NEWS

Local Muslims host faiths to stand for peace

Michael D. Clark
mclark@enquirer.com
An “interfaith peace ring” was formed Sunday around the mosque at the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati in West Chester Township.
  • Local Islamic mosque holds first inter-faith peace ring event drawing more than 100 from different religions.
  • The event was inspired by Muslims%2C Jews and others forming a symbolic protective line around a synagogue in Olso%2C Norway as a reaction to deadly synagogue shootings in Denmark.

WEST CHESTER TWP. – More than 100 Muslims, Christians, Jews and Sikhs came to a local mosque Sunday to form a symbolic, interfaith ring they said was necessary in the wake of local Islamic controversy and international violence.

Officials behind the first "interfaith peace ring" event at West Chester Township's Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati said they were inspired in part by a February incident in Scandinavia. Dozens of Muslims and others in Oslo, Norway, formed a symbolic, protective ring around a synagogue in the wake of a deadly attack on a synagogue in Denmark.

And they were also prompted by the local uproar last month over a student-proposed and voluntary Mason High School event - the "Covered Girl Challenge" – that invited girls at the Warren County high school to wear the Muslim hijab or head scarf to experience a small part of the Islamic religion.

Mason school officials canceled the event in response to parents and public complaints that it was an inappropriate injection of religion into the school.

"There are numerous stereotypes out there about Muslims," Erika King-Betts, executive director of the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission, who was credited with the idea for the interfaith peace ring event.

Followers of different religions came together Sunday in the name of peace.

"We will not allow stereotypes to be present in our community, and we just wanted to come together in a show of support," said Betts.

Shakila Ahmad, president of the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati, said she and the mosque's followers embraced Betts' idea and hope to make it into an annual event of interfaith unity.

"It's a phenomenal statement about the choices we all have to make … and how we are all willing to stand up for one another," said Ahmad.

After short speeches by Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious leaders, the participants stood in a line – lack of space made an actual circle impractical - in front of the mosque on the center's campus, which is the largest Islamic center in the region.

More than 100 participants then joined hands and held a moment of silence for religious unity here and elsewhere in the world.

This “interfaith peace ring” was formed Sunday around the mosque at the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati in West Chester Township.

The Rev. Heather Buchanan Wiseman, interim priest for the Indian Hill Church, said the event in the wake of the Mason High School incident was important.

"There is so much fear and distrust," between some followers of various religions, said Wiseman.

The "extremists on the fringes of religions" get too much attention and taint the more peaceful majorities, she said.

Catholic Liz Bellow of Pleasant Ridge joined in and left smiling.

"Everybody should participate in a day like this because we all want peace."