Establishment of a youth section
within Inter-Religious work

A group of prominent religious leaders belonging to the four main religions of Sri Lanka namely Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity expands their cooperation to work together on all humanitarian issues. These activities have been carried in Sri Lanka for twenty years mainly on peace-building and promoting religious harmony.
United Lanka is an example, it is a workshop organized by newly formed district Inter-Religious committees for Advanced level students (over 15th year old) in the district, jointly with schools.
We try to balance the ethnic and gender ratio as much as possible of the selected group of students. Our objective is to bring about basic change in attitudes, values and behaviour patterns to promote ethnic and religious tolerance within the communities.

Output

Establishment of a youth section within the district Inter-Religious work. Training them as Ambassadors of a new religious culture to build coexistence through discussions, drama and musical events. Organize youth exchange programs between districts, especially between the North/East with South. Start language classes to teach Tamil language to Sinhalese students and Sinhala to Tamil students.

Justification

Humanitarian feelings come from human hearts irrespective of ones faith. The center of all religious belief is human. Human dignity and humanitarian issues therefore cannot be limited to concepts acquired by a human. Even religions that are based on God-concepts do not impair human values.
This is the basis on which we start our cooperation and collaboration and then seek spiritual guidance from our respective religions, deriving basic principles of humanitarian issues according to fundamental religious teachings of our own religions in order to empower ourselves with self confidence to continue multi religious activities.
Humanitarian feeling is not a reality given to a human by someone else. Neither is it something that a human generates on his own. It is something that a human inherits by being a human. Whether you are a minor, elder, rich, poor, different in color or whatever religion you belong to, human dignity and concern is something equally inherited by every human.
Religion is for man’s development and peace. Religions help people to find meaning in life. If religious leaders can unite and work inclusively for the common good, why cannot people of all religions live together? We should not forsake our faith in order to achieve this. Instead we can adhere to our faith and work for the common good. We can learn much from Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian colleagues and that will strengthen us in many ways.
True ideals are always for universal good. On the other hand, those with a fundamentalist orientation, who believe that they hold the truth, have the potential to cause immense suffering. They can become suicide bombers or deploy them in the belief that it is for a just cause greater than them. There is no universalism in those who hold that they have the best truth or a monopoly of what is true.
One of the greatest challenges in religious harmony is to see the other religions in a new light, as having part of the truth, that is necessary to bring wholeness and harmony, where before there was division and enmity.
There can be no harmony without engaging with people of other religions and making them a positive part of the universal truth.

By Rev.Anura Perera