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Montenegro's Post-war Recovery and Religion, National Identity, Sports, and Economics

Author: Julia Warden

Julia Warden in Budva, Montenegro

Julia Warden is a senior from Ambler, PA studying Business Analytics and Film at the University of Notre Dame. The Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion is pleased to have been able to provide a grant to support her research in Montenegro. Julia submitted this eflection upon her return to Notre Dame for the Spring semester.

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Building Bridges of Faith: Interfaith Climate Activism at the United Nations Climate Conference

Author: Garrett Pacholl

Garrett

Garrett Pacholl was a student in Professor and Ansari Executive Director Mahan Mirza's course American Adventurism in the Muslim World. He was able to attend a portion of COP28 and generously wrote about his experiences whilst over his winter break. He submitted his reflectection to the Institute.

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Bridging the Divide Between the Public Sector and Religion: My Experience at Religions for Peace

Author: Saad Kamil

Saad Kamil Picture 2

The Ansari Instite for Global Engagement with Religion is pleased to partner with Religions for Peace to offer a student internship program. Notre Dame undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to apply to intern with Religions for Peace for a semester or summer internship and receive financial support from the Ansari Institute. This is a reflection from Saad Kamil, the Fall 2023 Religions for Peace intern supported by our Institute.

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The Interfaith Notre Dame Initiative Participates in Interfaith Prayer Service as part of Notre Dame's Cultural Relations Week

Author: Lestitian, Chloe

Interfaith Prayer Service

The Interfaith Notre Dame Initiative, a student initiative sponsored by the Ansari Institute, had the privilege of collaborating with Notre Dame Student Government and Campus Ministry for an Interfaith Prayer Service. The Service was hosted by the Student Government Department of Diversity and Inclusion: Race and Ethnicity, and it was the first event of Cultural Relations Week. This inspiring and thoughtful event took place at sunset at the World Peace Plaza where members of the Notre Dame community of different faith traditions gathered to discuss the theme of interfaith unity.

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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. She is also a member of the Ansari Institute's Advisory Board. In her piece The Common Good, Or Transactional Religion? published in the Inter Press, Professor Karam draws attention to a growing trend within inter-governmental and international relations: the leveraging of religion to enhance the perception of dialogue without the actual engagement of religious actors.

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

Author: Rambachan Anant

Anantanand Rambachan with friends at the Parliament of the World's Religions

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, the largest global interfaith network. Rambachan was one of the Ansari Institute's distingished guests at the Parliament of the World's Religions. In this piece, Explaining the Hindu divide at the Parliament of the World's Religions, published August 23rd by Religion News Service, Professor Rambachan critiques the nationalistic trends within religious traditions that threatens the transcendent nature of religion saying, "today what is most likely to distinguish one Hindu from another is their understanding of the relationship between Hinduism and the state."

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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…

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

Author: Kelly Shinnick

Kelly Shinnick

The Ansari Instite for Global Engagement with Religion is pleased to partner with Religions for Peace to offer a student internship program. Notre Dame undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to apply to intern with Religions for Peace…

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

Author: Mariama Dampha

Mariama Dampha 150x150

The Ansari Instite for Global Engagement with Religion is pleased to partner with Religions for Peace to offer a student internship program. Notre Dame undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to apply to intern with Religions for Peace for a semester or summer internship and receive financial support from the Ansari Institute. Mariam Dampha, the Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 Religions for Peace intern supported by our Institute submitted a reflection about her experience.

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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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Reflections in Srebrenica

Author: Mohammad Farrae

Bosnia

"At the graveyard, while I was praying in my heart for the forgiveness of those that had passed away, I was reminded of our belief that those who are martyred in Islam are considered to have a guaranteed route to Jannat (heaven). And, I thought to myself, those who died did indeed die tragically, but those who survived experience the real test. How do you begin to deal with the loss of multiple family members? How do you begin to think about forgiveness? And for those who are aggressors: How do you even forgive yourself for the misguided actions you might have taken?"

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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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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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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 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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