With the first cup of tea you are an invited stranger. With the second cup, you are a friend. And with the third cup of tea, you are family. Such is the custom for welcoming guests in Central Asia and most symbolic for Greg Mortenson the co-author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Three Cups of Tea.

Mortenson began his journey on one road, trying to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain in Pakistan’s Karakoram. As far as that goal was concerned he failed, became disoriented and took a wrong turn, literally, and ended up in one of the remotest towns at the foothills of the Karakoram: Korphe.  This was the beginning of new meaning and focus for him and the opening of doors for many people he had never met yet. Mr. Greg, as many call him, recovered his health in Korphe and while doing so, learned much about this harsh environment, supportive village and the children living there.

During his respite he learned about the village’s school and how Korphe and the nearest village shared a teacher so that the students only had a teacher for half the days of the week. And on the other days?

After the last note of the anthem had faded, the children sat in a neat circle and began copying their multiplication tables.  Most scratched in the dirt with sticks they’d brought for that purpose. The more fortunate, like Jahan, had slate boards they wrote on with sticks dipped in a mixture of mud and water.... Can you imagine a fourth-grade class in America, alone, without a teacher, sitting there quietly and working on their lessons? I felt like my heart was being torn out…. After the last note of the anthem had faded, the children sat in a neat circle and began copying their multiplication tables.  There was fierceness in their desire to learn, despite how mightily everything was stacked against them...(pg. 32)

It was in Korphe with his hosts, while partaking in three cups of tea, that human connections steeped, and bonds strengthened, and when Mr. Greg made a promise. In September of 1993, he decided to build a school for this town, a place on the road where a wrong turn had been made.

On April 3rd, Greg Mortenson will be coming to the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago for a CAI Gala Dinner and fundraiser to present his new book, Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Stones into Schools continues his story into the roiling present, providing historical, political, cultural and religious context for CAI's work. Work that seeks, through education, particularly for girls and women, to be the solution for the fanaticism brought to these areas by ignorance: "If you fight terrorism, that is based in fear. But if you promote peace, that is based in hope. And the real enemy I think is ignorance. It's ignorance that breeds hatred," says Greg.  He adds that "...if a woman has an education she is much less likely to condone her son getting [sic] into violence or to terrorism." And it is with his mother's blessing that a young man goes on jihad. Without this blessing, hate, and the violence that follows, dissipate.

What Greg understood and acted upon intuitively from the day he got lost in the Karakoram is the custom of the three cups of tea--reaching and seeking out others and taking time to learn. In Stones into Schools, Greg collaborates with Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff so that a much needed school in a remote area is finally built. Of their work, Admiral Mullen says "...Only through a share appreciation of the people's culture, needs and hopes for the future can we hope ourselves to supplant the extremist narrative. We cannot capture hearts and minds. We must engage them; we must listen to them, one heart and one mind at a time" (pg. 313). This is the worthy diamond amidst the dangerous, gritty, and risky work of bringing light into the remotest and most forgotten parts and peoples of these countries.

interView with Rev. Paul Raushenbush

Response by Anna DeWeese

Listening to Paul Raushenbush, it was very encouraging to hear him speak on ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ as two distinct, yet related, ideas. Often these words are used interchangeably, as if to believe in something is to have faith in that thing. But these words are much more complex than the above statement assumes, and each word has different meanings to different people.

This is why I have studied and continue to engage in interfaith work. I have struggled with the questions of ‘what do I believe’ and ‘do I want or need to have faith’, and have learned to embrace these questions in a way that opened me up – opened me up to my self and my tradition of Christianity, and to others and their traditions. These questions have opened me up to concepts and ideologies I would never have considered worth my while, but have come to enrich my life in fascinating ways. It is through these questions that I will continue to grow and learn, so that every encounter I have with another person helps us discover more deeply what our faiths and our beliefs mean.

Response By Freeman Trebilcock

When Rev. Paul Raushenbush asks us to think about how we find interfaith inspiration within our various traditions he is emphasising personal inquiry, getting us to look to the core of our own personal experience as people of faith living in a diverse world. As he says, this is the first and most important step towards developing a deeper understanding of where we stand and how we might contribute to the broader dialogue between faiths.

The point that Rev. Raushenbush makes that "we don't want all-liberals talking to all-liberals" is a good one.  This is because those people who may not normally be drawn to engage others from a different faith may in fact be the ones with the most to gain from it.  Also in terms of normalising interfaith engagement to become something more than a peripheral curiosty we cannot go on simply preaching to the converted.  I'm often asked why I do interfaith work, usually in a way that implies that this is a strange thing indeed. Why on earth would people from such different places, with such different ways of looking at the world even bother with one another? One goal world would certainly be to change the common sentiment, to prove that there is nothing strange about collaborating with people who share similar values –  values such as service, compassion and respect – and enacting these values co-operatively.

