“Interfaith Leadership and Service”

Our conference came to end with Eboo Patel quoting Maulana Rumi’s famous words: “Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…”

This closing plenary marked the beginning of a new chapter in the interfaith youth movement. The session was keynoted by Joshua DuBois, Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnerships and Rami Nashashibi, Executive Director of the Inner-city Muslim Action Network. Their inspiring words were followed with concluding remarks by Eboo Patel, who brought the conference to a close through highlighting stories of new leaders, new projects, and new partnerships.

Rami began his comments with recognition of the Interfaith Youth Core’s visionary and yet simple idea: bringing communities together around a common commitment to building bridges through social justice. However, while extraordinary interfaith cooperation is happening in communities across the world, there are communities living alongside this success who are not part of this dialogue.  He urged us, who are open to the possibility of dialogue and understand and empathize with the human condition, to broaden our vision and deepen our purpose. Rami emphasized that through this iteration of our work, we are not just forging new paths, but we are forging new models of for the world.

Joshua DuBois outlined the two main principles of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships: 1) the tremendous amount of work that needs to be done in our country on issues like education, healthcare, etc. and 2) an optimism that we can overcome these challenges just as we have overcome other challenges of the past. Joshua emphasized the importance of the government connecting with real change agents in communities, people who are bringing change by engaging in real grassroots work, recognizing that interfaith service builds houses and meets needs, and can also prohibit conflict. With this in mind, Joshua stated, the President’s office launched this summer’s “United We Serve” campaign, with an explicit focus on interfaith service projects. Finally, he urged us to reconcile the beliefs of each of us with the good of all of us.

Eboo brought us back full circle, back to the beginning: in a religiously diverse world where young leaders are interacting with one another with growing frequency – will their interaction be based on bridges, bubbles, barriers, or bombs? Interfaith leaders build bridges. They change the conversation, start new projects, and impact environments. Will we step up to the task and build bridges between our communities and hence strengthen the Interfaith Youth Movement?

As Rumi said, “Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…”

Jenan Mohajir
Interfaith Youth Core Trainer
October 27, 2009