Have you ever heard of this, faithful reader? Well I hadn't, until this afternoon. At our meeting earlier today to work on the proposal for a Centre of Excellence in Community Cohesion, John Hall (Director of the St Philip's Centre for Study and Engagement in a Multi-Faith Society) tells me that the first week in February is going to be "World Interfaith Harmony Week". This is news to me. I'm not aware of it as having shown up on the Council of Faiths radar at all. I can't recall seeing it mentioned on Twitter either and I follow a good number of inter faith sources there. Clearly, I've not been paying attention.
Having googled it, I learn that it began as a personal initiative by King Abdullah of Jordan, but it is intended to be a permanent addition to the calendar. The campaign's own website shows evidence of a lot of top level international support for this, but I can't find a lot of evidence of that at the grass roots in this country. A full and busy Facebook page shows a lot of activity in other parts of the world though.
This week-long event will come less than three months after National Inter Faith Week - and although we made a full contribution to that with our exhibition in Highcross, I'd be lying if I said that the week found great support from the media, service providers, local authorities etc. On the one hand, you could say the more occasions there are like this (attempting to build bridges between those of different beliefs and traditions) the better, on the other hand, you can only spread the butter so thin.
Naturally, I'll be happy to turn out and support anything that anyone else might be putting on for it (and undoubtedly I'll find reason to give it a mention or two here on the blog). Of course Leicester Council of Faiths would love to put our weight behind such a venture but given our meagre resources and limited capacity I can't see that happening. But if anyone were to look upon us with the eye of generosity, that would probably change.
Should you wish to find out more about World Interfaith Harmony Week, faithful reader (especially if you're one of the faithful readers of this blog from overseas) then click here:
http://worldinterfaithharmonyweek.com/
And here's their Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/world.interfaith.harmony.week
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