Beacon Broadside

Beacon Authors on the Boston Marathon Bombings and Aftermath

Beacon Press calls Boston home. While we are all back at work this week, we mourn the lives lost in the bombings and the pursuit of the suspects, and our thoughts are with their loved ones and the victims still recovering from their injuries in our area's hospitals. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino have set up a fund to help those most affected by the bombings: One Fund Boston. 

We have found words of comfort and valuable analysis from our authors in the days since the Marathon bombings. 

 

Scott Korb (Light Without Fire) and Suhaib Webb (Imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center) co-wrote this piece for the New York Times answering attacks against American Islamic communities by Rep. Peter King and others: 

Mr. King’s hypothesis, and the widespread surveillance policies already in effect since 9/11, assume that the threat of radicalization has become a matter of local geography, that American Muslims are creating extremists in our mosques and community centers.

But what we’re learning of the suspects, the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suggests a different story, and one that has itself become familiar: radicalization does not happen to young people with a strong grounding in the American Muslim mainstream; increasingly, it happens online, and sometimes abroad, among the isolated and disaffected.

[Read the rest at NYTimes]

 

For those looking for assistance speaking with their kids about violence and tragedy, we encourage you to read this excerpt from Children Who See Too Much on Scribd. The book's author and founder of the Child Witness to Violence Project, Betsy McAlister Groves, spoke with the Harvard Gazette about how to talk to kids about the bombings:

“Children take cues from their parents about how to make sense of all kinds of events in the world,” said Groves. She urged parents to assess their own feelings, and then determine what they will say and how they will say it before having a conversation with their kids. “I think that parents need to just give themselves permission to collect their own thoughts.”

Honesty is critical, she added, noting that opening a dialogue with children signals that it’s OK to discuss a difficult subject. “If parents take the initiative to bring it up, it makes the topic less scary to start with.’”

[Read the rest at Harvard Gazette]

 

At Guernica, Rafia Zakaria (whose book The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan is forthcoming from Beacon Press next year) wrote why attacks in America are "far more indelible in the world’s memory" than bombings in other places where they happen more frequently:

There may be fewer victims and less blood, but American tragedies somehow seem to occur in a more poignant version of reality, in a way that evokes a more sympathetic response. Within minutes American victims are lifted from the nameless to the remembered; their individual tragedies and the ugly unfairness of their ends are presented in a way that cannot but cause the watching world to cry, to consider them intimates, and to stand in their bloody shoes. Death is always unexpected in America and death by a terrorist attack more so than in any other place.

It is this greater poignancy of attacks in America that begs the question of whether the world’s allocations of sympathy are determined not by the magnitude of a tragedy—the numbers dead and injured—but by the contrast between a society’s normal and the cruel aftermath of a terrorist event. It is in America that the difference between the two is the greatest; the American normal is one of a near-perfect security that is unimaginable in many places, especially in countries at war. The very popularity of the Boston Marathon could be considered an expression of just this. America is so secure and free from suffering that people have the luxury of indulging in deliberate suffering in the form of excruciating physical exertion; this suffering in turn produces well-earned exhilaration, a singular sense of physical achievement and mental fortitude. The act of running a marathon is supposed to be simple, individual—a victory of the will over the body, celebrated by all and untouched by the complicated questions of who in the world can choose to suffer and who only bears suffering.

[Read the rest at Guernica]

 

Eboo Patel (Sacred Ground) asserts in the Huffington Post that, in the wake of bombings, interfaith action matters more than ever:

In America, just about everyone is some sort of hyphenated hybrid of race, religion and ethnicity/nationality. Irish-Catholic-American, African-American Pentecostal, Jewish-American secular Humanist, and so on. As Walt Whitman said, "I am large / I contain multitudes."

When interfaith cooperation is done well, it not only helps people from different faith and philosophical backgrounds get along, it creates space for the diverse identities within each of us to become mutually enriching rather than mutually exclusive. When interfaith events raise the question, what do I have in common with people of different religious and national identities, the natural internal dialogue that ensues is: What do my own diverse identities have in common with each other?

Religious extremists try to separate people's various identities and pit them against each other. The extremists that got to the young London 7/7 bombers somehow convinced them that their Muslim identity was at war with their British identity, and the former had to destroy the latter. While the facts are still coming in, this may also have been the case for the Tsarnaev brothers. It was a clash civilizations in their souls.

