by Amanda Greene
from The Christian Century

Andrew Bowen sat yoga-style in his armchair, absent-mindedly fingering a set of Muslim prayer beads in his left hand as he talked about 2011 — his year of conversion.

But he’s not Muslim. In fact, the 29-year-old Lumberton resident doesn’t call himself by any of the 12 faiths he practiced for a month at a time last year.

Not Hindu (January). Not Baha’i (February). Not Zoroastrian (March). Not Jewish (April). Not Buddhist (May). Not agnostic (June). Not Mormon (July). Not Muslim (August). Not Sikh (September). Not Wiccan (October). Not Jain (November). And not Catholic (December).

Finding faith in God again was not Bowen’s aim. This young father of two was looking for faith in humanity.

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Photo credit: Benoit Jurzynski

by Ruadhan MacCormaic
from the Irish Times

Marseille: It’s the Friday before mid-term break at Tour Sainte, and there’s a giddy mood in the yard as the children file out past Stéphane Thiébaut, the school principal. “Bonnes vacances,” he calls out to the parents and teachers milling about in the spring sunshine.

Tour Sainte has some of the best views in Marseille, its hilltop perch giving a wide panorama of the city and the Mediterranean. Birds are singing from the trees in the yard, while the glare of the warm sun against the peach buildings accentuates the calm. ‘We have built ourselves a little oasis of peace,” Thiébaut remarks.

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by Yolanda Chin and Norman Vasu
from the Eurasia Review

In light of several incidents touching on race and religion in recent years, it may be tempting to wonder if Singapore’s multicultural harmony has possibly been strained. Such events included but are not limited to a senior pastor of the Lighthouse Evangelism church making disparaging remarks about Buddhists and Taoists in 2010 and former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew calling into question the desire of Muslims to integrate in Singapore in the book Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going.

In an attempt to more systematically discern if there has been such unease, the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) conducted a study of two questions pertaining to the social fabric of Singapore: (1) Have Singapore’s multicultural ties been resilient between 2007 and 2011? (2) Were Malays, Christians and the Chinese consistently less inclusive than non-Malays, non-Christians and non-Chinese respectively between 2007 and 2011?

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by Gillian Flaccus
from the Huffington Post

CLAREMONT, Calif. — Frederic and Anne-Laure Pascal are devout Roman Catholics who built their lives around their religion. When she lost her job last year, the young couple decided on an unlikely expression of their religious commitment: a worldwide “interfaith pilgrimage” to places where peace has won out over dueling dogmas.

Since October, the French couple has visited 11 nations from Iraq to Malaysia in an odyssey to find people of all creeds who have dedicated their lives to overcoming religious intolerance in some of the world’s most divided and war-torn corners.

The husband-and-wife team blogs about their adventures – and their own soul-searching – and takes short video clips for the project they’ve dubbed the Faithbook Tour.

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from The Catholic Spirit

Made public today was the annual Message to Buddhists for the Feast of Vesakh, issued by the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue. The message is signed by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, respectively president and secretary of the council.

Vesakh is the main Buddhist feast and commemorates the three fundamental moments in the life of Gautama Buddha. According to tradition, the historical Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment and passed away during the full moon of the month of May. Thus Vesakh is a mobile feast which this year falls on 5 and 6 May, while in China it is celebrated on the eighth day of the fourth month of the Chinese calendar, which this year corresponds to 28 April. On those days, Buddhists decorate their houses with flowers and perfume them with incense, visit local temples and listen to the teaching of the monks.

This year’s message is entitled: “Christians and Buddhists: Sharing Responsibility for Educating the Young Generation on Justice and Peace through Inter-religious Dialogue:” Extracts from the English-language version of the text are given below.

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from AllAfrica.com

The Sultan of Sokoto, Dr Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, said in Sokoto on Monday that lack of education was the root cause of violence in the country.

Abubakar spoke while receiving the President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue in the Vatican, Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, who paid him a visit in his palace in Sokoto.

He said people were not knowledgeable enough about their religions and as such took issues in the negative.

According to him, our people do not know the similarities between Islam and Christianity due to lack of education.

The Sultan added that it was important that we must always teach adherents the true meaning of religion.

He said that that was because if people had knowledge about the similarities of the two religions there would not be conflict in the polity, the Sultan said.

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by Dilshad D. Ali

I’ve recently taken up saying prayers on my tasbih – much more so than I ever did in my life before. I sit in the rocking chair in the corner of my son’s room fingering my tasbih (something akin to a rosary), doing dhikr while he burrows under the covers on his bed, pulling the weighted blanket over his face as he retreats from the world and takes comfort in the dark, close, muffled space where nothing assaults his senses.

