An ILA Leadership Perspectives Webinar

Acts of Faith: Interfaith Leadership in an Era of Religious Crisis

Presenter: Eboo Patel

Date: 10 February 2009

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Religious extremists movements are built by leaders – people who tell a story of their religion requiring its adherence to dominate others and gathering large groups of people in service of this vision. If we are to build a world of equal dignity and mutual loyalty, we will need a new set of leaders – interfaith leaders with the framework, knowledgebase and skill-set to bring diverse people together on common ground. The time to develop those leaders is now. The time to be that leader is now.

Eboo will also talk about how he develops other interfaith leaders through the organization he founded and runs, the Interfaith Youth Core, www.ifyc.org. To learn more about Dr. Patel and his work please visit his blog, “The Faith Divide”, which he writes for the Washington Post and Newsweek, and that explores what drives faiths apart and what brings them together, and the links listed below.

Speaker Information

Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit that promotes interfaith cooperation. He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. An American Muslim of Indian heritage, Eboo has a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He is on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation and the Advisory Board of Duke University’s Islamic Studies Center. Eboo is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select network of social entrepreneurs with ideas that could change the world.