Interfaith Youth Forum - Reflection

· While participating in the activity, I felt very excited to hear about the different points of views of the different religions. Some of the things I heard surprised me. For example, one of the Jain girls said that they believed that plants such as lettuce had souls so there did not eat those either. Although I respect their beliefs and traditions, I couldn’t help but wonder how limited their diet must be if they considered plants to have souls and thought it wrong to eat them. Also, there was a Mormon girl who said she didn’t care about the environment because she had been taught that humans were the most important part of the world. I was astonished to hear this because I had previously believed that most religions advocated protecting nature and believe nature and mankind to be equal. I kept back some of my comments during the discussions as to not seem rude and disrespectful t anyone because I wouldn’t want someone to insult my beliefs.

· I think that this sort of activity is very important. In a world where there is so much hate and wars are caused by deferring beliefs, there needs to be something that shows us that we are not much different. By highlighting these similarities, we can see how foolish it is to hate each other because of a slight difference in our ideas. In this activity, we found that most of the people at the table had the same ideas and that even though we came from different traditions, we all had similar likes, dislikes and complaints. If we were to sit down and talk about our views peacefully, we could come to compromises and solutions more efficiently and without any damage. I think that personally I was able to remove some stereotypes and rumors I had heard about some faiths and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to do so.

· Some of the lessons I learned at this forum were not judging someone by their faith, not discriminating, and talking about your ideas openly. Often times we judge someone when we find out what religion they are part of due to the activities of some religious extremists. One big example of this can be found in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Due to the ideas of some Muslim extremists, many Muslims were being attacked around the United States because of their identity and traditions. We need to realize that it’s wrong to condemn a whole people for the actions of a few. Also, I learned that if we talk about our ideas amongst each other more often, we can see the things we share and unite in a common cause to fix issues in our world. For example, after the forum, the participants planned an event on earth day that would consist of picking up trash, planting trees, and other basic earth day activities. By finding the common ground that most of us believed that the environment should be protected, we were able to come together and make a different in our local community. This same concept can be applied to other ideas and projects.