I spent the Labor Day weekend at the Rosemont Convention Center in Chicago with over 30,000 Muslims who were participating in the annual conference of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA is the only Islamic organization in the world that has succeeded in bringing together the diverse groups of Muslims: Arab-South Asian; Black-White; Shi�a-Sunni. The event, established in 1963, combines learning�120 workshops on a wide-variety of mostly non-political subjects�with celebration in the form of art, film festival, and literary entertainment.

As Mary Vaccaro said in her article, �As important as it is for Christians to learn about Islam, it is even more important for us to come to know Muslim people.� The weekend afforded me the opportunity to listen to Muslims talk with one another about things that are on their minds, and to converse with them over meals, as well as before and after the sessions. Of irreplaceable value in this is that the personal encounter humanizes the �other� who has to some extent�whether we admit it or not--been stereotyped in our minds by media impressions. Add to this the insight and perspectives that come just by listening and asking questions. Some examples:

If I had heard just one speaker say, �Our mission in life is not to convert people to Islam or to save humanity, but to influence humanity to open to Allah who can save it,� I might have said, �yeah, right�.� and stayed with the stereotype of a hidden Muslim agenda to convert America. But I heard three different speakers say the same thing in different and unrelated sessions.

The former, reformist President of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, made his own contribution to that theme in addressing a plenary session: "There is a great opportunity of dialogue and cooperation among people of faith," Khatami said. "But I mean people of true faith. I don't mean extremists and terrorists. Public opinion can be rescued from the grips of ignorance and blunder, and the domination of arrogant, war-mongering and violence-triggering policies will end." He told the packed plenary that Muslims must forge a new identity that embraces the modern world, tolerates other religions and works toward peace.

Against the backdrop of the daily news reports of internecine killings in Baghdad, I listened with interest to Sunni and Shi�a Muslims talk about their differences in a workshop titled The Prospect of Sunni-Shi�a Repprochement.. There were moments when it seemed as though I was at the National Workshop on Christian Unity listening to a panel of Catholic and Protestant theologians discuss the Reformation and what it will take for us to be one Church again.

�Shi�is are guilty of denigrating certain companions of the Prophet (Muhammad),� said one Sunni speaker, �and they must repent and reform.� When a woman stood up in the question period and said, �I would like to see no Sunni and no Shia�just Muslim, with two separate schools of thought,� the crowd applauded. In moments like that, the will of the moderate Muslim on the street comes through. And I could relate: I would like to see Christians stand together within one Church with acknowledged different traditions of Christian faith.

In a session on Answering Difficult But Frequently Asked Questions About Islam, I got another angle on why Muslims take a pass on Jesus� death and resurrection. What I have previously been given to understand is that for God to be hungry, thirsty, tired, tortured is unthinkable. So as the Qur�an says, �It so appeared to them� (emphasis mine) that he died. But the answer that the speaker, Jamal Badawi, gave was that the issue is not whether a prophet could die such a death�several have, he said�but that there is no concept of inherited sin in Islam, and therefore no need for atonement. �Whether Jesus died or not doesn�t make any difference to our faith. Crucifixion just isn�t theologically important for Muslims as it is for Christians.�

The film festival, featuring a dozen short films produced by young Muslim adults, provided a window into various problems the Islamic community is coping with in North America. One, entitled �The Highway,� personalized the statistics of the Humdard Center that 30% of Muslim women�single, married, widowed�leave home because they are not given basic rights. It displayed the story of a young woman of Pakistani background in her final semester of college in America who runs away from home because her parents, while living in the U.S., had arranged for her to go back to Pakistan to marry someone she had never met. The final frame of the film displayed the statement: �Islam supports women�s rights. Unfortunately, culture oftentimes does not.�

Another film, �Whose Children Are These?� tells the stories of three Muslim youth, an honors student whose father was put into a detention center because his papers weren�t in order; a popular high school athlete who confronts pending deportation; and a college student who finds a new life�s calling to combat bias crimes in New York City as a youth activist. Each tale spoke for thousands of immigrant youth who are struggling in a post-9/11 environment to define a life and a livelihood. Said one young man in the discussion following the film: �There�s a problem of psychological ghettoisation among Muslims in America today. We live here, but we don�t feel like we belong here.�

How did they respond to a priest being in this sea of Muslims? One high school student stepped up to me and said, �Hey, what�s with the neck thing (collar)?� It occasioned a friendly conversation, and at a session the next day when I was looking for a free seat in the plenary hall, he spotted me and waved me over to one next to him. Mostly I just got a lot of appreciative nods of the head accompanied by a smile.

The conference theme�Achieving Balance in Faith, Family, and Community�effectively summarized the preoccupation of believers of every stripe in North America today. In the end, what left the deepest impression was simply this: here is a community of people with a strong faith in the God of Abraham and a strong track record in community service and charity (the city of Chicago�s foodbank said that the Muslim contribution last year was larger than any it had ever received in its history). In an era of secularization where faith is increasingly being air-brushed from the public square, I felt grateful for the witness of these believers and a desire to strengthen our relationship as �people of the Book�.