This morning before the speaker was the greatest morning in the history of Cultural Leadership, we got coffee. At 8: 30 in the morning a surprisingly large group of us made an overly enthusiastic trip to the starbucks 5 blocks away from the hostel. The caffeination was a great start to an absolutely fantastic and enlightening day of speakers and destinations.
Our first speaker of the day was Colman McCarthy a renowned teacher, author, and journalist for the Washington Post. He is best known for being a raging and extreme pacifist (oxymoron intended), who started courses in peace making and conflict resolution within innercity DC schools. His views on contemporary education are opinions that I wish could be held by public school boards across the nation. He believes that arduous exams, uninspired essays, and mountains of homework should be labeled as forms of academic violence (I concur!) But by far the most inspiring portion of his lecture was his defense of peace, it was one of the most (if not the most) inspiring speeches that I have heard on the trip so far. He believes that if war was a worthy solution to conflict “it would have been successful eons ago.” As history shows violence has never solved any problems in the way that conflict resolution does. I felt that as a group we were radicalized to fight in order to end war in our country and around the world.
After or talk with the amazing Colman McCarthy we had to book it to the Masjid. When we arrived at the Masjid in our cab and the driver realized where we were he refused to accept our money for the ride and in return only asked that we pray for him, this shows how truly holy and important our destination was. It was my first time at a Masjid and even though I didn’t have a stereotypical visit in mind, my expectations were blown out of the water. Upon entering the temple we were not met with kindness, we were met with love and admiration from everyone that was in attendance. I sat down at a table next to my buddy Julisa and a woman turned to us and began speaking about how we should try to live our lives, she spoke to us for almost an hour and gave advice that rivaled advice of clergymen that we had met before on the trip. She never once prosletized, she only spoke of her own supreme belief that jews, Christians, and muslims should live together in peace. The service itself was beautiful, the Imam spoke to the congregation about gender equality and how we need to ensure that women in the faith be educated as much as their male counterparts, it was no doubtebly a progressive masjid. At the end of the experience I couldn’t help but ask myself “if this is Islam how could anyone have a problem with it?” I really came to the realization that the islam that people have in mind is not at all the religion but instead the people who are enforcing the religion and dictating how the religion should be acted out.
Later we went to the heritage foundation where we listened to a lecture about entitlements and how they are destroying our country and we should fear them. We didn’t have enough time to ask all the questions we had for this conservative organization. Those that were asked were answered in a roundabout manner that left us really frustrated. We weren’t even given the luxury of disagreeing with their conservative values because they didn’t even tell us what their actual values were. FA-RUSTRATING!
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