A Source of Peace

By Melanie M. Sidwell, "Sufi master to visit Longmont Muslim and speak in Denver" - Longmont Times-Call - Longmont, CO, USA
Friday, April 11, 2008

Series promotes interfaith dialogue: Sufi Master speaks in Denver

A Sufi master, Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of the Naqshbandi Order, will speak in Denver this weekend during a free interfaith event about how religion is a source of peace, not conflict.

Kabbani is the keynote speaker during this weekend’s Abrahamic Initiative, an interfaith program sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Denver with support from The Denver Foundation and Iliff School of Theology, said Greg Movisian, chairman of the steering committee.

(...)

Movisian, who helped to coordinate the Abrahamic Initiative, called Kabbani “a powerful and articulate speaker on this topic of peace from the Sufi tradition.”

“We’ve been focusing (recently) on the relationship between religion and violence and religion and peace,” Movisian said. “It’s just a very basic question: Does religion foster violence or peace? Does it do both? And under what conditions and circumstances?”

The initiative, which began in 2001, promotes interfaith dialogue.

Past topics include women in Islam, Iraq, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the problem of evil and violence in holy texts such as the Bible, Torah and Quran.

“We’re not going to solve the Middle East crisis,” Movisian said, “but people in Denver are talking with each other about caring and understanding each other rather than seeing each other as the enemy.”

[Picture: Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of Fenton, Mich., addresses a crowd while visiting the Islamic Center of Yuba City, Calif., in 2006. Photo: Chris Kaufman/Appeal-Democrat file].