Eboo Patel’s Acts of Faith

Influences during our youth, writes Eboo Patel, founder and director of the Interfaith Youth Core, determine decisions and allegiances throughout our lives. In a world fraught with prejudice and fanaticism, teachers and mentors hold the key to instilling tolerance in the young. Yet, while youth programs are often praised by community leaders and politicians, they receive little in the way of funding, time, or energy.

In his book, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, Patel examines the threat of radicalism that occurs when communities neglect to nurture their youth. In the wake of 9/11 he urges that now, more than ever, young people need guidance and support. “This is a book about how some people become champions of religious pluralism while others become the foot soldiers of religious totalitarianism,” he writes. “Its thesis is simple: influences matter, programs count, mentors make a difference, institutions leave their mark.”

From his college years spent steeped in the angry intellectual culture of Marxist critique and his later adoption of the philosophy of love, abundance, and service at a Catholic Worker House to his discovery of what it means to be a Muslim through observing his grandmother’s devotion to helping others, he paints a portrait of the ideas and people that shaped him, leading ultimately to his adult embrace of Islam and his passionate advocacy of religious pluralism. “I believe that the twenty-first century will be shaped by the question of the faith line,” he writes. “On one side of the faith line are the religious totalitarians. Their conviction is that only one interpretation of one religion is a legitimate way of being, believing, and belonging on earth. Everyone else needs to be cowed, or converted, or condemned, or killed. On the other side of the faith line are the religious pluralists, who hold that people believing in different creeds and belonging to different communities need to learn to live together.”

Yet even Patel’s turn toward positive activism did not reconcile his struggle to understand his heritage and the faith of his family. He journeys to India in an attempt to reconnect to a home both familiar and foreign. “The dream of India,” he notes, “is the dream of pluralism, the idea of different communities retaining their uniqueness while relating in a way that recognizes they share universal values.” Here, his encounters with his grandmother, who embodies the compassion and service that he has struggled to come to terms with, reinforce his notion of empathy. When given a reception with the Dalai Llama, Patel declares himself a Muslim, and by the time he leaves India he has recommitted himself to the faith of his ancestors, and realized the urgent need for an active interfaith dialogue.

Ultimately, Patel’s devotion to the pursuit of tolerance and religious discourse enable him to start the Interfaith Youth Core, a group committed to spreading religious pluralism among young people across the globe. As the executive director of the IFYC he works to attract youth away from radicalism and violence, toward a path paved with acceptance, pluralism, and peace. “We have to save each other,” he says, “it’s the only way to save ourselves.”

To purchase the book visit here.