In a nation of hybrids, it's important to have loyalty to both sides of the hyphen. What if the Tsarnaev brothers were involved in discussions with people from other backgrounds about how their faith identity was mutually enriching with their nationality and citizenship? Perhaps they would have been less susceptible to the divide-and-destroy tactics of extremists.

[Read the rest at Huffington Post]

 

At her Being Both blog, Susan Katz Miller (Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, forthcoming Fall 2013) speaks about her Boston ties and the ways that interfaith communities and families can offer solace: 

We do not need to share a conception of God in order to comfort each other. No matter our religious beliefs or lack thereof, we can still pause to sing together, meditate together, hug each other.

I write as someone who chooses to live fulltime in this “interfaith space.” Interfaith families raising children with dual-faith education experience the benefits of interfaith celebration and contemplation and mourning–the synergy, the joy, the healing of reflecting together as an interfaith community–week in and week out. And as we model interfaith love, and radical inclusivity, we hope to play some small part in preventing intolerance, alienation and violence in the world.

[Read the rest at Being Both]

 

At Huffington Post, Rabbi Marc Schneier (co-author of Sons of Abraham: A Candid Conversation about the Issues That Divide and Unite Jews and Muslims, forthcoming Fall 2013) speaks out against the tainting of American Muslims with the actions of the Tsarnaev brothers:

Since Friday (April 19), when the news broke that the likely perpetrators of the bombings, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, were Muslim, many of the top American Muslim spiritual and organizational leaders have unequivocally denounced the Boston Marathon bombings as morally repellent and antithetical to the basic values of Islam. Their passionate comments on this issue; following the hundreds of pronouncements by Muslim leaders in the years since Sept. 11, 2001 denouncing terrorism and violence need to be heard and acknowledged; especially by those who knowingly or unknowingly continue to peddle the canard that American Muslim leaders turn a blind eye to -- or even approve of -- terrorist acts committed by fellow Muslims.

[Read the rest at Huffington Post]

 

Wendy Kaminer (Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU) looked at civil liberties issues in this piece for the Atlantic:

Some of the stories we tell about the nation are delusions that cloak weaknesses and wrongs, which fester unacknowledged. David Ortiz brags that "nobody is going to dictate our freedom," and I assume he hasn't heard of the Patriot Act or warrantless wiretaps, much less the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. Dennis Lehane can be excused for declaring that "they messed with the wrong city," but don't take seriously his confidence that not much will change: "Trust me," he adds implausibly, "we won't be giving up any civil liberties to keep ourselves safe because of this."

Of course we will. We've been surrendering liberty in the hope of keeping ourselves safe for the past decade. The marathon bombings will hasten our surrender of freedom from the watchful eye of law enforcement. The Boston Globe is already clamoring for additional surveillance cameras, which are sure to be installed to the applause of a great many Bostonians. You can rationalize increased surveillance as a necessary or reasonable intrusion on liberty, but you can't deny its intrusiveness, or inevitable abuses.

[Read the rest at the Atlantic] 

 

On Radio Boston yesterday, Judge Nancy Gertner (In Defense of Women) and Alan Dershowitz spoke about the legal issues surrounding the Tsarnaev case: venue changes, death penalty charges, the definition of weapons of mass destruction, Miranda warnings, and more. Listen here.

 

On her Facebook page, Kate Whouley (Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words), reflected on the "impulse to assist, the willingness to extend oneself in the service of others who need us," exhibited by the brave heroes who helped the victims.

 

And from our blog archives, as a way of celebrating our hometown, we invite you to read "Beacon Authors talk about their favorite places in the Hub."

 

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MLK Was an Interfaith Visionary

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MLK Was an Interfaith Visionary

Today is the 45th anniversary of the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel. One of the often overlooked aspects of King's life and activism is his commitment to interfaith cooperation. In this post first featured here a couple of years ago, Eboo Patel explores how King used his own faith as a bridge of cooperation. Patel is the founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement. He is the author of the award-winning book Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation and Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America.

Today is also the Interfaith Youth Core's Better Together day, a time to wear blue to raise awareness of interfaith cooperation. Read more about it here.

One hundred years ago, the great African-American scholar W.E.B. DuBois famously wrote, "The problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line."

History proved DuBois correct. His century saw the struggles against, and ultimately the victory over, systems that separated and subjugated people based on race—from colonialism in India to Jim Crow in the U.S. to apartheid in South Africa.

