Abstract

This research is about interfaith dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in New York City. This research was inspired from the global mainstream, that religion is a cause of conflict and from my experience in my country where it is so diverse in terms of religion and culture. This has encouraged me to be more aware of pluralism. Learning from the peacemaker’s experience in New York City developed my understanding and respect for other religions, and enhanced my efforts to try to maintain the peace that we have, through my roles as an individual, a teacher, a leader, and a peacemaker.

This study revealed that the obstacles in building interfaith dialogue for Jews, Christians and Muslim are prejudices, language differences, the fact that not everybody has equal time flexibility in their lives, a history of distrust, violence, theological perspectives, social and political differences, misunderstanding of the religious texts, lack of experience, and a misunderstanding of historical events. In addition, there are some activities that could be acceptable in building dialogue such as praying together, going to different worship services, celebrating other faith’s holidays, such as Passover, Easter or Ramadan, and social, cultural and intellectual activities.

This research might be applicable for developing the interfaith dialogue in New York City through the compilation of the experience of some peacemakers. For future research it would be interesting to study interfaith dialogue including various religions in New York City, because this research was only focused on three religions. In future research I would include all religions in New York City, so that the analysis will be more comprehensive. I am also interested in studying more about intra-faith, because there are conflicts in my country and in other Islamic countries, such as the conflict between Shi’ah-Sunni in Iraq, or the case of Ahmadiyyah in Indonesia.

Disciplines

Peace and Conflict Studies | Religion

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