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Biography
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"On Pluralism" John Winthrop, one of the earliest European settlers in America, gave voice to this sense of possibility. He told his compatriots that their society would be like a city upon a hill, a beacon for the world. It was a hope rooted in Winthrop’s Christian faith, and no doubt he imagined his city on a hill with a steeple in the center. Throughout the centuries, America has remained a deeply religious country while at the same time becoming a remarkably diverse one. Indeed, America is the most religiously devout nation in the West and the most religiously diverse country in the world. The steeple at the center of the city on a hill is now surrounded by the minarets of Muslim mosques, the Hebrew script of Jewish synagogues, the chanting of Buddhist sangas, and the statues of Hindu temples. In fact, there are now more Muslims in America than Episcopalians, which was the church attended by some of America’s Founding Fathers. One hundred years ago, the great African-American scholar W.E.B. DuBois warned that the problem of the century would be the problem of the color line. The 21st century might well be dominated by a different line, the faith line. From Northern Ireland to South Asia, the Middle East to Middle America, people are killing each other in the name of God. But the faith line does not divide Christians and Muslims or Hindus and Jews. The faith line separates totalitarians and pluralists. On one side of the faith line are those who believe that only one interpretation of one religion is a legitimate way of being, believing and belonging on Earth. Everyone else needs to be cowed, or converted, or condemned, or killed. On the other side of the faith line are the religious pluralists who hold that people believing in different creeds and belonging to different communities need to learn to live together in some sort of mutual trust and loyalty. Religious pluralism is neither mere coexistence nor forced consensus. It is a form of proactive cooperation that affirms the identity of the constituent communities while emphasizing that the well-being of each and all depends on the health of everybody else. It is the belief that the common good is best served when each community has a chance to make its unique contribution. America is a grand gathering of souls, the vast majority from elsewhere. The American genius lies in allowing these souls to contribute their texture to the American tradition, to add new notes to the American song. I am an American with a Muslim soul. My soul carries a long history of heroes, movements, and civilizations that sought to submit to the will of God. My soul watched while Ishmael and Prophet Abraham built Islam’s holiest shrine, the kaaba. My soul listened as the Prophet Muhammad preached the central messages of Islam, tazaaqa and tawhid, compassionate justice and the oneness of God. In the Middle Ages, my soul spread to the East and the West, praying in the mosques and studying in the libraries of the great medieval Muslim cities of Cairo, Baghdad, and Cordoba. My soul whirled with Rumi, read Aristotle with Averroes, traveled through Central Asia with Nasir Khusrow. In the colonial era, my Muslim soul was stirred to justice. It marched with Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Gandhi in their satyagraha to free India. It stood with Farid Esack, Ebrahim Moosa, Rashied Omar, and the Muslim Youth Movement in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The stories of my Muslim soul add new notes to the American song. I bring the Muslim story of creation. God created humanity with his breath and made us his abd and khalifa—his servant and representative—upon the earth. When the angels protested the exalted role that God had set before humanity, God vouched for our goodness by saying to the Angels, “I know what you do not know.” I am not from the East I bring the Qur’an’s guidance on brotherhood: “O humankind, God has created you from male and female that you may come to know each other: Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most righteous.” For me, this is where Islam and America meet. In one eye I carry this ancient Muslim vision of pluralism, in the other eye I carry the best of the American spirit. And in my heart, I pray that we make real this possibility: a city on a hill where different religious communities respectfully share space and collectively serve the common good; a world where diverse nations and peoples come to know one another in a spirit of brotherhood and righteousness; a century in which we achieve a common life together. Conversation with Eboo Patel Lydia Talbot: Eboo, thank you for living out Gandhi’s instruction to “be the change you want to see in the world,” as peacemaker. You are a Shia Muslim from India. Your wife, Shehnaz, is a Sunni from India. Eboo Patel: That’s right. Patel: Well, America, as we hear over and over again, is really the land of opportunity. And that’s opportunity on so many fronts. It’s the opportunity to