The Islamic-Christian Alliance (ICA) is a grass roots effort to explore the similarities of the Islamic and Christian faiths. The main purpose of this alliance is to foster peace between Christians and Muslims by allowing believers to better understand each others’ faiths. The focus of the ICA is on providing the tools for believers in local communities to interact profitably with one another.
The Principles of the Alliance
The main goal of the Islamic-Christian Alliance can be summed up in one three-word phrase: “Peace through understanding.” The ICA encourages encounters between believers at a community level, and desires to lift up what the Islamic and Christian faiths both hold in common. The ICA hopes that those who learn of the common ground between the two faiths, and who participate in interfaith dialogue within their communities, will encourage greater understanding and tolerance of the beliefs of the world’s two great monotheistic religions.
Islam and Christianity do indeed hold many beliefs in common. Both believe fervently in the unity of God. Both trace their beginnings back to the promises made to Abraham, the Iraqi desert wanderer who found himself following God’s direction to Palestine. Both uphold the same basic moral tenets, and encourage the same three basic spiritual practices of tithing, fasting and regular prayer. Both believe the creation of the universe and the origin of life to be the work of God alone, and trace the origin of human life in their sacred scriptures to the creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Islam even acknowledges the prophetic nature of Jesus, his virgin birth from Mary, and his special place in creation as God’s Messiah, even if they do not share the Christian belief in his divinity and in his role as redeemer and savior. The similarities between the faiths are often glossed over by the media, who tend to put all world religions on the same level and fail to highlight the common roots they often share.
The ICA will bring together groups from these two faiths to communicate with each other and learn together of these similarities that constitute the common ground between the faiths. From this, a new understanding will develop to pave the way for peace, harmony, and a cultural exchange of ideas, and better relationships between both Christians and Muslims in communities in the United States and, hopefully, around the world.
Online Component
Extensions, Inc., a social network search engine development company, has chosen ICA as a candidate for a new micro social network that will make use of EXT’s networking tools and technologies. EXT social networks were developed specifically to take social change-oriented causes and to develop an interactive social network and data repository to help move that cause forward.
EXT will create a network around the ICA’s concept of developing peace through understanding between Christians and Muslims at a local level. Members of the network will use it as a place for discussion, to coordinate the work of volunteers, to generate awareness, and to combine the many grass roots efforts currently underway across the United States and abroad to support dialog between Islam and Christianity.
Real Life Component
Peace, tolerance, understanding, and unity are powerful ideas that have been the rallying cry of many movements, from the abolition of slavery to the GLBT rights movement. The ICA will foster the growth of peace and tolerance in the Muslim and Christian communities by providing a number of cause-oriented teaching materials and organizational tools.
Some of the materials the ICA hopes to produce include Christian and Islamic video information series, subscription materials in the form of electronic newsletters and journals, protocols for meetings, forums, and joint prayer opportunities, and testimonials both written and on video of successful encounters between Muslims and Christians.
The ICA will also equip local organizers to host and conduct their own forums and meetings. Some of the events the ICA encourages and can provide advice on include informational speaker series, community meetings between churches and mosques, cultural exchange programs, and Q&A sessions about Islam and Christianity. They also hope to use the new EXT social networking platform to form local ICA groups in different localities across the United States, especially those areas where Muslims and Christians live in close proximity and in large numbers.