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The Common Good, or Transactional Religion?

Author: Azza Karam

Azzakaram

Azza Karam is very familiar with inter-religious dialogue and work towards the common good. She served nearly two decades with the United Nations where she co-founded and chaired the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion. She has published widely and lectured at various universities including West Point Military Academy in the USA and is a internationally respected leader in interreligious dialogue. …

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Explaining the Hindu divide at the Parliament of the World’s Religions

Author: Rambachan Anant

Professor Anantanand Rambachan (right) with Carolyn T. Brown. board chair of the Fetzer Institute.

Professor Anantanand Rambachan (right) with Carolyn T. Brown. board chair of the Fetzer Institute. Professor Anantanand Rambachan is an external advisor for the Ansari Institite's Nasr Book Prize and both a rewnowned scholar and an interreligious practitioner. He currently serves as co-president of Religions for Peace…

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The Langar: Encounter at Work

Author: Rebekah Go

Parliament 21

By far my favorite part of the Parliament of the World’s Religions was the langar I was able to attend on three occasions during my time there. This year the Parliament was held in Chicago during a week that felt more like October than August. The weather was temperamental and often quite wet which means the success of the langar was all the more impressive.…

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Witnessing the Work of Advancing Gender Equity and Women's Rights at Religions for Peace

Author: Kelly Shinnick

Kelly Shinnick

This past semester, I was offered the opportunity to work with Religions for Peace through the Ansari Institute at Notre Dame. During my time with Religions for Peace, I was able to work with various staff members, but I primarily worked under Liliana Ashman, the Executive Officer and Special Assistant to the Secretary General. I contributed to various tasks, including collecting data or researching subjects for Ms. Ashman as well as transcribing several staff meetings and Commissions.…

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Interconnectedness, Interdependence, and the Role of Religion: My Internship with Religions for Peace

Author: Mariama Dampha

Mariama Dampha 150x150

I am honored to have served as an Office of the Secretary-General Intern at the Religions for Peace International during the last two semesters of my Master of Global Affairs degree at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. This enormous opportunity was made possible through my reception of the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion internship award…

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Human Dignity Amid Violence in Ukraine

Author: Taras Dobko

Taras Dobko Banner

Taras Dobko is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Senior Vice-Rector at Ukrainian Catholic University and a Nanovic Institute Visiting Scholar. Wars are not all alike. They differ in intensity, strategy, and weaponry. But ultimately, all are violent and remain an affront to human dignity, whether they are small in scale or genocide.…

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Iranian students urge Notre Dame community to amplify protestors’ voices

Author: Ansari Institute

Iran Protests

We are writing this because we want Notre Dame, as a nationally ranked Catholic research university in the US that supports justice and democracy, to now support the people of Iran. After George Floyd, the University mobilized for racial justice. After Ukraine, the University has mobilized against the war. It is time for Notre Dame to stand with Iranians crying out for justice. Iranian lives matter, too.

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Religion, identity, and peace: Learning through cultural immersion in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author: Mahan Mirza, Ansari Institute Executive Director

Mahan Bryan Martin

During our May student trip to Sarajevo, Amra, one of our discussion facilitators, laughed, cigarette dangling from her lips, as she likened the city to a femme fatale—alluring, but with a dark side. It was, we soon learned, an apt description for a lovely and complicated city, one that has been simultaneously strengthened and scarred by its history. Our group, which included fourteen students from Notre Dame was drawn to Sarajevo to study “Religion, Identity, and Peace and the Periphery of Europe.”

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How I learned to appreciate religion’s role in building peace

Author: Prithvi Iyer

Prithvi Hiking Main

Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a place I had ever pictured myself visiting. This small country in the Balkans had quite simply never captured my imagination. Its allure was less obvious to me, unlike that of western European countries such as France and Switzerland that are often romanticized in globalized pop culture. But thanks to a student trip made possible by the University of Notre Dame and Peace Catalyst International, I recently visited the country—not as a tourist, but as a student of peacebuilding who gained a new appreciation for the role of religion in peace processes and reconciliation. 

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Finding hope amid the horrors of violence: Lessons from Sarajevo

Author: Allison Sharp

Allison Sharp News Image

I applied to Notre Dame’s faculty-led trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina this summer because I wanted to learn more about a part of Europe that is often left out of history books and course syllabi. I wanted to educate myself on the rich history of the country, and the current situation in regards to peacebuilding. This trip did help me accomplish those goals, but the most impactful part of the journey was actually a conversation about my own country.

