“An Invitation for Discrimination! The Covenant of Umar”

The Covenant of Umar is a treaty that was concluded between the Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab and Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Ghanem has translated this treaty and researched how it can be used as an example of Muslim-Christian relations. He also talks about his pilgrimage from English teacher to peacebuilder.

A Fulbright scholar, Ghanem joined the EMU community from his position as assistant professor in the English Department at Damascus University. He will earn a masters degree in conflict transformation from CJP this summer.

Ghanem earned a bachelors degree in English literature and a diploma in English translation from Damascus University. He is also an English language tutor at Syrian Virtual University.

For more info contact: Center for Interfaith Engagement, 540-432-4674 or email interfaith@emu.edu
www.emu.edu/interfaith

 April 4, 2012 CIE Forum [1:12:56] Play Now | Play in Popup

Teaching as a Christian in an Islamic University: How this contributes to Interfaith Engagement

Phil Enns, former MCC worker at the Islamic University of Indonesia, talks about his experiences teaching in Yogyakarta and relating to his Muslim co-workers. This forum is jointly sponsored by MCC/CIE/ACRS.

For more info contact: Center for Interfaith Engagement, 540-432-4674 or email interfaith@emu.edu
www.emu.edu/interfaith

 Mar. 26, 2012 Phil Enns CIE Lecture [1:15:52] Play Now | Play in Popup

Outreach and Program Director, Daniel Tutt, talks about his work to promote peace and understanding across religious and cultural lines at Unity Productions Foundation. He talks in greater depth about various aspects of “Talking Through Walls,” the interfaith film scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday, March 15. More specifically, Tutt explains UPF’s mission: “working for peace through media,” and their campaign to initiate 20000 dialogues. UPF gained notoriety when they released their important documentary, “Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet.”

For more info contact: Center for Interfaith Engagement, 540-432-4674 or email interfaith@emu.edu
www.emu.edu/interfaith

 Mar. 16, 2012 Daniel Tutt Interfaith Lecture [1:38:36] Play Now | Play in Popup

For opening its doors to its Muslim neighbors, Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Alexandria was featured on “The Daily Show with John Stewart.” Rev. Perry, an EMS grad and lead pastor at Aldersgate UM Church, and Baig, vice president of Islamic Circle of North America, will talk about their controversial experience of crossing boundaries to build relationships.

Rev. Perry grew up in Harrisonburg. He graduated from JMU where he majored in Philosophy and Religion, received an MDiv degree from EMS and a DMin from Wesley Theological seminary in Washington, D.C. He began serving churches while in college. He’s served Stanley Church in Page County, Keezletown Church in Rockingham County, Gordonsville and Barboursville churches in Orange County near Charlottesville and Woodlake Church in the Richmond suburbs.

Naeem Baig is Vice President for Public Affairs at the Islamic Circle of North America. Established in 1968, the Islamic Circle of North America was a response to the growing need for a supportive Muslim community in North America. ICNA has worked to establish connections between Islam and the public, collaborating with numerous Muslim organizations to reach this end. ICNA also works closely with many national interfaith organizations for the betterment of society.

For more info contact: Center for Interfaith Engagement, 540-432-4674 or email interfaith@emu.edu
www.emu.edu/interfaith

Renowned storyteller, activist, organizer, writer, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, is one of the first ten women in Jewish history to enter Rabbinic life and, in 1980, became the first woman ordained in the Jewish Renewal Movement. In 1973 she began congregational life with Temple Beth Or of the Deaf and then lived for 22 years in NM where she co-founded Congregation Nahalat Shalom, The Muslim Jewish Peacewalk for Interfaith Solidarity and Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence. She moved to California in 2005 to direct Interfaith Inventions Wilderness Peace Camp, and AFSC’s Israel Palestine program with Noura Khouri.

Rabbi Lynn serves on the advisory and rabbinic council of Jewish Voice for Peace and leads delegations to Israel, Palestine, and Iran with the Fellowship of Reconciliation. She cofounded The Community of Living Traditions with Rick, Kitty and Rabia in the spring of 2009 in an effort to bring the work of creating a multifaith, multicultural and multigenerational environment for activists committed to strategic nonviolence to build upon their work. She moved to Stony Point in November 2009 in order to set up The Shomer Shalom House and work on CLT programming.

She is author of She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism, and Trail Guide to The Torah of Nonviolence, coming out in 2012. She co-founded JSNAP: Jewish Solidarity with Native American Peoples in the winter of 2011 and continues to write and organize around Jewish nonviolence, prevention of violence toward women, anti-racism work, living wage movement, ending occupation and promoting multi-faith understanding.

 Jan. 11, 2012 CIE Forum [1:15:02] Play Now | Play in Popup

Doug Hostetter graduated from EMU during the Vietnam War years and did his alternative service with MCC in Tam Ky, Vietnam. His life work has been devoted to seeking nonviolent alternatives to war and oppression in many war zones including of North and South Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He has been heavily involved in reconciliation, citizen diplomacy, work camps and people-to-people exchanges with the citizens of the USSR, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bosnia, and Israel/Palestine. Doug has published broadly in both the secular and religious press on issues of war, peace, faith and nonviolence.

In the 1970s, he was staff for the People’s Peace Treaty in New York City. From 1971-80, he served the United Methodist Office for the United Nations as their Resource Specialist on Peace, Asia, and Latin American Issues. 1980, Doug became the Executive Secretary of the New England Regional Office of the American Friends Service Committee in Cambridge, MA. Doug joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation as Executive Secretary in 1987, and in 1993 became FOR’s International/Interfaith Secretary.

