Eboo Patel: I have learned so much more about Islam in conversation wi...

The question of how people orient around religion differently, or interact with one another, whether that be based on conflict or cooperation, will be one of the most engaging questions of the 21st century.

Eboo Patel

cooperation conflict people

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 the whole. It is the belief that the common good is best served when each community has a chance to make its unique contribution.

Eboo Patel

pluralism-is unique religious

To see the other side, to defend another people, not despite your tradition but because of it, is the heart of pluralism

Eboo Patel

pluralism heart people

Show me a religion that doesn't care about compassion. Show me a religion that doesn't care about stewardship of the environment. Show me a religion that doesn't care about hospitality.

Eboo Patel

stewardship care compassion

My favorite single line from the Quran is from Surah 49:13, which says that God made us different nations and tribes that we may come to know one another, in the sense that diversity is holy and it was created by God. What we humans are meant to do with that diversity is engage in positive interaction with each other and come to know one another because knowledge is holy and pluralism or positive engagement is holy.

Eboo Patel

diversity communication may

When thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else's story, they have the chance to write a new story together.

Eboo Patel

together writing people

We have to build bridges that are stronger than the bombs that other people might throw

Eboo Patel

stronger bridges people

I dream of a world where people from different backgrounds are praying and working for the flourishment of communities different from them, and I find my sustenance not only in these stories in scripture, but in stories of human existence also - the story of the Bosnian Muslim man who took to a Serbian couple with a new baby a liter of milk every day during that horrible struggle in the former Yugoslavia, because he said even if our tribes, our nations, are at war with each other, there is something deeply human about me wishing that your baby survives and is secure.

Eboo Patel

couple dream baby

Everywhere I go - from villages outside Kandy, Sri Lanka, to community centers in Amman, Jordan, to offices at the State Department in Washington, D.C. - I find people with a similar story. When thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else's story, they have the chance to write a new story together.

Eboo Patel

sri-lanka writing people

I thought about the meaning of pluralism in a world where the forces that seek to divide us are strong. I came to one conclusion: We have to save each other. It’s the only way to save ourselves.

Eboo Patel

strong way world

To teach your child to only be a Muslim in Muslim spaces or only a Christian in Christian spaces means in a way that you're teaching them a religious identity that is relevant to only a very small part of their lives, because the vast majority of their lives in the 21st century are going to be lived in interaction with others.

Eboo Patel

religious christian children

Have big dreams but focus only on what you can control: your own thoughts, words and actions. This was Gandhi's way ... in the words of Buddhist poet Gary Snyder, our job is to move the world a millionth of an inch.

Eboo Patel

buddhist dream jobs

One of the best ways of showing pluralism in action is for people to do service together, and that has so many benefits.

Eboo Patel

benefits together people

What we pluralists have to do is to say to the people standing on the faith line, particularly the young ones, no, pluralism is the wish of the creator. It is the greatest opportunity for humanity.

Eboo Patel

pluralism-is opportunity people

Finding Mecca in America weaves social theory and concrete ethnography into a significant contribution on Muslims in the United States, illuminating broader questions about the integration of minority and immigrant groups along the way. This is an important work and a joy to read.

Eboo Patel

important joy america

The totalitarians in the world are very, very small. Only the smallest part of humanity wishes and acts upon the destruction of others. The pluralists are far larger. Those of us who believe in a world where we live together - we're far larger. The problem is we haven't made our case compelling across the world yet.

Eboo Patel

humanity wish believe

Too many people think that the faith line divides Muslims and Christians or Jews and Hindus, or just to say that there is this clash of civilizations and people from different religions are inevitably against each other, inherently opposed to each other. I don't believe that for a second. I think the faith line divides totalitarians and pluralists, which is to say that totalitarians from different religious backgrounds.

Eboo Patel

religious christian believe

Religious extremists want to show us that the only possibility is for us to kill each other, so September 11 is not only heinous murder, it is also global performance. It is also putting an idea into the world, an idea of destruction.

Eboo Patel

september-11 religious ideas

A social entrepreneur is somebody who knows how to make an idea reality, and one of the great ideas of our time is pluralism. Can people from different backgrounds live together in mutual peace and loyalty? And what we need is a generation of young social entrepreneurs who know how to make that great idea reality in an historical moment where religious extremists are, frankly, making their idea reality.

Eboo Patel

loyalty religious reality

I as a Muslim believe deeply in the differences that are within Islam. But I also take seriously the idea that we have to come to know one another.

Eboo Patel

differences believe ideas