I attended the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta's 2012 Building Bridges Awards Dinner where Atlanta's most eminent leaders from the interfaith, education, government and business communities gathered to honor the recipients of speaker of the year award and the lifetime achievement award.
Mr. Alan Howard, was awarded the speaker of the year award and Drs. Hossam & Skina Fadel were awarded the lifetime achievement award. For the past ten years, the ISB has honored individuals and organizations in the metro Atlanta area who have made significant contributions towards interfaith and multicultural understanding. Doug Shipman, CEO of National Center for Civil and Human Rights was the honarary Chair for the Dinner and presented the opening message. Imam Mansoor Sabri of the Atlanta Masjid Al-Islam, Imam Plemon T. El-Amin, Ms. Angela Robinson, Mr. Zaheer Faruqi, Ms. Sally Yates, Ms. Shelia Poole and Ms. Soumaya Khalifa also spoke at the event.
The ISB dinner featured a networking reception followed by dinner, an awards ceremony and a Keynote address from Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa's Ambassador to the U.S. Ambassador Rasool and a a long time anti-apartheid leader. The topic of the keynote speech was "Building Inclusive, Shared Societies: The South African Experience" where he touched on compelling ideas on a range of topics covering identity, community development, governance, religion, Islamic and cultural issues. He expounded on the many similarities between the events of South Africa and the issues faced by religious communities, specially the American Muslim community today. He spoke about how faith itself is becoming irrelevant, and to embrace shared spaces while not focusing so much on exclusivity. I could not help but think how this applies to the national level, but especially at the local community level where we seperate ourselves through color, origin and sect-level associations.
Ambassador Rasool also pointed out that that once you discriminate against one group you open the door for discrimination of your own group. Another atendee also shared her thoughts about this event through her blog post titled 'The World Watches Us'.
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