Jewish-Muslim Youth relations

Hello,

Please circulate to contacts in your community and around the world. We are searching for 18 exceptional young people (nine Muslims & nine Jews) from eighteen different countries between the ages of 16-18 the participate in an historic project. Together, they will create an unprecedented Muslim-Jewish Relations Guidebook to Mutual Discovery.
It will be distributed to Jewish and Muslim communities all over the world at the end of 2006.

We need your help to get this information/application into the hands of the 16-18 year-olds in your communities.
Applications are due no later
than January 20th.

Applicants must be:

- highly motivated
- prepared to engage with the project via the Internet on a daily basis for four months
- feel comfortable communicating in basic written English with other mostly non-native speakers
- have access to a camera and a willingness to explore their religious community through photography
- knowledgable about their own religious tradition and comfortable serving as a peer educator to those from the other community
- willing to serve as an ambassador for Muslim-Jewish relations both in their own community and abroad.

****Below is the decription of the program****


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Discovery Program:

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the World" Nelson Mandela

The Discovery Program is an intensive four-month online seminar that is designed to act as an educational gateway in bringing together Muslim and Jewish youth to examine their current, as well as prospective relations.
Youth from all over the world are encouraged to engage in thought-provoking discussions that tackle themes related to religion, political debates, and the Arab-Israeli conflict and its effect on Muslim-Jewish relations. The program also provides an open forum to critically analyze the different forms of media and their impact on these two communities. The Discovery Program creates new opportunities and possibilities to learn about the 'other' by providing young Muslims and Jews with a platform to understand one another, to appreciate their respective culture and tradition, as well as to explore the similarities in beliefs and practices.

Along the lines of the notion that "a picture is worth a thousand words", the participants also discover their shared spiritual values through photography and thought provoking discussions. Each group of the discovery program consists of eighteen students, 9 Muslims and 9 Jews, who are selected from Jewish and Muslim communities from all over the world to take pictures of Muslim and Jewish religious themes, symbols, rituals and events.
These photos serve as powerful and spiritual visual tools that both challenge and prompt the students to explore and reflect on many issues that are considered 'taboo'. At the end of this educational journey, the students work together to publish a photo essay that serves as an educational tool for use in Muslim and Jewish schools and communities around the world.
This photo essay is a combination of photos and essays compiled by the participants in order for them to share their discoveries, insights and realizations with other Jews and Muslims locally and globally. The main goals of this four month long seminar are to:

1. Become leaders in Jewish and Muslim youth dialogue
2. Discover common theological and cultural beliefs and practices
3. Foster interaction between Muslim and Jewish teenagers around the world, with the aim of restoring a culture of respect based on knowledge and understanding
4. Become pioneers in the exploration of Jewish and Muslim traditions and breaking down the walls of mistrust, hate, and rivalry
5. Build creative and practical skills for peace-building and open dialogue between the two communities.

Thank you for reading,
Best regards,
Gul Rukh


Edited by GulRukh

Dear Senior member, we are an international non-profit organisation that work with Muslim and Jewish teenagers all over the world and hence the age limit.

you could contact me for further questions at [email protected]

W/salam

Dear Senior Member, Salam,
         &nbs p;   As I described earlier, we are an interfaith-based educational initiative that aims to bridge the ever-increasing gap between these two communities. We work with teens because we think that at that age they have found their own voice and identity to a certain extent. They can contribute productively to the educational objectives.

Dear Angela,
         &nbs p;      Thank you so much for your encouragment. We need these words as we understand that our work is not very popular.
         &nbs p;       I am not offended. Why would I be offended?  Part of what we are trying to do is to foster dialogue, so that we may learn  to respect  different view points.
         &nbs p;        But we will only be successful if both sides take part in a constructive dialogue.

Gul Rukh