France's UN World Interfaith Harmony Week Interreligious Zoom Meeting

In France, to conclude the World Interfaith Harmony Week, we organized an interreligious Zoom meeting on Sunday, February 7, from 5:00 to 6:30 pm.

We chose the theme of “hospitality of Abraham” and sent an email invitation to our contacts (see attached files).

To those who signed up, we sent some texts on the topic (from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, and from the book “Mother of Peace”).

Finally, 95 people registered and 55 people actually participated (from France, Switzerland, Italy, Mali, Congo, Burkina Faso), half guests, half members.

The program was:

A short presentation of the World Interfaith Harmony Week by Jacques Marion, UPF European President.

The reading of the poem “Red Brocade” by Naomi Shihab Nye which we translated into French.

We then had readings of sacred texts, which were commented (12 minutes each) by representative of different religions: Monsignor Nicolas, from the Orthodox Church Miss Hajar Masbah (representing Islam), from Morocco Venerable Michel Thao Chan.

Because of the health situation and their schedule, it was not possible to ask all our speakers to connect on Sunday, so we went to record them at their home, and we showed the video on Sunday afternoon.

We then had one 15-minute group discussion at the end.

We asked the participants if they were interested in repeating this experience, and the result was very positive.

This first test was interesting because we learned a lot from doing this event.

It was good to see several members (including Second Generation members) to involve in the preparations.

Jean-François Moulinet

Recording of the event: www,facebook,com/DialogueEtAlliance/videos/883428509121646