Distinguished guests – thank you for your warm welcome.
As many of you know, my country is very much saddened by the tragic incident of ten days ago that took the lives of 33 people at Virginia Tech University. That includes the life of the gunman, a mentally ill and tormented young man. Virginia Tech attracts an international mix of students and faculty to its campus every year. They come from a diverse set of countries and hold fast to a diversity of religions.
As such, victims lost have been mourned within mosques, temples and churches. On the Virginia Tech campus itself but throughout my nation and others, there have been prayer vigils, memorials, wakes, burials, tears, strength and even forgiveness in the week and a half since this horrific event. On the day of mourning, the campus held a ceremony in which religious leaders from the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Buddhist communities spoke and read from their sacred texts. Divinity met diversity as well as tolerance and empathy at a moment of collective grief.
And so, it is both an honor but indeed comforting to be with all of you today – to be with those who embrace this kind of diversity…to be with those who advance the tenets of compassion, empathy, tolerance and peace.
It is encouraging to be a part of this gathering today because – though the Virginia Tech campus gunman did not carry out his killing in the name of a religion – there are those who do.
But through forums such as this one, we can better understand one another’s religious traditions – our distinctions but also our commonalities. We can better understand our roles and responsibilities in rejecting, individually and collectively, anyone who seeks to hold up any religion in concert with an abject disregard for humanity.
For we know, intolerance is the antithesis of religious principle. Those who embrace intolerance disqualify themselves from membership in any true religion.
I am of the Christian faith – I’m not a religious scholar – so I speak with great respect and admiration for the expertise many of you bring to this gathering. I speak today merely as an observer. And I’d like to share some of my observations with you today.
Many times, in religion as in politics, differences are magnified and similarities are lost. But I believe, again in both religion and politics, disagreement does not mean disloyalty – within our unique political parties as well as between our reverence to a supreme and higher power.
Moreso, I believe that tolerance requires more than acceptance. It requires assimilation. A willingness and desire to co-mingle, despite differing points of view, despite differing definitions of Providence.
Think of the campus community at Virginia Tech…and the honor to which many religions embraced one another. There was not separate mourning; there was collective and communal compassion.
In many communities throughout America, one can draw a circle around our big cities and within those circles, you will find mosques, churches and temples. You will find people who represent the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim faiths. It is quite remarkable.
Overall, religious diversity is a source of pride in America; it is cherished, and it also protected within our Constitution. But diversity and tolerance is in no way perfect in my country. To this day, prejudicial points of view still exist.
In natural moments of weakness, we all have times when we struggle with our loyalty to our own faith when offering reverence to those of other faiths.
But we are appropriately self-corrected when we ask: do we not demean ourselves when we say that there is only one way to worship?
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