Our media is saturated with stories that entrench poor stereotypes and play up conflict, so it’s always worthwhile promoting stories that break those stereotypes. Scanning a bunch of articles, the headline ‘Imams Visit Auschwitz‘ caught my attention. In a world where followers of Islam are seen to be hostile to the Jewish people (and some are) and vice versa, seeing Islamic religious leaders embracing experiences like this shatters many preconceptions.

The pursuit of interfaith and more importantly, inter-human understanding, is extremely important in a world rife with conflict, especially when religion is often a catalyst (though I don’t see it as the cause) that is used to justify those conflicts.

To see a group of international Imams kneeling in prayer at Auschwitz is a powerful symbol of human connection where many would sadly expect to see anti-Semitism. The selected quotes from their responses shows they were truly impacted and this call sums up the result well:

“Whether in Europe today or in the Muslim world, my call to humanity: End racism for God’s sake, end anti-Semitism for God’s sake, end Islamophobia for God’s sake, end sexism for God’s sake… Enough is enough,”

We shouldn’t just be doing it for God’s sake though, we should be doing it for the sake of humanity. Each of these things eats us up, destroys our communities and birth’s conflict. It does so by dehumanising the ‘other’ and building justifications for our actions that hurt the ‘other’. We’re called to embrace the other rather than exclude.

Seeking understanding shouldn’t just be limited to the Imams and their visit to Auschwitz – the challenge extends to all of us. Where we hold prejudices towards those different from us, what are we doing to expand our understanding and to get to know those who are ‘other’ to us? What are we doing to embrace rather than exclude?