Last week URI helped celebrate the first ever United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week, an initiative by Jordan’s King Abdullah II to promote peace among people of different faith traditions. Coming against the backdrop of a spike in violence against Christians in Iraq and Egypt late last year; the killing of a progressive Pakistani governor in January over the nation’s blasphemy laws; and rising Islamophobia across Europe and the United States, why should we expect such a week—or even the interfaith movement—to make much difference?
It is important, in these times, to remind ourselves that extremism isn’t the story of religion. For all the highly publicized violence, an extraordinary amount of good has come from the work of people following the moral imperatives of their faiths. Under the adage, “Do unto others…,” religious groups around the world are providing food, clothing, shelter, health care, education and more for millions of people every day, and taking a growing leadership role in the environmental movement.
These services, when provided under the banner of multiple faiths, become even more powerful, showing the world that human compassion—indeed humanity—transcends the boundaries of politics, religion, culture and creed. And in encountering, and being served by, the “other,” people’s prejudices are inevitably overcome.
When URI East India and Ektaan CC hold a free medical and eye clinic for “untouchable” and tribal residents of Parulia village, for example, they are not just improving residents’ lives but also fighting caste discrimination; when interfaith CCs in Jordan bring blankets and winter clothing to Palestinian refugees, they are opening hearts as well as warming bodies; and when Muslims, Christians and Hindus of the Women and Children Development CC in Lahore, Pakistan start a bank for poor women in the Christian village of Khushpur, they are rebuilding trust in a tragically divided nation.
When the international interfaith movement was inaugurated by a meeting of religious leaders in Chicago in 1893, it was envisioned as peace from the top down. But in the 100-plus years since, the interfaith movement has become increasingly bottom-up, a groundswell of cooperation driven by the most primitive desire of ordinary people for peace and prosperity. URI’s rapid growth in the last ten years is testament to this. We began with fewer than 100 Cooperation Circles in 2000; today, we have more than 500 in 78 countries, representing half a million people. And now, with the United Nations’ formal recognition of this movement, it is finally taking the global stage. So even as suicide bombings and debates about head scarves make headlines, our work, our enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, is quietly bringing the vision of peace and tolerance to life.