My goal is that he should finger the tasbih while I say the prayers, especially when he shows signs that a meltdown is coming, or is in the throes of a meltdown. He likes to play with beads, stim on them. So I’m hoping he’ll grow to play with the tasbih and learn to use the tasbih as a method of grounding routine and ritual – something recently pointed out to me by a very astute Catholic autistic adult who read a recent blog post I wrote about my son’s struggles.

We’re not there yet, but for now, me just doing dhikr while fingering the tasbih seems to help calm my autistic son. Maybe it’s the prayers, maybe it’s not. But it gives me comfort; it’s something to do, a way to throw my line back to God and put some previously lacking trust back in His will.

For the past nearly 12 years of raising my son (and other two children), ten of which have been dictated by his severe autism, my faith as a Muslim has waxed and waned. I have searched for the words, the examples, the feelings that would help me believe, help me have complete trust that Allah knows best, that He will answer my prayers. I’ve sought guidance through my family, through friends and halaqas (religious study groups), through YouTube videos of inspirational sermons and lectures, through the words of Qur’an and hadith.

But, when you’re in the throes of helping your severely autistic son live his life, when your prayers turn from hopes of recovery and independence to just wanting him to be happy and at peace, when you beseech God time after time and still see your son suffering, when you see your entire family affected by one child’s disability, faith and trust can grow tenuous. And so I found my daily prayers growing one dimensional. I found myself continuously frustrated.

Common Grounds across Special Needs

Last fall, purely with intentions of self-therapy and autism awareness, I turned to one of the things I do best: writing. I launched my own blog at Patheos, a multi-faith news and blog website where I’m a managing editor, and began writing about Islamic issues, autism and my son.

The response was overwhelming, and the connections that came from Muslims the world over as well as from people of other faith traditions lifted my spirits. I’ve always felt divided between my faith and autism communities of friends, that neither group understood what it was like to live our life. In sharing our story, Muslims with autistic children reached out to me from around the world, sympathizing, asking me questions, offering advice and prayers.

But another profound thing to emerge from this journey has been the bolstering of my Muslim faith from connections I’ve made with people of other religions. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. As a journalist and editor, I’ve sought to cover Islam in America in both horizontal (to reach out to other religious groups) and vertical (to deepen the conversations in the American Muslim community) ways.

Whereas I knew that the heartfelt thoughts shared by Muslims would help bolster my faith in Allah, what resonated even further at times was how people of other faiths ignited a kindred spirit in my struggles. Reading and speaking with them about their struggles and lessons learned gave me fuel to think of Islam, Allah’s will and innocent children in different ways. Soon after beginning my blog, I was blessed to become friends with Amy Julia Truesdell Becker, a writer who blogs at “Thin Places—Faith, Family and Disability” at Patheos and is the author of A Good and Perfect Gift.

Becker has three children, one of whom – Penny – has Down’s syndrome. She writes about accepting Penny and loving her as she is and growing stronger in her Christian faith, about finding strength and acceptance in God’s will and how He does or doesn’t answer her prayers – things I’ve struggled with for years with my children.

“So many people I know [with their own special needs children], whether or not they’re of my faith tradition, understand the traditions and value of my daughter in an intuitive way – it’s a special bond that goes beyond theology,” Becker said to me in one of our conversations.

“I think that most parents of children with special needs, regardless of their faith background or lack thereof, have some sort of innate understanding of humanity, of life in all its diverse form. I then understand that or make of that experience through a theological lens. There’s a point of difference between our faiths, but [this understanding of diverse humanity] is a powerful commonality,” Becker said.

It’s this common respect for all of God’s children, this idea that life is diverse, imperfect, difficult, beautiful, and a gift that helps me to accept that although I may not understand His purpose or plan, Allah indeed has one for my son.

Tradition, Routine and Self-Control

Now, I’m not a strong woman. I falter a lot in this thinking. I backtrack, and have to find that trust in Allah time and time again. Two weeks ago I wrote about the Jekyll and Hyde of autism, how Mr. Hyde’s awful persona has taken over my son for months now, how we are desperately trying to figure out what has changed, what may have triggered it.

