Watch out for this name. Eboo Patel. I can’t think of a more hopeful voice for interfaith dialogue. Patel is rallying young people to a kinder gentler Islam than gets most of the press these days. Progressive Christians will find a like-minded thinker in this progressive Islam.
Rose Marie Berger of Sojourners asked Patel what he would like Christians to know about Islam. He answered, “Three things...
1. The core tenet of Islam is mercy. “In the name of God, the all merciful, the ever merciful.... Be merciful on earth if you want the one in heaven to be merciful to you.
2. Diversity and pluralism is revered in Islam. One of Patel’s favourite line in the Quran is from Surah 49 - “God made you different nations and tribes that you may come to know one another.”
3. Islam is a tradition that has inspired jazz and poetry and love in one fifth of humanity for many centuries. It’s a remarkably diverse group of people so don’t think simple things about them.
Nice to see charismatic leaders that want to give this world a shake. In a good way.
Peter
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A moderate Muslim. Why is that so strange?
Where ever we look there are radicals, be they Christian fundamentalist, Ultra Orthodox Jews, follows of Osama. All practice the age old my way or the highway theory of religion.
Now, Emmanuel United may not exactly be a hot bed of religious upheaval but go to any of the Living the Question series, or the Men's Suppers, where the Virgin Mary becomes a girl who couldn't tell dad that.... and Jesus is a nice guy, and there is some pretty heated debate.
And yet when we are done, we are still one big family, who agree to disagree, and then we all go off to have lunch.
If it can work for us, it can certainly work on the larger scale.
IT
Russ
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