In 2003 Doug was ordained as Peace Pastor at Evanston (IL) Mennonite Church. He is currently the Director of the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Liaison Office in New York City.

For more info contact: Center for Interfaith Engagement, 540-432-4674 or email interfaith@emu.edu
www.emu.edu/interfaith

 October 12, 2011 Doug Hostetter CIE Forum [1:14:29] Play Now | Play in Popup

Interfaith Forum with Susan Kennel Harrison

Susan Kennel Harrison, BA, MDiv, ThM is currently a PhD candidate researching Christian Peace Theology and Interfaith dialogue at Emmanuel College at the Toronto School of Theology.  She is an associate member of the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre and serves on the advisory council for EMU’s Center for Interfaith Engagement. Susan has been involved with Christian – Muslim dialogue for over a decade. She leads “scriptural reasoning” at the University of Toronto, an interfaith practice where Muslims, Christians and Jews study their scriptures together.

Her forum talk, You Can’t Talk to Them – Peacemaking and Dialogue, focuses on the importance of building relationships with persons of other religious affiliations, particularly fundamentalists, in order to promote understanding and respect.

For more info contact: Center for Interfaith Engagement, 540-432-4674 or email interfaith@emu.edu
www.emu.edu/interfaith

 September 14, 2011 Interfaith Dialogue Forum [1:31:27] Play Now | Play in Popup

Speaking on the topic, “Jesus, Son of God and Isa, Son of Mary and Prophet of God: Listening Together to the Divine Word,” Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub compares and contrasts broad aspects of Christian and Muslim Christologies.

Dr. Ayoub, Faculty Associate in Shi‘ite Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford (Conn) Seminary, is a leading authority in both the scholarship and comparative study of Islam and Muslim-Christian relations, as well as inter-religious dialogue.  His special areas of interest are Shi’ite Islam, comparative religions, interfaith dialogue, and Christian-Muslim relations.

Born in South Lebanon, Dr. Ayoub earned a BA in Philosophy at the American University of Beirut, an M.A. in Religious Thought from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in History of Religion from Harvard University.

Speaking on his decades long career in education, Dr. Ayoub said:

My intellectual and spiritual life has been a religious odyssey from Islam – the faith of my birth – to Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity, to Quakerism and back to Islam. Yet in a way I still live this long spiritual journey in my daily life. From Islam I continue to be guided by the Qur’an and the lives of some Sufi saints. Academically and intellectually my thinking has been profoundly influenced by my esteemed mentor, the late Wilfred Cantwell Smith. His books and ideas, but above all, my years under his tutelage have helped me to return to my Islamic heritage, but with a new appreciation and a new critical mind. Smith made me a historian of religion, and the historian of religion lives a life of inner struggle with all reified absolutes. But it is a life that is more precious than all the precious stones of the world.

For more information, contact EMU’s Center for Interfaith Engagement: 540-432-5674 , interfaith@emu.edu

 March 24, 2011 Mahmoud Ayoub Play Now | Play in Popup

Dr. Landrum Bolling presents an Abraham’s Tent Forum  on, “Re-thinking the Middle East Conflicts.”

Dr. Bolling brings over seven decades of exceptional international experience in conflict resolution and in facilitating dialogue between members of different religions, cultures and ethnicities.  Early in his career he was a foreign correspondent with assignments in Rome, Vienna and Berlin and served as a war correspondent with Tito’s Partisans in World War II, covering the  liberation of Sarajevo from Hitler’s occupation army.

Educated as a political scientist at the University of Tennessee and the University of Chicago, Dr. Bolling served on the faculties of Beloit College, Brown University and Earlham College, where he was president for 15 years. He was also a research professor at The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Dr. Bolling also served as president of the Lilly Endowment, one of the largest grant-making foundations in the world, and as Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Foundations. He has been a senior advisor to Mercy Corps (http://www.mercycorps.org) for much of the organization’s history.  Currently he works out of the agency’s Washington, DC, office on matters of policy and program development, serves as president of Pax World Service (a Mercy Corps affiliate that promotes citizen diplomacy), and is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

Dr. Bolling has written or co-authored several books, including Search for Peace in the Middle East, This is Germany, Private Foreign Aid, Reporters Under Fire, and Conflict Resolution: Track Two Diplomacy.

 February 22, 2011 Landrum Bolling [1:31:25] Play Now | Play in Popup

Bertha Beachy, a long-time worker in Africa and the Middle East with Eastern Mennonite Missions and Mennonite Central Committee, discusses “Why and How We Should Carry on Dialogue With Muslim” in an  Abraham’s Tent forum.

After earning a degree in elementary education and English from EMC (now EMU), she moved to Somalia in 1958 to teach English and learn the ways and language of the Somali people.

Now a resident of Greencroft Retirement Community in Goshen, Ind., Beachy continues to embrace opportunities to learn and serve, including a stint with a Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) to Iraq and a peace and learning tour to Iran with MCC.She continues to relate to many Muslim friends and is a strong proponent of interfaith dialogue.

Abraham’s Tent at EMU is a center that plans and sponsors a variety of opportunities and programs for interfaith engagement.

 October 12, 2010 Bertha Beachy Abraham's Tent Forum [1:05:41] Play Now | Play in Popup