{"id":3171,"date":"2012-09-21T19:10:32","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T00:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/?p=3171"},"modified":"2012-09-21T19:10:32","modified_gmt":"2012-09-22T00:10:32","slug":"muslim-and-mennonite-women-drawn-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/2012\/muslim-and-mennonite-women-drawn-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Muslim and Mennonite Women Drawn Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

August 24, 2012 \u00a0–\u00a0<\/strong>Muslim and\u00a0<\/strong>Mennonite women joyfully drawn to study and friendship <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>The conversation is lively this warm June\u00a0evening in Winnipeg, and there\u2019s lots of laughter, picture taking, interruption for checking text messages, and food. It\u2019s very much a typical \u201cgirls\u2019 night out\u201d with friends.<\/p>\n

But this party is unique. More than half the women attending are Shia Muslims from Iran, the others are Canadian Mennonites, and they\u2019re celebrating the end of an intense week \u00a0of the study of Christianity.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also celebrating the friendships they\u2019ve formed. For many of them, interfaith encounters are a first.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome things about Christianity you can learn from books,\u201d says Mariyam Naqvi, \u201cbut when you learn from people practicing it, it\u2019s completely different. Then you can understand with your whole soul and body.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIntroduction to Christianity,\u201d held June 11-17, 2012 at the Canadian Mennonite Unversity (CMU), grew out of an initiative by Iranian scholars in 2011, when a group of female Muslim students came to Winnipeg for a one-week course on Christian understandings of peace and justice taught by CMU professors Irma Fast Dueck and Sheila Klassen-Wiebe.<\/p>\n

This spring, there was another request. Would CMU offer a second course, for a second group of women graduate students from the Jamiat Al-Zahra, an international Islamic women\u2019s institute Qom, this time for an introduction to Christianity?<\/p>\n

It seemed a wonderful opportunity, a further link in a chain of Muslim-Mennonite interaction that goes back to 1990, when Mennonite Central Committee responded to the devastating earthquake in Iran. Educational exchanges followed that first contact, as well as a series of five scholarly dialogues between Mennonite theologians and Iranian Muslim clerics in Iran and at Conrad Grebel College in Waterloo, Ont. and Canadian Mennonite University.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s course examined the history, practices, and core theological beliefs at the heart of the Christian faith. Each day\u2019s session began with Bible study, followed by lectures and discussion on topics such as Jesus, salvation, the trinity, Christian ethics, and the church. Dueck and Klassen-Wiebe facilitated and taught parts of the course, with other CMU professors contributing in their areas of specialty. A number of Mennonite women sat in on the course as well.<\/p>\n

The week included visits to a Hutterite colony, the Mennonite Central Committee offices and warehouse, and Sunday morning attendance at Charleswood Mennonite Church. And there was homework: a reading journal of at least ten entries, on articles in the Mennonite Confession of Faith and selected Scriptures.<\/p>\n

The nine visiting scholars, most in their twenties or early thirties, most quite fluent in English, participated keenly in everything. They jumped in with questions when things weren\u2019t clear to them, sometimes breaking into the Farsi language to help each other understand the concepts being taught.<\/p>\n

The women say they were surprised at \u201csimilarities\u201d they encountered in Christianity. They found challenges too, such as the Trinity. \u201cI just can\u2019t understand it,\u201d says Nafise Amiri.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has changed lots of my thinking about Christians \u2013 in a good way,\u201d Zahra Golzar offers. \u201cBefore this, I thought that just we<\/em> love God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faculty involved in the course acknowledge that aspects of the interfaith dialogue have been controversial within parts of the Mennonite community, not least because of Western political tensions with Iran. They feel joyfully drawn, however, to continue to engage with Muslims, to articulate the Christian faith, and hopefully to also make a small difference on behalf of the struggling Christian church in Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a Christian calling,\u201d Irma Fast Dueck says firmly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about breaking down stereotypes,\u201d adds Sheila Klassen-Wiebe. \u201cAnd about building relationships — with smart, funny, strong, devout women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article written\u00a0by Dora Dueck\u00a0for CMU<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            August 24, 2012 \u00a0–\u00a0Muslim and\u00a0Mennonite women joyfully drawn to study and friendship The conversation is lively this warm June\u00a0evening in Winnipeg, and there\u2019s lots of laughter, picture taking, interruption for checking text messages, and food. It\u2019s very much a typical \u201cgirls\u2019 night out\u201d with friends. But this party is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[25,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3175,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3171\/revisions\/3175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}