Introduction Letter

Friends:

The Interfaith Cooperation Forum (ICF) grew out of an interfaith consultation held in Prapat North Sumatera, Indonesia in April of 2003. This consultation was jointly organized by the Asia Pacific Aliance of YMCAs (APAY), Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) and the Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED) of Germany and came to the agreement that, following the events of 9/11 and the ensuing “war on terrorism,” people of all faiths need to work cooperatively to end violence and build inclusive communities of justpeace. A working committee of people from different faith traditions was set up to facilitate this effort.

In 2004 the ICF organized workshops on “Gender and Justice” and “Young People as Peacemakers and Culture Bearers.” Through these two workshops, a program to expand the efforts of the ICF throughout the region developed. One of the major activities suggested was the School of Peace. More will be said about this activity in another part of the e-newsletter.

This monthly e-newsletter called Faith and Peace is an attempt to share with you interfaith and interethnic justpeace efforts in the region. It will contain articles on relevant issues written by regional friends which reflect the perspectives of different religious faiths. Regional campaigns and interfaith movements will also be highlighted with suggestions on how others can become involved. Occasionally new resources or books which relate to the building of interfaith and interethnic justpeace will be described and contact information provided if you want to acquire these materials.

We, of course, will welcome your feedback on all the material you find in Faith and Peace. If you would like to submit an article or other relevant information you may also do that. It will be given to our editorial committee for perusal and considered for possible inclusion in a future issue. Both feedback and articles should be sent to the editor at forumicf@yahoo.com.

Finally, we know that you did not request this e-newsletter so if you do not wish to receive it, please let us know and we will remove your name from our mailing list. But we do hope that you find it useful and relevant to the interfaith movement for justpeace which is so crucial to our conflicted world today. We look forward to hearing from you.