I heard this report on the BBC in the car, and wanted to share. Whatever your actual beliefs, I think we can agree that the situation in Sierra Leone is preferable to that of some countries where countless deaths are done in the name of religion.
Some people argue that the world today is living through 'a clash of civilisations' - between Islam and Christianity. You only have to tune into the news from time to time to see that there are people all over the world who believe these two religions to be utterly opposed. Look at the stories of inter-communal friction – and sometimes violence - between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia.
But in Sierra Leone, a country which has seen more than its fair share of war and devastation, Tamasin Ford has met some people who feel that not only are Islam and Christianity utterly compatible, they can even be seen as complementary. So: what is a "Chris-Mus" exactly, and what does he or she believe?
Conversion from one religion to another without an uprising? Say it ain't so!
As for the original topic - not ever going to happen, been at war since King Richard and before - why stop now as Christians are nothing but a bunch of infidels (along with all other 'non- believers') and must be erradicated.
This has existed for Centuries in countries like Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Egypt. However there have been developing radical and medieval elements in Islam for some time. This is all tied to Isaac and Ishmael and the lineage from those two.
Unfortunately, the Muslims who are moderate, are dominated and intimidated by the radicals.
Remember Germany. Not all Germans were Nazis, but, enough were to cause World War II. The same is happening in Islam. Folks who would dwell quietly on their own, are sucked into the violence.
What I find difficult is to know who my friends are, if they come from the Middle East. It is a situation we can't really trust.
Arn
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01:11 PM
Pyrthian Member
Posts: 29569 From: Detroit, MI Registered: Jul 2002
Muslims are normally social conservatives. The people you have to target are the EVIL Islamists masquerading as Holy people. These are the people dedicated to world domination by Islam. They are dedicated to KILLING Americans and any other western Christian people and subjugating women. And, incidentally, if you are not Muslim, you are an infidel, and that includes Christians.
Ancient religious wars are used by Imams to motivate certain young people to go to war against us. Make no mistake, there are many good and honorable Muslims in the world, but, they won't stand up against the radicals. We are in a war, like it or not. But let's not blame all Muslims, because, some are pretty decent people.
Arn
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Boondawg Member
Posts: 38235 From: Displaced Alaskan Registered: Jun 2003
This has existed for Centuries in countries like Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Egypt. However there have been developing radical and medieval elements in Islam for some time. This is all tied to Isaac and Ishmael and the lineage from those two.
Unfortunately, the Muslims who are moderate, are dominated and intimidated by the radicals.
Remember Germany. Not all Germans were Nazis, but, enough were to cause World War II. The same is happening in Islam. Folks who would dwell quietly on their own, are sucked into the violence.
Muslims are normally social conservatives. The people you have to target are the EVIL Islamists masquerading as Holy people. These are the people dedicated to world domination by Islam. They are dedicated to KILLING Americans and any other western Christian people and subjugating women. And, incidentally, if you are not Muslim, you are an infidel, and that includes Christians.
Ancient religious wars are used by Imams to motivate certain young people to go to war against us. Make no mistake, there are many good and honorable Muslims in the world, but, they won't stand up against the radicals. We are in a war, like it or not. But let's not blame all Muslims, because, some are pretty decent people.
Arn
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rinselberg Member
Posts: 16118 From: Sunnyvale, CA (USA) Registered: Mar 2010
Originally posted by Arns85GT: Muslims are normally social conservatives. The people you have to target are the EVIL Islamists masquerading as Holy people. These are the people dedicated to world domination by Islam. They are dedicated to KILLING Americans and any other western Christian people and subjugating women. And, incidentally, if you are not Muslim, you are an infidel, and that includes Christians.
Ancient religious wars are used by Imams to motivate certain young people to go to war against us. Make no mistake, there are many good and honorable Muslims in the world, but, they won't stand up against the radicals. We are in a war, like it or not. But let's not blame all Muslims, because, some are pretty decent people.
If you read the article that Fierobear posted, you would see progressive Muslims standing up against the Islamic fundamentalists and tribalists that uphold oppressive laws like the one that allows the kidnapper of a minor to marry her to escape jail.
Who are the people in Morocco that are stepping up the pressure to scrap laws that allow rapists to escape jail by marrying their victims?
Are they not Muslims?
They are actually more truly Muslim than the Islamic fundamentalists and tribalists.
I posted a link to this recent CNN column because I think it supports my thesis that there is an identifiable mainstream of Islam, fully compatible with U.S. laws and traditions, and that if more of the two billion people worldwide who self-identify as Muslims actually adhered to mainstream Islam, instead of fringe Muslim charlatans like the Azz-Bomber cleric, there would be far less trouble in the world.
