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Old August 16, 2007, 07:12 PM
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ammark ammark is offline
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Join Date: May 17, 2005
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Puck
one of the surprising aspects of church attendance is that how welcome the non-believer is made to feel. i have attended a lot of church services over the years as i have had a lot of friends who went into the (christian) ministry. the local vicar is a friend of mine as we both attended the same night class on classical arabic (yes the local church of england vicar went to a night class to learn arabic!) and i had often been invited to his church's interfaith dialogue seminars and meetings.

....however, the syltei imam and the mosque council would not allow him entrace to the mosque!
I'm not surprised. I have had many a discussion on religion and theology with an ethiopian coptic minister who was a post-graduate student at our college's divinity school, and ate his meals at our table. He had told me then that their curriculum included courses on Islam and Arabic, and it was required for them to either do these courses or take substitute courses on other world religions.

The only place I have come across embracing and tolerant imams by contrast is at my university or the downtown masjid here in toronto. I'm not surprised that (and mind you this is *my* generalisation... and specific to Toronto) at the small mosques in the immigrant ghettoes, as the older diaspora community often wants imams who would cater to their mindset and issues of salvation, the imams do not actively speak of engaging the community with the non-muslim society at large. There seems to be a genuine incapability or disinterest in these mosques to do some outreach and make a positive impression on the wider non-muslim host society. Secondly the city here is extremely multi-ethnic and is composed mainly of multi-national immigrant areas than of the white 4th generation Canadian. Its always the larger, organised, well-funded suburban mosques instead that seem to engage in this outreach, interfaith dialogues and political activism with the greater canadian mainstream.

The bit about the Dutch I said was an offhanded remark which I didnt expect a serious response from. I have never been to the Netherlands, however I have travelled a little bit in Western Europe and interacted a little bit with Belgian, Dutch, French, German, Scandinavian and English students... aside from the North American bunch at my university. On the few occasions that I have been able to gauge religiousness in my fellow students (mostly in first and second year), often times they have expressed their disillusionment with any organised religion and have considered it a barrier to progress, in the sense that religion is often perceived to be at odds with dispassionate academic and scientific work. Their morality may be founded on Christianity, however their philosophies no longer are about spirituality in life but more agnostic existentialism.

I guess I made a general extension and assumed that the educated Western European student/youth would probably have similar values. Furthermore, from having been in certain countries/cities of Western Europe (and from the media), I do think Europe is a far more liberal, less conservative place than North America hands down. For the most part I perceive Western European societies to be in a post-modern state, vigourously defensive of the complete removal of religion from public life, while upholding values that tolerate all forms of diversity, and thus it includes hedonism and materialism as a lifestyle ...which seems to be greatly at odds with the austerity of religion.
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