Christians and Muslims met on the UPEI campus Tuesday for an event to mark diversity week, and things got a little tense.
A panel of two Muslims and two Christians spoke to an audience of about 25 people at the chaplaincy centre. It is one of many events for the week coordinated by the diversity office of UPEI Student Services.
Speakers and members of the audience quoted passages from the Bible and Qur´an, each encouraging people to follow a path of peace.
"Part of what makes us diverse is our claims to absolute truth which can be good but most of the time humans use it for bad," said Josh Duffy a panel member and religious studies student at UPEI. "We fail to realize that only God can convert anybody . . .
"Our responsibility to merge this whole diversity is to just honour God in our own lives, live for him and let him sort the things out," said Duffy.
"I (view) this whole pride and conversion thing as being a huge detriment to unity and peace in the world," said Duffy.
"I don't think you can really make somebody want to believe something," said panel member Jo-Ann Esseghaier. "It has to come from within."
"Maybe your behaviour, by being a model, you can give who you are and people (will follow)," said audience member Khadija Ghanam. "I think the main thing here, we should be all 'love luminaries' and just spread love and peace and respect to each other.
"The main objective of religion is peace and love and that should be the main objective for each," said Ghanam.
"My point is we don't necessarily need to believe exactly the same things to come along side each other in a spirit of peace," said Duffy in another portion of the meeting.
"For example, Jesus went to the Samaritans and they hated the Jews. They were enemies of the Jews but Jesus transgressed those differences to bring peace and revelation to them.
"I shouldn't need to expect you to receive Jesus as God for me to (work with you)," said Duffy speaking to a Muslim couple in the audience.
One of the panel members was UPEI student Rami Nassif who asked if he could speak past the allotted time on an associated topic. He was given that chance later in the meeting, but was soon asked to stop.
He had begun to look at the definition of terrorism and use it to look at the actions of European cultures, beginning hundreds of years ago in South America. He said he wanted to look at the media interpretation of Islam.
Members of the audience and moderator Sister Sue Kidd intervened, saying the direction he was going, likely to say that all religions and cultures can be accused of being terrorist, was not in the spirit of meeting.
"The purpose of this is to let us talk to each other, with each other," said Kidd. "You are putting forward a media issue . . . but that is not what we would like to be about tonight."
There is one little difference. Islam considers Jesus as a prophet. Judaism considers Jesus and Mohhamed heretics. There is more commonalities between Islam and Christianity than between Christianity and Judaism...