Eboo Patel
Founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core

In an era of global religious conflict, three points are clear: Religion is not going away, it is impossible to avoid contact with people from different religions, and religious identity is profoundly important to young people. The predominant narrative about religion, born of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and Al-Qaeda, tells the story of inherent conflict. It presents a powerful way for youth to engage religious identity: Guarantee that your religion dominates and all others suffocate.

But religious identity in the 21st century can mean something different. The strength of a young person’s religious conviction does not have to be at the cost of someone else’s dignity. Young people have a choice: join the futile fight for destruction, or pave the way for cooperation. Choosing cooperation means joining the ranks of the most powerful social movements in history led by religious young people, such as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who, at 26, led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. As young people build the interfaith youth movement, they advance and expand a compelling counter to the narrative of religious violence.

The urgency of this situation is compounded by a series of converging sociopolitical and population trends which have created a mass of religious young people. These influential trends are probably not news to any of you. We know that globalization has given rise to unprecedented interaction among diverse religious communities around the world, and that it is young people, as they in particular have embraced new forms of global communication, who will decide how these interactions tend. In Muslim majority countries, several additional trends are at work. First, there is a significant youth bulge: in Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip, the median age is about 17 years; in Iraq and Pakistan it is barely 20, and in Syria and Saudi Arabia the median is about 21.5 years.[1] Second, these youth are faced with changing socio-economic factors that create insecurity; there is a clear lack of job opportunities and services to meet their needs. The unemployment rates in Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip have been estimated at close to 40%, and in Jordan and Iraq this number is around 30%.[2] Finally, as youth worldwide seek identity and purpose in their lives, they are confronted with a global religious revival. Scholar Thomas Farr writes “Faith, far from exiting the world’s stage, has played a growing role in human affairs, even as modernization has proceeded apace. Iran’s Shiite revolution in 1979, the Catholic Church’s role in the “third wave” of democratization, the 9/11 attacks – all illustrated just how important a global force religion has become.”[3]

Though much of the media focus is on the Middle East, the issue of religious identity in youth is relevant worldwide. Muslim communities in Western Europe are a key demographic that cannot be ignored. As of 2003, there were 15 million Muslims in the European Union (three times more than in the United States at the time). Moreover, in 2003 the Muslim birth rate in Europe was triple that of the non-Muslim birth rate. By 2015, the Muslim population in Europe will have doubled, while the non-Muslim population will have declined by 3.5%.[4] Many of these European young Muslims face issues such as discrimination, economic deprivation, underemployment, and residence in ghettoized communities.

Let me be clear: the problem is not the mass of religious young people. The problem is that powerful grassroots movements like Al-Qaeda engage young people’s religious identities destructively and lead them towards radicalization. These movements provide youth with uncertain futures a sense purpose, meaning and contribution. We need a substantial investment in a counter-movement that engages the powerful force of religious identity in a constructive way. This movement will provide youth with a different kind of meaning: empowering them to become interfaith leaders. It will require significant funding, the mobilization of human capital and the adoption of interfaith youth engagement as a government priority.

With the Obama administration, this counter-movement could become a reality. Since day one at his inaugural address, Obama has emphasized the importance of interfaith engagement and cooperation. Last week in Turkey, he made it clear that “The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.” His outreach to the Muslim world, indicated by his re-iterated “open hand” to Iran and recent visit to Turkey and Iraq, among other examples, shows that his intention isn’t merely rhetorical. The White House Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, of which I am an advisory member, is another example: one of our four task forces focuses on interfaith cooperation.

As the most powerful leader in the world, it means something that President Obama has chosen to highlight this issue. I hope he considers the pivotal role of young interfaith leaders in his quest to advance interfaith cooperation.

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Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel is the founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement. He was recently appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Initiatives, where he is working to realize the President’s priority of interfaith cooperation. He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Eboo holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He writes "The Faith Divide", a featured blog on religion for The Washington Post and has also written for the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, the Chicago Tribune, The Clinton Journal, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, The Sunday Times of India and National Public Radio. Eboo serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA, and the National Board of the YMCA. He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and at universities around the world. Eboo is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world; was named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America; was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch; and was most recently selected to join the Young Global Leaders network of the World Economic Forum.