The Muslim-cultural Students Association hosted a discussion about faith’s place in the diversity initiative on campus with speaker Eboo Patel, the president and founder of the Interfaith Youth Core and member of President Obama’s Interfaith Advisory Council.
Patel’s discussion focused on creating cooperation between diverse faith groups and the tension that exists between prejudice and pluralism in the history of the United States, from the time of George Washington to the present.
“More people from more different religious backgrounds live together than have done so in any other political entity in any other time in recorded history,” said Patel, emphasizing the present importance of the interfaith movement in the United States.
He used the controversy that arose surrounding the construction of Park 51, an Islamic community center blocks from the site of Ground Zero in 2010, as a recent example. Patel said although he initially was angered by the controversy, he came to realize it could be an opportunity to create change and raise awareness.
“These are the moments when your nation is molten and can be shaped,” Patel said.
Weinberg sophomore Arshad Haque, the McSA executive vice president said the group wanted to host a spring speaker who would bring attention to faith in light of the diversity issues that NU has experienced.
“I thought race, sexual orientation and cultures aside from race were given a lot of attention, but I thought that faith faded into the background,” Haque said.
In his speech, Patel explained what he calls the “science of interfaith cooperation” and said such cooperation was much like a triangle, in which positive attitudes about a religious group are formed through positive relationships with people from that religious group and an appreciative knowledge of that group’s traditions.
“It brought faith into the picture and also brought a template that has been successful in interfaith that can be used in the Northwestern diversity initiative,” Haque said.
Patel also spoke of the “art” of acting as an interfaith leader. He said effective leaders must have a voice that makes religion inspiring, engage others by building relationships and then find ways to act across faith divisions to achieve common goals. He accentuated the importance of finding commonalities among religious groups, and that people should stand up for one another despite their differences.
“If I want an America where my people are free, I’ve got to create an America where your people are free,” Patel said.
During a Q&A led by Medill senior Kelsey Sheridan, Patel connected the idea of finding commonalities among religions to the recent “I Agree with Markwell” campaign, a campus group’s initiative to spread a message of salvation through Jesus Christ. Patel suggested students who do not agree with this message should respectfully guide the conversation to a different topic.
“A big part of many people’s faith is about salvation,” Patel said. “Their faith tradition gives them a particular view about that. What interfaith leaders do is, they articulate other conversations.”
In closing, Patel emphasized the importance of bringing interfaith work to the NU campus.
“This the perfect place to do this work,” he said. “There is no place on earth where you can go from idea to reality as fast as a college campus.”
