The right way to start a dialogue
“In this profession, if nobody’s mad at you, you’re doing something wrong.” Those words, for whatever reason, have always stuck with me. St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan said them while he was guest-lecturing a journalism course I took in college.
I’ve written a number of stories on Jewish-Muslim relations -- both positive and negative -- in the Valley, but perhaps none have earned as many passionate responses as “Islam 101? BJE course on radicalism labeled as basics,” which we ran July 30.
McClellan said that he lets the criticisms roll off his back, and that on occasion when he can’t think of a good topic for a column, he does a question-and-answer piece with some of the funnier comments. I would love to be able to do the same. “Dear Josh, why are you such a lousy journalist? Your parents did a terrible job raising you.” “Yes, reader, I had a horrible childhood. For my 16th birthday I asked my parents for a Porsche. They bought me a Honda. What a Japanese piece of garbage.”
But that’s neither here nor there. Now that I’ve finished ranting, please allow me to get back on track.
The real reason for this blog post is to give a mention to Foundation for Intercultural Dialogue (FID), a Tempe-based nonprofit founded in 2004 and run by the local Turkish Muslim community. I had intended to include FID’s point of view in the Islam 101 story, but was unable to get in touch with them before deadline. I had the pleasure of visiting the organization’s office yesterday (Aug. 12) for the first time.
Ertugrul Kostereli, social and community services manager, and board member Sadik Kucuksari told me that FID bases much of what it does on the principals of Muslim Turkish author and educator Fethullah Gülen, and gave me some books to read, including “Muslim Citizens of the Globalized World” by Robert Hunt and “Advocate of Dialogue: Fethullah Gülen” by Ali Ünal, to learn more about the organization’s principles.
“Our goal is contributing to our community that we live in,” said Kucuksari, explaining FID wants to learn firsthand about the other cultures in the Valley, as well as to teach about Islam.
Kostereli said that Islamophobia in the United States is, in part, a fault of the American Muslim communities because they are often closed communities that don’t always “live by the standards of the culture they live in.” FID is working with the local Muslim community to open up to other cultures in the Valley. The nonprofit recently facilitated a four-part intercultural dialogue between members of the Muslim community and Temple Emanuel of Tempe.
Rabbi Andrew Straus, spiritual leader of Temple Emanuel, said that the dialogue was a success. “It opened up a conversation between our congregation and their (members), between the Jewish community here and the Islamic community.” Straus said that a number of Jews and Muslims from the dialogue still get together socially to participate in community-service projects and exchange recipes.
Kostereli said that the nonprofit is not looking to grow, just to spread understanding locally between different cultures “by whatever means necessary” by creating “a platform for everyone to share ideas.”
To learn more, visit fid-az.org.
13 Aug, 2010 >
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