We have had very interesting discussions this week. As part of one of our classes we have discussed religion/Islam with two groups of people.
The first occasion we had met with students from Dutch-speaking Belgium and discussed religion and their thoughts on Islam being in their country. It was so interesting to talk to a lot of them because Atheism is so big in the younger generations. A lot of young adults have turned away from the church because of all that it has done. It was interesting talking to them too about Islam, we talked a lot about religious identity and whether a religious culture and a nationalist culture can interact. We had no answers but it was such an interesting discussion. I wish we had better time to prepare because my small group wasn't very talkative but there was still a few things to gleam from it.
The second occasion was with Muslim college students. These students actually invited us to have a dialogue with them after they had heard about the community center that was being built near ground zero. For the dialogue we were actually placed into 2 groups: for and against. Instead of choosing the option of what we sided with, we were chosen on one side and then had to debate the other. I was in the "Against it being built" side. We came up with our argument then had a debate. It was interesting that some of the Muslims were actually on the side of being against whereas most of the Americans were for it being built.
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