Category: Social Issues
The 2015 Parliament of The World’s Religions: The Tower of Babel in Reverse
The story of the Tower of Babel has always confused me. In it, humans are punished for working collaboratively together. But what kind of god causes confusion and separation, rather than illumination ... Read More
Interfaith Abroad, Part 2: Privilege, Context, and Coming Home
Read Part I here. Travel gives you space to see new things, and learn to appreciate all the familiar things you take for granted. Travel grants the traveler a suspension of their own reality, a limina... Read More
Let’s Talk About the Refugee Crisis for a Moment
In the last two weeks, the travesty of what’s been happening in the Middle East (a complicated and complex term in itself) has come to full light with the recent refugee crisis that has hit many par... Read More
Making the Unconscious, Conscious: Why Interfaith Communities Struggle with Racial Diversity
Last year, I was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement to write, “The Illusion of Separation”. The purpose was to encourage people in Interfaith, Interreligious and Interspiritual communitie... Read More
Can Interfaith Dialogue Lead to Racial Justice?
O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. – The Holy Quran 49:13 I was born and raised in Pakistan, a country pred... Read More
Our Humanity Compels Us Toward Others
I believe that in order to better relationships between peoples in today’s interdependent world, it is imperative that countries become more sensitive to the beliefs and histories of the different p... Read More
On the Anniversary of Internment: Reflections and Truths
Seventy years ago, the United States government rounded up approximately 110,000 American citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry and forcibly relocated them to concentration camps along the Pacif... Read More
Opting Out of Interfaith Dialogue as Resistance for the Right to Exist
When it comes to interfaith dialogue and cooperation, it seems that not all faiths are created equal. My community includes a Umatilla/Nez Perce/Sauk & Fox indigenous storyteller and an Ifa pries... Read More