "Consultations continue. We expect to have more to say over the course of the Fall."
Clues to focus area?
While details of countries or religions on which the new office might focus are unclear, the government has spoken out in the past about persecuted religious believers.
After a bombing outside a Syrian Catholic church in Kirkuk, Iraq, injured more than 20 people around the same time that Mr. Baird was meeting with Ms. Johnson Cook in the United States, he denounced the attack saying that "Canada remains deeply concerned about the plight of the Iraqi minorities, including the Christian community, who are especially vulnerable to violence."
Pakistan held its inaugural National Minorities Day on Aug. 11, something that the Canadian government praised. "Canada encourages Pakistan to continue promoting the rights of all minorities, including for individuals belonging to Ahmadiyya and Christian communities," said Mr. Baird, in another statement on that day.
In another statement July 7, Mr. Baird condemned Iran, saying that it "has consistently persecuted minorities for their religious beliefs," and singled out its alleged abuse to the Bahá'í community leaders.
The government has also recently expressed concern over Ahmadi Muslims in Indonesia.
American lessons
The United States set up an Office of International Religious Freedom in 1998. It was created under the International Religious Freedoms Act, which authorized the state department to provide it with funding from its existing budget. Initially the new office's budget was minimal, making it difficult to grow, said Thomas Farr, who served as the first director of the office and stayed for about four years.
While things have started to change over the years, the fact that the Congress does not appropriate any new money for the office and that it is funded at the discretion of the state department is a mistake, Mr. Farr said.
The ambassador, who heads the office, is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The current office, under the Obama administration, probably has around 14 official staff, Mr. Farr said.
He said the office should have at its head someone who knows what they are doing in foreign affairs, not someone who is appointed because of their support for a political party, or because they happen to be popular within Canada. The first ambassador for the office, he said, deliberately tried to hire foreign service officers in order to "embed this within the diplomatic community." There was a perception that the office was controlled by the American religious right, he said, which was a driving force in the government's creation of the body.
The American office issues reports each year on other countries, based on information gathered by its diplomats abroad, resulting in some nations being categorized as ones of 'particular concern.'
The European Union, among others, has expressed interest in creating such an office, said Mr. Farr, but as far as he knows no other countries have one.
Associate professor at Trinity Western University Janet Epp-Buckingham said while the Canadian government has focused largely on human rights, it has not been as strong in the area of religious freedoms. A religious freedoms office would be helpful to Canada's foreign policy development, she said.
Ms. Epp-Buckingham said that with religion being such a big factor in many international conflicts, the office would allow the government to better understand certain aspects of these conflicts.
Meanwhile, when the Conservatives made the announcement about the office, the Liberals suggested the move was more about gaining support within ethnic communities and would blur the line separating the church and state.
But for Peter Bhatti, it is a symbol of hope for religious minorities around the world and a continuation of his brother's legacy.
Mr. Bhatti's brother, Shahbaz, was Pakistan's minister of religious minorities when he was assassinated on March 2 for his defence of religious groups such as Christians, whom he believed were targeted by the country's blasphemy law.
He said through a religious freedoms office, the Canadian government could put pressure on other countries to uplift minority groups.
"We have to respect each other's faith and try to live together," Mr. Bhatti said, adding that he hopes the government will involve various religious groups in the operation of the office.
Joined: 07 May 2008 Posts: 1139 Location: AUSTIN, TEXAS. U.S.A.
Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 4:07 am Post subject:
Interesting articles we need more articles like this, this article is very informative.
Does word "Ahlul Kitab" referring four kitabs, Tauret, Jaboor, Bible and Quran or just Quran only?
What about the other 'SAHIFA' reveled (isnpired) by Allah on various other Prophets besides Prophet Moses, Prophet Isa, Prophet Dawid and Prophet Mohammad (SWT)? are these Sahifa also consider as "Ahlul Kitab"or not?
Interesting articles we need more articles like this, this article is very informative.
Does word "Ahlul Kitab" referring four kitabs, Tauret, Jaboor, Bible and Quran or just Quran only?
What about the other 'SAHIFA' reveled (isnpired) by Allah on various other Prophets besides Prophet Moses, Prophet Isa, Prophet Dawid and Prophet Mohammad (SWT)? are these Sahifa also consider as "Ahlul Kitab"or not?
Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah says in The Memoirs:
"All Islamic schools of thought accept it as a fundamental principle that for centuries, for thousands of years before the advent of Mohammed, there arose from time to time messengers, illumined by Divine Grace, for and among those races of the earth which had sufficiently advanced intellectually to comprehend such a message. Thus Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the Prophets of Israel are universally accepted by Islam. Muslims indeed know no limitation merely to the Prophets of Israel; they are ready to admit that there were similar Divinely inspired messengers in other countriesGautama Buddha, Shri Krishna and Shri Ram in India, Socrates in Greece, the wise man of China and many other sages and saints among peoples and civilizations, trace of which we have lost. Thus man's soul has never been left without a specially inspired messenger from the soul that sustains, embraces and is the universe."
Joined: 07 May 2008 Posts: 1139 Location: AUSTIN, TEXAS. U.S.A.
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:24 am Post subject:
Whatever Sultan Mohammad Shah told in his memoirs is true and correct but my question was about those 'sahifas" which were reveled on other prophets like Prophet Noah, Prophet lot, prophet Adams (s.a.), it may possible that these sahias were very small and may be not big enough to consider them as book like quran, tawret, bible and zaboor but history shows that these kind sahifas also reveled on many prophets on and off on almost all prophets, does these small sahifa also counted in Ahlul kitab or not? that was my question the author Alwaez Sadruddin Fattoum of above articles does not mentioned about those sahifas but he only mentioned about four main holy books mentioned above.
Whatever Sultan Mohammad Shah told in his memoirs is true and correct but my question was about those 'sahifas" which were reveled on other prophets like Prophet Noah, Prophet lot, prophet Adams (s.a.), it may possible that these sahias were very small and may be not big enough to consider them as book like quran, tawret, bible and zaboor but history shows that these kind sahifas also reveled on many prophets on and off on almost all prophets, does these small sahifa also counted in Ahlul kitab or not? that was my question the author Alwaez Sadruddin Fattoum of above articles does not mentioned about those sahifas but he only mentioned about four main holy books mentioned above.
Once you accept a prophet or a saint as divinely inspired, I do not see why you should not accept their message whether it is small or large in content. Basically all the 'books' contain the same essence, hence reading material from different
divinely inspired messengers can only enhance one's understanding of his/her own particular tradition.
Hence people adhering to traditions established by divinely inspired messengers can also be counted as Ahl al-Kitab - 'people of the book'. This would include Hindus, Budhists etc.
Joined: 07 May 2008 Posts: 1139 Location: AUSTIN, TEXAS. U.S.A.
Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 5:20 am Post subject:
Quote:
Once you accept a prophet or a saint as divinely inspired, I do not see why you should not accept their message whether it is small or large in content. Basically all the 'books' contain the same essence, hence reading material from different
divinely inspired messengers can only enhance one's understanding of his/her own particular tradition.
I didn't say that I don't accept those small sahifas nor I have any intention in future that I will not respect them but as per my thinking author should clarify this that sahifas also consider in Ahlul kitab not only four holy books.
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