An effort to promote love through sharing the beauties of different religions drew more than 200 people to Star of the Sea Community Centre Monday.
“This was to create understanding of different religions,” Mohammad Aslam Shad, regional president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (AMC), said of the World Religions Conference. “There are more commonalities than there are differences.”
Featuring a panel of religious scholars representing five faiths – Buddhism (Myoshin Kate McCandless), Christianity (Father Edwin Kulling), Hindu (Suman Sharma), Islamic (Mohammad Afzal Mirza) and Sikhism (Sukvinder Kaur Vinning) – the conference was themed “Reconciling Existence of God and Human Suffering.”
The event’s roots date back 116 years to when the first forum was organized by AMC. Today in B.C., about two dozen are held each year.
Following a chance for each panelist to give their perspective on the theme, questions from the audience ranged from whether suffering is simply a part of the evolutionary process, to “Is it possible for a murderer to get into heaven in your religion?”
To the latter, Sharma said the cause must be considered first; Mirza said it depends whether the subject can be reformed.
In Christianity, “there is no unforgiven sin,” Kulling said. “But… the person has to repent.”
Shad said the exercise was a healthy one.
“There can be no peace among the nations without having peace among the religions and there can be no peace in the religions without having dialogue,” he said.