Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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inho
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Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

Post by inho »

SLTrib:

Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals for Muslim neighbors
Reaching out >> Organizers say the joint iftar — breaking the daily fast during Islam’s holy month — will help build bridges in the community.

Sunain
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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Meh. I understand they are trying to reach out to other religions by hosting Ramadan meals at the chapel but I don't think it gives the right message. This just screams, look at us, we like Muslims too! Doing a joint community service project would be more appropriate.

It feels like these members are trying to overcompensate for the bad press Muslims are getting. Did the Muslims ask us to have Christmas or Easter dinner with them when the LDS church was getting a lot of bad press during Mitt Romney's presidential run?
Last edited by Sunain on June 1st, 2017, 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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inho
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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Sunain wrote: June 1st, 2017, 6:19 am Meh. I understand they are trying to reach out to other religions by hosting Ramadan meals at the chapel but I don't think gives the right message. This just screams, look at us, we like Muslims too! Doing a joint community service project would be more appropriate.

It feels like these members are trying to overcompensate for the bad press Muslims are getting. Did the Muslims ask us to have Christmas or Easter dinner with them when the LDS church was getting a lot of bad press during Mitt Romney's presidential run?
This might very well be how most people think about it. However, according to the person interviewed in the article, the impetus wasn't to show how they accept Muslims [at least for her ward]. Instead, it was all about to help people value fasting more:
For Kristen Hodges, of the Gregson Ward, organizing an iftar dinner grew out of preparation nearly two years ago for a lesson she gave to women in her ward's Relief Society on the subject of fasting.

"I did some research on other religious traditions that incorporate fasting," she recalls, "so that we could reimagine our own [LDS] fast — how they do it and what it means to other faiths."

lundbaek
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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This helps bring the Church out of obscurity and create good will, which, I've heard tell by one of the Seventy, is a major Church goal.

JohnnyL
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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lundbaek wrote: June 1st, 2017, 11:55 am This helps bring the Church out of obscurity and create good will, which, I've heard tell by one of the Seventy, is a major Church goal.
Nice, but if we're doing it for the Muslims, why not create good will with the FLDS first? Then the CoC and other offshoots, then the Amish and Quakers, 7th day Adventists, and on and on...

///
"I did some research on other religious traditions that incorporate fasting," she recalls, "so that we could reimagine our own [LDS] fast — how they do it and what it means to other faiths."
Ideas about incorporating fasting? Ramadan isn't about fasting, gorging, fasting, gorging, etc.?

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Robin Hood
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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To me this smacks of the Church's obsession with trying looking good in the eyes of the world.
I dislike service projects where we are instructed to wear the Mormon Helping Hands tabards. It's all same mindset.
The scriptures tell us that the left hand shouldn't know what the right hand is doing, for a reason. Our acts of kindness and almsgiving should be done in secret.
If the ward wants to feed Muslims, fine. But there's no need to make a song and dance about it.

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captainfearnot
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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Sunain wrote: June 1st, 2017, 6:19 am It feels like these members are trying to overcompensate for the bad press Muslims are getting. Did the Muslims ask us to have Christmas or Easter dinner with them when the LDS church was getting a lot of bad press during Mitt Romney's presidential run?
When Proposition 8 opponents protested LDS involvement in that anti-gay-marriage measure at the church's Los Angeles Temple, Gilliland got a call from Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, a coalition of about 80 mosques. Syed said he could bring a large group of Muslim leaders to the temple grounds to stand with the LDS Church against the demonstrators.

"No other religious leaders offered that kind of support," Gilliland recalled. "The Muslims are truly our friends."
http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/ci_14382290

So not the same thing as hosting a Christmas dinner, but the outreach has been going both ways.

samizdat
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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This activity is known as "being a good neighbor." You know, like what Jesus commanded in the Scriptures.

Silver
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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Until we learn to love all God's children and to stop bombing innocents in the Middle East, until we learn to seek the truth and to not be influenced by the propaganda that comes out of Washington, DC, and NYC, we will always be a slave to the hatred, bigotry and racism that Satan so desires us to clutch tightly in our hearts. Until we learn that politicians who claim it is in "our national security interests" to unilaterally place military bases in another sovereign country is a lie we use to continue the unjustifiable existence of the American empire, we will be guilty of unrighteous dominion.