No American did more than Martin Luther King, Jr., to address the problem of the color line. He spearheaded the marches that revealed the brutality of segregation, made speeches that reminded Americans that the promise of their nation applied to all citizens and expertly pressured the nation's leaders in Washington to pass landmark civil rights legislation.

But to confine King's role in history only to the color line—as giant as that challenge is, and as dramatic as King's contribution was—is to reduce his greatness. In one of his final books, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, King showed that race was one part of his broader concern with human relations at large: "This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited ... a great 'world house' in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu ... Because we can never again live apart, we must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."

This ethos, as King's examples make clear, applies not only to the question of race, but to faith as well. In the same way as the headlines of the 20th century read of conflict between races, headlines in our times are full of violence between people of different religions. Indeed, what the color line was to the 20th century, the faith line might be to the 21st.

Faith as a bridge

King's life has as much to say to us on the question of interfaith cooperation as it did on the matter of interracial harmony. A prince of the black church, deeply rooted in his own Baptist tradition, King viewed his faith as a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.

When, as a seminary student, King was introduced to the satyagraha ("love-force") philosophy of the Indian Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi, King did not reject it because it came from a different religion. Instead, he sought to find resonances between Gandhi's Hinduism and his own interpretation of Christianity. Indeed, it was Gandhi's movement in India that provided King with a 20th century version of what Jesus would do. King patterned nearly all the strategy and tactics of the civil rights movement—from boycotts to marches to readily accepting jail time—after Gandhi's leadership in India. King called Gandhi "the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force."

Following Gandhi was King's first step on a long journey of learning about the shared social justice values across the world's religions, and partnering with faith leaders of all backgrounds in the struggle for civil rights. In 1959, more than a decade after the Mahatma's death, King traveled to India to meet with people continuing the work Gandhi had started. He was surprised and inspired to meet Indians of all faith backgrounds working for equality and harmony, discovering in their own traditions the same inspiration for love and peace that King found in Christianity.

King's experience with religious diversity in India shaped the rest of his life. He readily formed a friendship with the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, finding a common bond in their love of the Hebrew prophets. The two walked arm-in-arm in the famous civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

Later, Heschel wrote, "Our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying."

King's friendship with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh inspired one of his most controversial moves, the decision to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. In his letter nominating Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize, King wrote, "He is a holy man... His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to a world brotherhood, to humanity."

Better together

In his famous sermon "A Time to Break Silence," King was unequivocal about his Christian commitment and at the same time summarized his view of the powerful commonality across all faiths: "This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality" is that the force of love is "the supreme unifying principle of life."

We live at a time of religious conflict abroad and religious tension at home. This would no doubt have dismayed King, who viewed faith as an inspiration to serve and connect, not to destroy and divide. During King's time, groups ranging from white supremacists to black militants believed that the races were better apart. Today, the same is said of division along the lines of faith.

King insisted that we are always better together. Indeed, that pluralism is part of divine plan. To paraphrase one of his most enduring statements: The world is not divided between black and white or Christian and Muslim, but between those who would live together as brothers and those who would perish together as fools.

This post originally appeared in USA Today.

Interfaith Activism Reading List:

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The last book written by King—his final reflections after a decade of civil rights struggles

Read the introduction by Vincent Harding.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind-for the first time-has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.

 

"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice 

by Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Lewis V. Baldwin

An unprecedented and timely collection that captures the global vision of Dr. King—in his own words 

Too many people continue to think of Dr. King only as "a southern civil rights leader" or "an American Gandhi," thus ignoring his impact on poor and oppressed people around the world. "In a Single Garment of Destiny"is the first book to treat King's positions on global liberation struggles through the prism of his own words and activities. 

From the pages of this extraordinary collection, King emerges not only as an advocate for global human rights but also as a towering figure who collaborated with Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert J. Luthuli, Thich Nhat Hanh, and other national and international figures in addressing a multitude of issues we still struggle with today-from racism, poverty, and war to religious bigotry and intolerance. Introduced and edited by distinguished King scholar Lewis Baldwin, this volume breaks new ground in our understanding of King. 

Featuring the essay: "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."

 

Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America

by Eboo Patel

An inspiring call for Americans to defend the values of inclusiveness and pluralism by one of our best-known American Muslim leaders 

There is no better time to stand up for your values than when they are under attack.

