Tuesday 12 December 2006

Dec 12: Last meeting of year

Today's interfaith society meeting was the last meeting of the year. The next meeting will be on Tuesday 23 January 2007, after the XMas holidays.

We had a few new muslim friends today, including Abdul Hannan, Issa and others, and a no-religion friend Yoji. First we discussed about the future of the society. It was decided to continue with our programme of visits to places of worship. So far this year we have been to a Jewish reform synagogue (in city centre), Bahai centre (in fallowfield), Hindu temple (in chorlton), and Sikh Gurudwara (near Salford). Abdul suggested we could visit a Mosque either ithe Didsbury Mosque or in Cheetam Hill. Other candidates for a visit are a Catholic Church, Anglican Cathedral, Buddhist temple, Jain community centre in Longsight etc.

We also reviewed the multifaith week in the student union that was last week, and the very interesting interfaith dialogues on Religion and Gender (Thursday), Religion and Conflict (Monday), Faith and Environment (during Abraham's table on Thursday), Religion and science (on Friday) etc. We can also continue to discuss such important issues from different religious persepctives in a friendly atmosphere in the interfaith society meetings as well. After all, most religions have similar perspectives to many such issues and it will be worth stressing on our commonalities and where we agree.

Abdul also played a very interesting recorded speech by Tony Blair and a piece from a US radio show (although it was a hoax) about discrimination against muslims. We had a long and friendly discussion about the issue from various perspectives both faith and non faith. Abdul also spoke his views about the meaning of tolerance and how followers of different religions should get together to fight discrimination.

Finally, John informed us that the next Abraham's table will be sometime in March 2007 (also jointly organised by interfaith society and the multifaith reference group, and including delicious food like last week!) and Tariq Ramadan, who is a very famous writer, will be invited as a speaker.

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