In response to Rev. Raushenbush first question I'd say that my own religious tradition explicitly calls for interfaith engagement. Within the Buddhist tradition there are teachings that liken the diverse spiritual traditions to a range of medicines that can be prescribed to a person afflicted by disease.  Different medicines are needed for different people.  It seems to me that we are fortunate to live in a world today where the spiritual medicine-cabinet is brimming full. Viewing this great diversity as an asset makes much more sense than searching for contradictions. And by coming together with others to collectively put into practice our various prescriptions of faith, we are all the more effective in healing ourselves and this world we share.

Response By Liane Carlson

Rev. Raushenbush begins by asking why the bloggers have become invested in inter-religious dialogue, and ends by urging all people, regardless of affiliation, to “learn their traditions,” in order to have a firm place from which to argue.  Rather than answer with an anecdote or quotation, I want to question the assumptions structuring his request.  Such a question privileges the text and the personal experience as granting a particular authority or right to speak.  That this dual emphasis on text and interiority are paradigmatically Protestant Christian preoccupations goes without saying.  That it also assumes something like a common set of experiences which might unite us – exposure to relatives, friends of different faiths, belief in the heterogeneity of the canon – seems equally obvious.

But is this really the best place to start thinking about inter-religious dialogue, or is it, instead, symptomatic of the assumptions that make dialogue so necessary and so difficult?  In responding by turning inward, both textually and personally, are we attempting to found dialogue on fundamentally incommensurable, unsharable, radically private experiences?  So, rather than beginning with confession, might it not be better to start by turning outward, to a common world with common problems?

Response By Leigh Rogers

Rev. Raushenbush clearly explained why inter-religious work is important to him: he was raised in a Christian tradition that held these values, and he was shaped by experiences in an interfaith family. These two elements, tradition and experience, gave him a sense of why it is so important to get “explicit” about why inter-religious work matters: if we don’t know where we stand, as he puts it to his students, where will our voices be around the circle?

Being around the circle and including all voices is what makes inter-religious dialogue so important. Raushenbush said he wanted “as wide a spectrum of talking to one another as possible,” because its purpose is a shared dialogue answering two questions: What do I believe, and what does my neighbor believe?

I like that he said it doesn’t matter what level of orthodoxy your tradition is, or whether you’re conservative or liberal. For me, it reaffirmed my fears of being perceived as too “wishy-washy” as a spiritually promiscuous person from an agnostic household. I may still be figuring my spirituality out, but I can still know my values.

What matters is that you have something to say, and you’re willing to listen and learn about what the person next to you is saying. We have to understand our own values and our neighbor’s. Not only did Jesus teach the parable of the Good Samaritan as a Jew; he taught it from the perspective of the Samaritan.

This is the religious literacy that Raushenbush refers to, where the purpose is to “[be equipped] with language and knowledge of other religious traditions- to be respectful and aware of others’ beliefs but also our own beliefs.”

Finally, to answer Raushenbush’s question, I do interfaith work because I need to learn from others to really know where I stand. As an aspiring theologian, I have to be literate of others’ religious values, listen and reflect, then balance it with my own.

Response By Anthony Paz

The Catholic Christian tradition does not, as part of its everyday operation, promote interfaith understanding as central to its message. It seems that few religious traditions do. For Catholics, thinking about other religions has never happened except because of experience.  Today's Catholic, especially in America, is constantly confronted with other worldviews.  Raushenbush asks, “why are you doing this?” My answer: The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the conquest of the New World, the Troubles in Ireland. My tradition has, almost in secret, grown more interested in tolerating and understanding other faiths. I had to seek the 20^th Century pronouncements that quietly declare that non-Christians can, in fact, make it to heaven. So, while the tradition has a varied and mostly disturbing history of Raushenbush's “this,” I would not have known about it if not for my own experience of September 11, 2001, which triggered a desire to understand other religious and to be understood by them. Raushenbush hits on one of the great truths of religious belief, one that is central to our dialogue: the difference between tradition and experience. I may identify with a 12^th Century Catholic, but my experience creates an individual with a strikingly different set of values and beliefs. It is essential to understand individuals as representing only some of their tradition, since it is all filtered through experience.

IRS Building Ablaze in Austin

On February 18, 2010, Joseph Stack intentionally crashed his airplane into an IRS office building in Austin, Texas. Innocent life was lost, and thousands were terrified. But nobody rushed to pronounce him a terrorist. The media called him 'frustrated,' 'deranged,' and 'disgruntled,' but seldom a terrorist. No public figures that I am aware of countered the spin.

To many this may seem to be a simple omission, but it is a glaring one at that. In American popular culture and discourse, we only call Muslims (or, for those who don't know the difference, Arabs) terrorists.Whether we like it or not, this is Islamophobic. Muslims are being singled out as targets for a debilitatingly charged word -- while other Americans are left immune from it.

