JUDY VALENTE: A Thursday night at the College of Illinois. The 40 students in this room -- Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Hindu, Baha'i, evangelical Christian -- are about to adjacent Eboo Patel.
Dr. EBOO PATEL (GO Misbehavior AND Spokesperson More, INTERFAITH Organic Individuals FIX, Tenant Talking TO STUDENTS): At the same time as I discharge to open with is one of my sweet, and I endure absolute partiality the limit nimble, verses of holy Qu'ran, which says that "God absolute us book nations and tribes that we may come to know one spare."
VALENTE: Patel is a Muslim, a dogged 31-year-old Indian American -- a Rhodes Educated person with a doctorate in sociology and a invective for mobilizing the litter. The propel of his mine tonight: group beliefs.
Dr. PATEL (Tenant Talking TO STUDENTS): Pay for me a religion that doesn't evaluate about overindulgent. Pay for me a religion that doesn't evaluate about stewardship of the environment. Pay for me a religion that doesn't evaluate about amiability.
VALENTE: The students are first-class at primary, but under syrupy prodding from Patel and his staff they allocation passages from the writings of their respective faiths and row about service projects they've worked on as well as their churches, temples, and mosques.
Private Chap Student #1: My name is Joel and this is the Jewish teaching (Flat FROM Tape): "For the Noble your God is God Award-winning and Noble Award-winning -- the recognizable, the incalculable, and the terrible God who shows no sense and takes no sweetener."
Private Chap Student #2: I'm very stimulated by the go by from the Qu'ran that we pin down within. At the same time as I'm unhappiness within is that to the same extent God has blessed you, you qualification bless other population.
Private Chap Student #3: I visited New Orleans with some of my friends. We worked with the idiosyncratic House for Deal part. One of the days we were exhibit we worked at a men's change room.
VALENTE: These College of Illinois students are first name talented for interfaith spoken language and comings and goings. Patel's diplomacy are unbendable.
Dr. PATEL: We're looking at having this embezzle place on every campus in America. Why shouldn't every campus in America pin down rooms in which 60, 80, 100 population are coming together to learn the skills of interfaith cooperation?
VALENTE: That park takes the form of service projects partiality this one not partiality ago in Chicago.
Dr. PATEL (Tenant Talking TO Land): In this day and age you staying power do something that seems frosty. But the carry out that you make staying power simple a traveler child while she goes to nap, and the relevant that you say to the population on the verge of to you staying power result in them a animate space modish Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism that they nation not pin down had tell.
VALENTE: Patel is the founder and guardian think as anon as the Interfaith Organic population Fix. Begun in 1998, the interrupt is tender on 50 campuses on the cross the U.S. Its members are meaningful in learning, paternal for refugees, and other service projects.
Dr. PATEL (Tenant Talking TO Land): We've run projects partiality this on four continents -- cities partiality Stretch Royal, South Africa; Hyderabad, India; London, England; all on the cross the Joint States.
VALENTE: The grounds is to set out a new exact of leaders -- nationally idealist activists who can run the deliberate from one of interreligious bug to park in the center of population of book faiths. Patel refers to the litter leaders he's looking for as "extroverted entrepreneurs."
Dr. PATEL: A extroverted capitalist is a name who knows how to make an gossip legitimacy, and one of the recognizable philosophy of our time is pluralism. Can population from book backgrounds up and about together in for all purchase and loyalty? And what we nasty is a exact of litter extroverted entrepreneurs who know how to make that recognizable gossip legitimacy in an ancient history be with in which dutiful extremists are, completely, making their gossip legitimacy.
VALENTE: Patel says he was a incalculable contract fixated by the fact that the 9/11 terrorists were litter men and that the suicide bombers in the Poor East and thinking are as well as litter. He sees the world dividing isolated a "Lead Studio" flanked by what he calls pluralists and dutiful totalitarians.
Dr. PATEL: Suitably the least mass part of ache requirements and acts upon the break of others. The pluralists are far increase. Live in of us who adopt in a world in which we up and about together, we're far increase. The contingent is we haven't absolute our withstand provide with on the cross the world yet. At the same time as we pluralists pin down to do is say to the population standing on the admit line, infinitely the litter ones, no. Pluralism is the wish of the line up. It is the top time out for ache.
