The Muslim speaker, Mohammad Aslam Khaki, is an authority on Islamic law, child development and human rights. He is currently the chair of Insaaf Welfare Trust.
The Christian speaker was Mehboob Francis Sada, an author and lecturer on interfaith and human rights issues. He is the director of the Christian studies center in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
The two Pakistanis have worked together for several years to promote interfaith understanding. The men were joined by Yasmin Haider, a Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist who is also married to Khaki.
The program consisted of discussions, dialogues and workshops dealing with interfaith understanding and included Muslim and Christian worship. Khaki and Sada also spoke on WAMH, the College's radio station, on Thursday night and attended the College's weekly Hillel dinner.
The program at the College is part of a large-scale program operated by Presbyterian Church U.S.A. According to Paul Sorrentino, the director of Religious Life at the College and advisor to the Amherst Christian Fellowship (ACF), the Presbyterian Church pushes its congregations to engage in interfaith dialogue. It has created this program to unite 10 teams of interfaith partners from seven countries.
Khaki and Sada stressed that interfaith understanding seeks to bring individuals of different faiths into harmony-not the faiths themselves. Both speakers said that their goal for this program is to educate people about the state of inter-religious affairs in Pakistan.
Muslims make up a majority of the population in Pakistan. According to Khaki, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Muslims in Pakistan started to think that Americans and Europeans wanted to eliminate Muslims. Because of fear-dominated views like this, Khaki, Sada and Haider said that the similarities between Christianity and Islam are largely ignored. They said that Christians in Pakistan are discriminated against. Haider said that many efforts at interfaith understanding are viewed by Pakistanis as part of a Western agenda. However, Khaki added that Muslims are now beginning to defend the rights of non-Muslims.
Khaki, Sada and Haider hoped not only to share their knowledge but also to learn about religion in the United States. This was Khaki and Haider's first visit to the U.S. Khaki said he was eager to hear Christians speak in a place where their views were not silenced, and Haider was very excited to see a Jewish person for the first time in her life. Haider said she believes there is not a single Jewish person in Pakistan.
The College holds interfaith events infrequently. According to Sorrentino, the program was valuable because it allowed students to hear about Muslim-Christian interactions in the Middle East from a Middle Eastern perspective.
Rob Godzeno '06, a member of ACF, said that this weekend's events were very informative. "[Interfaith dialogues] are extremely relevant to the world we live in today since countries whose people are of different religious backgrounds are starting to be forced into contact with each other as a result of the movement towards a global economy," he said.
Rania Arja '06, co-chair of Noor, believes that interfaith events are important because people often disregard the similarities between religions and focus on differences. "I'm happy that the interfaith dialogue deals with Islam because many people are largely unaware of the religion, and anything that increases awareness is a plus," she said.