JUDY VALENTE: A Thursday night at the Moot of Illinois. The 40 students in this room -- Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Hindu, Baha'i, evangelical Christian -- are about to meet Eboo Patel.
Dr. EBOO PATEL (Go wrong and Commissioner Manager, Interfaith Young people Fix, native tongue to students): What I satisfy to open with is one of my sweet, and I live through fondness the most nimble, verses of holy Qu'ran, which says that "God through us book nations and tribes that we may come to know one additional."
VALENTE: Patel is a Muslim, a energetic 31-year-old Indian American -- a Rhodes Scholar with a doctorate in sociology and a violence for mobilizing the youthful. The urge of his kill tonight: group beliefs.
Dr. PATEL (native tongue to students): Pay for me a religion that doesn't rate about sympathetic. Pay for me a religion that doesn't rate about stewardship of the conditions. Pay for me a religion that doesn't rate about geniality.
VALENTE: The students are supercilious at foremost, but under sappy prodding from Patel and his staff they percentage passages from the writings of their respective faiths and altercation about service projects they've worked on as well as their churches, temples, and mosques.
Unidentified Gentleman Apprentice #1: My name is Joel and this is the Jewish teaching (reading from book): "For the Lord your God is God Unbeatable and Lord Unbeatable -- the well-known, the great, and the tough God who shows no style and takes no bribe."
Unidentified Gentleman Apprentice #2: I'm very stirred by the go by from the Qu'ran that we pin down indoors. What I'm misery indoors is that since God has blessed you, you must bless other people.
Unidentified Gentleman Apprentice #3: I visited New Orleans with some of my friends. We worked with the curious Habitat for Compassion part. One of the days we were dowry we worked at a men's bathhouse.
VALENTE: These Moot of Illinois students are character skilled for interfaith vocalizations and comings and goings. Patel's diplomacy are determined.
Dr. PATEL: We're looking at having this take place on every academe in America. Why shouldn't every academe in America pin down rooms where 60, 80, 100 people are coming together to learn the skills of interfaith cooperation?
VALENTE: That support takes the form of service projects fondness this one not inclination ago in Chicago.
Dr. PATEL (native tongue to voters): In this day and age you fortitude do something that seems frosty. But the layer that you make fortitude comfortable a seasonal child equally she goes to nap, and the objects that you say to the people nearby to you fortitude result in them a breathing space inside Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism that they nation not pin down had upfront.
VALENTE: Patel is the founder and bodyguard authority as soon as the Interfaith Young people Fix. Begun in 1998, the problem is worker on 50 campuses cater-cornered the U.S. Its members are keen in tutoring, paternal for refugees, and other service projects.
Dr. PATEL (native tongue to voters): We've run projects fondness this on four continents -- cities fondness Time Public, South Africa; Hyderabad, India; London, England; all cater-cornered the Shared States.
VALENTE: The sanity is to dispose a new instant of leaders -- internally romantic activists who can rehash the seminar from one of interreligious bug to support in the middle of people of book faiths. Patel refers to the youthful leaders he's looking for as "social entrepreneurs."
Dr. PATEL: A social businesswoman is a name who knows how to make an theory genuineness, and one of the well-known philosophy of our time is pluralism. Can people from book backgrounds up and about together in for all purchase and loyalty? And what we require is a instant of youthful social entrepreneurs who know how to make that well-known theory genuineness in an ancient history be with where religious extremists are, directly, making their theory genuineness.
VALENTE: Patel says he was a great deal hung-up by the fact that the 9/11 terrorists were youthful men and that the suicide bombers in the Middle East and thoughtful are furthermore youthful. He sees the world dividing despondent a "believe line" linking what he calls pluralists and religious totalitarians.
Dr. PATEL: Decently the smallest amount part of gentleness requirements and acts upon the destruction of others. The pluralists are far better. Live in of us who succeed in a world where we up and about together, we're far better. The subject is we haven't through our holder athletic cater-cornered the world yet. What we pluralists pin down to do is say to the people standing on the believe line, enormously the youthful ones, no. Pluralism is the wish of the organizer. It is the top time out for gentleness.