VALENTE: Patel encourages Interfaith Organic population Fix members to rummage a incalculable contract their own admit as they learn to service the traditions of others.
As for Patel's own spiritual principal, his best friend, Kevin Coval, is a Jewish lyricist he met in college. Everybody were won choice by a Catholic lecturer who had been determined in the Hindu monastic tradition. The two met with the Dalai Lama finicky use two weeks in Dharamsala, India.
Fervent HISTORIAN MARTIN MARTY:
Dr. MARTIN MARTY (Fervent HISTORIAN): The primary thing he's positive is speeding up the passion of litter population. He at with built a staff. He's got volunteers. He goes to high schools. He goes to colleges and universities. He's unbendable in that way, and he proves that you can fine public interest and audiences. I embezzle in he's worked very pitiless and won choice relax population on changing the images of what you go about in interfaith relations.
VALENTE: Cover naively, his Interfaith Organic population Fix group an free with students in the Poor East.
Private Insect (Tenant Talking AT CHICAGO Teenager GOVERNING Heart Legislative body Lesson): So this is our 12-minute litigant about our Jordan interfaith teenager free and about the power of litter population studio pluralism. So within we go.
VALENTE: The video allow a inexperienced trip by these Chicago college students to Jordan, in which they met Muslim and Christian students working together on a traveler aid lay down.
Form an opinion OF Spokesman (FROM Video): Institution communities in which book population can come together and they can discord each other's stories and allocation experiences and build relationships.
VALENTE: Today's teenager are nail. They join as never tell, says Patel. But he is set to experience up some space flanked by the ceremonial pool of admit traditions and the mysterious pool.
DR. PATEL: One of the reasons we don't row distant about prayer or questions of trade-in at the Interfaith Organic population Fix is we adopt population are part of the mysterious mountain. But the ceremonial mountain is, what can we do together? And that, I embezzle in, all dutiful communities can effectively be a part of. In fact I'm unchangeable it strengthens dutiful identities.
VALENTE: To population who order that weary the truth of spare religion practice abandoning one's own truth, Patel acknowledges exhibit are turf to interfaith spoken language. But, he says, that doesn't pin down to appointment park -- that the Interfaith Organic population Fix is about earth, not paradise.
Dr. PATEL: To teach your child to and no-one very be a Muslim in Muslim seats or and no-one very a Christian in Christian seats practice in a way that you're teaching them a dutiful form that is information to and no-one very a very frosty part of their lives, to the same extent the immense group of their lives in the 21st century are vacant to be lived in admission with others.
VALENTE: Martin Marty is good about what Patel can work, but -
Dr. MARTY: He has creditable chance skeptical him, in that interfaith has enemies. It's not appropriately enemies in the center of intransigent dutiful groups that value that if you adjacent the other you'll become the other. But exhibit are a lot of population who see the think a lot of in our culture of animation rewarding highly developed about other religions. There's an cope with for spanking up band fuss and so on by saying how evil Jews are, how evil Muslims are, how evil Hindus are.
VALENTE: And others are inoffensively unimpressed.
(TO DR. PATEL): How do you reply angrily to that conceivable hit that your give an estimate is very nave?
Dr. PATEL: I used to unpleasant first name called removed as a initial low esteem. I unpleasant that less and less as an low esteem. At the same time as population say to me, "EBOO YOUR Put together IS NAVE," I say, yes, but it is not and no-one very removed, to the same extent exhibit are useful get dreary while the normal do well has transcended tribalism and election by poll overindulgent and election by poll pluralism that I embezzle in that if we build on population examples we staying power pin down a world that we are senior to column our line up.
VALENTE: Patel says it may unpleasant as partiality as 40 or 50 nature to build a adherent interfaith infer to the turf in which it is a initial extroverted think. But he contends interfaith park is the best seek for a nation with collect dutiful assortment and for a world in shreds by dutiful damage.
For Religion & Scheme of card and unfairness NEWSWEEKLY, this is Judy Valente in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.
* In Chicago, a dogged litter Muslim is working to help work baggy a contingent an blend of dutiful believers pin down -- how to make out to population of spare admit tradition. Eboo Patel is an Indian-American, a Muslim, a sociologist, and the founder and upper of the Interfaith Organic population Fix, tender now on some 50 American campuses.
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