In the decade following the attacks of 9/11, suspicion and animosity toward American Muslims has increased rather than subsided. Alarmist, hateful rhetoric once relegated to the fringes of political discourse has now become frighteningly mainstream, with pundits and politicians routinely invoking the specter of Islam as a menacing, deeply anti-American force.

In Sacred Ground, author and renowned interfaith leader Eboo Patel says this prejudice is not just a problem for Muslims but a challenge to the very idea of America. Patel shows us that Americans from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. have been "interfaith leaders," illustrating how the forces of pluralism in America have time and again defeated the forces of prejudice. And now a new generation needs to rise up and confront the anti-Muslim prejudice of our era. To this end, Patel offers a primer in the art and science of interfaith work, bringing to life the growing body of research on how faith can be a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division and sharing stories from the frontlines of interfaith activism.

Patel asks us to share in his vision of a better America—a robustly pluralistic country in which our commonalities are more important than our differences, and in which difference enriches, rather than threatens, our religious traditions. Pluralism, Patel boldly argues, is at the heart of the American project, and this visionary book will inspire Americans of all faiths to make this country a place where diverse traditions can thrive side by side.

 

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation

by Eboo Patel

A renowned Muslim activist's personal story of building a global interfaith youth movement that might just change the world. Includes a new afterword by the author.

Acts of Faith is a remarkable account of growing up Muslim in America and coming to believe in religious pluralism, from one of the most prominent faith leaders in the United States. Eboo Patel's story is a hopeful and moving testament to the power and passion of young people-and of the world-changing potential of an interfaith youth movement. 

 

Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India and the Origins of African American Nonviolence

by Quinton Dixie and Peter Eisenstadt. Foreword by Walter Earl Fluker

The first biographical exploration of one of the most important African American religious thinkers of the twentieth century—Howard Thurman—and of the pivotal trip he took to India that ultimately shaped the course of the civil rights movement.

In 1935, at the height of his powers, Howard Thurman, one of the most influential African American religious thinkers of the twentieth century, took a pivotal trip to India that would forever change him-and that would ultimately shape the course of the civil rights movement in the United States.

After the journey to India, Thurman's distinctly American translation of satyagraha into a Black Christian context became one of the key inspirations for the civil rights movement, fulfilling Gandhi's prescient words that "it may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world." Thurman went on to found one of the first explicitly interracial congregations in the United States and to deeply influence an entire generation of black ministers-among them Martin Luther King Jr.

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Wear blue for interfaith Better Together Day

Eboo Patel: A Common Life Together

Eboo Patel is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation and Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America. He is founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit building the interfaith youth movement.

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post.

“So which side are they on?” The question was part of a conversation I overheard on the street the other day, and it was in reference to people like me—American Muslims.

As several of my country's embassies have been violently threatened by people of my faith, this seems as good a time as any to be clear about my answer: I am on the side of all those who seek a common life together. I believe America's founding creed, E Pluribus Unum, makes us humanity's best chance to achieve that possibility. I believe that Muslim values—just like Jewish, Christian, Hindu and humanist ones—can contribute to that spirit. And I believe, as the violence and ugliness demonstrate, that building societies where people from different identities live in equal dignity and mutual loyalty is one of the great challenges of our times.

We find ourselves in a terrible situation. The evening news in America is full of Muslims burning American flags and trying to breach embassies. The evening news in Arab countries is full of stories of Americans defiling the Prophet Muhammad. And the actions of a thuggish few are increasingly viewed as representing the sentiments of entire nations and religions.

The sad part is that those thuggish few are not just skewed representations of the broader whole, they actually stand in violation of their traditions. I believe as a Muslim that the mob violence we are witnessing does a greater dishonor to the Prophet Muhammad than the original offense. Muslims are meant to act in the tradition of the Prophet, who dealt with insults during his entire mission, responded unfailingly with mercy and commanded his followers to do the same: “You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness...”

Moreover, Islam is a tradition that protected pluralism from its beginnings. One of the Prophet Muhammad's earliest acts in his adopted city of Medina was to enact a Constitution that created a single political community—barring tribal violence, establishing basic freedoms and assuring collective security—between his growing number of Muslim followers and the various Christian, Jewish and pagan groups already present in the city. During Islam's expansion, the Caliph Ali sent his governor in Egypt a letter that said, “All people there are your equals in faith or your brothers in creation.” The Quran affirms the holiness of this pluralistic view: “God made you different nations and tribes that you may come to know one another.”

