November 22, 2009 Café: Islamic Society of Milwaukee

Our first Interfaith Youth Café was held at the new Islamic Center on November 22, 2009. Six congregations brought young people to meet each other and experience interfaith dialog. As always, they first discuss the topics briefly within their own faith community to get some guidance and wisdom from their own traditions and beliefs.  Next, they meet in mixed groups for three rounds of conversation. Finally, they return to their own faith community to compare notes and discuss what they learned about the different faith traditions. The café ends after each faith group gives a summary of their experience, and then each faith community offers a prayer for the others.

The theme for our November café was reconciliation, since that the United Nations had declared  2009 the International Year of Reconciliation. See http://www.unic-ir.org/Recouncilation.pdf

Three basic topics were discussed during the three rounds of conversation:

• Apology and Forgiveness: Holy writings and personal experiences
• Formal celebrations of Reconciliation: From your faith tradition and personal family practices
• Conflict and separation: Consequences from lack of reconciliation, both personal and national

Each faith group was asked for a short summary of their experiences at the café:

Muslim congregation: Islamic Society of Milwaukee

We liked experiencing other people’s religions and learning new things, such as the Jewish traditions of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana. It’s a good way to meet new people and learn about what others believe.

Jewish congregations: Beth El Ner Tamid and Congregation Sinai

We liked meeting new people with new and different ideas, and found we could identify the universalities – what we all had in common. This was a great learning experience… now we know things like Islam’s year is based on a lunar calendar, and Quakers believe God is in everyone. They don’t have holydays, and they don’t believe in war.

Quaker congregation: Milwaukee Friends Meetings

The table conversations were insightful and gave us both the formal religious perspective as well as personal perspectives on the different topics we discussed. We heard what the terms for forgiveness are from each faith tradition, and special holy days that other faith groups celebrate. We got to observe how Islamic prayer is conducted.  We learned that most participants believe it is harder to ask for forgiveness for yourself than it is to forgive someone else.

Christian congregations: Tippecanoe Presbyterian and House of Peace

As always, we learned more about different faith traditions. Today, we saw the way Muslims pray. People who attend these interfaith cafés would get a different outlook on their own religion as well as the religions of others, and they would see the differences and similarities between themselves and people of other faith communities.