Daniel Cluchey may have said it best on the Huffington Post:

Everyone now knows the story of Joe Stack, the aptly named regular Joe whose outrages stacked up in his own mind until he hit the breaking point, setting his house on fire and flying his Piper Cherokee PA-28 into the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas. In taking his own life, Stack injured thirteen people and murdered Vernon Hunter, a 67-year-old father of six. Watching the thick smoke jet out of the windows of the Echelon complex on television, I had the strangest feeling that I had seen this sort of thing before. Wasn't there a name we used to use for people who flew planes into buildings in order to kill Americans? We used to say that these were the actions of a... the actions of a...

Ah, yes. Thank you,Wall Street Journal! These were the actions of a "tax protester." I knew it started with a 'T.'

I was fifteen when protesters flew planes into the Twin Towers, only back then we called them terrorists. Are we no longer terrified by airplane suicide attacks? I doubt it. So what's the difference? Those murderers were from Saudi Arabia, they had dark complexions and unpronounceable names; Joe Stack was your next door neighbor, an engineer from Pennsylvania by way of Texas. His fervor was more acceptable to us, less foreign to the American mind. He hated the government. He hated taxes. His sickness, and his violence, already live here, and this will not be the last time we see the smoke.

Cluchey's recommendation is to label Stack a "terrorist" for the sake of internal consistency. But there may exist an even better alternative: ridding our lexicons of the term "terrorist" altogether. It is a label that can be used to smear. And it has disproportionately been wielded against a particular religious community. The overuse, misuse, and inconsistent use of the word "terrorist" may itself comprise a threat to America's well-being.

This article was first published on the Tikkun Daily blog.

interView with Rabbi Dr. Burton Visotzky

Response By Hafsa Kanjwal

An important point that Rabbi Visotzky raises is the role that religious leaders and activists involved in international interreligious dialogue often end up playing in second tier diplomacy. For me, the use of inter-religious understanding to promote certain political or policy agendas can be and has been fraught with complications. Especially given the global context surrounding the politics of Islam, Muslims have been unable to truly engage the deeper issues in interreligious dialogue without a strong eye towards improving Islam’s image. In addition, significant programming led by governments or foundations relating to Muslims in inter-religious dialogue takes on a counter-terrorism narrative.

I agree with Rabbi Visotzky that it is important to begin locally. In response to Rabbi Visotzky's question on what we are seeking to accomplish when we do inter-religious dialogue, I believe that a priority must be to build relationships that promote the common good, rather than serve narrow political or policy interests. While the translation of dialogue to diplomacy or policy is sometimes inevitable, it must be met with a critical analysis on the part of those who seek to promote mutual understanding and cooperation.

Response by Jennifer Bailey

Last Sunday, sitting on the back pew of the large Southern church that I frequent, the last thing I expected to hear from the pulpit was sermon on racial reconciliation. Call me cynical, but in my 22 years on this Earth, 21.5 have been spent in segregated worship services in which a person of a different race entering a sanctuary is viewed with fierce suspicion at worst and uneasy curiosity at best. To have a white pastor addressing issues of institutional racism to a mixed race audience in the South was truly mind blowing, but perhaps not as revolutionary as the unintended subtext of religious pluralism I heard throughout message. “Diversity,” he said, “Is not just window dressing or politically correct speech, or a contrived atmosphere to look good. It is the fruit of the root of a people that are reconciled”.

In 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, the Apostle Paul writes about the importance of humans reconciling themselves first to God and then to one another through Christ. Yet if we broaden this concept to be inclusive of those outside the Christian tradition, we hit the very essence of what we accomplish when we engage in inter-religious dialogue—the reconciliation of human beings to human beings in the face of division caused by religious intolerance and persecution. True reconciliation is a long and challenging process that requires us to move beyond the “kumbaya” of most interfaith dialogue to a frame work of justice and action. It recognizes historical injustice and institutional discrimination while holding stakeholders accountable to do the same in their faith communities. It also requires that we sacrifice the comfort we experience in our insular religious congregations in the hope of acquiring a new type of knowledge in which participants “unlearn” negative stereotypes while opening themselves to building relationships with those previously deemed “the other”. This is the promise of inter-religious dialogue: that we would come to know one another as we seek to more fully understand the deities we serve.

Response By Andrew Rosenthal

In order to enter into inter-religious dialogue we must first enter the story of the other, both the other faith and the individual believer. Just as midrash opens up Torah not so much by deconstructing its philosophical underpinning but by allowing us to enter into the narrative, working with Raymond Brown (himself an academic and Roman Catholic Priest), Rabbi Visotzky took the risk of entering into the experience of the other not only on an academic level but on a personal level. The word midrash derives from the Hebrew darash—"to inquire" or "to seek." Inter-religious dialogue is about inquiring, seeking to find a deeper meaning of the difference between religions and uncovering a deeper level of conversation. Toward the end of the interview the Rabbi brings us back to his original question, “what is it that we accomplish with inter-religious dialogue?” The answer is “action on behalf of the other.” The Rabbi says, “don’t just talk to one another do something, and work shoulder to shoulder.” This is our bottom line, this is why inter-religious work matters. We begin with the text, the reality of our diverse world, we relate it to it through entering the experience of the other and in the end we work together to bring about change for all peoples of all religions.

