Last week I felt blessed. It was the first meeting for the Boston Bridges Fellowship Program, a program designed to create relationships between religious and communal leaders throughout the Greater Boston area. There were twelve Fellows and amongst them six Christians, two Rabbis, two Muslims, one Hindu, and one Baha’i. Coming from a community where religious pluralism and interreligious affairs amongst community leaders is not at the forefront of peoples minds, so this was special to me. I met Tay, another muslim, who at one point asked if it was alright to pray in the middle of “ice-breaker” activity, my response: “Can I pray with you.” We prayed together and in all honesty, I need to do more of that in order to be thankful for the blessings in my life. Towards the end we had a quick discussion where I learned a little bit from everyone’s faith that I did not know before. One thing stuck out to me in particular, it was what Tay mentioned. When we were discussing the different Christian denominations someone asked what were the Muslim denominations. Tay gave the quick answer of Sunni, Shia, and Sufi and mentioned that the different schools of thought create variations among them. What really stuck out to me was what he mentioned afterwards when asked what denomination he was a part of. “It’s funny that I’m here now, speaking with members of other religious communities, but one thing we don’t do as muslims is interact with each other. It’s almost as if we hate each other over simple differences. I don;t like the hate, differences, or labels. So when people ask me what I am, I just say I’m Muslim.” I always thought of it that way, but never articulated it in that manner. Mostly, I would just say I was Sunni because I didn’t know how else to respond.
Tays words opened up my mind in a way to simplify things, rather than complicate them. I am a man, I am a Muslim, but above all I am a human being. As humans we laugh, we cry, we love, we hurt, we live, and we die. There are so many basic similarities between us that we take for granted and ignore. It was a beautiful thing to see as bridges were created at the first Boston Bridges Fellowship meeting (this is a horrible pun). People came together to just understand each other, still include our love for faith, but our love for each other as well. We are people, we are loving, and we are one.