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"So, the external markers of Sikhism date to Guru Gobind Singh, where he says, “you are going to be fearless. And to be fearless, you are going to stand out. You can never deny who you are.” In simplified language, that's the origin of the uncut hair and turban for men, and to some extent, for women. The sword, another such marker, all Sikhs would agree, is a symbol of self-defense, but also of standing up against oppression of any kind. Now from there things got worse in the sense that a succession of Mughal rulers or officials tried to wipe out the Sikhs. Guru Gobind Singh lost all four of his sons in this struggle for survival. Sikhs’ external markers come from that struggle, and have been reinforced by it. “We're going to stand up for ourselves and for anybody who needs support.”"

Read More about Nirvikar Singh: We're Going to Stand Up for Ourselves and for Anybody Who Needs Support

"You also were asking where the title Bad Catholics, Good Trouble came from and you're right, there's a story there. It actually starts with an academic article that I wrote for the journal Religion and American Culture. And that article was about the hundreds and hundreds of white Catholics in Chicago who wrote letters to the Archdiocese to express how outraged they were that the Church was supporting the civil rights movement. And the people who wrote these letters - many of which were overtly racist and explicitly endorsing violence against civil rights activists or, at the very least, resisting integration - were insisting they were 'real good and sincere Catholics.'"

Read More about Matthew Cressler: So Many Catholics Who Have Engaged in Racial Justice Work Have Been Labeled "Bad Catholics"

At the root of the Catholic Worker here locally is our work on housing. I firmly believe that housing is a human right and human duty that serves the common good. Everyone ought to be housed and if we all came together as human beings - or even just here in this local community of South Bend together with Notre Dame - we could house everyone who needs to be housed. There's an invitation in the Catholic social tradition to see these basic issues of need and vulnerability through a lens of God's abundant provision.

Read More about Margie Pfeil: I Would Love to Have a Constructive Dialogue About Distributive Justice

This Fall the Ansari Institute is pleased to offer three book talks so that our growing community of learners can engage with scholars of depth and interest on a variety of topics. Each of these talks will be offered in the reading room on the second floor of the Hammes Notre Dame BookStore. There…

Read More about Ansari Institute to Host Three Fall Book Talks

"Just last night I was on the campus of Northwestern speaking to a group of students and many of them were the protest leaders, and I shared with them that the key to moving the world forward is finding common ground. When you find common ground, that's the only way that you can move to higher ground. You can't get to higher ground all by yourself. I also shared with them that I was very proud of them and the college president for coming to an agreement to end the protest and to honor many of the requests that the protesters were asking for. For example: hiring Palestinian faculty members, having scholarships for Palestinian students, building a house for Muslims on campus, just like there's a house for black students and of course the Jewish faith has its own house. The Catholic faith has its own house. So you know, I thought all of that was just important. A wonderful model for what is going on with other college campuses around the country."

Read More about Rev. Dr. Michael Nabors: Civic Engagement Lets Me See the Work of God in Human Affairs

Distinguished scholars Hussein Ibish and David Myers joined the University of Notre Dame’s Maura Policelli on Sept. 25 at DeBartolo Hall for a discussion addressing the approaching first anniversary of the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The event began the Israel-Palestine Series of the 2024-25 Notre Dame Forum on “What Do We Owe Each Other?”

Read More about ‘One must hold up the dignity of all human life’: Distinguished scholars discuss history, future of Israel and Palestine at Notre Dame Forum event

I have been blessed with excellent formation and many opportunities, but the Catholic World Fellowship provided a completely different experience of the Catholic spiritual life. Being in Rome in particular, at the very heart of Catholicism, was powerful and offered some unique insights. In the shadow of the Holy See stand countless churches that house the bodies of some of the holiest saints to have ever lived.

Read More about Catholic Fellowship Provides Opportunity for Perspective and Discernment

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Read More about Ansari Institute Hosts Local Church Immersion

"I have to say, I come from a church that is always talking about evangelism and the Protestant churches in Northern Ireland are very proselytism driven and evangelism driven. It is not a good mix. Because they engage with you for the purpose of converting you. “I want to make you me, and when you are me and you accept my politics and my religion, we will all be happy.” Well, that is not a decent way to behave. That is outrageously unsympathetic to people's human rights, to their conscience, to their opinions, their beliefs, their right to believe whatever they want to believe. So when I was the President of Ireland I said from the very beginning, I have no interest in proselytism. I have no interest in evangelism. I am not inviting people to my home, the President's home, for a photo opportunity. I want to build friendships."

Read More about Mary McAleese: Politics of the Sacred and the Necessity for Respectful Discourse

"I think when you start to see the heart of people, you realize the same parts or the same hurts or the same thought process – while they might look different overseas – they're very similar to what we have here. So I think how people are responding to immigration or homelessness or race, if we really open our eyes and have an honest look, we have a lot of those same walls. They might not be physical walls like I saw in Israel and Palestine but, there are walls in our communities, in our cities, and in our families that have been erected, many times for generations."

