US Interfaith Groups Combat Intolerance
“In college, students are forced into an environment that is ripe in diversity,” Johnny, a Muslim student in Arizona State University, told USA Today on Saturday, May 23.
“A lot of students who come from homogenous communities will go to a large university, where within close proximity there are thousands of Christians and thousands of Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and atheists, so most students know at least one person from different traditions,” Martin said.
Raised in a Christian family, Martin said he was told that other religions were bad.
Reverting to Islam during his college years, Martin, who pursues a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies, said his perspective has changed greatly.
Martin is the founder of Sun Devils Are Better Together, a student organization at Arizona State University that is part of the Better Together campaign.
Better Together is a movement that helps students build interfaith cooperation on college campuses, according to the Interfaith Youth Core website.
There are over 400 schools that have their own Better Together campaigns, Martin said.
Interfaith, as defined by Interfaith Youth Core, builds religious pluralism, including respect for diverse religious and non-religious identities, inspiring mutual relationships between people of different backgrounds, and common action for the common good.
Islam Growth
The importance of these interfaith activities maximized after the release of a report by Pew Research Center saying that the Muslim population will surpass the population of Christians by 2070.
The report also revealed that Islam will increase faster than the population of the world from 2010 to 2050 with a 35 percent growth.
The group has a saying: “We shouldn’t focus only on the elephant in the room—the fact that we have vastly different religious beliefs, or none at all—when there are so many other animals in the zoo,” said Spencer Hawkins, a member of Sun Devils Are Better Together.
“To me, this means that even though we may believe different things about gods or an afterlife, this shouldn’t prevent us from finding common ground and discussing our shared values in order to move forward together,” he said.
Martin believes that interfaith plays a major role in the population’s perception of religion in the future.
“I would imagine interfaith groups will say, ‘Okay, that’s what we’re dealing with; this is likely happening in the future,’ and will be aware that they will need to focus on combating bigotry and making sure there’s a safe space,” Martin said.
“If the dynamic of the global population’s religious diversity is really going to change so dramatically, it requires people to engage across lines of difference to combat ignorance and intolerance,” he said.
Source: On Islam