America, contrary to the strain of ugly Islamophobia that has become more prominent since 9/11, has a long and positive history of respect for Islam and Muslims. The Flushing Remonstrance, a 17th century document which established the precedent of religious freedom and goodwill between different faiths, explicitly includes Muslims: “The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sons of Adam.” Thomas Jefferson famously owned a Quran and hosted an iftar dinner for a Muslim diplomat. Benjamin Franklin started a hall in Philadelphia and said that the pulpit would be open to all preachers, including a Muslim from Constantinople. An envoy appointed by President George Washington negotiated the Treaty of Tripoli with a majority-Muslim nation, a document which stated that “no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” The treaty was later signed by President John Adams.

Current events highlight a harsh reality of globalization. That people on one side of the world can create something that incites violence on the other side of the world. But there is a silver lining here: just as ugliness begets ugliness, so might beauty inspire beauty. Let's not let the handful of people who seek to spread hatred between faith communities pattern interfaith relations across the world. Now more than ever, we need to lift up those stories within Islam and America that speak to the power of pluralism. And we need to act on those stories, by working together to apply the values of mercy, compassion and hospitality that are shared across all traditions. I remember President Obama telling his Inaugural Faith Council, of which I was a proud member, that he hoped Americans of all faith backgrounds would participate in interfaith service projects together. This was not just as a way of strengthening our own nation, it was also an example of diversity leading to harmony in a world that is increasingly convinced of the inevitability of conflict.

In an interconnected world, the only chance we have is a common life together. If we are to build it, we must insure the bridges between us are strong enough to withstand the bombs of the extremists. As the American poet William Stafford wrote, “The signals we give must be clear now ... the darkness around us is deep.”

Finding Common Ground With “Sacred Ground”

Chris Stedman is the Assistant Humanist Chaplain/Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University, the emeritus managing director of State of Formation at the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, and the founder of the first blog dedicated to exploring atheist-interfaith engagement, NonProphet Status. Stedman writes for the Huffington Post, the Washington Post's On Faith blog, and Religion Dispatches. His first book, Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious, will be published by Beacon Press in November. 

Buy from Beacon Press

Qty:

Available in hardcover and ebook wherever books are sold.

On my last day of work at Interfaith Youth Core, I had lunch with its founder, Eboo Patel. As we ate I told him that, inspired by his book Acts of Faith, I was going to write a book of my own about atheism and interfaith work.

“Yeah?” he replied, grinning and taking a bite of his sandwich. “When?”

“Oh,” I offered, realizing I hadn't actually thought about details. “Someday...”

“When?” he said again.

“In five years? Maybe 10?”

He thought for a second, then said, “Why not start now?”

I chewed on my sub, and on his question. Why not now? I came up with several reasons immediately: I'm young; I like to write but have little formal training; I'm really young. But I swallowed those thoughts and said: “Sure. Why not? I'll start writing and see what happens.”

As soon as I started writing, I couldn't stop. Before I knew it I had a book contract, and then a finished book. (My book, Faitheist, will be released Nov. 6 and is available for preorder.)

While I was writing, so was Eboo. I got a copy of his excellent new book, Sacred Ground—a vital, urgent exploration of America's dark history of both prejudice toward religious minorities but also its principled promise of religious liberty—a few weeks ago. When I read the chapter on interfaith leadership, where he describes some of the journey I share in Faitheist, I was moved.

A story about an atheist in a book like Sacred Ground is good for atheists; it demonstrates that we have a unique contribution to make to America's diverse religious landscape. And it will promote the idea of atheists as largely goodhearted people who want the same things most Americans do to people who might believe otherwise—people whose perceptions of atheists are based on caricature rather than meaningful relationships.

Storytelling can do that. It can connect and inspire us to new ways of thinking, to greater empathy and to increased familiarity with different experiences, identities and values.

I thought more about the power of narrative as I followed the news cycle last Sunday with a broken heart, when a white gunman stalked into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and shot and killed six people and wounded several others. I surveyed reactions to the shooting and found they were significantly more muted than the response to the Aurora tragedy several weeks before. Perhaps people are becoming more accustomed to awful, violent outbursts such as this, but I wonder if the reactions don't say something about the way we see “others” in this country.

