Jewish Teens Wanted for Online Interfaith Dialogue
Children of Abraham’s Global Discovery Program (GDP) is an intensive four-month online seminar that is designed to act as an educational gateway to bring together Muslim and Jewish youth from eleven cities across the world, including Damascus, Dubai, Jakarta, London, Montreal, Marrakech, Moscow, Paris, Riyadh, Tehran, and New York.
Participants investigate a wide variety of topics and go through a journey of mutual discovery. They examine their current, as well as prospective relations, engage in thought-provoking discussions about their common Abrahamic roots, their social and cultural similarities and differences, the globalization of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its effects on global Jewish-Muslim relations.
The main goals of the program are:
- To incubate young Muslim and Jewish leaders in a virtual community that enables them to explore the frontiers of the Muslim-Jewish relationship.
- To bring young Muslims and Jews together to examine the bases of the past, present and future relationship between Islam and Judaism.
- To provide Muslims and Jews who do not have the opportunity to interact with each other a forum to do so and thereby gain some of the perspective that living in a pluralistic society brings.
- To model effective methods of interfaith dialogue so that participants can bring Children of Abraham’s message to their own communities.
- To transmit the knowledge and confidence to take on leading roles in Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
- To encourage Muslim and Jewish youth to build empathetic relationships that will be the basis of a broader rapprochement between the two communities.
Children of Abraham is currently seeking more Jewish participants, aged 16-18. If you, or anyone you know, may be interested, apply online today!
This sounds like a lovely idea, but why no Israelis and no Palestinians? Across the world, there have been man occaissions of Muslims and Jews cooperating. While erhaps today there is some animosity, it has been clearly demonstrated that there is no real conflict between teh religion. This program seems cute, and good, but misses the place where it can be most effective, and is most needed.
—Josh Frankel · March 26th, 2007 at 3:35 am
Dear Frankel, Most of the Jewish-Muslim dialogue work revolves around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In a nut shell, the point of our program is not to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, there are hundreds of initiatives trying to resolve that. We want the youth from different parts of the Muslim world to be able to connect to their Jewish peers in major Jewish communities. The goal of the program is to have these teenagers talk about their relationship to Islam and Judaism, their complex identitites, their own understanding of their faith and how they think it relates to others and how others relate to it.
There is not a problem between Islam and Judaism per say but there is deep suspicion, ignorance and very deep-rooted biases and misunderstandings on both sides. Lack of exposure to the ‘other’ has bred hatred and fear of the unknown and the media imagery of Muslims and Jews do not help either. Globalisation of the Palestinain-Israeli conflict has also globalised the intolerance and hatred. We very much want to address the anti-semitism and Islamophobia that is out there and help these young people open their minds and hearts to their perceived unknown, faceless ‘enemy’ and give them a chance to know who the ‘other’ is and what they are all about.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the program, its content or how it is conducted.
—Gul Rukh Rahman · March 27th, 2007 at 2:18 pm