Building the Interfaith Youth Core

Eboo Patel, author of Acts of Faith: the Story of an American Muslim, Struggle for the Soul of a Generation

Eboo Patel, an American Muslim of Indian descent, begins by discussing how he came to terms with his multiple identities.  He first had to cope with racism since his brown skin exposed him to racist taunts from schoolmates.  Thus, when he studied at the University of Illinois, he became involved in “identity politics,” which described and divided groups of people over against the dominant white, male, heterosexual, Christian.

Later, he went to India to explore his ethnicity.  There, he realized his “American” identity, especially in the way he looked at the servants he found in his family household and the dignity of labor.  And in India, his grandmother helped him understand what it means to be Muslim.  He questioned her sheltering a young woman who had been abused, and he asked her “why?”  “I am a Muslim,” she replied.  “This is what Muslims do.”

Eboo Patel then lays out his analysis of the world.  The “color line” cited by W.E.B. Dubois remains significant today, but the “faith line,” he believes, is even more significant in the 21st century.  But for him, the “faith line” is not between Muslims and Christians, or Muslims and Jews.  It is between “religious totalitarians” who believe they have “the truth” and want to impose it on everyone else, and “religious pluralists” who actively seek to practice their faith tradition by helping humanity live together in harmony. 

He cites both Pat Robertson and Osama bin Laden as “religious totalitarians.” 

He also notes that most of those who actually commit terrorist acts In the world today are young people in their teens or twenties.  And he asks “why?”  He says it’s because they were influenced and indoctrinated by religious totalitarians.  So, he founded the Interfaith Youth Core (yes, that’s the correct spelling) to inspire the younger generation with religious pluralism.

The Interfaith Youth Core is international.  It encourages young people to launch service projects that bring together youth of various faith traditions to tutor children, build homes, clean rivers, or whatever is needed in a community.  Then, these young people reflect on what they have done, and why, from the perspective of their various faith traditions.  Tens of thousands of young people have already participated, and this is growing. 

Muslims from the Middle East Explore Islam in America

Sheereen Al-Sayed, an engineer from Egypt

Ghada Ghazal, a university teacher from Syria

Hani Ahmed, an Egyptian imam affiliated with Al Anzar University

Sixteen Muslims from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia came to the United States in June to explore Islam in America.  Their trip was co-sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America and the National Peace Foundation.  The trip included many interfaith experiences.   It was funded by the Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau of the U.S. State Department.

Sheereen Al-Sayed, a 24-year-old engineer and Muslim woman from Egypt, talked about meeting a rabbi for the first time on this trip.  She also recounted conversations with Americans about the status of women in the Middle East, and the fact that she does not feel oppressed as a woman, and she freely chooses to wear the veil.

Ghada  Ghazal, a university teacher and Muslim woman from Syria, discovered on her trip here that US Muslims came out of their relative isolation after 9-11, determined to show people that terrorism is not Islam.  She was struck, however, by the insularity of Americans and their need to know more about the East.  She suggested that Americans travel to the Middle East, on trips like hers to the U.S.

Hani Ahmed, a young male Muslim and imam from Egypt, was critical of the U.S., its policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its treatment of prisoners at Abu-Ghraib.   He admires the principles of the U.S. Constitution, principles of justice, freedom and equality, but he does not think that the U.S. applies them in its foreign policy.

Implications of the Sex Abuse Settlement in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles

Kathleen Shaw, former religion journalist, coordinator of the blog, “Abuse Tracker,” on Bishopaccountability.org

Professor Charles Zech, Director of the Center for the Study of Church Management, School of Business, Villanova University

Professor Charles Zech, an expert on Catholic Church financing noted that the $660 million settlement in the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles covered 508 victims, and that this number was the result of the lifting of the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases by the state of California in 2003.  He said that other states are considering this, and so it’s not likely that we have seen the end of lawsuits.

The $660 million payout will come from the Archdiocese itself, insurance companies and some religious orders whose members were abusers.  The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has a $250 million liability, but is a large landowner in southern California and can sell assets to cover this without touching current contributions or closing parishes.  However, those assets were purchased with past contributions from local Catholics, so the average parishioner is ultimately paying.

This scandal has cut down both church attendance and parishioner contributions nationwide.

Kathleen Shaw says it has not generally touched the faith of Catholic people, who differentiate between faith and sinful activity.  But it has made Catholics much more suspicious of authority, and Catholics believe that the cover-up by bishops nationwide was in many ways more egregious than the molestations themselves.

Both Shaw and Zech say that the Bishops have not lived up to the demands of their own charter, which they agreed to in Dallas in 2003.  It calls for the removal of priests from ministry where there is a credible accusation against them.  Shaw notes that the Vatican has also stepped into some cases, and in at least one case, re-instated a priest (who has since pled guilty). 

Catholics everywhere, Shaw says, want the Bishops to tell the full story, to let the truth come out, without using euphemisms.  She related several horrific stories where abuse was not only damaging to the victim, but sacrilegious in its abuse of the sacraments.  These included abusing youth on an altar, celebrating a “Mass” on the nude body of a victim and telling a 7-year-old girl in confession that she needed a “ritual bath,” and then giving her one to molest her. 

The bishops call these things “fondling,” Shaw says.  It’s much more than that, she says.  The Catholic people need the truth, and they are ready to forgive.