Read More about Matt Graybill: Peacebuilding in the Holy Land Leads to Peacebuilding at Home

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Read More about Changes Coming to Ansari

"In a special way, practicing Muslims show fidelity to things like modesty, regular prayer, how to eat, what to eat, not drinking alcohol, and what to wear. Christians have our own teachings, so the way that we work through things will look different - I'm not saying we should just imitate Muslims. But Islam can be a gift for Christians just by the faithfulness that we see in Muslims and the way they manage to be religious in America."

Read More about Gabriel Reynolds: Islam Can Be a Real Gift to Christians

While many may think that the schedule is quite relaxed for academics during the summer, many of the Ansari Institute’s faculty fellows are quite busy with research, conferences, and teaching.

Read More about Faculty Busy This Summer with Research and Scholarship

Azza Karam…

Read More about The Age of Holy Wars and the Poetics of Solidarity

"There is maybe a naive kind of faith that I have in the human mind or the human heart to be capacious and compassionate enough to engage different perspectives without resorting to epistemic violence, or worse. But I think that this capacity, where it is not inherent in a person’s disposition, can come about through training and acculturation. The capacity to engage differences productively is born out of experience and encounters across differences that are positive and life-giving. That's what I'm trying to teach when I do interreligious work or when I write in the field of interreligious studies."

Read More about Celene Ibrahim: Islam's Internal Diversity and the Value of a Diverse Body Politic

"I think this can help us to understand the suspicion with which so many Catholics have long regarded the liberal rights tradition. It was expressed most recently by Pope Benedict XVI, in an address to the UN in 2008, when he warned against a relativistic and subjective conception of human rights that divorces them from their ethico-religious foundation and reduces them to mere legal instruments. It also helps us to understand a more general tension that I think exists within Catholic social teaching, between a robustly theological ethics and one that doesn't presuppose Christian faith. The disagreement between Maritain and de Lubac is a case in point of this tension, and it affects how Catholics relate to secular political or legal projects."

Read More about Sarah Shortall: French History, Human Rights Discourse, and the Underappreciated Influence of Catholic Theology

The Institute is pleased to welcome four new faculty members into its community. Faculty “fellows” are professors at the University of Notre Dame whose academic home is within another department or school, but whose work substantially aligns with the Ansari Institute’s mission. Faculty “affiliates” are academic experts within their own field but whose employment and professional commitments are not primarily with the University of Notre Dame. Both faculty fellows and faculty affiliates contribute to building a community of like-minded scholars and to developing a “fellowship of faiths" as envisioned within the Ansari Strategic Plan.

Read More about Ansari Institute Welcomes New Faculty Fellows and Affiliates

"First, how do we understand the term “religion”? The concept of religion originates from the West. Often when people think about religion, their experiences are with Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. In both the academic world and daily life, people's perception of religion is primarily based on their Western experiences. It's very difficult to say that Confucianism resembles religions in the West. If evaluated by conventional criteria, Confucianism could never be counted as a religion. Confucians don't worship a god, nor do they have an organized church. The Confucian community is relatively informal. People generally self-identify as Confucians. There is no organization such as a church to sanction your membership, nor is there a ritual ceremony like baptism to symbolize regeneration and admission to Confucianism. So, Confucianism is not a religion in the Western sense."

Read More about Liang Cai: Confucianism, Digital Humanities, and Changing History

"We know from all religious studies research, that religion is integrated in every other aspect of society - the social, the cultural, the political, the economic, and so truly being able to say it's the religious piece that made the difference is very hard to do. Moreover this hasn't been a field where there's been a lot of funding for research. So we're at a place where we're searching for the middle ground. We're not trying to prove definitively that there's one number that will say yes or no about faith Impact. But we are saying that we would benefit from more quantitative research; we would benefit from more mixed methods research."

Read More about Olivia Wilkinson: Faith in Development, There is Still a Lot of Research to Be Done

The Institute is pleased to share three new videos added to the Conversation Series hosted on our popular YouTube Channel. It was nearly a year ago that the Ansari Institute sent a delegation to the Parliament of the World’s Religions. The Ansari Institute was a major sponsor at the Parliament, acting as the premiere sponsor of the portion of the parliament called the Global Ethic Assembly. Towards the Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration was a seminal document originally discussed and signed in 1993 at an assembly of religious and spiritual leaders meeting as part of the Parliament that year. It was expanded in 2018. During the Parliament affiliate faculty members Margaret Gower, Chad Meister, and Robert Stockman contributed to panels on the Global Ethics irrevocable directives.

Read More about Three New Videos Added to the Popular Conversation Series