What is Interfaith Cooperation For?

It’s a question of civic space, Eboo Patel explains, rather than of political ideology.

May 5, 2013
By Eboo Patel

Some years back I met the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Nechervan Barzani. One of the first things he did was thank me for the American military intervention that he described as freeing his people from oppression. I informed him that many of my friends viewed the Iraq War as profoundly unjust and protested vociferously against it.

Barzani was rendered speechless for a moment. When he finally spoke it was to say, through clenched teeth, that the only thing unjust about the war that removed Saddam Hussein was that it didn’t happen sooner.

I was reminded of that story when I read Lucia Hulsether’s thoughtful critique here on RD of my recent Huffington Post article on the urgency of interfaith cooperation after the Boston bombings. As religious diversity continues to grow both in demographic fact and in salience in our public discourse, and as interfaith efforts expand, it is more important than ever to engage in a thoughtful exchange about the purpose of interfaith programs. I wish to use this space to advance my view of what interfaith cooperation is for. The ideas I present below have been developed in conversation with my colleagues at Interfaith Youth Core, the organization I founded and lead, and it guides the work we do with college campuses and students.

Let me begin by summarizing one of Hulsether’s main arguments. She maintains that mainstream interfaith projects reach a wider base by avoiding divisive political topics and glossing over issues of “justice” and “structural violence.” This is a problem because, to Hulsether, those are the issues that really matter. Hulsether names civil liberties, material conflicts, and American military campaigns abroad as some examples that fit her list of priorities. She writes, “Appeals to ‘interfaith’ often prioritize projects for recognition of such identities over attention to systemic forms of material and social inequality” and “interfaith programs always provide means to other ends.”

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/7100/what_is_interfaith_cooperation_for_/