Response by Stephanie Lin

As a newcomer-slash-outsider to this realm of so-called “koombaiya” (it was interesting that Rabbi Visotzky did not seek to move away from this connotation), viewing this clip made me feel even more so. I cannot say what “it” is that participants of inter-religious dialogue seek when they come together – can there really exist a united vision or goal? If so it must be painfully vague. People hold the hope that more communication and openness among followers of different religions must lead to a better world – a hope that we can create a sort of antidote to the reality that many earthly horrors are related to religious conflict caused by lack of dialogue and willful intolerance. If it is indeed so that there is no lack of interfaith communication and goodwill going around, is there a way to measure its effects and benefits? Will increased inter-religious tolerance and understanding solve the world’s problems? Has it? I wonder if those long active in the sphere of inter-religious dialogue ever get the sense that perhaps we are being fooled into thinking that religious ideology – not greed, not power struggles, not flawed systems – is the stubborn root of most bloody conflicts around the globe.

Response by C. Nikole Saulsberry

I am thrilled Rabbi Visotzky addressed the “kumbaya” assumption that engulfs inter-religious dialogue, and eloquently refuted said notions. Rabbi Visotzky’s question is one that every religious pluralist must answer for their unique mission. For me, as one trying to breech the topic of inter-religious dialogue in an informal setting, the answer is three-fold. First, each individual engaging in inter-religious dialogue gains an incomparable, genuine and intimate knowledge of one of the most integral aspects of another’s humanity. This knowledge then begets a deeper and unprecedented admiration and respect for religion and its diversity. It is the respect gained from the knowledge received in dialogue that then allows you to accomplish anything.

The last part sounds like the fluff of “kumbaya,” but it has substance and weight. Inter-religious dialogue can be about similarities and making peace, but it can also be, and is often times more engaging when it is, about tough questions and understanding. I do not proclaim inter-religious dialogue to be the be-all that ends-all religious issues. Though it can and does play a significant part, the effects can span the spectrum of productive and harmful.

Osnat Aram-Daphna and Najeeba Sirhan

At a meeting in the Israeli city of Acre, Osnat Aram-Daphna and Najeeba Sirhan, two school principals, one Jewish and one Muslim, looked across a table and became friends.  It was during the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000.  Both were attending a principals’ co-existence workshop, and there they discovered a shared vision: Through education and cross-cultural contact, Arabs and Jews can learn to respect one another; and respect can ultimately become acceptance, trust and even friendship.  Osnat described Najeeba.  “Like me, she is a doing woman, not a talking woman.”

Their paths to Acre could not have been more different.

Najeeba, the oldest of eight children, was born into a working-class family in the religiously mixed village of Kafr Yasif.  Her father, a farmer, had recently returned to Israel from Lebanon.  Poorly schooled, he believed in education and worked to ensure that all his children attended university.  After finishing her Master’s degree at the University of Haifa, Najeeba taught for 15 years before making an unusual transition: she became a female Arab school principal at the Al Salaam school in Majd Al Kurum.

In contrast, Osnat was born in 1955 into a very liberal, and proudly Zionist, family in Tel Aviv.  In the 1940s, her father was a member of the Palyam, tasked with escorting illegal Jewish immigrants from Europe to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine.  After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, she attended university in Tel Aviv, became a teacher, moved to the Galilee and, later, was selected as principal of the Kalanit school in Karmiel.

Osnat and Najeeba’s communities, Karmiel and Majd Al Kurum, are as different as the women’s personal histories.  Only a few kilometers apart, they are separated by visible religious, cultural, economic and linguistic differences.  The predominately Jewish city of Karmiel has the feel of an urban center, while Majd Al Kurum is a smaller, traditionally Arab village.  The village’s historic buildings and crowded, narrow streets stand in marked contrast to the modern, planned suburban neighborhoods of Karmiel. Arabs often came to Karmiel to bank, shop or take advantage of other services not readily available at home.  Before the Second Intifada, Jews could similarly be seen enjoying Arab restaurants in and around Majd Al Kurum.  After the outbreak of violence, everything changed.  Fewer Jews ventured into the surrounding Arab villages, and many Muslims cut short their trips into Karmiel.

In this diverse corner of Israel, Osnat and Najeeba launched what is now known simply as “the Project.”  The idea was simple: by bringing together Jewish and Muslim children, some no older than 6 years old, for positive shared experiences, the framework for lasting relationships would be built.  Typically, Muslim and Jewish students in Israel do not mix in educational settings until university.  By that age, many students already have experienced emotional and physical encounters and heard stories that frame negative worldviews of “the other.”

Not surprisingly, there was much to be done just to lay the foundation of the Project.  Many other initiatives throughout Israel had failed, and Osnat and Najeeba understood that without the support of their teaching staff, the Project would never gain traction.  Initial meetings therefore included only staff, and later, local religious leaders.  Even with their respective principals urging them, however, many of the educators were hesitant to participate.  Osnat and Najeeba were determined.  After a year of cajoling and exhorting, bonds of trust were slowly established and the educators began to plan suitable activities for the children.