I spent some time in Istanbul. Standing on a corner with a map in my hand and a confused look on my face or on a train trying to figure out where to get off, I was approached by multiple young men, you know, those scary "men of military age refugee" kind of men, who offered to give me direction. I am of mostly British/Scottish descent and very fair-skinned so it would be obvious to them that I am from northern Europe or North America. They approached me with a smile and their best broken English, not distrust and hatred. I was thankful and humbled by their friendly attitude.

Islam is not your enemy. If America wants world peace, let America stop droning wedding parties and go home first.

When the Nephites hated the Lamanites, they did not prosper. When the Nephites and Lamanites communicated and traded with one another their relationship improved. And when the Nephites and the Lamanites moved freely among each other, they approached Zion. Too bad it didn't last, but such is the history of the world and the nature of the natural man.

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Robin Hood
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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Silver wrote: June 2nd, 2017, 9:43 am I am of mostly British/Scottish descent......
"British" and "Scottish" are same thing. So is British and English, or British and Welsh.
Do you mean English/Scottish?

Silver
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

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Robin Hood wrote: June 2nd, 2017, 10:41 am
Silver wrote: June 2nd, 2017, 9:43 am I am of mostly British/Scottish descent......
"British" and "Scottish" are same thing. So is British and English, or British and Welsh.
Do you mean English/Scottish?
Yep, thanks for keeping me honest! I guess all Scottish are British, but not all British are Scottish.

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captainfearnot
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

Post by captainfearnot »

Silver wrote: June 2nd, 2017, 10:43 am
Robin Hood wrote: June 2nd, 2017, 10:41 am "British" and "Scottish" are same thing. So is British and English, or British and Welsh.
Do you mean English/Scottish?
Yep, thanks for keeping me honest! I guess all Scottish are British, but not all British are Scottish.
That's why I always keep this diagram handy:

Image

Sovereign states shown in red, constituent countries in orange, islands in green.

Silver
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

Post by Silver »

JohnnyL wrote: June 1st, 2017, 7:42 pm
lundbaek wrote: June 1st, 2017, 11:55 am This helps bring the Church out of obscurity and create good will, which, I've heard tell by one of the Seventy, is a major Church goal.
Nice, but if we're doing it for the Muslims, why not create good will with the FLDS first? Then the CoC and other offshoots, then the Amish and Quakers, 7th day Adventists, and on and on...

///
"I did some research on other religious traditions that incorporate fasting," she recalls, "so that we could reimagine our own [LDS] fast — how they do it and what it means to other faiths."
Ideas about incorporating fasting? Ramadan isn't about fasting, gorging, fasting, gorging, etc.?
Regarding the Community of Christ, I know the Church works closely with them in Kirtland. Are you certain that our leaders are doing nothing with the other faiths you mentioned? Evidence?

I confess to being a Mormon who has rushed home after church on Fast Sunday and gorged. I guess it's not just them rascally Muslims after all.

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gkearney
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

Post by gkearney »

captainfearnot wrote: June 2nd, 2017, 11:14 am
Silver wrote: June 2nd, 2017, 10:43 am
Robin Hood wrote: June 2nd, 2017, 10:41 am "British" and "Scottish" are same thing. So is British and English, or British and Welsh.
Do you mean English/Scottish?
Yep, thanks for keeping me honest! I guess all Scottish are British, but not all British are Scottish.
That's why I always keep this diagram handy:

Image

Sovereign states shown in red, constituent countries in orange, islands in green.

And it gets even more complicated than even this diagram would suggest. There are also the Crown Dependencies, these are separate nations that are dependencies of the Crown but are not part of the United Kingdom. These include:

Isle of Man (part of the British Isles)

Off the French coast, and thus not part of the British Isle are the Channel Islands.
The Bailiwick of Jersey and
The Bailiwick of Guernsey which in turn is made up of Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark

An interesting fact is that the Channel Islands were the only Crown realms occupied by the Germans in World War II.

Fiannan
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Re: Mormon wards to host Ramadan meals

Post by Fiannan »

Interesting article..
The Muslim world can match the FLDS sin for sin—Muslims commonly practice polygamy, forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harri ... 00132.html

So does anyone expect an outreach to the FLDS?

In fairness to the Muslim community on those two issues the Bible never, ever, and not even once lists the minimum age a woman can get married -- that is a cultural construct. And when the Old Testament says to slay all the men and women except for the female virgins in some of those battles in the days of Moses how old do you think those virgin girls were? As for polygamy I think we can safely conclude the Bible is never negative on that.

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