On March 1 the Hope Not Hate Innovators visited Special Representative Farah Pandith at the State Department. Rep Pandith is the first person to occupy the office of Representative to Muslim Communities, appointed by Secretary Clinton in 2009. An extraordinary woman, Rep Pandith is an American Muslim of Indian heritage, who has a background working in the White House and in other roles within the State Department. Read more about her here: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/125492.htm
The Innovators met with Rep Pandith for over an hour engaging on issues of doing interfaith work, distinguishing between syntaxes such as ‘Muslims’ and ‘Muslim World,’ and discussing ways to change their communities for the better. One of the conversations that came up is being mindful of not letting interfaith work to propagate an ‘us and them’ mentality.
Another lesson we learned was you don’t need to reinvent the wheel in making positive change, take advantage of programs and networks that are out there. What you do want to do is “connect the nodes.” Find the existing communities, think about your contacts, and bring it all together to make it happen.
One of our challenges moving forward with the program will be taking these lessons back into the community.
I am 65 years old and have been observing our world for at least the past 48 years. You may think at my age that I am just old school and part of the worlds problem, but a real study of Islam and it’s history will show that Islam and Democracy are antithetical. Your group is made up of young students and you think you can solve all kinds of things with fresh ideas and my money. I can detect that you have been well indoctrinated by our educational system where you are taught to question everything except what your professors (and possibly Hollywood celebrities) tell you. Actually, what you have been taught are not fresh, new ideas. They are the same ideas that have failed time after time around the world. Each generation thinks that they will be the ones who will make it work.
Muslims are responsible for their own negative stereotypes. I have been told for the last 20-30 years that it is only a few young Muslims who have hijacked a “great” religion that is the problem. I observe and I think for myself, though. Osama Bin Laden was not young, the Ayatollahs are not young people, the leaders of Iran, Syria, and Sudan to name a few, are not young people and their followers are not just a few. I do not hate Muslims, but that does not mean they do not hate us. Read the Qur’an or a true history of Muhammad sometime. Islam is a barbaric religion and many Muslims are a barbaric people. I will not include all Muslims as being barbaric, hateful or anti-democracy. Many Muslims are like many Christians, they identify themselves as Muslim or Christian, but they really don’t practice their religion.
I have read what I have written and I apologize for the apparent harshness of my writing. It sounds mean spirited and I don’t mean to be. I wish I were more gifted at expressing my disagreements in writing, without coming across as being super critical or even hateful, which I am not.