make a life for yourself in terms of economic and educational mobility. But it’s also the opportunity to be who you are, to bring your faith tradition across the seas, to bring your culture and your language, to cook the food that was important to your ancestors, to pass down the stories that were whispered to you in your ear when you were a baby. So I think when my parents looked across the ocean from India to America, they thought to themselves, “I want to be a part of a nation that will allow me to be who I am and to contribute that to the broader fabric.” Talbot: But is the sectarian conflict in India, the violence between Hindus and Muslims, troubling to you and disturbing? Patel: I think India, like America, like every nation, has multiple stories. So I go back to India every year or two and I have lots of Hindu friends in India and lots of Sikh and Christian and Buddhist and Jain friends and Muslim friends there. And we have a wonderful time together. So that is one story of India. It’s a story of hundreds of millions of Hindus really having a powerful, positive relationship with their Muslim and Jain and Christian minorities. The other story of India is a story of religious conflict which emerged really powerfully in the late 1940s where a million, maybe more, were killed in sectarian conflict. I think the challenge for us, whether it’s in India or it’s in Iraq or it’s in America, is which story are you going to bring to the fore. And America has stories of ethnic and religious conflict and ethnic and religious cooperation. We just have to work and do everything we can to make sure that’s it’s cooperation that dominates the 21st century and not conflict. Daniel Pawlus: That’s what I wanted to ask you about, Eboo. You beautifully laid out your dream for the future of America. What do you think are the greatest challenges we’re facing right now in understanding the Muslim religion, just in a general sense? What do we really need to progress in that regard in your observation? Patel: I appreciate that question very much, Daniel, and I think it’s a challenge that Americans of Muslim faith and Americans of other faiths, or no faith at all, share. That challenge is coming to know one another. One of my favorite lines in the Holy Qur’an is that God made you different so that you could come to know one another. We need to make sure that the lines of communication and openness are as clear as possible between us. There is a great line by the poet William Stafford that says if you don’t take the time to get to know me and I don’t take the time to get to know you, then a pattern that others made may prevail in this world and following the wrong God home we could miss our star.* I think we have to remember that the world still looks to America as an example of pluralism, as an example of cooperation across ethnic and religious lines. So what we do here in Chicago, in our high schools, in our communities, it matters elsewhere. We are still a city on a hill and I think one of our great gifts to the 21st century will be as a model of religious pluralism. Talbot: Religious pluralism, Eboo. Is pluralism possible in all religions? I mean, after all, we have people in the same faith killing each other these days. I guess the question is, religious diversity that would be possible even though there are Muslims who demand a Muslim state, Jews who demand a Jewish state, Christians in America who want a Christian nation. What about that internecine warfare and that exclusivity? Patel: Right. Well, that’s why I think that this century is going to be dominated by what I called the faith line. But we have to be very careful by who we put on different sides of that line. I don’t think that as a Muslim I am on one side of the faith line and that Jews or Christians or Hindus are on the other side. I frankly think I share my side of the faith line with the vast majority of the world: Jewish and Christian and Hindu and Buddhist. And that side of the faith line is called the pluralist side. We believe that people from different backgrounds should live together in mutual trust and loyalty. Talbot: I remember in 1993 when the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, the producer of this program, produced the documentary on the centennial Parliament of the World’s Religions here in Chicago. Dave Hardin said, “Wouldn’t it be great if the Evangelical could say to the Muslim or the Buddhist to the Hindu, or whoever, ‘Isn’t it interesting how you see God?’ And that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it, in the Interfaith Youth Core? Patel: That’s part of what we’re doing. A big part of what we’re doing is about the energy of young people. And I really believe that if we’re going to have religious pluralism in America or in India or in Iraq, young people are going to play a major leadership role. One of the great figures of pluralism in America is, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. An African American, southern Baptist, who not only called his white brothers and sisters to come together in one nation but also learned profoundly from an Indian Hindu in Gandhi, and marched arm in arm in Selma with an Orthodox Jew, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and carried on a correspondence with a Buddhist monk in Thich Nhat Hanh. And King, we have to keep remembering, was just 26 years old in Montgomery, Alabama, when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. So, I see in my generation that same fire, that same power. And I think it takes place largely in volunteer projects, in service projects to others. Pawlus: I know we’d love to talk about that more. I wonder if I could ask you just a little bit more about the faith line that you laid out. Historically this has always been an issue, hasn’t it? I mean throughout the centuries. Is there something different about this time in history that can give us a greater hope that we’re going to get a little bit farther with this? There always seems to be a need for a bad guy or conflict somewhere in the world, around religion many times. Do you have any thoughts toward that? Patel: I think what makes the 21st century unique is the fact that people from different religious backgrounds live in close quarters with each other. So you actually see Muslims walking down the street. You hear Jewish prayer. You listen to Hindu and Buddhist chanting. There is a famous story several centuries ago. A German scholar would lay out his map and in the center of it would be Europe, and everywhere else he would have written “there be monsters,” because at that time, several centuries ago, people from different backgrounds were not in as frequent and intense contact. But today we are. I know that people from a different religion or a different nation or a different race aren’t monsters. I know they are just as human as me. My question is, how can I cooperate with you to serve others? I think that if that’s the question that guides the 21st century—How can I cooperate to serve others?—we’re going to have a good century. If that’s not the question, we’re in some trouble. Talbot: And that we all have more in common than in conflict. Now, you did your doctorate in the sociology of religion at Oxford. You were a Rhodes Scholar. How proud your parents must be of you! But you are a most accomplished young man and is it appropriate for me to ask you how old you are on this show? Patel: Sure. You can ask! I’m 31. Talbot: 31! Patel: But actually, I want to say something on the topic of accomplishment if I could. I think accomplishment and achievement are never finally measured or even initially measured on curriculum vitaes and resumes. I think it is only measured, if at all, in terms of the service you offer. Talbot: Faith without action is no faith at all. And that’s where I wanted to compliment you as I did at the beginning of the program for living out that instruction to be the change that you want to see in the world. But I am asking you about your age in the context of your accomplishments because you are an amazing inspiration, an example certainly for young people, people of all ages. You’re bringing people together for peace making, for understanding by breaking down stereotypes, Eboo. What are the things that most excite you about what you have seen through the Interfaith Youth Core? Patel: That’s such a great question. When I first started this organization, it was in 1998, and I was just beginning graduate school at the time at Oxford, which meant that I was at the doorstep to the whole world. I mean England is much closer in proximity to Africa and to Asia. So I would go there all the time. I spent several months in South Africa. I spent some time in Kenya. I spent time in India and Sri Lanka. And everywhere I went, people would ask me to run a small interfaith youth program. How to bring these kids, these Hindu and Buddhist kids in Sri Lanka together, or kids from African traditionalist and Muslim and Christian and Baha’i backgrounds in South Africa. And I would ask them, how do you want to serve the world? They would not only have these amazing dreams but they would immediately want to make them into concrete projects. I thought to myself, my gosh, what enormous energy there is in young people all over the world! I saw one thing similar in young people in Kenya, in South Africa, in Sri Lanka, in India and England and Turkey and the States—wherever else I’ve been blessed to be—and it’s an enormous energy to serve others. I feel, in a way, all I’m doing is getting out of the way of that energy as best as possible so that it can serve others and it can do it in a cooperative and pluralist spirit. Pawlus: We are so blessed to have you here in Chicago as the home for Interfaith Youth Core and it touches so many people. Thank you so very much, Eboo, for joining us today. Patel: Thank you, Daniel. Talbot: And that’s a beautiful dream for his baby boy. Pawlus: Absolutely. Patel: Right. It’s the most faithful thing anybody ever does. Thank you, Lydia. * A Ritual to Read to Each Other If you don’t know the kind of person I am - William Stafford (1914-1993
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