4th Interfaith Leadership Forum: Interfaith Engagement with the Environmental Crisis
Rumi Forum Podcast
Rumi Forum, Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington, and Washington Theological Consortium presented the 4th Interfaith Leadership Forum: “Interfaith Engagement with the Environmental Crisis” on May 31, 2023. The program featured keynote speaker Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, an interfaith panel, and an opportunity for small group dialogues. Keynote by: Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, D.Min. started at Adat Shalom when the synagogue was only eight years old, and meeting at the JCC – he was still in rabbinic school, Founding Rabbi Sid was part-time, Shabbat morning services were every...
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In-Person Book Talk: “Profiles in Peace”
Rumi Forum Podcast
This new book traces the lives of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in Israel and Palestine who have dedicated their lives to building peaceful relations among the two peoples and between individual people who seek to live in peace and harmony with one another. These people have acted courageously and consistently in their work for peace. In this book, the author profiles the lives, thoughts, feelings, and actions of six important peacebuilders — men and women, secular and religious, 3 Jewish Israelis: Rabbi Michael Melchior, Professor Galia Golan, and Mrs. Hadassah Froman, and 3...
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In-Person Book Talk: “Between Thought & Action”
Rumi Forum Podcast
This in-person book talk by Dr. Ori Z. Soltes was a discussion on “Between Thought & Action”, Fethullah Gulen`s intellectual biography of thoughts, words, and actions including interviews with Hizmet movement followers. This volume has two goals. One is to explore the life and the thought of Fethullah Gulen and the important educational and peace-inducing activities in which he and those inspired by him have been engaged for several decades. The outcome of those efforts—of creating schools and providing diverse social and cultural services that bring people together people from diverse...
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In-Person Book Talk: "Hearts & Minds: Hizmet Schools and Interethnic Relations"
Rumi Forum Podcast
Dr. Parrillo and Dr. Ansari present a cross-cultural study of Hizmet schools in seven countries of varying histories and ethnic compositions. Some are fairly homogeneous, while others are longstanding multicultural, multiracial societies. Some have Muslim-majority populations, others a small Muslim minority. Through hundreds of interviews with students, parents, staff, and financial supporters, the authors explored individual perceptions and experiences, as well as the triad of student, parent, and school interaction. Analyzing the commonality of the schools' structures and processes in...
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In-Person Book Talk: “I Never Thought of It That Way”
Rumi Forum Podcast
We think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we’re right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding and attacking one another is breaking… everything. Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we’re not using: our own curiosity....
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3rd Interfaith Leadership Forum: "Building Interfaith Partnerships Beyond Racism and Religious Nationalism"
Rumi Forum Podcast
Religious nationalism is on the rise worldwide. In the U.S., it has primarily taken the form of White Christian Nationalism: the affiliation of being White and Christian with belonging and mattering in this country. This program explored the nature of global nationalism and its specific manifestation in the U.S. First, we heard from Dr. Mark Juergensmeyer, who is an expert who has been studying this trend for over thirty years. His keynote remarks were followed by a panel of diverse faith leaders who shared their views on building interfaith solidarity to resist the White Supremacist Christian...
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Panel Discussion: “Modern Muslim and Jewish Thinkers Who Have Inspired Us”
Rumi Forum Podcast
While anti-Semites and Islamophobes often speak as if our faiths have been frozen in ice (and primitive thinking) for many centuries, the fact is that Jews and Muslims belong to living, breathing, stimulating faiths. On February 9, 2022, JIDS and the Rumi Forum jointly presented a dialogue that presents some of the exciting ideas and personalities that have emerged within the past century to enrich our faiths. Jews and Muslims belong to living, breathing, and stimulating faiths. On this panel, we discovered some of their inspiring modern thinkers together. We heard...
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Panel Discussion: ”How Do We Deal With Covid, Social Injustice, and Polarization?”