There's a big difference between "identifiable" and 'huge majority". If the 2 billion people who globally self-identify as muslims would stand as one and throw extremism and violence out, there would be a lot less violence in the world, but that ain't gonna happen and there's a reason it won't. You know that reason as well as I do.
(rationalizations and misdirections will soon follow)
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fierobear Member
Posts: 27083 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
Neil Armstrong's recent passing reminds me that we used to do bold things. I believe we should set ourselves the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a non-Muslim man in Mecca during the Hajj and returning him safely home.
Islam only means peace to Muslims who blindly submit. To Christians Islam means war, persecution and death. The Qur'an says: "Fight and slay the pagans [Christians] wherever ye find them and seize them, confine them, and lie in wait for them in every place of ambush" (Surah 9:5)
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crashyoung Member
Posts: 1333 From: Lowell, Michigan, USA Registered: May 2012
Two hours of prayer at the DNC? I would like to be there if/when the libs sit through any type of prayer, let alone two hours worth! I hope they provide translations in real time, not precanned translations... could be interesting!
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Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
Muslims are normally social conservatives. The people you have to target are the EVIL Islamists masquerading as Holy people. These are the people dedicated to world domination by Islam. They are dedicated to KILLING Americans and any other western Christian people and subjugating women. And, incidentally, if you are not Muslim, you are an infidel, and that includes Christians.
Ancient religious wars are used by Imams to motivate certain young people to go to war against us. Make no mistake, there are many good and honorable Muslims in the world, but, they won't stand up against the radicals. We are in a war, like it or not. But let's not blame all Muslims, because, some are pretty decent people.
Arn
I agree. The vast majority are regular people, just like the majority of Jews or Christians are normal people that you couldn't spot in a crowd. True Christians accept non-Christians as brothers and sisters. True Muslims do as well. "Jihad" doesn't mean suicide bombing. It means something more like "struggle" or "striving" for God's cause and to be a good Muslim. The Christian equivalent would be missions, giving out bibles, telling people about their faith and practicing what they preach It's too bad that we have a few screwballs trying to pervert religions to their own ends. I guess you see that in every aspect of culture though really.
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normsf Member
Posts: 1682 From: mishawaka, In Registered: Oct 2003
In Saudi Arabia, right now a wedding planner who was deemed unsatisfactory has been given 500 lashes, 50 lashes a week for ten weeks. At least they were merciful to HER to spread the punishment out rather than all at once.
How could Christian people ever tolerate this type of behaviour, let alone coexist. Western culture treats dogs better than they treat women. (on second thought, maybe there on to something). NOT!
It happens every day ... even right here in my town. I even "coexisted" with two Muslim women at Costco today. But you won't read about it in the newspaper, because it's not news.
quote
Originally posted by maryjane:
If the 2 billion people who globally self-identify as muslims would stand as one and throw extremism and violence out, there would be a lot less violence in the world, but that ain't gonna happen and there's a reason it won't. You know that reason as well as I do.
I'll bite. It won't happen overnight largely for the same reason that the huge body of good, devout, European Christians took so long to "stand up" against The Inquisition: well-founded fear. Well, fear combined with habitual submission to authority, a desire to just live their lives in peace, and a fervent hope not to attract the attention of the religious zealots among them. We tend to overlook the fact that the religious tolerance our Founding Fathers enshrined in the Constitution was something rather unique in modern human history.
[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 08-28-2012).]
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normsf Member
Posts: 1682 From: mishawaka, In Registered: Oct 2003
Two hours of prayer at the DNC? I would like to be there if/when the libs sit through any type of prayer, let alone two hours worth! I hope they provide translations in real time, not precanned translations... could be interesting!
At the DNC? Like in proximity of? If you click on fb's link, it has an image of the agenda which states that the event is being held in a park. That park may be adjacent, but apparently not inside the convention hall, and not organized by the DNC. And even Muslims have first amendment rights in our great country.
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fierobear Member
Posts: 27083 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
It happens every day ... even right here in my town. I even "coexisted" with two Muslim women at Costco today. But you won't read about it in the newspaper, because it's not news.
I thought it was interesting because of the location, the fact that some people even 'practice' both religions, and the nation as a whole seems to embrace the idea. I would expect peaceful 'coexistence' in our country.
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Marvin McInnis Member
Posts: 11599 From: ~ Kansas City, USA Registered: Apr 2002
I thought it was interesting because of the location, the fact that some people even 'practice' both religions ...
Many American Indian cultures find nothing wrong with simultaneously practicing both Christianity and their traditional religions. I have personally observed this myself on several occasions within the past decade at Indian ceremonial dances in New Mexico and Arizona. This, of course, has led to outrage and occasional conflict with European American religious authorities who insist that they practice only the One True Religion ... theirs.
quote
I would expect peaceful 'coexistence' in our country.
I was responding primarily to some of the posters in this thread (and other threads), who seem not to share this expectation.
