17 July 2008
Young People Are Seen as Key to Success of Interfaith Efforts
Pluralist forces must counter pull of extremists, panelists say
Washington -- Interfaith movements hold the key to resolving conflicts rampant in today’s world, but focusing those efforts on youth is critical to their success, panelists at a June forum sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace agree.
That emphasis on the young is especially vital when extremist groups like al-Qaida are concentrating their own recruitment efforts on young people searching for a meaningful identity, they contended.
Pushing the case for interfaith engagement, panel member Eboo Patel told an audience of 80 -- most of them directly involved with the interfaith youth movement through policy research group, nongovernmental organization (NGO), university or governmental roles -- that religion “is an identity issue that in too many cases is causing division.”
Patel, an Indian-American Muslim who founded and directs the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), recalled feeling in the 1990s that “every time I turned around, there was some young person killing people to the soundtrack of prayer” on the news.
To his alarm, it appeared that “religious extremism was a movement of young people taking action,” whereas interfaith conferences were marked by “senior theologians drafting documents.” If that dichotomy is allowed to persist, “I think we lose,” Patel said. “So the question is, how do we… have young people more engaged as … leaders in building interfaith cooperation?”
He founded the IFYC in 1998 to help provide the answer. It describes itself as an “international nonprofit working to build mutual respect and pluralism among religiously diverse young people by empowering them to work together to serve others.” Patel stressed the difference between the concepts of diversity and pluralism contained in that description.
“Diversity is simply a fact of the world -- people from different backgrounds in close quarters with each other,” he said. To become a positive thing, “it has to be engaged … in a way that builds trust, that builds bonds between people from different backgrounds. That’s when diversity becomes pluralism.”
Patel cited five intersecting forces that he said make interfaith youth efforts especially important now: a sharp increase in the youth cohort, especially in the most religiously volatile parts of the world; an ongoing religious revival; a breakdown in traditional socioeconomic patterns; increased interaction between people from different backgrounds; and “the explosion of civil society forces.”
Religious extremists, he argued, have benefited from that flux. “The two things that young people want the most are a clear identity and a way to make an impact. And it’s those religious extremist movements who understand that and are addressing it,” Patel said.
Now, he said, the interfaith movement is responding increasingly effectively. “The vast majority of human beings are pluralists. There’s little doubt about it, otherwise we’d be living in a far bloodier world than we are,” Patel said. But, he added, “pluralism has to be acted upon … and young people need to play a central role.”
Panelist Samuel Rizk, a leader of the Forum for Development, Culture and Dialogue (FDCD) in Beirut, Lebanon, told the audience that this was beginning to happen. “The interfaith youth movement in the Middle East is alive and well,” he said, while acknowledging that “interfaith relations in the Middle East and globally only need small sparks to blow up.”
He cited multiple FDCD projects, including annual work-study camps that enroll young Muslims and Christians, mainly in their 20s, from the Middle East, Europe and the United States.
Another program, Rizk said, brought together young people from the Middle East and Denmark, soon after Muslims in Lebanon and elsewhere had conducted violent protests in the wake of a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that they considered blasphemous. Rizk’s group produced a videotaped documentary that, he said, traced seminar participants through their “short journey from suspicion and discomfort and anxiety to dialogue and interaction.”
Still another has been a three-year project, conducted in cooperation with 15 Iraqi NGOs, to build capacity to undertake conflict resolution work and peace building.
Farah Pandith, a senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, backed Patel’s view that groups like al-Qaida exploit young people’s search for an identity. “We cannot allow them … to take advantage of things that we all in this room understand are just very natural,” she said.
“Young people are the future, the next leaders of government and civil society and think tanks and universities,” Pandith said. “If we don’t understand the demographic piece that Eboo talked about, we will fail in everything that we’re doing.” She said government must change the hierarchical structure under which “the more gray hair you have, the more power you generally have,” and seek greater input from young people.
“We want to partner with you,” she told the private-sector members of her audience, “because you are flexible, because you are creative, because you can turn on a dime.”
“If we do not find a way to build bridges of dialogue with young people now, we will be pushing our future out the window,” she declared.
An audio clip (15.8 MB) of the U.S. Institute of Peace panel discussion is available on the organization's Web site.
See “My America: The New World,” by Eboo Patel, and “Youth Interfaith Movement Thrives in United States.”
Also see Diversity.
