Students Discuss Religious Unity

Approximately 20 students representing undergraduate religious groups, faculty, and administrators met last night to discuss how the Harvard College Interfaith Council (HCIC) could bring together the disparate religious groups on campus.

HCIC leaders convened the group to strategize ways the group could become a more stable and significant presence on campus. To ensure the sustainability of HCIC, Nura A. Hossainzadeh ’06, the group’s co-chair and also a Crimson editor, asked organizations to nominate official representatives to regularly attend HCIC meetings.

HCIC Co-Chair Om L. Lala ’06 said that all official undergraduate religious organizations were represented at the meeting. He explained to the group that the four “pillars” of HCIC are to break down barriers between organizations, to expose people to other faiths, to increase networking, and to coordinate service projects.

Although the United Ministry at Harvard—a consortium of religious professionals on campus—has brought people of multiple faiths together during times of crisis, such as in response to the events of Sept. 11 and the tsunami, Lala said such efforts tended to be reactive rather than proactive.

In the early months of the HCIC, which was founded last spring, the organization held discussion dinners addressing issues such as the role of religion in politics, gender roles, and notions of afterlife.

Aslihan E. Manisali ’08, a member of the Harvard Islamic Society (HIS), said the Fast-A-Thon—a nationwide fast for charity that drew 500 Harvard participants—was a good example of the type of interfaith collaboration that HCIC could help foster.

The success “wouldn’t have happened if we just used our own resources,” Manisali said. She added that collaboration with organizations beyond the HIS’s usual network was the reason the HIS beat out other organizations in the nationwide fast, winning an extra $500 for the Save the World Foundation..

Participants suggested that future Interfaith Council events might include joint community service events and discussion dinners addressing controversial issues that intersected with religion, including homosexuality and stem cell research. They also suggested an interfaith concert and a bus tour of Boston-area religious spaces.

They cited a lack of official infrastructure, busy schedules, and the tendency to look inward to carry out events sponsored by their organizations as reasons why organizations hadn’t actively engaged in coalitional work yet.

Sheel C. Ganatra ’06, co-president of Dharma, the Hindu students’ association, said younger organizations also struggle to maintain a balance between sustaining the organization and branching outwards to learn from others.

“Often times, if you’re with a religious group that’s just beginning to discover itself, you can lose track of what’s going on,” she said. “It would be nice to have less formal events as well.”

Diana L. Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies and director of the Pluralism Project, voiced her enthusiasm for building deeper understandings of each other across faiths and celebrating the “dignity of difference” in a world where religion has become a divisive issue.

The group’s faculty advisor Ali Asani, professor of Indo-Muslim languages, said the Interfaith Council is a positive step towards not simply recognizing difference, but embracing it.

Undergraduate Council president Matthew J. Glazer ’06 was also in attendance last night.