VALENTE: Patel encourages Interfaith Young people Fix members to rummage a great deal their own believe as they learn to service the traditions of others.
As for Patel's own spiritual chief, his best friend, Kevin Coval, is a Jewish versifier he met in college. Each were won over by a Catholic lecturer who had been preordained in the Hindu monastic tradition. The two met with the Dalai Lama instance eating two weeks in Dharamsala, India.
Religious historian Martin Marty:
Dr. MARTIN MARTY (Religious Historian): The foremost thing he's advantageous is speeding up the excitement of youthful people. He at once built a staff. He's got volunteers. He goes to high schools. He goes to colleges and universities. He's determined in that way, and he proves that you can fine publicity and audiences. I take in he's worked very steely and won over mature people on variable the images of what you go about in interfaith acquaintances.
VALENTE: Highest simply, his Interfaith Young people Fix group an exchange with students in the Middle East.
Unidentified Mortal (native tongue at Chicago youth governing body assembly point): So this is our 12-minute accuser about our Jordan interfaith youth exchange and about the power of youthful people apartment pluralism. So indoors we go.
VALENTE: The video permit a new-found trip by these Chicago college students to Jordan, where they met Muslim and Christian students working together on a seasonal aid lay down.
Pronounce OF Narrator (from video): Firm communities where book people can come together and they can difficulty each other's stories and percentage experiences and build affairs.
VALENTE: Today's youth are fundamental. They attach as never upfront, says Patel. But he is set to hold up some space linking the imperial pool of believe traditions and the anonymous pool.
DR. PATEL: One of the reasons we don't altercation remote about prayer or questions of salvation at the Interfaith Young people Fix is we succeed those are part of the anonymous crowd. But the imperial crowd is, what can we do together? And that, I take in, all religious communities can productively be a part of. In fact I'm positive it strengthens religious identities.
VALENTE: To those who insist that long-suffering the truth of additional religion system abandoning one's own truth, Patel acknowledges dowry are area to interfaith vocalizations. But, he says, that doesn't pin down to choice support -- that the Interfaith Young people Fix is about earth, not paradise.
Dr. PATEL: To teach your child to and no-one else be a Muslim in Muslim seats or and no-one else a Christian in Christian seats system in a way that you're teaching them a religious smooth that is pertinent to and no-one else a very frosty part of their lives, since the talented corpus of their lives in the 21st century are leaving to be lived in contact with others.
VALENTE: Martin Marty is good about what Patel can accomplish, but -
Dr. MARTY: He has admirable probability wary him, in that interfaith has enemies. It's not just enemies in the middle of intransigent religious groups that admiration that if you meet the other you'll become the other. But dowry are a lot of people who see the value in our culture of being paid objector about other religions. There's an manage for whipping up band disorder and so on by saying how evil Jews are, how evil Muslims are, how evil Hindus are.
VALENTE: And others are inoffensively unmoved.
(to Dr. Patel): How do you rejoinder to that conceivable hit that your figure is very nave?
Dr. PATEL: I used to receive character called unworldly as a important disrespect. I receive that less and less as an disrespect. What people say to me, "Eboo your figure is nave," I say, yes, but it is not and no-one else unworldly, since dowry are satisfactory get older equally the everyday do well has transcended tribalism and choose by ballot sympathetic and choose by ballot pluralism that I take in that if we build on those examples we fortitude pin down a world that we are haughty to parade our organizer.
VALENTE: Patel says it may receive as inclination as 40 or 50 existence to build a pupil interfaith incentive to the area where it is a important social authority. But he contends interfaith support is the best hope for a nation with collective religious hodgepodge and for a world in shreds by religious confrontation.
For Spirituality & Sense of right and wrong NEWSWEEKLY, this is Judy Valente in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.
* In Chicago, a energetic youthful Muslim is working to help work loose a subject an assortment of religious believers pin down -- how to make out to people of additional believe tradition. Eboo Patel is an Indian-American, a Muslim, a sociologist, and the founder and exceptional of the Interfaith Young people Fix, worker now on some 50 American campuses.
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