Source: cochranetimes.com, By David Feil, Cochrane Times

Cochrane’s seventh annual World Religions Conference will be taking place at the RancheHouse on Thurs. Apr. 9 at 6:30 p.m., continuing a tradition of providing a place not only for different faith groups to speak on issues but for people to come and ask questions pertaining to the faith of the invited speakers.

The Ahmadiyya Muslims started religious conferences in Canada in the 1970s, growing to hold 300 such events in Canada every year with a growing emphasis recently on reaching out to smaller communities as interest grew.

This led to Cochrane hosting its first World Religions Conference in 2007 with the topic of Religion and Social Peace and going on to discuss religion in relation subjects like human rights, the theory of evolution and economic impacts from the perspective of Christians, Muslims, Budhists, Jews, atheists, Native Spirituality and followers of Bahai, an offshoot of Islam founded in Iran that has since defined itself as separate from the Muslim faith.

This year, five religious scholars will be coming to the RancheHouse on Thursday to discuss the role of freedom of expression in each of their belief systems while looking at issues like respecting religious sanctities, the difference between the right to criticize and mockery and the place of the law in matters such as hate speech and protecting religious sentiments from vulgarity.

This year’s panelists who will be speaking to this issue will be Kevin Peacock, professor of the Old Testament, Stoney Nations elder Roland Rollinmud, retired school teacher and Bahaist Joan Young and Salman Khalid, an engineer who is currently sitting as the vice president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at in Calgary.

Everyone is encouraged to come out to hear the presentations of the panelists dealing with Freedom of Expression and to follow up with questions, no matter how difficult or potentially offensive, although they should be framed in a way that fosters discussion rather than debate.

“We should be able to remove misconceptions,” said Islam, adding this event is a good opportunity to get answers to tough questions from people from different religions, which in turn allows for a clearer understanding than hearsay and fosters an environment where people can learn and grow together no matter what they might believe individually.

“These are very small steps, but people who attend the conferences see it as time well spent,” said Basheer Islam, one of the conference’s organizers and a Ahmadiyya Muslim, who started the conferences as a means of understanding.

david.feil@sunmedia.ca