Interfaith Partner's of South Carolina has produced a beautiful 18 Month Interfaith Calendar featuring information on each of 12 South Carolina religious groups and its important holidays, this calendar will be a great resource for: Teachers • Sunday Schools • Government Agencies • Local Businesses • Community Leaders • Law Enforcement • Nonprofits • Event Planners • and anyone who would like to learn more about the many faith groups in South Carolina!

​Created as both a fundraising project as well as an education tool this calendar has both great production values, as it was designed and layed out by a professional graphics designer, and is chock full of information and dates sacred to many faiths. It has been distributed to all 82 of SC's school districts so that our public schools can be mindful of all the holidays of importance to a wide number of religions.

​Dr. Barbara Fields, Executive Director of the AGNT (Association for Global New Thought) and who served as Program Director for the first modern Parliament of World Religions in 1993, had this to say about our calendar:

​"The entire project is so well executed; I have seen quite a few of these in my career in interreligious dialogue and this is one of the nicest. You should feel proud and so do, I hope, your colleagues on this council. It is clear that healing of religious-based wounds must begin with sharing and mutual understanding and the calendar achieves this in a wonderful way."

​Click on the image to visit IPSC's page in order to purchase this calendar.

The title is intended to be provocative and to raise some questions, such as “Why does he like Muslims?”, or “How many Muslims has he met?” or even “Why is he telling us that?” Good questions all. I have been involved in Interfaith work for over forty years and have developed some high level overviews and arguments for the value of Interfaith work, the intrinsic value of individual religions, even an elaborate defense of Swami Vivekananda’s statement in his keynote speech to the first Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1893 “We believe all religions are true”.  But I’ve been reading Eboo Patel’s book Interfaith Leadership lately and I have come to realize that my natural willingness to defend the rights of Muslims to practice their faith was arrived at slowly after much thought and debate, but my story (a very important word “story”) begins long before any real consideration of these issues, with my experience teaching English as a Second Language to Muslims at Utah State University in the mid-seventies, a point in time where I self-identified as an Atheist. Over the course of four or five years I taught several hundred students from all over the Middle East, Iran and parts of Africa. I found them generally warm, engaging and hospitable. It was twenty years later that I first heard the word “Jihad” even though some of those students were Palestinian or Libyan for instance and had very strong political opinions.

I was raised in the Mormon community of Bountiful, UT and attended that church until I was maybe twelve. The Latter Day Saints (LDS) as the Mormons are formally known, feel a strong kinship with the Jewish people, some going so far as to refer to themselves as “the other Chosen People”. Although I left the LDS faith while quite young I still had strong sympathies for the Jews and for the state of Israel. Because our community in Bountiful was so homogeneous I wasn’t really exposed to religious bigotry until I was in basic training in the military. One poor kid came down with a bad summer cold and as it turns out he was Jewish. It wasn’t long before I heard such phrases as “don't catch the Jew Germ” and other slurs. My natural response was to come to Bernard's aid and, as I had no arguments or positions to defend, I chose being his pal as a defense. I had him teach me Hava Nagila which I’d vaguely remembered from Fiddler on the Roof. We sang it at the top of our lungs… I’m not sure this really helped except I never heard “Jew Germ” again.

Fast forward to my years at Utah State and to the "Hub" where we gathered to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. Surprisingly the most boisterous, laughing tables were occupied by Middle Easterners, which made me feel comfortable and drew me in enough to allow me to begin asking questions about the volatility and warfare in that region. I soon came to realize that things were much more complicated than I originally believed. We had a lot of political discussions, but also I heard a great many personal stories which made for deeper connections. I really was quite taken by the cultural warmth and hospitality of these primarily Arabic speaking Semitic peoples. I say that in contrast to the large presence of Iranians, or Persians as they generally called themselves, who were also Muslim, but Caucasian for the most part, and many were quick to remind you of that. The national/cultural presence of these Farsi speaking folks was not as lighthearted or welcoming, they sat by themselves for the most part, somewhat more distant and reserved. Although when I began to teach I made good friends among them as well. It turned out they had plenty of reasons to be cautious as they fell into two strong factions, the loyalists to the Shaw of Iran and the revolutionary forces which eventually toppled the Peacock Throne.

So back to the questions I intended to spark. I’ve known hundreds of Muslims, made many friends and have participated in weddings and other celebrations, and yes, "broke bread" with them and I stand by my claim that I’ve never met a Muslim that I didn’t like. Since they are just people, like many another, I count myself lucky in who I have met. Certainly I’ve read of Muslims who have committed atrocities and I’m pretty sure that friendship would not have been possible with them, for same may be said for partisans in Northern Ireland or guerrilla army members of FARC in Columbia, just to point toward a couple other troubled places. My liking the Muslims that I’ve known also probably has very little to do with their religion. When I think of Muslims my mind doesn’t instantly go the troubles, to religious tensions and ideological chasms, but rather to specific people I came to know and like. For that I count myself lucky as well. Perhaps this is true in large measure because we shared and listened to each other’s stories and made human connections. Eboo Patel has challenged me deeply in almost everything I’ve read of his and I’m grateful that he has, because it has inevitably grounded me in my existence as just one man with his own unique history and stance, thereby allowing me to operate as an advocate of Interfaith Harmony in a more authentic and effective manner one-on-one. Mr. Patel has made me more sensitive to a number of subtler issues, but especially he has reminded me that in conversations it comes down to you and me, to your story and mine.

