Faiths in Conversation

By Rev. Bahman Kalantari - Orangeville Citizen - Orangeville, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, March 22, 2007

Two weeks ago I drove to a nearby town to visit one of our parishioners who had been confined to bed in hospital. There was very little room for moving around. Carefully, I found a space to stand beside his bed and say a prayer for him. As usual, I closed my eyes. When I was about to finish my prayer, still with closed eyes, I felt a friendly presence gazing at me.

And so, when I finished my prayer and opened my eyes, I was not surprised to find a man looking at me. His name is Foad. He is an Afghani, a smart thinker and a skilled dentist. Foad and I first became friends in Nepal. And here, after all of these years, was Foad standing in front of me with his unique and friendly smile.

Foad is a very special person. He has lived through and experienced many different phases of Afghani History: The Kingdom of Afghanistan, the Republic of Afghanistan, Communist Afghanistan, The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Mojahedeen Afghanistan, Taliban Afghanistan, and Post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Together, Foad and I have experienced revolution, civil war, imprisonment, harsh spiritual ups and downs , and living in exile in Europe and Asia. Foad and his family now live in Germany. He had come to Canada to visit his dear grand-uncle who was in hospital and to see what Canada is like.

We left the hospital together and I offered Foad a lift to Hamilton, as I was on my way to Canterbury Hills myself. As we settled into the drive I asked Foad what he thought about today's Afghanistan. He smiled and replied:

For the first time in my life, I do not fear for the end of Afghanistan. You remember, my friend, those Taliban days, days filled with annihilation and ness. Some days, I feared that Afghanistan would simply be wiped from the of the earth. I have such good memories of our Kingdom and our Republic. Nothing could have prepared us for the arrival of our Satan, the Taliban.

The Taliban suffocated our hope for peace, unity, democracy, and prosperity. We have supreme ideals for such things in our culture, in Sufism especially. But the Taliban destroyed our sense of peace, love, forgiveness, and freedom... especially for women. These ideals are now inspiring us to build a new and prosperous society, to reopen the dialogue between nations.

(...)

I told Foad about a program that will shortly be held in Mono (sponsored by St. Mark's and St. John's Anglican Churches) titled: Faiths in Conversation: Three Progressive Voices in Today's World. Here, I told him, the voices of Islam, Judaism, and Roman Catholicism would come together in dialogue.