Into to Buddhism

For one of my classes I had to read Understanding Buddhism by Perry Schimdt-Leukel. I highly recommend it to anyone who would like a basic overview of Buddhism. I have taken courses on Buddhism before and I found this book helpful, a good refresher. Buddhism's historical roots are discussed as well and the main philosophical ideas. It also gets into the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia and the changes that took place due to its expansion. It's well written and I think would be good for anyone interested in Buddhism whether or not they have had an introduction to the religion before.

Children of Abraham

The Children of Abraham focuses how to build the relationship between Jewish and Islam. This organization emphasizes their activities to the world’s Jewish and Muslim students to spend time together.
I think it is so important to build interfaith dialogue since in the young age because in their age, their characters are built. Unfortunately, those young teenagers who get access to internet only can reach their activities whereas; this organization is so effective to spread mutual understanding.

However, the problem is how to spread a kind of this organization to developing countries. For instance, I myself before coming to the USA, I just knew a little about Judaism. Something that I knew was that Islam and Judaism have a same root (Abrahamic religions).

Now I know that there are similarities in both religions, such as its fundamental religious outlook, structure, jurisprudence, and practice (food, modesty, prophecy, some words, values, etc). Human being is easy to be prejudice because of the lack of information. I hope in the future more organizations like this emerge so that the peace in the world could exist.
If you are interested in knowing more about them, you can go to their website: http://www.childrenofabraham.org/homePage.html

Rabbi Speaks at Muslim Convention

At the opening of the 44^th annual Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention last Friday, Rabbi Yoffei, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, gave a speech encouraging Jews and Muslims to work towards an open dialogue so that “they can inspire and strengthen one another to fight fanatics and work to promote the values of justice and love that are common to both faiths.”

Educating Americans about the true nature of Islam, and fighting against the stereotypes portrayed in the media was also the focus of Yoffei’s speech. Moreover, he encourages education about Judaism in order to combat anti-Semitism.

My favorite part of his speech was when he said, “you cannot honor a religion of peace through violence; you cannot honor God if you do not honor the image of God in every human being; and you cannot get to heaven by creating hell on earth.” You can read his entire speech here.

The Union For Reform Judaism includes more than 900 congregations and 1.5 million Jews, while the ISNA convention included around 30,000 people.