May 16 issue
Bomb, barrier or bridge?
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Religion can be a bomb, a barrier or a bridge, says Eboo Patel, a Muslim leader who promotes interfaith cooperation. Four days after Patel spoke at the Associated Church Press annual convention in Chicago, the world’s leading pseudo-religious bomb thrower was dead.
The killing of Osama bin Laden on May 1 presents an opportunity for Christian peacemakers to reflect on our role in defusing bombs, tearing down barriers and building bridges.
Patel’s three categories define how religion sparks violence, causes division or fosters unity. Which of these will prevail? Patel said it depends on who tells the most powerful story.
The bomb throwers are good at getting their story out. “The goal isn’t actually the murder,” Patel said of al-Qaida’s strategy. “The goal is the video of the murder,” so the world can see the narrative of their version of Islam.
That story is well known. So is the one that presents religion as a barrier. A common version of that story is, “We don’t want a mosque here.”
But, Patel said, “there is no more powerful story than religion as a bridge of cooperation and as a source of compassion.”
Patel is creating and telling that kind of story as director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based organization dedicated to building a global interfaith youth movement.
Jesus told the story of compassion too, Patel noted, in the parable of the Good Samaritan. But Patel believes a lot of people miss an important point. They think the parable is just about helping someone in need.
“It is not just a story of helping,” Patel said. “It is a story of helping those who are not like us.”
Even more specifically, it is a story of seeing the humanity of those who are despised because they have a different religion. Samaritans followed an Abrahamic faith closely related to Judaism, but different enough for each group to consider the other heretical.
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