Faiths urged to rally for Darfur this weekend

by Jason Kane
Religion News Service   

WASHINGTON — Religious organizations of all creeds are joining forces this weekend (Dec. 9-10) to pray for an end to the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and demand action by the U.S. government.
   
     Organized by the Washington-based Save Darfur Coalition, the “National Weekend of Prayer for Darfur” encourages faith organizations to dedicate a sermon, encourage prayer and educate their members about Darfur.
   
     Dozens of the nation’s leading faith communities have signed on, adding their names to a full-page advertisement that ran Tuesday (Dec. 5) in USA Today. Participants include the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Jewish Committee, the Union for Reform Judaism and the Islamic Society of North America.
   
     The hope for the movement is to “drive people out of the pews and into the streets,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, in a press conference Tuesday.
   
     Violence has raged in the vast Darfur region of Sudan for more than three years as government-backed Arab militias have repeatedly attacked non-Arab tribes seeking greater rights and autonomy. At least 2.5 million people have been displaced and 200,000 killed in a conflict the Bush administration calls genocide.
   
     The faith leaders said it is time for Washington and the United Nation to act on that rhetoric by more forcefully demanding the implementation of a U.N. peacekeeping force — a force the Sudanese government has adamantly rejected thus far.
   
     The Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, said Americans currently know too little about the conflict to demand concerted action.
   
     “If they knew more, if they had all of the facts, they would rise up urgently to stop the genocide,” Edgar said.
   
     Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani, spiritual leader of the Imam Al-Khoei Foundation in Queens, NY, said Muslims must rise above the persecution they have faced in a post-Sept. 11 world to speak out against acts of violence.
   
     “We have a great loss that Muslims have been killed by Muslims and the greater loss that they use the religion as a reason for that while the religion is so far from such action,” he said.
   
     Gutow compared the current violence to the Holocaust, and asked Jewish communities nationwide to respond with that sense of urgency this weekend.