by Maij Vu Mai
What is religious pluralism to the Survivor? To the one who’s lost faith in themselves? Lost faith in other people? Lost faith in humanity? To the one who’s lost faith in their ability to connect because…
by Miranda Hovemeyer
I’ll be honest. I haven’t felt at home in the field of interfaith work for quite a while. During one of the last interfaith conferences I spoke at, I was asked by an older white gentleman why I was there, then insisting…
by Sable Manson
n the spring of 2020, I was working with my higher education colleagues to prepare for an interfaith retreat set on Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California. We had planned numerous…
by Najeeba Syeed
I’ve written about “casserole” hospitality, an ethic of care demonstrated in America’s Heartland found in communities of various traditions who welcome…
by Marcus Braybrooke
Sympathy, empathy, compassion; my dictionary treats them as synonyms. Contributors to the important new book Confronting Religious Violence, however, suggest there are important differences.
by Ruth Broyde Sharone
Is the world becoming more compassionate or more hateful? This prickly question is eloquently answered in the opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’ classic tale of revolution in France, A Tale of Two Cities.
by Marcus Braybrooke
After the inauguration of the Interreligious Association for Peace and Development in Vienna last month, I visited the Mauthausen Concentration Camp.
by Marcus Braybrooke
The row over reading verses of the Qur’an in a Cathedral in Scotland has, I gather, reached across the Atlantic. Certainly the Cathedral has had a lot of abusive online messages from the U.S.A. During an Epiphany service at the Cathedral a Muslim law student was invited to read the Qur’anic account of the birth of Jesus, which also says, as Muslims believe, that Jesus was a prophet but not divine.
by Despina Namwembe
On the 31st of January, we left for the northern part of Uganda in a place called Adjumani (which borders Southern Sudan) to celebrate the Interfaith Harmony Week. We celebrated with our brothers and sisters who are now refugees in Uganda because of the insurgency going on in their country.
by Kira Zalan
Over the past three years, funded by a modest grant from the Dutch government, 16 women and the local organizations they run in Sudan have intervened in dozens of disputes and brokered solutions. In some cases, that meant building a freshwater well—in others, assistance in drafting laws and power-sharing agreements.
by Audri Scott Williams
Recently I decided to run for political office in 2018 for the state of Alabama. I will be a progressive Democratic candidate in Alabama’s Congressional District 2, for the U.S. House of Representatives. Friends who know me well have asked me, “Why are you running for a political office?”
by Marcus Braybrooke
The row over reading verses of the Qur’an in a Cathedral in Scotland has, I gather, reached across the Atlantic. Certainly the Cathedral has had a lot of abusive online messages from the U.S.A. During an Epiphany service at the Cathedral a Muslim law student was invited to read the Qur’anic account of the birth of Jesus, which also says, as Muslims believe, that Jesus was a prophet but not divine.
by Henry Ralph Carse
In the shadow of the ancient walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, on a sunny day in April, I am leading a small group of prophets down a pathway into the Kidron Valley, and then up the slopes of the Mount of Olives. I call them “prophets,” but these women and men in their twenties are not in old-fashioned robes or unkempt beards, nor roaring dire warnings about the end of time.
by Michael Reid Trice
Twenty fifteen is a year for remembering massacre. This past July marked the twentieth summer since the summary executions in the municipality and town of Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims…
PULASKI, Tennessee – There will be peace in Israel and Palestine, Professor Yehezkel Landau – founder of a joint Jewish-Palestinian-Christian peace initiative in Israel – told a small group of Middle Tennessee religious leaders during the first evening of a three-day conference, Our Muslim Neighbor Initiative. But religious leaders must be part of building that peace.
A complex history of religious, political, and ethnically based conflict has now thrust the world into a wrenching conversation around the significance of a terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State (known by other acronyms such as ISIL or ISIS or simply IS). Here in the U.S., this conversation has broadened to a more volatile discussion around religion, secularization, Islam and human rights.
Moderate Muslims and interfaith activists are regularly, persistently asked the question: Why don’t your leaders step forward and protest the advancing threat of Islamic extremism? Especially in light of troubling headlines from Iraq and Syria in recent weeks?
In fact, American Muslims have established dedicated websites brimming with articles and YouTube segments by prominent Muslims leaders, citing the Quran and full of harsh condemnation against religious extremism – websites mostly unknown to the greater public. Heretics have “high-jacked” their religion and caused Muslims in America and the world to be targets of Islamophobia, and they are raising their voices. Only recently have major media started to pay attention.