An amazing thing came from this post of despair. A person, who self-identified as a Catholic autistic, told me that when I am despairing of how to rid my son of Mr. Hyde, I should teach him to pray:

“Give him a prayer rug or a kneeler or whatever fits your family traditions. Maybe two so he won’t be scared the first few times if you can be with him. Then, when you hear the perservating, when you can tell a meltdown is about to happen- that’s the time to pray. The routine of the prayers is calming.”

“I may not be able to meet you on theology—but when it comes to tradition, routine, and self-control, Islam is equal to or better than Christianity on all three. And it’s those three things that the Autistic needs to survive in the modern world.”

This advice has been a turning point. As I wrote in a following post, “My son thrives on routine. And, when he is in the throes of a meltdown, his therapists and I often instruct him through short commands to help ground him and occupy his mind and hands (clap your hands, stomp your feet, touch your nose, do the puzzle, do this, do this, do this) until hopefully he comes out of it. Why not add the tasbih or rituals of salat (prayer) to his arsenal of meltdown-breaking weapons?”

You never know where religious strength will come from: divine inspiration, self-reflection on faith, immersion in sermons and scripture, or from a simple piece of advice given by a Catholic who understands how the rituals of Islam may help an autistic child.

Becker said to me, “Sometimes prayer’s purpose is to change us, not to change our circumstances.”  It is with this thought, and with the words of the Catholic commenter, that now, for the past week, I sit in my son’s room, perform my Maghreb salat and then take a tasbih and whisper so he can hear, Subhanallah, Alhamdulillah, Astaghfirullah, Allahu Akbar.*

*Glory be to God, All praise is due to God, I seek forgiveness from God, God is Greater

Dilshad D. Ali is the managing editor of the Muslim Portal at Patheos, editor-in-chief of Altmuslim at Patheos, and she blogs at www.patheos.com/blogs/muslimahnextdoor. She is the mother of three children, the eldest of whom is severely autistic.

by Jerry L. Van Marter
from Presbyterian News Service

More than three dozen religious leaders today (March 22) unveiled a “faithful budget” that they say will address the nation’s needs and priorities rather than partisan political considerations.

According to a press release from the “Faithful Budget Campaign,” its priorities for a faithful budget are a set of comprehensive and compassionate budget principles that will protect the common good, value each individual and help lift the burden on the poor.

The “Faithful Budget lays out ideas for restoring economic opportunity, ensuring adequate resources for the country’s fiscal needs, fostering true security, reducing poverty and hardship, taking responsibility for future generations, caring for the environment, improving access to health care and recognizing the robust role of government in combating poverty,” the group said in unveiling its proposal at a Washington press conference.

“Drafted by Jews, Christians, Muslims and other faith leaders, the ‘Faithful Budget’ embraces our role as a united nation to take care of the most vulnerable among us, while making balanced investments in our future,” said Parsons in a prepared statement read by Nelson after Parsons’ flight was delayed.

“By following our sacred imperative to ‘love our neighbor as ourselves,’” Nelson said, “we not only can pass a budget that makes sense, but pass a budget that begins to create a more just society and a healthier world.”

Endorsed by 37 religious denominations and organizations, the proposal is a call to Congress and the President to enact a budget that “enhances the well-being of all Americans and to make a good faith increase in funding for the impoverished and the vulnerable here and abroad in fiscal year 2013,” the group’s press release states.

“For too long, our nation’s political leaders have fallen into a trap of starting with an arbitrary top-line budget number and then working within its parameters to fund the programs on which we all rely. Rather than follow Washington’s example, the Faithful Budget focuses on our national needs and priorities,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby.

“We hope our Faithful Budget model can serve as a model that Congress and the Obama Administration can use to help build a more perfect union,” she added.

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by Jillian Berman
from the Huffington Post

For lent this year, some will inevitably give up the usual guilty pleasures like chocolate or meat. More than a few churches are taking a decidedly different approach.

About 25 churches have withdrawn $16 million from big banks such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase as part of a Lent-themed protest against the banks’ foreclosure actions, The New York Times reports, citing PICO National Network, a social justice coalition of churches that’s leading the charge. Individual members and organizational partners have also taken out an additional $15 million.

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from Huffington Post

This week’s Faith Inspires highlights the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD), a Jerusalem-based organization of inter-religious leaders who promote environmental consciousness and responsibility together. Through their Seminary Students Sustainability Program, Muslim, Christian and Jewish students learn side-by-side about sustainability and co-existence. The organization leads “eco-tourism” trips throughout the Holy Land. And on March 19, ICSD will host the Interfaith Climate and Energy Conference, which will bring together a diverse group of religious leaders to talk about the religious imperative to protect the earth.

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