What did you think of the Interfaith Dialogue?
December 3, 2006On Thursday, November 30, the MSA joined Campus for Christ in an Interfaith Dialogue, seeking to promote dialogue and understanding between Muslims and Christians. The event featured Shabir Ally and Tony Costa, who answered questions about the essentials of their respective faiths, and Sawitri Mardyani and Valera Strugov, who talked about their religious experience as students. This was followed by a lively and at times heated question and answer session.
The event was, Alhamdulillah, a success. About 120 people attended, both Muslims and Christians alike. Many stayed behind afterwards to chat with the speakers and other attendees. Some commented that we need to do more to better understand each other, and that similar interfaith events should be planned in the future. What do you think?
It went well and was a very interesting discussion. The question-and-answer period was particularly engaging. I was standing outside the lecture hall after the event, and an elderly fellow walked by and stopped to look at the MSA posters. He saw me and I smiled politely, so he came up to me and started talking. Turns out he’s 81 years old and just happened to be walking through Bahen. He started telling me how important it is for the religions to work together because secularism threatens to undermine all religion. Christians and Muslims should band together, he said, to demonstrate religion’s relevance in this age. I told him we’d just had an interfaith dialogue event to that effect, and he was very happy to hear that.
I agree with Safiyyah, the event was really cool. It forced us to think about engaging with other faith groups in a positive and contructive way. Hopefully we’ll see more events like this in the future.
Can’t the MSA buy that big BLUE poster board like CfC has? It looks so nice.