[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 08-28-2012).]
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kwagner Member
Posts: 4257 From: Pittsburgh, PA Registered: Apr 2005
Islam honors every human being, regardless of his color, race or religion:
We have honored the sons of Adam, provided them transport on land and sea, sustained them with good things, and conferred on them special favors above a great part of our creation.
Originally posted by maryjane: There's a big difference between "identifiable" and 'huge majority". If the 2 billion people who globally self-identify as muslims would stand as one and throw extremism and violence out, there would be a lot less violence in the world, but that ain't gonna happen and there's a reason it won't. You know that reason as well as I do.
(rationalizations and misdirections will soon follow)
How would that happen? One big world wide public demonstration, two billion Muslims marching in the streets?
Reform can only prevail as the accumulated outcome of countless small local movements, like this one in Morocco:
quote
Moroccan activists have stepped up pressure to scrap laws that allow rapists to marry their victims - after a 16-year-old girl killed herself.
lets see anyone try and co-existing with the lovely christians of the KKK or maybe the Phelps..... that should be real enlightening. or how about all them christians crying to have the middle east nuked into a "glass parking lot"
its not christians or muslims - it all these azzhat religous idiots. it not this pile or that pile - its both piles.
and while were making the world a better place - how's about them jews?
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Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
lets see anyone try and co-existing with the lovely christians of the KKK or maybe the Phelps..... that should be real enlightening. or how about all them christians crying to have the middle east nuked into a "glass parking lot"
its not christians or muslims - it all these azzhat religous idiots. it not this pile or that pile - its both piles.
and while were making the world a better place - how's about them jews?
Like I said.
It sure is a good thing the KKK and WBC isn't a worldwide majority of the Christian population, even having entire nations ruled by their version of Christianity.
[This message has been edited by Formula88 (edited 08-29-2012).]
Islam honors every human being, regardless of his color, race or religion:
We have honored the sons of Adam, provided them transport on land and sea, sustained them with good things, and conferred on them special favors above a great part of our creation.
Here are brief (three-minute) videos of the two Muslim leaders that will be leading the Muslim prayers at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Here are brief (three-minute) videos of the two Muslim leaders that will be leading the Muslim prayers at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Neighbors of Pakistani Christian girl in blasphemy case living in fear
By SAHEED SHAH McClatchy Newspapers
ISLAMABAD -- The Christians are trickling back to the poor neighborhood in Islamabad that they fled after a blasphemy allegation ignited terror earlier this month. But fear still haunts them.
By Thursday, perhaps half of the 300 to 500 hundred families that had run in horror from their homes the night of Aug. 16 - after a Christian girl was charged with burning pages of the Quran - had returned.
"We are also Pakistanis. We have the right to live here in peace," said Khursheed Ahmed, 65, who returned after a week to her family's home in the Mehrabadi district on the outskirts of the capital. "Where else would we go?"
Mehrabadi, where they can rent a tiny three-room house for the equivalent of $42 a month, is the cheapest place they could find to live in Islamabad, she said. The area is a warren of dirt tracks, with high walls on both sides enclosing little homes that are entered through steel doors.
The Christian returnees said they had nowhere else to go. Others remain crammed in with relatives or living on roadsides.
Mostly illiterate, the Christians number 2 million to 3 million of Pakistan's 180 million population and tend to be among the poorest of society. They migrated to Mehrabadi over the years in search of a better life, but the public outcry over the Quran incident has turned their lives upside down.
Arif Masih, a 49-year-old unemployed cook, and his family had bolted their home so quickly he didn't even lock the front door. He returned nine days later to find it looted. The thieves took the jewelry he'd bought for his child's upcoming wedding; they even took his kitchen utensils and a sack of flour.
"People are so afraid, they cannot sleep at night," he said. "Christians and Muslims have been living here next to each other, like brothers and sisters, for 20 years. But now we just want to leave; we want to be given somewhere else to live."
The Christians, who mostly have the same surname, Masih, had good reason to take flight. After blasphemy allegations were made in 2009 in Gojra, a town in the eastern Punjab province, a mob attacked the area where Christians lived, burning at least eight people to death.
Many in Mehrabadi told McClatchy Newspapers that they feared something similar could happen there.
"If that girl did something wrong, she should be punished," Arif Masih said. "But what have we done? Why are we all being punished?"
At the center of the storm is Rimsha Masih, who is 11 years old and has mental disabilities, according to her parents. They say she has Down syndrome, but her condition is unclear. She's been arrested and charged with desecrating the Quran.
A neighbor, Malik Hammad, claimed that he saw her with burned pages of the holy text in a bag she was carrying. The charges, which carry the death penalty, have caused an international outcry.
An angry crowd of about 500 people gathered outside Rimsha's house that night after an announcement about the incident from a nearby mosque.
