WASHINGTON: It was not exactly “Mississippi Burning,” but a flaming cross shoved into the ground, and set alight was enough to frighten students and teachers of al-Huda, a small Muslim school in College Park, Maryland.

This happened early last Thursday. On Tuesday, a Muslim advocacy group in Washington reported 602 incidents of discrimination against Muslims in 2002, a rise of 15 per cent over the previous year.

Worried at the larger implications of such incidents, Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders gathered at the University of Maryland University College over the weekend for an inter- faith dialogue.

The dialogue was organized by the Islamic Information Centre, Maryland.

The Foundation for Defence of Democracies, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, the US Justice Department and the World Media Forum participated in the discussions.

Imam Rafiq Naqvi, addressing the gathering, warned his followers, and those of other faiths, to stay away from the political war of words.

Instead, he urged them to do some soul-searching to see what was the cause of friction between the Islamic and western worlds.

“Fear and ignorance,” he said, “are often the main cause of bias and hatred. We fear what we do not know. Once we get to know the other person, we fear him now no longer.”

And this introduction to Islamic culture began at the registration desk where girls in jeans and headscarves, who were born and raised in the United States, welcomed the visitors.

Christian and Jewish teenagers also attended the conference. Many were students of the University of Maryland. The Islamic Information Centre says since the 9/11 many young Americans contact them for information about Islam and Muslims.

“There definitely is an interest in knowing who the Muslims are and what are their beliefs,” Imam Naqvi said. “It is now up to us to inform them, to let them know that we are not as different as some might think we are. There’s no need to fear us.”

If for the Muslim cleric, knowledge is the key to religious harmony, for his Jewish counterpart, it is peace that allows different communities to know each other better.

Nir T. Boms, vice-president of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, recited several passages from the Torah to make his point: All religions emphasize peace, not war.

Father Paul D. Lee, a Catholic priest, reminded the audience of the importance of forgiveness in all three faiths, adding that obedience to one God should make the followers of these three monotheistic religions more tolerant of each other.

“Knowledge is the key to peace and harmony,” Imam Naqvi said. “Only if we knew how similar we were, we would not hate each other.”

“Islam, in Arabic, means submission. For Christians, this obedience is time and again attested in the Scripture,” the Rev Lee said.

He briefly examined the virtue of obedience to God and said this should encourage the believer to love God’s creations. “Those who are obedient to God cannot hate his creations,” he remarked.

True obedience to God, he said, can only encourage a believer to serve his creations, not to harm them.

Mr Boms, who is an Israeli national, said all three religions call Jerusalem a holy city and consider it a sin to shed blood in this city of peace. “Yet the podium of this divine wisdom is not always used for this holy mission,” he said.

For those present, it was interesting to watch three members of Abrahamic faiths using almost “a fundamentalist approach” in preaching peace.

They were urging their followers to go to the original source, the book. But unlike the extremists, they were referring to the original source to search for peace and not to make war.

What they were trying to say is: if you have been killing each other, it is not because your faith asks you to do so. Do not blame your religion for your deeds. You can learn to live peacefully if you go to the real source of your faith.

It’s a well-meaning but simplistic approach, which may or may not be able to persuade Christians, Muslims and Jews of this world to stop hating each other. But as Imam Naqvi suggested, “there is no alternative to peace. We will have to learn to live with each other. If we do not now, we may have to do it in 10, 20, 30 years, only after much more destruction and deaths.”