Peacequest Centre for Human Excellence:
PeaceQuest:
- Produces audiovisual content for promoting religious tolerance, compassion, and inter-faith/inter-cultural harmony to counter hate, extremism and violence
- Promotes compassion and understanding for building a resilient, safe and inclusive community for everyone.
- builds social resilience through education and awareness to prevent hate and violence.
CONTEXT
Where We Live
Communities in the US, Canada and Europe, in particular, have turned into multicultural societies whose ethnocultural makeup has been shaped over time by their first peoples and then other immigrants and their descendants. This means nations with ethnocultural mosaics as indicated by their immigrant population, the ethnocultural backgrounds of their people, the minority populations, linguistic characteristics and religious diversity.
The Challenge We Face
With this diversity comes various challenges in communication, from differences in language to differences in culture. Of course, understanding these differences and what they may accidentally communicate is critical to effective communication and building cohesive communities.
However, there is a lot more to pay attention to – things that are common among us as human beings; some basic characteristics, our primordial settings and factors that may lead the wrong way if not properly understood and addressed, or if deliberately misrepresented or misinterpreted.
A glaring example is the campaign of intolerance, hatred, and extremism against the perceived “other” in almost all societies. As a result of this, many communities of faith – whether Muslims, Christian, Jewish or any other – and communities of various ethnicities, colours and ways of life are being violently targeted.
The Point We Miss
Unfortunately, other than the contemporary ways to analyze, explain and deal with these issues, we do not go deep enough to understand the root causes of mistrust among people of all faiths and ethnicities which lead to extremism, hatred and sometimes violent actions – not against one specific group but all faith and identity groups. If this is a common problem, it must have a common root cause and a common solution as well.
Unfortunately, just as the perpetrators of intolerance, hate and violent crimes vary by their background and affiliations, so are the responses to their actions without any coordinated attempt, except some interfaith meetings/dialogues, etc.
Also, the intended work to address the issue of extremism, hate and violence is:
1) happening in isolation from one another;
2) devoid of a focus on the root causes of the issue; and
3) as mentioned, not effectively coordinated to leverage on each other’s strengths.
Bridging the expertise in the social service sector with the faith communities mean that there needs to be a deliberate effort to engage expert facilitators and trainers from the mainstream organisations to understand the core issue, and then develop appropriate content for sharing it in effective ways to address the curse of extremism as reflected in so many different forms.
Our Objective
PeaceQuest aims to facilitate bridging the gap between faith communities and the mainstream social service sector.
PeaceQuest frames the message of Islam to clear the misconceptions and deliberate misinterpretations.
PeaceQuest aims to support service agencies, faith organisations, law enforcement and others in developing appropriate, integrated and informed content for addressing hate and violence.
How We Get There
The work begins with sensitisation followed by education and earnestness. PeaceQuest aims to provide a collective platform and collective voice to all organizations working to address intolerance and hate in one form or another.
PeaceQuest is a unique non-profit striving to understand the root causes of bigotry, prejudice, hatred and violence.
PeaceQuest looks into various psychological, philosophical and political theories to understand the different aspects of inter-group tensions that lead to discrimination and violence.
PeaceQuest strives to remove doubts, fear and misconceptions that lead to Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia as well as other ideologies of hate. We create content that dispels myths in order to cultivate social change by promoting compassion, and countering hatred.
PeaceQuest widens the understanding of the psychological roots of factors that create destructive inter-group relations – e.g., intolerance and exclusion.
PeaceQuest explores the role of Islam in shaping human attitudes towards peace and equality on one hand. And on the other hand, selfish materialistic ideologies which are constantly pitting people against each other.
PeaceQuest disseminates knowledge that helps parents in educating their youth and help them explore the spiritual aspect of human nature to engage their youth and inspires personal and social change towards achieving human excellence, harmony, and peace.
Where We Begin
To begin with, PeaceQuest has started framing the core teachings on Islam in a way to address the general misconceptions and deliberate misinterpretations. The work is mainly focusing on helping youth and non-, and new Muslims understand Islam from a new perspective of living a peaceful and contented life by following – the Straight Path – middle course; exercising moderation and avoid going to the extremes.
This very basic work is intended to broaden the conversation and engage various scholars, community leaders, youth and other experts to discuss what we have in common and what we can address together to develop empathy and compassion.
Moreover, keeping the broader vision in mind, PeaceQuest has started working on developing some content about our search for pleasure, fun, and success in life as the alternative to seeking the tranquillity of mind and contentment of the soul. The work so far has focused on helping overcome our feeling of emptiness and the purpose of our life from an Islamic perspective.
We have also picked up a couple of important issues that are directly linked to youth education and some myths and misunderstandings about Islam. The hope is that these topics will later become part of the conversation when we engage leaders from across communities and across sectors in discussing the contemporary issues from youth involvement in drugs and crime to the larger issues of intolerance and extremism in the society.
The Future Work
The conversations that PeaceQuest intends to launch will hopefully address the vast gap that currently exists between the various faith communities/leaders and the facilitators and change-makers in the social service sector. Faith communities need the facilitators in social service sectors as their allies to communicate the core message to the masses to address misunderstandings and myths that lead to hatred and violent crime down the road. Of course, specific initiatives have to be launched to assist the facilitators of change in developing relevant courses and programs for mass outreach – with one collective voice – but the connection between these divided worlds has to begin somewhere, and PeaceQuest wants to make that happen.