To hate Muslims is as ridiculous and immature a stance as to hate Republicans or Democrats. Certainly long lists of points of disagreement are readily at hand, but no single point is in fact an article of faith for everyone who adopts a label, sports a bumper sticker, or wears a baseball cap with a logo. And in the case of hating Muslims, in any number cases it’s like hating Frenchmen, any element of being French may very well be an accident of birth, that is, one happened to be born in Marseilles or Paris and not a crucial aspect of their identity. That one is born in Egypt or Indonesia (the most populous Islamic nation) is similarly an accident of birth. The tightness with which one holds to the tenets of their faith is as variable as the human experience. Even to the devout, the particular ranking of these tenets also vary widely. Best to come at anyone with the understanding that they came to be in front of you by way of paths that you have no idea of. The more willing you are to hear their story and to share your own, the more likely it is that you will hear one another on religious and ideological issues.

On December 30th, 2016 IPSC, the Governors representative, and many fellow travelers joined in the Capitol Rotunda in Columbia, SC to launch January as Interfaith Harmony Month. My dear friend Andy and I traveled up for the event and there were throngs of people, including Gov. Haley's father Ajit Singh Randhawa and mother Raj Kaur Randhawa. The photo above is of Dr. Randhawa receiving a plaque of recognition on behalf of Gov. Haley who was out of town, and so this year her proclamation was read by her liaison Ms. Beth Webb. Behind them is a corner of my beloved C's Interfaith banner which was her birthday present to herself from the 2015 Parliament of the World's Religions. The little corner that you can see has the symbol of the Bahá'í Faith. This event spawned all sorts of Interfaith activities all across the state, several of which I participated in and there will be posts about them soon. The press loved the banner as the image highlights, and it was prominently displayed in a number of later events.

Some of you may know I lived over 40 years in Utah. My involvement with native culture and ceremony began there in the early 70’s. In the news for a while has been the controversy over the proposed Bears Ears national monument in the southwest portion of the state. The Inter-Tribal Logo to the left is a clickable link to the Inter-Tribal Coalition’s website where they have placed a wealth of material and some stunning photos. For many of the non-indigenous peoples these lands offer access to mineral wealth and recreation, all monetized. To the native Elders this is sacred land. Land continuously occupied for over 12,000 years. Here is a listing of the tribes and Pueblos with cultural ties to Bears Ears: Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe, Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Tribe, White Mountain Tribe and Jicarilla Apache Tribe, San Juan, Kaibab, & Utah Paiute Tribes, White Mountain and Jicarilla Apache, Hualapai Tribe, Pueblos of Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Nambe, Ohkay Owingeh, Picuris, Pojoaque, Sandia, San Felipe, San Ildefonso, Santa Ana, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo, Taos, Tesuque, Ysleta Del Sur, Zia and Zuni. I had the great fortune to know many among the Navajo, Ute, Paiute, Apache and Hopi. I have walked many miles and camped in a number of places in the area of the Bears Ears and it is a wondrous, sacred place.

As important as the Bears Ears issue is, I was prompted to write because of a long held concern with the endangered nature of so many sacred places. All religions with strong ties to the earth have their sacred places. I became radicalized about this issue and worked on the fringe of the environmental movement not because species, including Homo Sapien, were endangered by rapacious attitudes towards lands and natural resources, but because I couldn’t tolerate the ugliness being made in places of beauty where the mark of the creator was still clear, imprinting the land. Early on I sensed the hallowed nature of certain places. In later years I participated in ceremony throughout the deserts and mountains of Utah. My last trip back to there was to attend the Parliament of the World’s Religions in October 2015 and I was deeply gratified by the solemn welcome, and for the guidance and wisdom offered by the indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Among them the Paiute, the Ute, the Goshute, and the Navajo And for the sacred fire which burned continuously throughout the Parliament, there were elders present to facilitate the offering of prayers and tobacco twenty-four hours a day.

I arrived in Utah early enough to spend three days in the remote House Range of the west desert. Emptying and cleansing myself were part of it, but I had two sacred tasks specifically to attend to. The making of my “intention” as the stick one plays the drum with is sometimes known, and the painting of the drum, which my lodge helped me make the week before. The weekend following the Parliament was a reunion, a gathering of Aho, a large spiritual family my wife and I have been connected with for some thirty years.  That final Sunday evening I would ceremonially awaken this drum at a sweat lodge, or Inipe ceremony. A Shoshone elder sang a special song in that lodge as his gift to my drum. This drum has since served me well and I say thank you again to those who made it possible. Reconnecting with that awe inspiring patch of the desert that I knew well, left me with an assuring sense of belonging to our mother earth again, I have sometimes struggled with maintaining that nurturing connection here in South Carolina. It also renewed my commitment to speaking out for the protection of sacred lands and the access of native peoples to them for the spiritual practices that have sustained them and their lands across more than a dozen millennia.