Tolerance doesn’t often create headlines: hate and violence deliver much more sensational coverage in the media. Yet tolerance is like a dove of peace in a world lacerated by conflict. We cannot achieve peace unless we take the steps that lead to it. Tolerance is a tool of peace. It is one we can all take up and so become active contributors to peace on our communities.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited St Paul’s Anglican Church Manuka in Canberra, Australia’s spacious and leafy capital city. The sermon was preached by the Reverend Dr Brian Douglas, the Rector of St Paul’s and tolerance was a strong message that came through what he had to say. He made a special point of interfaith tolerance and gave an example from his experience.

Afterwards, I asked him further questions about this. Dr Brian Douglas had been teaching Studies of Religion to Australian secondary school students (generally teenagers) and now teaches theology as part of Interfaith Dialogue at Charles Sturt University (generally to adults). He told me that Studies of Religion is the fifth most popular course for students preparing for the major exams, the HSC, that conclude secondary school here.

Part of the Studies of Religion included a visit to an Islamic mosque. Here is Dr Douglas’s description of the student visits:

“We always went to the Gallipoli Mosque in Auburn, in Sydney, where we were greeted warmly and with respect. They have an excellent education section there which is very accomplished at talking to young people and responding to their questions. One of the greatest outcomes of these visits and meetings was that students came to see that Muslims are in the main reasonable people, and while there are some terrorists in the world the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful and loving people who are prepared to welcome fellow seekers after God. The students always went away with a new and much more healthy view and realised that sometimes the media creates opinions that are less than helpful.”

This heartening result was echoed in the experience of the older students of Interfaith Dialogue at Charles Sturt University.

Dr Douglas says: “The course aims to provide not only knowledge of Islam in the hope of providing accurate information, but also investigating the principles of interfaith dialogue. In the interests of making this real we visited the Canberra Mosque and were warmly welcomed. The four people we met were very impressive. An older man who is the secretary of the mosque, another man who is a member and two younger people, one about 19 and one 14. All of these people spoke to us of their faith with enthusiasm and respected us. We discussed the fact that Christians and Muslims share a common Abrahamic faith and that all Muslims read and respect the Bible but at the same time see the Qur’an as God’s final revelation. Questions and answers were freely exchanged and it was good to share in a time of dialogue.

“As a part of this course we also had an interfaith dialogue session where two women from the Gallipoli Mosque travelled to Canberra and spent a couple of hours with us in dialogue. This was really excellent and allowed us all to explore the other’s tradition without acrimony but in a spirit of dialogue. The purpose of dialogue is not to argue for one’s own position, but to explore each other’s position and to realise that there is a great deal that unites people in seeking after God. The students found this part of the residential course run here in Canberra as the most useful and real.”

My own interfaith knowledge is much more limited, but on a trip through Turkey in 2005, I had a similarly positive experience. I was one of 29 Australian Christians visiting Turkey to explore Christian sites and partly trace the steps of St Paul on his great missionary journeys at the beginning of the Christian era.

From cosmopolitan Istanbul, our Turkish Muslim guide Hakan took us on a flight to Kayseri. This is a large, prosperous inland city, and I watched truckloads of potatoes and pumpkins being driven in to market as we were bussed out into the countryside of Cappadocia to see the remarkable homes and churches hewn into cliff faces by early Christian believers in the Goreme and Zelve Valleys. In this region, if I saw local women outdoors at all, they were in burqas and fully covered.

However, all the men treated us with respect and kindness. Hakan was a wonderful and entertaining source of information. Our bus driver, Yilmaz, kept us safe and always had a smile as we began the morning’s itinerary. His assistant, Bekir, served refreshing apple tea that I still remember with some nostalgia.

They showed us hospitality and tolerance.

It’s a thought for today.

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