Upon hearing news of the shooting in a Colorado movie theater, many people likely conjured an image in their mind. They could imagine what it was like there, and they could imagine themselves in it. But how many Americans can envision a Sikh gurdwara and what goes on inside? Many people can imagine themselves in a movie theater, but how many can picture themselves, or people they love, in a gurdwara? How many people know about American Sikhs' sacred ground?

This is just one reason why Sacred Ground is such an important book—and why it is so important for people to share their stories. The day after the horror in Wisconsin, my dear friend Valarie Kaur, a longtime Sikh activist, shared her story on CNN. We tell these stories—stories of being Muslim, of being Sikh, of being an atheist and of finding common ground—with the hope that they will accomplish what Sacred Ground suggests: that familiarity with diversity changes how we think about it.

My hope is that Sacred Ground, Faitheist, Valarie's words and work, and the cumulative efforts of everyone who promotes pluralism will build a world where tragedies like the one in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, never happen again. We all—Muslims, atheists, Sikhs and everyone else—have stories to tell, and sharing them with others will help make the world a place where everyone is free to proclaim their beliefs with pride and without fear of violent recourse.

I'm happy to say that we are building that world—in the last week alone, atheist friends donated to rebuild a mosque destroyed by arson in Joplin, Missouri; Muslim friends petitioned to free Alexander Aan, an atheist jailed in Indonesia; religious friends decried Pat Robertson's statement blaming atheists for the shooting in Wisconsin (following a trend of blaming atheists for tragedies such as this, an issue I explore in Faitheist); people of all different beliefs (atheists, Muslims, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Pagans, Christians and others) joined me at a Sikh gurdwara for a memorial where we shed tears of mourning and of happiness. When a mosque in Illinois was shot at on Friday—just two days after Rep. Joe Walsh said at a town hall meeting just 15 minutes away that there are Muslims in Illinois towns “trying to kill Americans every week”—atheist and religious friends reached out to him and asked him to condemn this act as awful and un-American. So when naysayers claim that building bridges between different communities is impossible or a waste of time—that it is not possible for atheists to be in solidarity with those who believe in sacred ground—I am encouraged by the reality that we are improving the world through the stories and values we share and the actions we take together.

So to you, reader, I ask the question Eboo posed to me over a set of sandwiches: You have a story, and sharing it will help build a better world. Why not start now?

Related posts at Beacon Broadside

Interfaith Work is the Antidote to Atheist Islamophobia

Dear Religious Americans: How Many Atheists Do You Know?

Eboo Patel: The Holiness of Common Ground

Photo at left of Eboo Patel and Chris Stedman courtesy of the author.

Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America

An inspiring call for Americans to defend the values of inclusiveness and pluralism by one of our best-known American Muslim leaders 

There is no better time to stand up for your values than when they are under attack.

In the decade following the attacks of 9/11, suspicion and animosity toward American Muslims has increased rather than subsided. Alarmist, hateful rhetoric once relegated to the fringes of political discourse has now become frighteningly mainstream, with pundits and politicians routinely invoking the specter of Islam as a menacing, deeply anti-American force.

In Sacred Ground, author and renowned interfaith leader Eboo Patel says this prejudice is not just a problem for Muslims but a challenge to the very idea of America. Patel shows us that Americans from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. have been "interfaith leaders," illustrating how the forces of pluralism in America have time and again defeated the forces of prejudice. And now a new generation needs to rise up and confront the anti-Muslim prejudice of our era. To this end, Patel offers a primer in the art and science of interfaith work, bringing to life the growing body of research on how faith can be a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division and sharing stories from the frontlines of interfaith activism.

Patel asks us to share in his vision of a better America—a robustly pluralistic country in which our commonalities are more important than our differences, and in which difference enriches, rather than threatens, our religious traditions. Pluralism, Patel boldly argues, is at the heart of the American project, and this visionary book will inspire Americans of all faiths to make this country a place where diverse traditions can thrive side by side.

Buy Sacred Ground from Beacon Press
Amazon (Kindle) | BN.com (Nook) | Indiebound | Apple iBookstore | Google Play

Read a selection from the book at Scribd.

Read Eboo Patel's posts at Beacon Broadside. 

