If there is one lesson we keep learning from history, and that has been highlighted of late by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, is that people … - Azza Karam

we have to be committed to questioning what we think we know, and few of us have that bandwidth (some call it a luxury). But how can we inspire and transform if we are always in a hurry to work only with the like-minded?

For religions to be about peace requires many things: we need to appreciate that religious consciousness, spirituality, or belief is a force for good in most people’s lives, and we need to appreciate that religious institutions suffer from some of the same ills as all other institutions populated by humans, but that this is no cause to dismiss all the institutions.

Cooperation, collaboration, are not options. They are necessities for us to survive. Unfortunately, there are still many people who feel or believe that their nations or communities could survive at expense of everyone else. The truth, however, is we are growing, even with globalization, even with technology, even with wealth, we are growing dependent, not less dependent, more dependent on one another, economically, socially, politically, culturally.