Osnat and Najeeba were ready.

Next, they set about winning over the parents.  Because of the Second Intifada, many parents refused to visit the other’s communities or to permit their children to become involved.  After some initial successes with the children, Osnat and Najeeba planned a “market” in the Arab village, where Jewish and Arab students sold their crafts and food prepared by their parents and gave their proceeds to poor families in both communities.  Karmiel’s Jewish parents agreed to participate in the event, but only if Najeeba promised full security. She unequivocally agreed.

Yet, when they arrived, there were no security guards.  The parents confronted Najeeba. Standing tall, she responded, “I am the security.”  Najeeba made it clear – the children of Karmiel were her children too, and she would not let anything happen to them.  Though undoubtedly skeptical, the families remained, and Jewish and Muslim families began interacting in unfamiliar ways.  These fragile relationships were strained by the 2006 Lebanon War and the 2008-2009 war in Gaza and southern Israel.  Despite this, the foundation remains and, through continued engagement with the parents, the Project’s leaders are determined not to give up.

The Project’s activities are mostly secular, focusing on community involvement and service, though the children occasionally meet with Muslim and Jewish religious leaders.  Osnat and Najeeba especially liked environmental activities, such as cleaning parks and local forests, which they viewed as a symbol of their shared ownership of the land.  Together, the children also visit elderly Jews in a retirement home to provide companionship.  For the youngest children, some of whom do not speak the same language, there are non-verbal, fun-filled activities, including dancing, drawing and music.  As the children dance together, one sees simple smiles and pats on the back.

Underlying the Project’s activities is the premise that the children must understand their religious differences and their similarities, including their shared identity as Israeli citizens. Ignorance breeds fear, while exposure to children of different faiths and cultures helps to prevent negative stereotypes from forming and alleviates some that do exist.

Together, the children from the Kalanit and Al Salaam schools visit mosques, synagogues and churches and hear discussions about peace and coexistence.  At one meeting, for example, the children learned about the similarities and differences between the Islamic festival of Eid Al Adha and the Jewish chronicle of the Akeda, two recountings of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son in obedience to God.  Through such sharing, the children learn that their religions share not only a common root, but common values and common themes as well.

Osnat always believed that to truly engender change, “You have to start with the children.”  From her perspective, children attend school to study mathematics, science and to learn the values and actions of respect.

The Project was in its seventh year when Osnat learned that she had cancer. Forced to leave school and move to Tel Aviv for treatment, she saw the cancer as a “gift,” one that made her take time to focus on herself and her family.  An optimist, she looked forward to returning to her children and the Project.  It was not to be.  Osnat lost her battle with cancer in August 2008.

Osnat would have been proud of her “sister” Najeeba during the fighting in Gaza in January 2009.  Still crying over her best friend, Najeeba addressed over a hundred people at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.  She told the story of the Project, of how it continues, and of her journey with Osnat.  Najeeba shared her conviction that the children must learn to live together in peace.  As Osnat once said, “that’s the most important thing.”

Joyce S. Dubensky is Executive Vice President & CEO of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding

Matthew Lucas is Project Assistant for Religion and Conflict Resolution at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding

Libby and Len Traubman

1969 was a year that changed the lives of Len and Libby Traubman. Their first child, Eleanor, was born. And like millions of other people, they saw the first photos of Earth taken from space. The image of our planet “embedded itself in us,” notes Len, and “emphasized the idea of echad, of wahad,” as “oneness” is known in Hebrew and Arabic. While it was a particularly formative year for the Traubmans, their life’s work to promote dialogue had not yet begun.

After years of volunteer work, in 1984 the Traubmans went to the Soviet Union as part of the Beyond War movement to find out whom these "enemies" actually were. In meeting face to face with many Soviet citizens who were assumed “ready to extinguish us at a moment’s notice,” they “found a way to connect through the telling of personal narratives.” The two had come to the table of dialogue with one “internal set of images” but left with another.

In the late 1980s, Beyond War and the Traubman couple were approached by Palestinian and Israeli citizen-leaders to apply their knowledge of dialogue to deeply troubled Middle East relationships.  This resulted in the historic June 1991 conference in the California redwoods, which established a signed "Framework For A Public Peace Process” and affirmed that authentic citizen-to-citizen relationships and models of cooperation were necessary for any government treaty to succeed. This 1991 moment introduced to the world the term "public peace process," having previously been known as "track-two diplomacy."  Even as government representatives meet to negotiate what everyone hopes will be a final peace accord, true peace cannot be reached until large numbers of individual Palestinians and Israelis engage to humanize one another by hearing one another's stories with a new quality of listening-to-learn.

Back home, after “scratching around” for a few courageous Palestinians and Israelis willing to take part in neighborhood dialogues, they set out to create a phenomenon known as the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group. Libby describes the early years of the program as a “crucial process of learning what worked and what didn’t.” The biggest lesson was to “stick to talking about what was meaningful to each individual, not only the problem at large and governments.”

