Gathering over faith and food helps foster understanding

Sixteen-year-old Noor Chaudhry is a Muslim, but on a cold Sunday night recently she stood in the lobby of a Presbyterian Church in downtown Columbus welcoming visitors to a service. Afterward she mingled with people from a handful faiths as they gathered for a potluck meal in the church’s basement.

It was the second time the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio (IACO) had held such an event but a first for Chaudhry, who was compelled to attend as part of a school project on political activism.

She was surprised by what she discovered. 

“There’s a lot you can do just by talking to people, by finding out what they need,” said Chaudhry, a spunky, sweatshirt-clad teen who went without a headscarf.

As a youth growing up in an overwhelmingly white, middle-class suburb, learning about the challenges facing refugees and immigrants resonated.

“There are some people who just want a listening ear, and I think I relate to that as a teenager,” she said, referring to the story of an immigrant she met that night who was struggling to get people to visit his store.

The desire to create spaces where people can listen, share and learn from one another is driving groups like IACO. It’s also generating interest from youth who want to address issues such as racial and cultural hatred, gender inequality and religious intolerance. 

Peace-Builders, a youth-led group formed this year with the help of IACO, is working to curb common stereotypes by bridging social divides, said co-founder Durya Nadeem, whose bright lavender eyes, nearly the color of her headscarf, glowed as she spoke.

The night’s service was no ordinary one. Leaders from dozens of faith-based communities, including Buddists, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims and Vedic Brahmans, an ancient form of Hinduism, all offered up prayers and religious perspectives. The theme of the night was “Welcoming the Stranger,” a nod to a year in which fear of the other has stoked anxiety in many communities.

“We come together tonight from various perspectives  because we share one very important belief, and that is whether driven by our faith’s teachings or our own conscious, we all have a responsibility to care for the immigrant and the refugee,” said Phil Washburn, head of the IACO.

Behind him, the pulpit of the Broad Street Presbyterian Church glowed with the lights of Christmas. In the audience before him sat a mosaic of faces, some clad in colorful headscarves, skullcaps or turbans. 

A leader from the Islamic Society of Greater Ohio said given the current state of global affairs, there was a lot of work to do. And Angie Plummer, the head of Community Refugee and Immigration Services advocated for people to put pressure on their legislators to repeal laws that hurt millions of people seeking protection in the country.

“I never imagined when I started working with refugees that it would be controversial,” Plummer said.

Religious leaders said coming together helped. Many were learning how to navigate the challenges of life in a new culture, of being outsiders. Seeing how others had done so was instructive. Talk of the diversity in Columbus was also prevalent. But so too was the understanding that face-to-face interaction was needed to overcome widespread segregation and discrimination.

Born in the US to Pakistani parents — both of whom were at Sunday’s event — Chaudhry attends an alternative high school part time that she says feels like a respite from the stereotyping and hate she faces at the public high school.

While she came out Sunday to volunteer as a greeter, she was interested in learning more about the Peace-Builders and other groups at the gathering. And that is exactly the type of interaction organizers are hoping to generate.

“We are part of a mosaic,” said Iram Jafri, part of the Ahlul Bayt Society, a multicultural congregation comprised of Pakistanis, Indians, Iranians and Iraqi refugees. “We are not complete without each other.”