An extract from a report from the last 6 years
One of the personal joys in serving as chair was the honor of meeting with the Dalai Lama. He is an inspiring but also humorous man. And he combines those qualities by masterfully posing a thoughtful and thoroughly serious challenge with his mischievous smiles.He has repeatedly asked us the question that I have named the Dalai Lama Dilemma: what do you do in between two parliaments?
Our board deliberated on that dilemma and here is what we were able to do as a result:
In view of the rising fear, hate and anger the Parliament established Faith Against Hate, the campaign for which we organized interfaith leadership summits, webinars, and training events, as well as started the tradition of “Love Alerts” for the interfaith movement.
We developed an interfaith training program as a major component of our undertakings and included a role for facilitation. We introduced students in training for religious leadership to the realities and challenges of interfaith endeavors, made it possible for them to participate in Parliament events and guided them in reflection on their involvement, and gave them experience in working in a multi-religious world.
We established the Parliament’s United Nations Task Force that focused on the issues posed by nuclear weapons and our youth representative was invited to address the UN General Assembly during the U.N.’s World Interfaith Harmony Week.
We joined the coalition of “faith2endpoverty” partners of the World Bank.
As for the Parliament program itself, we anchored the event with focus on three crucial global-wide issues (climate change, income inequality and the widening wealth gap, and hate, hate speech, violence, and war) and three critical constituencies (youth/emerging leaders, women, and indigenous peoples). Each of these emphases on issues and constituencies was accompanied by a rigorous Declaration and a set of proposed commitments that invited individual, organizational, policy, and media involvement.
Subsequent to the Parliament, these six foci (issues and constituencies) are being developed programmatically in ongoing work in 2016, along with a strong emphasis on membership development.
So we now have a response to the Dalai Lama’s Dilemma as the work in key areas continues between Parliaments.
Peace, Salam and Shalom!
Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid
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Parliament of the World's Religions
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Website http://www.parliamentofreligions.org