Seventeen years later, The Dialogue Group is set to have its 214^th meeting. The participants range in age from 20 to over 80. They include Muslims, Christians, and Jews – Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, and many Jews with immediate family in Israel.

The Traubmans have also developed a series of programs and initiatives designed to amplify the impact of their Living Room Dialogues.  These include: Oseh Shalom~Sanea al-Salam Palestinian Peacemakers Camp for youth and adults; a 100-page illustrated cookbook, Palestinian & Jewish Recipes for Peace; two documentaries – Dialogue at Washington High, and Peacemakers: Palestinians and Jews Together at Camp; a document about change, in Hebrew, Arabic, and English; and how-to guidelines for facilitating successful in-home or public dialogues.

Len and Libby have expanded their activities to include dialogue programs for high school students, allied military officers, mosques, synagogues, and even a forthcoming campus-wide dialogue at the University of California at Berkeley.  As Libby puts it, she and her husband are “responding to a need and a call and truly seeing what it means to have empathy.”

So what have the Traubmans learned from their 214 Living Room Dialogues and countless other initiatives? Len suggests that “Most people don’t practice dialogue as we know it; they talk about only the government process [toward peace], which is neither a whole nor adequate view.” Libby argues that there may be far broader possibilities for dialogue: “We have not just entered into doing this for Jews and Palestinians… What we are doing is a small model for all relations between human beings.”

Even as a Jew in New York, I know what it is like to be Muslim in France.

While studying abroad in the French city of Strasbourg in 2007, I decided to grow a bushy beard. Little did I know that in France only traditional Jewish and Muslim men don anything but the most finely trimmed moustache or goatee. Since I did not wear a yarmulke or other head covering, people who saw me on the street assumed that I was Muslim.

I felt that police officers and passersby treated me with suspicion, and even on the crowded rush hour bus few chose to sit next to me if they could avoid it. On one occasion someone followed me home and tried to start a fight, only to find I was a bewildered American, not a French Muslim.

Never before, and never since, have I experienced disdain of this sort. On a daily basis, I was made to feel badly because of my appearance -- and what was presumed to be my corresponding religious affiliation. So when I read of the impending effort by parliamentary leader Jean-François Copé and his supporters to criminalise the burqa (and other garments that fully cover a woman's body, head and face) in France, I understood it to be far more than a measure to protect women's rights or preserve the concept of a secular society, on which the modern French state is built.

In my opinion, it is easy to see how the "burqa ban" might be misused as a part of a broader effort to stigmatise a religious population, one that already perceives itself to be on the margins of society.
Admittedly, I am fundamentally opposed to any garment or religious practice -- including those found in my own Jewish tradition -- that suggests women hold a different or subservient position. But theburqa ban in France will not achieve the aim of gender equality. If anything, it will strengthen religious conservatives in France's Muslim population by convincing members of the moderate majority of Muslims that the rest of French society will never accept them.

While there are said to be only 2,000 women who wearburqas in all of France today, the entire Muslim population, estimated to be around five to six million, will take umbrage at another measure that singles out their community.

If we assume that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is genuinely motivated by the belief thatburqas are a "sign of subservience, a sign of debasement," according to the 16 January edition of The Economist, his best response would in fact be to enact measures welcoming Muslim citizens more fully into French society. Such affirmations would undercut efforts by the small minority of religiously conservative Muslims to gather a following among disaffected coreligionists who feel unable to overcome anti-Muslim prejudice.

The need for the French government to treat religious minorities with respect is bolstered by its own history. In 1781, the enlightened German thinker Christian Wilhelm von Dohm made what at the time was a revolutionary suggestion: "Certainly, the Jew will not be prevented by his religion from being a good citizen, if only the government will give him a citizen's rights."

But it was the French who first put Dohm's prophetic vision into action.

In 1806, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte emancipated French Jews by passing laws to improve their economic and social status. He invited them to live anywhere they pleased, as opposed to confinement in crowded city slums and frequent itinerancy in the countryside. He also officially recognised their religion and affirmed its permanent place within the private sphere of French life.

Through these acts of profound tolerance over 200 years ago, France set an example for all of Europe and proved that its open-mindedness was more than rhetorical.

Modern France would do well to follow its own admirable example and truly treat Muslim citizens as equal participants in society. Foregoing the burqa ban would be a sensible first step.

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* Joshua M. Z. Stanton is co-editor of the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue (www.irdialogue.org) and a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in New York City. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 26 January 2010. Copyright permission is granted for publication.

While Humanism continues to go unmentioned, some of the current literature on atheism seems to roar from every page, “Atheists and religious people are nothing alike! Either you believe or you don’t! Either it’s stupidity or it’s science!” And countless voices that together form a long history of fear and anger and condemnation towards non-believers scream back, “If you don’t believe in God, you’re worthless, meaningless, and doomed!”

