On Thursday, Sept. 27, ICNY’s program associate Dr. Sarah Sayeed spoke at a panel exploring resources and best practices for successful interfaith relations, arranged by the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations and the Permanent Mission of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the United Nations. A video of the entire panel discussion is available here.
The text of Dr. Sayeed’s prepared statement follows:.
Greetings of Peace, Assalamu’alaikum! Thank you for the honor of speaking at the Annual ISNA convention, with the theme of “Striving for the Common Good.” The Interfaith Center of New York, where I work, was founded in 1997 as a secular nonprofit organization to bridge differences between diverse religions of New York by solving common social problems. Our religious leaders include Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Native Americans, Afro-Caribbean- we extend outside the Abrahamic family of religions. It is actually a three-way conversation that we promote. Our programs aim to
create connections across faith communities and connect religious traditions to civic institutions like city agencies and courts.
We had the fortune of having Dr. Syeed, ISNA’s National Director of Interfaith and Community Alliances to come and deliver his reflections on interfaith- it was affirming for us to be recognized by a national entity like ISNA. The conference he spoke at focused on our work bringing Catholics and Muslims together for common action. Funded by the GHR Foundation, a Catholic family foundation, we started as a pilot project bringing together like-minded social service providers to do practical projects serving the common good. The GHR Foundation was specifically interested in
translations of “A Common Word Between Us and You” into community action projects at the grassroots level.
We created projects in three boroughs of New York City, which were diverse but shared two common goals: to increase understanding about social justice in each tradition; to identify common problems at the local level that can be addressed by working together because we share the religious imperative to do good acts.
Since 2010, some of our accomplishments include:
Bronx
-training staff and pantry volunteers about the census
-civic engagement for staff and volunteers- wrote letters to local and national electeds
about hunger in the Bronx—one of the challenges is to get the people doing service work
to also understand advocacy—and vice versa.
Manhattan
-Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem conducted a food drive for a Catholic Church
-Catholic Charities provided training on immigration to Senegalese immigrant
community at the Murid Islamic Community mosque.
Staten Island
-Youth from the Teen Federation at the CYO and the Miraj Islamic School met and
visited a mosque and church together- they helped clean up each house of worship by
dusting, vacuuming. They also did a joint food drive together. This was in spite of some
of the parents of the Catholic youth who were quite hesitant to allow their children to
meet the Muslim youth—some of the Catholics had family members who were first
responders in the tragedy and terrorist attacks of 9/11. However, the Catholic youth were
insistent on becoming involved, and thought that it was very much consistent with their
faith to get involved with this project. As a result of the youth involvement, parents also
learned about Islam and Muslims.
In conducting these types of projects, I suggest asking yourself, what will stop us/challenge us? This will help anticipate problems. The specific challenges we faced include:
-Not all Muslim institutions are ready for the challenges involved- our community has
different opinions and different approaches to interfaith work- just as Catholic vary.
Working on common problem creates a bridge, but even that is not easy. Even if imams
are open to social activism, their communities need to be brought along.
-Pay particular attention to involving women and youth—many interfaith programs tend
to leave them out.
Practical issues also arise, things outside our control but that impact our partnerships
-For instance, budget cuts can shut down pantries, or other services
-Priests or imams who are involved in the partnership move away.
-Structural differences in how the religious traditions are organized. The Catholic
community has many more soup kitchens, pantries and social service organizations than
the Muslim community. At the same time, Catholics are more centralized and
hierarchical; Muslim organizations are decentralized, and can function more
independently.
-Anticipate the practical issues, and know that the vision will always be challenged and
you will be tested in your commitment.
-But also, be prepared to learn about and from the obstacles.
-Start small and build in time to reflect together on progress and challenges
-Think about what sustains you in this work?
For me personally, it is that we are called on to do good; that we must exercise our duty to be caretakers and maintainers- not only of our families, but also our communities and our planet. We are told to compete in good works- if we see an evil or wrong action, to correction it with our actions and our speech. We are also told in the Quran that God created us into nations so that we may know one another. It is our task to inspire and educate by example the next generation of Muslims about the value of building bridges in order to serve the common good.