Rimsha remains in jail, where the ordeal has deeply traumatized her, according to her lawyer, Tahir Naveed Chaudhry. Hopes for bail were dashed Thursday after her accuser's new lawyer objected to a crucial medical report, which concluded that she is, indeed, a juvenile and mentally underdeveloped, confirming her parents' account.
As a minor she'd be entitled to bail, while any mental disability could help acquit her of the charge, because blasphemy requires a willful act, under the law.
Rimsha's immediate neighbor, Bin Amin Masih, a security guard, said that even by the standards of Mehrabadi, the girl's family was impoverished. Able to afford only one bed for them all, most of the family slept on the floor, he said.
"Rimsha used to play with my daughter," Bin Amin Masih said. "She didn't speak much. But she used to laugh a lot, which had made me think that she had something wrong with her mind."
The case against the girl turned even graver Thursday after her accuser's attorney claimed that the government was secretly supporting her and said this would drive Muslims to take the issue "into their own hands."
Appearing in court for the first time, lawyer Abdur Raheem raised the specter of Mumtaz Qadri, the man who last year gunned down a senior politician who'd called for reforming the blasphemy law, which has been frequently abused.
The hijacking of the case against Rimsha by organized extremists, including radical lawyers, would spell great danger for her. It could intimidate the court and put her life at further risk even if she's freed.
"There are many Mumtaz Qadris in this country," Raheem declared outside the court in Islamabad, after he managed to get the bail hearing for Rimsha postponed. "This (medical) report has been managed by the state, state agencies and the accused."
Raheem alleged that the report was illegal because it was based on the orders of a civil servant and not the court. He claimed that it also went beyond its boundaries of just determining Rimsha's age.
In an interview after the hearing in his office, adorned with a large poster of Qadri, Raheem said: "If the court is not allowed to do its work, because the state is helping the accused, then the public has no other option except to take the law into its own hands."
Many lawyers rallied around Qadri last year after he killed Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer in public. At his court appearance, they showered him with rose petals.
"This girl is guilty," claimed Raheem, who's working for free. "If the state overrides the court, then God will get a person to do the job. There is so much evidence against her, a reasonable court is not in a position to find her not guilty."
The court will hear the case again Saturday, when bail for Rimsha could be considered again.
What remains unclear about the case is why Rimsha's neighbor suspected her and how he saw inside the bag she apparently was carrying. Also unclear is whether any burned pages were from the Quran or another book that contained religious verses.
Blasphemy allegations often are made on the flimsiest of evidence, but enraged mobs pressure the police into registering cases. In court, the alleged act of blasphemy can't even be repeated, as that would be an act of blasphemy in itself. So verdicts are issued without hearing the main pieces of evidence.
Earlier this year, a mentally disturbed Muslim man in Bahawalpur, a city in the middle of Pakistan, was accused of blasphemy and arrested. A crowd of up to 2,000 stormed the police station and dragged him out. He then was beaten and burned alive.
(Shah is a McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent.)
Originally posted by dennis_6: Neighbors of Pakistani Christian girl in blasphemy case living in fear ...
Muslim Imam arrested in Pakistan blasphemy case
Pakistani police have arrested an imam accused of planting burnt pages of the Koran in the bag of a Christian girl accused of blasphemy, officials say.
The girl was detained two weeks ago after after an angry mob demanded she be punished for the alleged crime.
However, a witness has testified that imam Khalid Chishti put the pages in the bag himself, local media say.
The case of the girl, named as Rimsha, who is said to be about 14, has sparked international condemnation.
A report by a government-appointed medical board seen by the BBC suggests the girl has a mental age of less than 14.
Earlier this week, a court extended Rimsha's detention at a maximum-security prison by a further two weeks.
Her father has said he fears for his daughter's life and for the safety of his family. He has called on Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to pardon her.
Rimsha's parents have been taken into protective custody following threats, and many other Christian families have fled the neighbourhood.
Pakistan's strict blasphemy laws are often used to settle personal vendettas, correspondents say.
Last year two leading politicians were assassinated after speaking out against the legislation.
From a long litany of charges (posted right here on PFF) leveled at the Obama administration that range from highly discussable to demonstrably ludicrous--and everything in between:
quote
Eboo Patel, a religious advisor to President Obama, says "America is the ideal place for a renewal of Islam".
So a "renewal of Islam" is a bad thing?
What would a renewal of Islam around the world, influenced by U.S.-based Muslims like Eboo Patel, actually imply?
I generally don't like to paste complete news articles, but I make an exception in this case because I find this article hard to summarize, and because if I give a link to it, it will be blocked by the New York Times login firewall (except for subscribers):
An Effort to Foster Tolerance in Religion
By Laurie Goodstein Published: June 13, 2011
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.”
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 09-04-2012).]