But as Selmanovic and Epstein show us patiently, thoroughly, and lovingly, there is simply more to the story. As usual, life, and people, are more complicated. Too often religiosity is confused with ethics and morality. It is imagined, and forcefully stated time and time again, that without belief in God life becomes morally slippery, if not downright chaotic. It’s time to separate these ideas. It’s time to get messy, personal, and real.

Kate Fridkis is interViews Editor for The Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue™. She recently received an MA in Religion at Columbia University.  Her research focuses on intersections of religion, secularism, and gender.  She is also a lay cantor at Congregation Kehilat Shalom in central New Jersey.  She graduated summa cum laude from Douglass College, Rutgers University with a BA in Religion. Kate has written several novels and is enjoying the opportunity to continue with her literary and academic pursuits.

Excerpt from It's Really All About God taken with the permission of the author.

My wife and I married on June 30, 1990. We also married the next day, on July 1, 1990. My largely secular atheistic family could not fathom the idea of going to a church wedding, talking to my church friends, hearing church talk. They considered themselves so open-minded that they could not conceive of associating with the pious crowd of my wife’s family and my new friends. My wife’s family, on the other side, did not complain. Actually, they were relieved. It meant they did not have to worry about what they considered twin evils of the world: alcohol and dancing….

Both [families] assumed that atheists and believers must be enemies. It was obvious to both sides that one of them must be terribly wrong. ….Somehow, the separation of human life into two camps made sense to people. This was not simply a fear born of social awkwardness. Things went much deeper. History, philosophy, science, and architecture had been erecting the walls of separation for centuries.…

We religious people tend to avoid, ridicule, or threaten atheists in a number of ways. We say, most readily, that atheism is just another religion. Since one must believe something in order to doubt something else, all atheists are believers. “Therefore,” my Christian peers argue, “atheism has its own objects and ways of worship, its own dogma to teach, and its own priests trying to evangelize others into their either-or choices and—like any other religious fundamentalists—with the same tone of certainty and contempt for others.” Atheism, as they see it, insists on forcing a choice between rational and emotional knowing, between the science of life and the mystery of life, calling humanity to an apocalyptic showdown between faith and reason. It wants to clean up the world of those who disagree and create a public square devoid of any options but its own…..

Atheism at its best participates. It does not simply dismiss religion but engages with it constructively so that the world is better for it. It is an expression of faith in humanity, even faith in religious humanity—however misguided they might be, religious people are human too!—asking the difficult but legitimate questions that religious people dismiss, about scientific evidence ignored by religion, about historical facts forgotten by religion, and about suffering produced by religion. Atheism at its best questions religion while acknowledging the good it brings…..

Atheism at its best is a guardian of secularization, a process of creating a common and safe space where worldviews—including religious ones—can share their treasures and expose themselves to correction by others. It demands that every religion should have the whole of humanity, not just religious insiders, as its ethical community.

Atheists are God’s whistle-blowers.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam need atheists, both those who are constructive and those who are less so. Religion deserves to be challenged. This deserving is of two types. First, religion deserves the pain of criticism and correction because of its failures to live up to its own ideals. Second, religion deserves the blessing of criticism and correction because it has often been a precious catalyst for justice, peace, and beauty in the world.….

God does not have an ego that can be wounded by our disbelief about God’s existence. God, I suggest, would prefer a world where humans love and care for each other and this planet even at the expense of acknowledging God, rather than believing in and worshiping God at the expense of caring for one another and the world....

In the name of all the clergy, theologians, and believers who have ever said such a thing, I profusely apologize to my atheist friends, family, and readers. Please forgive. Quite the contrary, you bless our world.

Does religion own virtue?

Are religious people more likely to be the protectors of the earth’s resources, more likely to believe in nonviolent solutions to world problems, and more likely to care for the poor and the oppressed?

The obvious answer to these questions is no. To which many religious people respond, “Yes, but this is just because the sense of right and wrong of atheists is feeding off of centuries of the development of morality and ethics nurtured by religion. Once that storehouse of tradition is used up, secular societies are going to fall victim to their inherent vacuum of values. If we don’t do something, it will all blow up in our faces.”

Maybe.

Or maybe the world would be better off with less religion. Or maybe religion needs to transform itself in order to contribute anew to the storehouses of virtue. Or maybe humanism has its own way to supply virtue to our life together. We don’t know. But we do know this: atheists have been blessing the earth and its people. This is an empirical truth. And we religious people should look more deeply into our own ethical responsibility to acknowledge what is true....

We organized our two weddings without the conviction and courage to stand up together against forces that thrive on dividing human life.

Yet, there were exceptions at our two wedding parties. My uncle Franc and his wife, Gordana, who came from Germany for the occasion, stepped over the line and attended our religious wedding. ….Also, I smuggled several of my Christian friends into our first wedding, … including Tihomir Žestić, a friend who cared for me and taught me about God….

At this party, he crossed the line and danced with the atheist crowd, risking his entrance to Paradise. Since Seventh-day Adventists are seriously dance-challenged, he found great difficulty translating music into body movements....