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Justice and compassion for all: Embracing multifaith inclusion in America’s heartland

Author: Charles Powell

Charles Powell 2

For the last decade, I have immersed myself in studying and subsequently developing a better understanding of and appreciation for Islam. I have traveled to Muslim-majority countries such as Bahrain and Oman and developed meaningful relationships and friendships with Muslims—many of whom refer to me as their brother. I’m very fortunate to have Muslim friends throughout the world. I’ve relished intimate tours of mosques, observed prayer times, and enjoyed countless halal dinners. Most recently, I returned from visiting newly made friends and Islamic centers in New Buffalo and Rochester, New York as well as Jacksonville, Florida. This past fall, when I learned that “The Mother Mosque of America…

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Identity, Exploration, and Discernment: A Personal Journey to Religious Pluralism

Author: Thanh Nguyen

Thanh2

At the heart of it, pluralism invites us to engage with the new questions of the 21st century and to no longer see our differences as daunting borders. Embracing new faith traditions has made me a stronger Christian. By welcoming these traditions into my own religious space, I make more room to understand God as the trinity, as a mystery, and as the presence of all things.

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Capitol crisis calls for a pastor-in-chief

Author: Mahan Mirza, Ansari Institute Executive Director

Mirzadd

The January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, DC, is just the beginning. It came as advertised; it was televised; and the perpetrators are promising more to come. We are now transitioning to an administration the rioters have been programmed to view as illegitimate. Combining their sense of disenfranchisement with deep feelings of being disrespected for generations, the rioters place us in danger of seeing the insurrection transformed into an all-out insurgency.

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Spatiality and subjectivity: Code-switching as resident and researcher during COVID-19

Author: Lailatul Fitriyah

Lailatul Fitriyah2

Undertaking research in my Indonesian home removes the somewhat convenient compartmentalization between my private and public lives. It transforms my home into a liminal space in which I experience my Indonesian and American identities within the same place. While this shift can be unsettling, it also has its advantages.

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Thresholds: Reflecting on faith, transformation, and countering racism amid COVID-19

Author: Emma Wright

Emmawright

For me, as a Christian and soon-to-be seminarian, racism is not a political or social issue—it is a God issue. And anti-racism is a daily spiritual practice. The conversations I’m having with my Omani friends about countering racism as people of faith has not only deepened our mutual trust but expanded my understandings of Islam, Christianity, and God.

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Veils and leggings: Gender roles in Indiana, Oman, and beyond

Author: Elizabeth Boyle

Elizabeth Boyle

This time last year, a mother of two young sons wrote to our campus newspaper urging young women to avoid wearing leggings during Basilica Mass because it was distracting for her sons and other young men. The opinion piece spread like wildfire and found its way into various prominent media outlets, such as the Boston Globe…

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Your freedom, my restriction: Rethinking religious freedom at home and abroad

Author: Julia French

Julia French

Once I was displaced from my familiar American surroundings at the University of Notre Dame where Christianity is built into the very bricks of the school, I wrestled with these notions of religious freedom and tolerance throughout our time in Oman. The conversations I had with classmates have challenged me to rethink how many assumptions I carry about my own country, and to recognize what I take for granted in being part of the preferred religion of the United States.

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Amid a pandemic, exploring Islam and migration in Istanbul

Author: Rafael Vallejo

Vallejo Web Cropped

I started writing this blog at the crossroads of Asia and Europe, here in a cosmopolitan city that has been known by many names: Byzantium, Constantinople, Nova Roma, Istanbul. Or “Islambul,” according to the folk etymological preference of the current president to highlight the Islamic character of the city. I am sipping Turkish coffee at a café overlooking the Bosphorus, after a hurried visit to Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). This wonder of Byzantine architecture was built in 537 CE and was once the largest cathedral in all of Christendom.

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From Mecca to Mitt: Religion, politics, and COVID-19

Author: Mahan Mirza, Ansari Institute Executive Director

Mirza Dd 1024x768

The second caliph of Islam, ‘Umar b. al-Khattab (r. 634-644 CE), is reported to have said that even if a dog were to die on the banks of the Euphrates River, he would be held accountable. Other reports say he spoke of a camel or sheep, or perhaps the Nile instead of the Euphrates. These details don’t change the meaning. As the leader of the fledgling Muslim community, it was ‘Umar’s responsibility to provide for the sustenance and care for all beings, even the very least of them, to the farthest stretches of his authority.…

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From silicon to sand: Engaging religion in a global classroom

Author: Mahan Mirza, Ansari Institute Executive Director

Mahan In Oman Featured

The ship of capitalism set sail centuries ago. Its goods have reached the four corners of the world. The sands of the desert have become the silicon for microchips. Technology has changed the world, most certainly for the better, but pandemics remind us of our precarity. Are we going too fast? Can we build more resilience into our global system? Can its fruits be better shared among all? On the shores of Oman, at the crossroads of Africa and Asia, we were reminded of these questions, as we experienced a different rhythm of life, where, for a few days, strangers became like family, and we saw the possibility of a different world.

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Engaged: Religion and the common good

Author: Mahan Mirza, Ansari Institute Executive Director

Mahan Mirza

Over the course of the next few weeks and months, the Ansari Institute will engage in online conversations on questions relating to the human condition and to global affairs. Our conversations will include local and global partners, students and educators, and journalists and educators, as we explore how religion can serve as a force for good in the world. 

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