Religious leaders urge tolerance
Imam says Islamophobia on the rise; reverend calls on Christians to build relationships outside of their faith at 10th annual World Religions Conference
Emelie Peacock
Northern News Services
Friday, September 29, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Imam Shahruk Abid came to Yellowknife this weekend with a message of peaceful coexistence in a time of looming global conflict.
An Imam at the Baitun Nur mosque in Calgary and a missionary with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at, Abid is used to sharing this message across Canada. This year, he is touring with the World Religions Conference, rallying around the need for justice in the face of global conflicts.
Abid said sharing the message of peaceful coexistence between religions is crucial to counter the messages of radical groups prominent in the media today.
"A very small minority of people have hijacked our religion and the media is focusing on them, so I think it's our job to present the true teachings of Islam and to learn from others as well because there's a lack of tolerance in the world that's causing conflict," he said.
There was an urgency to Abid's words about military conflicts between nations, the threat of nuclear war and the disappearance of peace. One important part of his visit, he said, was to spread the true teachings of Islam in the face of antipathy towards his religion.
"Islamophobia is on the rise, especially here in Canada," he said. "And that's because the way the media portrays it to be. Our job is to reach out to our fellow Canadians and tell them we're just as Canadian as them, we're not against Canada and we're just law-abiding, normal citizens."
The conference, which has visited Yellowknife for 10 years in a row, was aimed at bringing together religious leaders to focus on commonalities rather than their differences.
Abid was joined by Felix Lockhart, former Akaitcho grand chief and former chief of Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation. Lockhart, representing the First Nations perspective, spoke about decades of efforts to heal from the effects of colonization and residential schooling.
His message was one of mutual respect for different religions and the need to re-establish a traditional vision of Dene life.
"We're still not moving forward as a people, as Indigenous people," he said. "We need to be able to continue on to move forward in the spirit of re-establishing ourselves and our relationships with each other through what the elders began for us during the time of our treaties based on mutual respect."
Peter Chynoweth shone a critical light on his own religion when he spoke, saying the Christian faith has been very good at "othering" those both within and outside the faith.
The Yellowknife United Church reverend urged people of all faiths to build relationships with people outside their faiths.
"It's about relationship," he said. "We're part of these religious or spiritual traditions because of the community that they describe or define and delineate. To be in relationship, we have to get to know each other. And yes it's nice to get to know each other in a community which has a certain set of norms and understandings."
Brian McCutcheon shared a Buddhist perspective of how to deal with global conflict and justice, by bringing justice back to the individual level.
"The first thing we need to do is pay attention to how we live our lives, not how other people are living their lives," he said. "My understanding of Buddhism is that it teaches us how to live a good life."
