Guest Author - Serkan Tufan

As I mentioned before, one of the important things for me as a Muslim is building bridges and working for dialogue and understanding among different faith communities. We organize and participate in such occasions that will enable us to come together as members of different faith groups.

Today, as a follow-up for our invitations to our activities, the minister of a Baptist church invited us (Muslim families) for observing Sunday service. We joined and watched (partly participated in) the service and let ourselves be known to the members of this community. They warmly welcomed us and sang a special song for us as well.

The minister friend of us did a little talk saying that when he visited Turkey, he observed that Istanbul, the historical city in Turkey actually sit on two continents: Europe and Asia. So he brought up the metaphor of "building bridges". To him, Turkish community built bridges among different faiths just like Istanbul became a bridge between Asia and Europe, i.e. East and the West.

Then after the rituals and sermon, we were invited to the downstairs for refreshments and chat with members of the church. We ended up chatting with a couple of young men on sports and different countries. So many things are shared among us that I am surprised why we focus so much on the conflicting points, stereotyping and criticism towards others....I am hoping that another understand better now that Muslim image in the media do not really represent Islam and we have much respect and peace for them as they have for us.

As I was listening to a radio program on interfaith dialogue, the scholar on the program explained the necessity of interfaith dialogue: "Without an interfaith dialogue, there would be no interfaith peace, without interfaith peace, there would be no peace on earth".

So let's not lose this opportunity to come together for the purpose of peace, understanding and dialogue, and fight and brainstorm together actually for the deepest problems of earth and life: wars, poverty, murders, oppression, environment, and children as faith in God might offer solutions to all...