PRESS RELEASE

On the web @ www.globalinterfaithed.org

PRESS RELEASE

June 25, 2003

Consultation for Interfaith Education to Convene Symposium in Barcelona July 8th – 10th to Address Rising Global Religious Tensions

The Dalai Lama and religious leaders from 20 nations will address the pressing need to promote education for religious understanding.

What can be done to quell the flames of holy war and religiously fueled hatred? That question will be at the forefront of an international symposium sponsored by the twelve organizations that make up the Consultation for Interfaith Education. The symposium, which will be part of the Parliament of World Religions and the Barcelona Forum 2004, will feature an Iraqi professor who teaches issues of religious diversity at Babel University, a leading Imam and ethics teacher from the Sierra Leone, a Hindu woman who is working to ease religious tensions in India, an Orthodox Jew who leads interfaith prayer vigils in Jerusalem, a Catholic priest who is a leading human rights advocate, the president of the world’s only Zorastrian University, as well as religious leaders and religious scholars from around the world.

The keynote for the symposium will be the Nobel Peace Prize winner His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, The Fourteenth Dalai Lama. He will speak on the first day of the symposium, addressing the global imperative for interfaith education. The second day will be devoted to interfaith education in regions of conflict and will include presenters from the Middle East, India, Africa, and Ireland as well as educators who work at the nexus of interfaith education and human rights. The third day, which will feature the Catholic theologian Raimon Pannikar, will be devoted to the spiritual implications of interfaith dialogue. The symposium will end with the presentation of the Julliet Hollister award to ethicist Dr. Hans Kung and the Sufi leader Pir Vilayat Inayata Khan. “This will be an amazing opportunity to address religious tensions face to face” said Nurah Jeter, head of the Muslim Women’s Institute for Research and Development, and an organizer of the symposium. “The diversity of this symposium is the product of more than two years of successful collaboration by more than twelve organizations representing more than as many religions,” remarked another organizer, Dr. Michael Gottsegen from CLAL – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. Alison Van Dyke, of the international interfaith organization the Temple of Understanding, a group which has played a pivotal role in this work, stated “At no other time has inter-religious understanding been so vital to communities across the globe.”