About the author: Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core and the author of Acts of Faith. He was a member of President Obama’s inaugural faith council, is a regular contributor to the Washington Post, Huffington Post, CNN, and public radio, and speaks frequently about interfaith cooperation on college campuses. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two boys.

“Interfaith cooperation is one of America’s founding ideals. It still sets us apart from much of the world. Eboo Patel has lived that value and, in this book, spreads that good word. Uplifting and invaluable, Sacred Ground is essential reading for our polarized era.”—Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin

“At a time when ignorance and suspicion are holding us back from building true community with our neighbors, Eboo Patel offers a light in the darkness. He challenges the bigotry and intolerance that is seeping into our political rhetoric, reminding us that America is a country built on the pillars of pluralism and tolerance. In both Sacred Ground and his wonderful interfaith work, Eboo offers an opportunity for us to move to higher ground in our relationships with our Muslim brothers and sisters, and to play our part in building a ‘beloved community for all people,’ both in the United States, and around the world.”—Rev. Jim Wallis, author of God’s Politics

“Eboo Patel is a remarkable young man with the wisdom to seek truth and the courage to speak it. One of America’s foremost advocates and practitioners of interfaith understanding, he has written a book that combines timely social commentary with compelling history and a wealth of personal anecdotes. Sacred Ground is a refreshing, thought-provoking, myth-smashing, and deeply patriotic exploration of American identity and ideals.”—Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

“Sacred Ground is simultaneously a chronicle of religious tensions in post–9/11 America and an account of how to create, through trial and error and critical self-reflection, the most successful interfaith movement in the country. Patel probes like a professor, inspires like a preacher, and writes like a poet. I really loved this book; it is a tale that is truly hard to put down.”—Robert D. Putnam, author of American Grace

“Eboo Patel has been a transformative force in our young and tumultuous century. And he has an utterly original experience of what robust religious identity can mean in modern lives. With this book, he opens the idea of "inter-faith" into a vision of America that is practically informative, refreshingly challenging, and full of hope.”—Krista Tippett, host of NPR’s On Being

Eboo Patel: The Holiness of Common Ground

Eboo Patel is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation and the forthcoming book Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America. He is founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit building the interfaith youth movement. He was appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations. This post originally appeared at Huffington Post.

Delivered at the Colgate University Baccalaureate.

In the early days of Islam, when the Muslim community was small and fledgling, and being harassed and hunted by the powerful tribes of Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad -- may the Peace and Blessings of God be upon Him -- sent a delegation of his companions to a land called Abyssinia.

When they arrived, the Kingdom's ruler, a man known as the Negus, summoned them to his court and demanded they explain their purpose. Ja'far, speaking for the Muslims, said they were followers of the Prophet Muhammad, believers in the One God, reciters of the Quran -- a divine scripture which, among other things, had deep reverence for Jesus and his mother Mary.

Ja'far then quoted a verse:

...'I am but a messenger
Come from thy Lord, to give thee
A boy most pure.'
She said, 'How shall I have a son
whom no mortal has touched, neither
have I been unchaste?'
He said: 'Even so my Lord has said;
"Easy is that for Me; and that We
May appoint him a sign unto men
And a mercy from Us"...

The sources say that the Negus and his assembled advisors wept so hard at this recitation that their beards were wet and their scrolls were soaked through. The Abyssinians were Christians, and the knowledge that an emerging religious community would hold as holy what they held as holy moved them deeply.

When I first read that story, it occurred to me that there were many ways that those Muslims could have explained their faith to the Negus. They could have shaken their fists and marked their disagreement with the Christian belief that Jesus is the Son of God. They could have wagged their fingers, and lectured the Negus and his court on the distinct notion of revelation in the Quran. Instead, they chose to extend their hand, to speak of the shared reverence for Jesus and Mary, the mutual belief in the virgin birth, the joint view that Jesus was sent by God as a messenger and as a mercy. In other words, the Muslims chose to highlight common ground.

Honestly, I hate the term "common ground." It just sounds boring. Every time it escapes my lips or gets tapped onto my keyboard, I imagine the audience preparing for a snooze. Passion, everyone seems to agree, lies with the partisans -- those who stand at either pole and volley verbal assaults. The only way to generate audience electricity, the most direct route to expressing personal authenticity, is to mark the territory of difference and erect a barrier.

