Religious leaders seek common ground
Jeff Sullivan
Issue date: 2/6/08 Section: News
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"The story of the great sage Hillel, which our organization here at URI is named for, tells of the Rabbi Hillel and his student who asked him to teach him the Torah," said Amy Olson, executive director of the URI's Hillel Foundation and Jewish chaplain. "He said, 'What is hateful to you, do not do unto your neighbor. All the rest is just commentary.'"
These words set the tone for the discussions, and the representative for each of the three faiths discussed the importance of honoring differences and celebrating similarities of each religious persuasion. They also discussed the damage of stereotypes and how they developed within each religion.
Assem Sayedahmed, an assistant professor of food microbiology at URI and the chaplain for the Muslim community of Kingston, discussed the media's generalized perception that all Muslims are intolerant and extremists.
"After Islam spread around the globe, some Muslims have mixed the religion with their inherited traditions," he said. "A lot of times these traditions are extreme and have nothing to do with Islam. Due to ignorance, the media found this a great opportunity to attack Islam; unjustly pointing fingers to things like Jihad and women's status in Islam."
Rev. Jennifer Phillips, of St. Augustine's Episcopalian Church on campus, said that extremists in the Christian world, which she referred to as literalists, also pose many problems for dialogue and peaceful interaction between the faiths.
"As it turns out, Christians are very diverse in their beliefs," she said. "We actually have about the same amount of debate and arguments within our own factions as we do with other religions."
She said that the faith's Greek roots created a belief that there was one singular truth, or message, God wants one to understand and it could be found if one studied the scriptures correctly.
"The person Jesus made the claim of being truth ... truth is not an idea, it's a person," she said. "However, for some Christians there is a very narrow sense of what Christ's truth is, it is very exclusive."