Source: Rice, by Jeff Falk.
A rare intrafaith dialogue on Islam had the Asia Society Texas Center’s Brown Foundation Performing Arts Theater packed to the last seat Feb. 21. The event featured four imams representing the Ahmadiyya, African-American, Shia and Sunni traditions of Islam and was co-hosted by Rice University’s Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance and the Asia Society Texas Center.
Imam Azhar Haneef, vice president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of the United States, based in Silver Spring, Md., stressed the definition of goodness as provided by the Koran. “One of the beauties of Islam is that it doesn’t leave definitions up to man,” he said. “Every religion is saying that we should be like an image of God … and that is what goodness truly is. We should struggle in this together and with one another and not against one another in being good.”
In a forum moderated by Mike Ghouse, president of the Dallas-based Foundation for Pluralism, the imams spoke with candor, wit and hope about the danger of superficial differences and importance of commonalities in face of relations among the traditions that, in the Middle East and Asia, have been at times marked by intense rivalry and conflict.