Montreat College Conference: Interfaith Dialogue

Eboo Patel took the stage like so many before him have done. He spoke words of reconciliation, peace, justice, and interfaith dialogue. Eboo Patel is Muslim, and if there has been another time in Montreat’s history that a Muslim person took the stage for keynote, I am not aware of such time.

Eboo stated that over the next thirty years interfaith dialogue will be one of the most important issues facing this country and the world. The morning after his keynote, the above picture was on the front page of the New York Times. Quite prophetic.

His Keynote address focused greatly on Martin Luther King Jr.’s work as a result of studying Gandhi. Specifically he told Kings story of hearing about an Indian man, and his philosophy of satyagraha “truth force”, a philosophy of nonviolent protest. King heard this and knew he believed in these same ideals: love, justice, peace for all people. How can we as people of faith - who hold the same ideals - learn from one another? Eboo went on to talk about how King became the leader of the Civil Right’s movement, and how interfaith dialogue played directly into the movement.

If we are to be people of faith that hold fast to justice, peace, and love, we have to learn how to be people who can respect others religions. We have to be a people who intentionally learn about other faiths, and that means more than just which book particular faiths consider holy. We have to know what those books say. It struck a deep chord in me as I sat in the pew that morning, knowing that Eboo had studied Christianity and the Bible. He was speaking our "language". He was able to look to our scriptures and then reflect on the the Qur’an and see how our faiths are similar. If we are to be a people who seek to be faithful, “to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God”, we are called to love all people, and to seek how to work in partnership. Our doctrines may be different, our understanding of who the Christ to be may be different, but imagine what we could do together.

In his closing, Eboo posed the question: “What if as people of faith, Christians, Muslims, Buddhist, Jainist, Jews, made it a point to end malaria? We know that in order for people not to contract Malaria they need a mosquito net over their bed at night. If they do contract it, they need a shot. What if as a people of faith we made it our point to end the injustices of this world, instead of fighting against one another? What if we did that?”

His words resonated within me, inspired me, and frankly led me to a place that I felt I could take on the world. With tears in her eyes, the person next to me in the pew embraced me after the eruption of applause subsided. We could speak few words, but in the embrace we knew no words were needed. We wanted to take on the world.

I leave you with this quote, “We need to get busy building the world we want to live in.” - Eboo Patel

Thoughts?

Check below for a little bit about Eboo Patel.

Grace and Peace- Matthew Ruffner

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About Dr. Eboo Patel (the SUBJECT of this post, not the author): Named by US News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, Eboo Patel is the founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement. Author of the award-winning book Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, Eboo is also a regular contributor to the Washington Post, National Public Radio and CNN. He is a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.