But the beauty of the sight of him energetically celebrating life with unbelievers with such abandonment brought me to tears. My atheist friends loved it. It was the best dancing I have ever seen!

Samir Selmanovic, Ph.D., grew up in an intellectual urban atheist milieu in the capital of Croatia in a European Muslim family. In his youth, he was immersed in existential literature and has produced modern theater projects with system-subversive overtones such as the works of Bertolt Brecht and George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Introduction to Good Without God excerpted with the permission of the author.

It is not easy to live a good life or be a good person—with or without a god. The fact is that life is hard. Living well and being a good person are difficult to do. But that doesn’t mean we should give ourselves permission to judge an entire group of people as incapable of goodness unless they’re being good the majority’s way.

Tolerant, fair-minded people of all religions or none do not dwell on the question of whether we can be good without God. The answer is yes. Period. Millions and millions of people are, every day. However, the question why we can be good without God is much more relevant and interesting. And the question of how we can be good without God is absolutely crucial....

We Humanists take one look at a world in which the lives of thousands of innocent children are ripped away every year by hurricanes, earthquakes, and other “acts of God,” not to mention the thousand other fundamental injustices of life, and we conclude that if the universe we live in does not have competent moral management, then so be it: we must become the superintendents of our own lives. Humanism means taking charge of the often lousy world around us and working to shape it into a better place, though we know we cannot ever finish the task....

More formally, the American Humanist Association defines Humanism as a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment, aspiring to the greater good of humanity....

How Is Humanism Different from the New Atheism?

So much has been written about the religious people and traditions of the world. Thousands of anthropologists and sociologists have devoted their lives to studying religious traditions and their adherents. Millions and millions of pages have been written about theology—about what religious people believe. But try to go to your local bookstore or library and ask for a book about nonreligious people or what we believe. The choices have always been scant indeed. So it’s no wonder the recent spate of best-selling books by atheists attacking religion has caused such a stir.

Today, those who believe that the good life ought to be defined as obedience to God and tradition feel under siege by the forces of modernity. In their minds, certain outward signs of this modernity—whether gay pride paraders all done up in leather and fuchsia, a woman rearing a child on her own, or simply people like me who can publicly deny a belief in God and live respectable lives—are all declarations of war against the old ways. And so both fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity, among other religious forces, have declared war on secularism and Humanism. In turn, a group of bold new atheist intellectuals and leaders has arisen to declare war right back, proclaiming “God is not great!” “God is a delusion!” and “This is the end of faith!”

I admire today’s “new atheists” because they seek to right the very real and very many religious wrongs of our time. …… But atheism goes astray when it adopts a certain posture, one best captured by a cover story in Wired magazine in November 2006: “The New Atheism: No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science.”

It is true and important that Humanists don’t adhere to the idea of a heaven or a hell, and it is also true that we value science as the best tool humans have for understanding the world around us. But “Just Science”? Such language raises concern that the new atheism is cut off from emotion, from intuition, and from a spirit of generosity toward those who see the world differently. While nonreligious people often value science highly, many deeply religious people value and study it as well. So surely valuing science cannot be a way to distinguish religious people from nonreligious people. Besides, books on science, though often containing much useful information about the world around us, can less often say important things about what we ought to value most in life, or why. Science can teach us a great deal, like what medicine to give to patients in a hospital. But science won’t come and visit us in the hospital..…

Humanism traces its story back not only to the European Enlightenment and to ancient Greece, as many assume, but also touches cultures from India, China, and the Middle East. It is a belief held by American Revolutionary patriots like Thomas Jefferson, leading women’s suffragists of the nineteenth century, civil rights leaders of the twentieth, and on to the original new atheists—not only Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris but Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, and Darwin....

Religion is a profound source of meaning and purpose for many people—…… But a Humanistic approach to life can provide nonreligious people with a profound and sustaining sense that, though there is no single, overarching purpose given to us from on high, we can and must live our lives for a purpose well beyond ourselves....

I want to offer an affirmative response to the question can you be good with God? I urge atheists and agnostics to strive for what Steven Prothero calls religious literacy, and I implore religious people and Humanists to enter into deeper dialogue and cooperation—because we live in a world that is flat, interconnected, interdependent, not to mention armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction—a world where we can no longer afford to misunderstand one another or to be ignorant about what makes each other tick.

I believe that community is the heart of Humanism. In the past century, God was supposed to be dead, but too often it has seemed that Humanism died instead. What will it take for a new Humanism to arise—one that is diverse, inclusive, inspiring, and a transformative force in the world today?

Greg M. Epstein serves as the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, and sits on the executive committee of the 36-member corps of Harvard Chaplains. In 2005 he received ordination as a Humanist Rabbi from the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, where he studied in Jerusalem and Michigan for five years. He holds a BA (Religion and Chinese) and an MA (Judaic Studies) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Masters of Theological Studies from the Harvard Divinity School.