God, I know the satisfaction in that. I've shaken and wagged so many times that I'm surprised I've got fists or fingers left. And precisely because I've exercised those muscles so frequently, I know intimately the many prices to be paid for singing the song of division, especially when it's put to the soundtrack of self-righteousness. 

One price is fewer converts to my cause. All of my shaking and wagging has only ever succeeded in ending conversations, and sending people running in the opposite direction. In the history of the world, I don't know if anyone has ever been truly convinced of anything when staring into a shaking fist or a wagging finger. 

The price I've been more attuned to recently is of the relationship lost -- the cost of what we might have learned from each other, what we could have accomplished together -- if I had just led with my hand. Wherever you stand on whatever divisive issue the headlines are screaming about -- however much we might disagree on that particular matter -- I want to reject the instinct to dig in there. I want to nurture the discipline to look elsewhere, to find common ground. The Quran says that God made us different nations and tribes so that we may come to know one another, that where there are differences, we should engage them in the best and most beautiful of ways. The term common ground might lack a little electricity -- and I'd be happy to entertain synonyms from this well-educated crowd -- but the idea is holy, and finding it is a spiritual practice. Let me give you an example. 

People ask me all the time why, as a Muslim who is concerned about the intersection between religion and politics in the world, I don't talk more about the elephant in the room when it comes to interfaith relations: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It's not that I don't follow it, or that I don't have a point of view. I don't lead with that because, when it comes to the relationship between Muslims and Jews, there are -- stick with me on this metaphor -- other animals in the zoo. I'd much rather talk about those: the similarities between Jewish law and Muslim law, Jewish practices of charity and Muslim practices of charity, Jewish patterns of integration in America and Muslim patterns. To limit the conversation about a 1,400-year-old relationship between two great faiths that has spanned nations and civilizations and been largely mutually enriching to the experience of a few decades on a single patch of land seems to me narrow. When we concentrate only on the elephant, we not only we ignore the other animals, we also distort them. The more we talk and talk and talk about the elephant, the more every animal starts to look like an elephant.

Similarities between the Muslim view of interfaith cooperation and the Jewish view brought me to Ruth Messinger, President of American Jewish World Service, one of the most inspiring NGOs I know. Ruth has been a mentor of mine for the past 15 years, helping nurture me and Interfaith Youth Core along our journey. She came by our offices a few weeks ago and talked about the holiness of common ground. Someone on my staff asked where she got that conviction, and Ruth told this story.

Her first professional experience was in Western Oklahoma in the early 1960s. She was a Jewish woman from New York City with a graduate degree working for the government -- lots there for the locals to be suspicious about. The best place to do her job happened to be at churches. So she went. A lot. She went to formal brick churches on Sunday mornings, she went to Bible studies on porches on Wednesday evenings, she went to backyard praise gatherings on Thursdays.

I imagine Ruth did not agree with everything she heard, was probably offended by some of it. I imagine a few of the people looked at her crosseyed. But Ruth had something a lot more powerful than political and theological disagreement. Ruth had hundreds of children -- abused, neglected, orphaned children. And she needed to find foster families for them. The evangelical ministers in Western Oklahoma considered this God's work. After the sermons and the songs and the altar calls and the amen choruses, they would stand at the pulpits and point at Ruth and say, "This woman has informed me that there are four of God's children in our community who are hurting and need families to take care of them. I need four families to come forth and volunteer to do God's work with her and me and take them in."

"We always got our families, and it never took long," Ruth told my staff.

How many subjects did Ruth Messinger and those Western Oklahoma evangelicals disagree on? Those arguments could have lasted long into the night. But Ruth Messinger chose to extend a hand instead of wag a finger or shake a fist. Hundreds of children in Western Oklahoma grew up in families instead of orphanages because Ruth Messinger stood on common ground.

When I graduated from college, I had this belief that the whole world was going to take notice of my every move. If I was nice to a homeless person, everyone would be nice to homeless people. I would give the signal, and we would end homelessness. There's a Bob Dylan song about that: "Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent, when I paint my masterpiece." Took me a while to figure out that it was satire.

Will the headlines about Afghanistan or Iraq or the election be different next month if you extend your hand a bit more? Probably not. Will cable news anchors hang it up when you commit to finding common ground? I'd be lying if I said yes. But sometimes you do things because they are important to do, because they are holy.

As William Carlos Williams writes in "Love Song":

Who shall hear of us
in the time to come?
Let him say there was
a burst of fragrance
from black branches.