Pakistanis tackling challenges in Pakistan

On October 2, 2012 a group of writers, editors and scholars from Pakistan visited with the Interfaith Council of Thanksgiving Square in Dallas.  There were five visitor plus two translators.  Participants from the Interfaith Council included two Jews, six Muslims, one Sikh, and four Christian denominations.  I think that parts of the discussion and points of view are worth sharing.

The primary interest of the visitors was to learn how Americans work together across ethnic groups and across religions and cultures, and to see what they could bring home to help Pakistan overcome those challenges.  Prior to meeting with us in Dallas, among their other stops, they had met with an Undersecretary of the State Department in Washington, DC. 

Following our introductions and some discussion of why the Council members participate in the Council, one of the visiting professors said that this was the first day in his life that he has met so many people of different religions working together to face interfaith challenges.

A visiting writer/magazine editor said that interfaith work in Pakistan requires overcoming perceptions.  There is a need to highlight similarities, not differences.  He said that another misconception is that all religions are really the same, but that that is not true.  (That contradicted what some of the Muslim Interfaith Council members had said earlier in the meeting.)  That societies differ and that Pakistani society is different than American society and that each must work in its own context.

A visiting university scholar asked if it wouldn't be easier to start working on getting sects within a faith to get together than it is to try to work across faiths.  The response from he Council was that no, it would not be easier.  It is my opinion that it is also not as important to work within a faith as it is to work across faiths, but we did not have time for me to bring up that thought.

A Jewish member of the Council mentioned the Talmudic statement that "You are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to abandon it."

A visiting professor said that "We see the differences between the people of America and the government of America, but people elsewhere don't understand that.  How do you persuade others that there is a difference between the people and the government?"

An Imam on the Council explained that in America the president and the government are not involved in promoting religion nor any particular religion.  That people are free to say whatever the want.  That we don't all agree on what people say and sometimes almost everyone disagrees, but people are still free to say what they want.  That is something that the visitors can help people back home understand.

A Muslim member of the Council showed a copy of the new book, Three Testaments, and talked about how remarkable it is that the texts of the three major Abrahamic religions were published together, between the same covers and that this is a sign of the progress that we continue to make.

And then their schedule demanded that they move on.