Rumi Forum Podcast
Rumi Forum, Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights, and Prince George’s County Memorial Library System presented a virtual panel discussion on “How Do We Deal With Covid, Social Injustice, and Polarization?” on February 3, 2022, for a conversation for our time, in recognition of World Interfaith Harmony Week. How do we build and use interfaith harmony to develop restoration, reconciliation, and resiliency as applicable to the world that we live in now? We are plagued: by the Covid-19 pandemic, by social injustice, by economic inequities, limited and inequitable access to...
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In-Person Book Talk: “People of the Book”
Rumi Forum Podcast
On December 9, 2021, participants joined this in-person book talk for a considered study of Muslim–Christian coexistence and dialogue in the time of Prophet Muhammad. The Christians that lived around the Arabian Peninsula during Muhammad’s lifetime are shrouded in mystery. Some of the stories of the Prophet’s interactions with them are based on legends and myths, while others are more authentic and plausible. But who exactly were these Christians? Why did Muhammad interact with them as he reportedly did? And what lessons can today’s Christians and Muslims learn from these encounters?...
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In-Person Book Talk: “God`s Diplomats”
Rumi Forum Podcast
Using inside sources and extensive field reporting about the secretive, high-stakes world of international diplomacy, Vatican reporter Victor Gaetan takes readers to the Holy See to explicate Pope Francis‘s diplomacy, show why it works, and offer readers a startling contrast to the dangerous inadequacies of recent U.S. international decisions. About the author Victor Gaetan, Ph.D., has served as an international correspondent for Catholic News Service and the National Catholic Register. He contributes to Foreign Affairs and America magazine. He has written from...
info_outlineWorking on an aid program in one of the most violent places in the world, North East Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, philanthropist, and business leader Steve Killelea asked himself, ‘What are the most peaceful nations?’ Unable to find an answer, he created the world’s leading measure of peace, the Global Peace Index, which receives over 16 billion media impressions annually and has become the definitive go-to index for heads of state. Steve Killelea then went on to establish a world-renowned think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace. Today its work is used by organizations such as the World Bank, United Nations, and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and taught in thousands of university courses around the world.
"Peace in The Age of Chaos" tells of Steve’s personal journey to measure and understand peace. It explores the practical application of his work, which is gathering momentum at a rapid pace. In this time when we are faced with environmental, social, and economic challenges, this book shows us a way forward where Positive Peace, described as creating the optimal environment for human potential to flourish, can lead to a paradigm shift in the ways societies can be managed, making them more resilient and better capable of adapting to their changing environments.
Speaker
Steve Killelea is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), one of the world’s most impactful think tanks on peace and what creates it. Steve is also the creator of the Global Peace Index, the world's leading measure of peace that ranks 163 countries and independent territories by their levels of peacefulness each year, and is used by major organizations such as the World Bank, OECD, UN, as well as governments and thousands of universities worldwide. Over the last two decades, Steve has applied his business skills as one of Australia's leading entrepreneurs to his many global philanthropic activities, including his private family charity, The Charitable Foundation, which now has over three million direct beneficiaries. In recognition of his contribution to the global peace movement, Steve has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and was awarded the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2016. He has also been recognized by the Action on Armed Violence group as one of the 100 most influential people in the world on reducing armed violence. "Today, Steve serves on the President’s Circle for Club de Madrid, the largest forum of former world leaders working democratic former Presidents and Prime Ministers working to strengthen democracy, and is an honorary president for Religions for Peace, the largest organization in the world working on inter-religious challenges.
Discussant
Chic Dambach is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins and American Universities, and he is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. He was President and CEO (currently President Emeritus) of the National Peace Corps Association; former President of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and former Chief of Staff for Congressman John Garamendi. Previously, he held executive positions in the arts, sports, and health, and he was an “expert” advisor to the director of the Peace Corps. He serves as Chair of the Mali Affinity Group, and he has served on dozens of nonprofit boards. He lectures regularly at colleges and universities and at conferences, and he was a senior consultant with BoardSource where he helped write two books on nonprofit governance.