War, terror, conflict – it’s hard to escape these buzzwords at the moment. But peace, reconciliation and new beginnings are much less common. In order to shed light on these two sides of a common world and create a space for interreligious peace dialogue, the young adults of the Focolare Movement and the Muslim Hizmet community organized a joint weekend from 14 to 16 March in collaboration with the DIALOP dialogue platform.
The 64 participants were a diverse group of different nationalities. Particular emphasis was placed on interfaith dialog between Muslims and Christians with the aim of catering to the needs of each religion without restricting the needs of the other. For example, the generous meals were donated by the Muslims of the Hizmet community, even though they were fasting during the days of Ramadan.
The program was arranged in such a way that all prayer times and mass could be attended without stress, and some meals were accompanied by a Muslim prayer, others by a Christian prayer. The relaxed start with lots of games on Friday contributed directly to an exuberant atmosphere. Building on this, we plunged into the topic of “War and Peace” on Saturday morning.
Claudia Krieglsteiner (KPÖ Vienna and peace activist), Luisa Sello (theologian, psychologist and coordinator of Dialop) as well as Wolfgang Palaver (theologian and political scientist at the University of Innsbruck) could channel the motivations into productive discussions.
“This weekend I experienced that we from the Hizmet community and you from the Focolare Movement are like brothers and sisters.”
“I’ve heard a lot of talks on this topic. But this weekend was primarily about relationships and that was so good for me. I’m going home with a new hope.”
The participants’age ranged from 15 to 30, but it seemed that everybody could reach his/her workload of knowledge and reflection.
One is clear: we don’t want war!
Hard work and listening to the other’s opinion strenghtened but brought a lot of security in the own feelings and opinions.