Rami Nashashibi (Executive Director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network) and Joshua Dubois (head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships) spoke to us today. Again, much of this will appear as stream-of-consciousness writing, with intermixing of paraphrasing and quotations. Nashashibi addressed us first, saying that our conference was aimed at rekindling the approach to a very simple concept. He quoted from Surah 49:13, which says “God has made us into nations and tribes so that we may come to know one another.”
It happens to be one of my favorite verses, largely because it’s awesome, but also because it speaks to the way in which our planet now looks. The White House is now stacked with people who truly believe in a global, transnational world, and our country is picking up the proverbial mop and working to make peace and justice happen globally. “What we do in cities and urban centers in America now more than ever matters to people in refugee camps and cities across the world. It’s a paradoxical moment – the gross inequities of our era have transmitted themselves across the world,” said Nashashibi.
“This paradoxical moment is what drives faith communities globally to strive to create a new society and new possibilities across the world.” But there are obstacles within these religions as well. “Interfaith” is sometimes viewed as a less real expression of our faiths. In order to have the dialogue, you must therefore suspend the tenets of faith and go “politically-correct”.
The notion of interfaith dialogue is not new. This is something that we all know. We’ve been doing it for a very long time and we have the examples to prove it. Intrafaith and interfaith dialogue has already shaped the world and our own traditions.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was stoned in a park in Chicago on August 5, 1966. Across the street from this park is a synagogue. Its leader, Rabbi Marx, wrote a letter to American Jews. He said that he would join the marchers. And when King was stoned, he sought refuge in that synagogue. I can’t even begin to describe the letter that Rabbi Marx wrote – it was poetry. Look it up. Nashashibi closed with this reading and it was outstanding.
Sadly, I had to leave the lecture at this point for the airport and conveniently missed Joshua Dubois. Shucks. He’s a swell dude.
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