As means to bridge the religious diversity that accompanies the cultural diversity at AHS, the MSA along with a student run non-profit will be sponsoring an Interfaith Panel, Thursday, May 30, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in Clausen Hall.
The event is set to bring together leaders from the three largest monotheistic religions, as guest speakers. The speakers include Reverend Clarence Brown, senior pastor at the Annandale United Methodist Church, Imam Makhdoom Zia from the Mustafa Center Mosque and Rabbi David Kalender, head rabbi from the Synagogue Olam Tikvah.
“Islam is all about high tolerance. Raise the bar to be positive. I have to accept you . . .If I don’t respect you I have a problem. . .” MSA sponsor Ola Layaly said.
The two-hour event will begin with an hour long Q&A session of already pre-created questions towards the religious leaders around the events main theme: Religion in the 21st Century, Teenagers and Faith.
Questions, will surround topics from inter-religious dating to religious profiling post 9/11.
“I personally consider myself a practising Muslim and a person of faith and therefore I find a great amount of interests in the area of ethics,” junior Kowthar Said said.
Following a 15 minute break, for refreshments and hors d’oeuvres, the second half of the event will be student and audience led. The audience will have the opportunity to step up to the mic or write down their own questions.
Along with the MSA, the event is sponsored by a group of AHS students through a jointly created venture, RealTalk Radio. RealTalk, created and initiated by a group of AHS students as a multi-media forum for teens to simply talk about contemporary current event issues.
This is their first live event.
RealTalk also hopes to host future events, based around different themes. In the future they hope to hold a political debate between the Young Democrats and the Young Republicans as well as a guy panel and girl panel, based around gender perspectives highlighting the old-age question around who really has it harder.
“We’re just starting up,” Said said, “We’ve been organizing our website, blogs and podcasts but this event will be our first discussion brought to life.”
The student members of RealTalk organized the event, calling in the religious leaders and posting signs to advertise. They will also be in charge of the afternoon’s schedule.
“For our first event I think this is really creative to show people what we are about. Hopefully it will be a success in getting people excited about us and what we will do in the future. RealTalk is going to do great things!” junior Melissa Stamp said.
Some of the members gave us exclusive access to a few of their questions:
“Our main goal was to start a discussion, to get people talking. So, our questions are going to be hard, at times controversial, but in the end really fulfilling in bridging this idea of understanding,” Said said.
Questions include: How have your religious view been affected by the uprisings of social issues, such as abortion and gay rights? Does a diverse environment, influence people to deviate from their religion and if so can that be refrained? How much influence should parents have over their child’s religious choices?
Questions such as these will help to spur on conversation and debate between the religious leaders.
RealTalk hopes to engage the teens at AHS in the conversation and get them talking about current events as well as other topics that pertain to current, everyday society.
“As teenagers we realize how easy it is to talk about the latest gossip, celebrity crush and obsession, but it’s also nice to talk about real-world things. We just want to open up that discussion,” Said said.
