Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue

“We listen and speak with respect to deepen mutual understanding and trust.” - URI Principle 5
SunDABT CC inviting interfaith dialogue

URI Cooperation Circles must include members of at least three different religions or traditions. By engaging in respectful conversations, members learn, share and build bridges of understanding.

Examples of our work in this Action Area:

  • Sun Devils Are Better Together (SunDABT), a university student group and URI Cooperation Circle, creates safe spaces for people to ask respectful questions about other religions by holding signs that read, "Meet a Muslim," "Meet a Jew," etc.

  • The URI global community celebrates UN World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW) in the first week of February each year, with grassroots interfaith events in many communities.

  • Campinas CC in Brazil hosted an interfaith gathering and invited representatives of multiple religious and faith beliefs to talk about life and death from the perspectives of their own traditions.
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Stories

Posting #3 from India

Asia
Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue

Dear Friends -- Greetings of love and peace. Today began at KIPS with a peaceful interfaith prayer gathering under a mimosa tree planted seven years ago by Abraham and now big enough to provide shade for our group, seated in a circle of chairs on the red dirt, listening to the music of the Earth and sharing the sacred wisdom of different traditions, listening with open hearts and minds, with joy and gratitude, as small yellow petals floated down from the tree.

URI's Father Channan attends national harmony celebration and meets with President of Pakistan

Asia
Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue

In August 2011, 2,000 members of Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Sikh and Buddhist communities gathered at Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, the President of Pakistan’s House in Islamabad to celebrate National Harmony. The ceremony included the reading of a speech by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, regarded as the Father of Pakistan, in which he said that all citizens should be equal and there should be no discrimination on the basis of religion—a dream that is still not realized in Pakistan. The President also paid tribute to the Christian political leadership who worked with Ali Jinnah and voted in favor of Pakistan. There was also a beautiful performance by high school children singing national songs.

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Ektaan CC opens new computer training center at local Mosque

Asia
Education
Health and Social Services
Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue
Media

Dear Friends,

Namaste and greetings of peace from India. Here are some pictures of another computer center which opened a few weeks ago with the help of the members from the local Mosque. This is the first time in the area that a computer training program has been run by URI inside the Mosque premises. URI member Md. Sarfaraz oversees the project. We expect to run a complete educational program and engage the larger community, especially targeting children from different communities to attend classes at the center. This will allow children from other communities to an opportunity to attend the Mosque and become familiar with other religions through engagement and open interaction with other children. This initiative had been planned for a long time. So it’s now being born, we are moving forward with much concrete steps to develop the plan further for greater impact.

Biswadeb Chakraborty
Ektaan CC