2. Our Work
Office of Brotherhood and Sisterhood Activity, America
From the Desk of the Peshkar
Murshida Nuria Stephanie Sabato
and KarimaGita Erickson-Harper, Assistant Peshkar
Beloved Brothers and Sisters,
In our daily life, it is highly likely we will interact with a variety of individuals, people who have customs, values and religious beliefs that are different than our own.
Hazrat Inayat Khan offers our imagination the ideal of equality where all people of the world live according to their individual manners, ideas and expressions in life, while respecting and understanding others.
Murshid encourages us to practice principles of brotherhood and sisterhood so that we might serve the cause of humanity and "bring about a better understanding" among all people.
We might wonder what we could do to make this ideal possible. Murshid tells us that we may "express goodwill and friendly feelings towards one another".
Imagine greeting each person you meet, the familiar friend, the person who is not easy to get along with, the unfamiliar neighbour, the stranger standing next to you in the grocery store line, all with this feeling of friendliness. Imagine the effect this might have at home, at work, in your spiritual community, and in the world community.
This message from Hazrat Inayat Khan awakens us to practice this each day and to experience and share the gift of humanity that God has given us.
With sisterly love and prayers for an enlightened world,
Nuria and KarimaGita
Our work in the line of brotherhood and sisterhood, Social Gatheka, No 2
by Hazrat Inayat Khan
In working in the line of brotherhood our main object is to bring about a better understanding among the different classes, the followers of different religions, and people of different races and different nations. But by this we do not mean to mix them up. If this were our idea, it would have been quite a different thing. We want to let the farms of wheat be farms of wheat; on the farms where rice grows, let rice grow; where there are woods, let there be woods; where there are gardens, let there be gardens; all things are necessary.
Our ideas have not reached to the extreme of cooking all things in the same dish. We do not wish to stretch the fingers so as to make them all even, for their natural size is the proper size for them. Our imagination of equality has not yet reached that idea. Only our motive is that East and the West, the North and the South, instead of turning their backs to each other, may turn their faces to each other. We do not wish that all people in the world should be of the same religion or the same education or the same customs and manners; nor do we think that all classes must become one class, which is impossible.
We wish that all classes may blend into each other and yet every individual may have his own individual expression in life; all nations may have their peculiarity, their individuality, but at the same time they may express good-will and friendly feelings toward one another; different races may have their own manners and their own ideas, but at the same time they may understand each other; that the followers of different religions may belong to their own religions, but at the same time may become tolerant to each other. Therefore our idea of brotherhood is not in any way extreme. The motive is not to change humanity, but to help humanity on towards its goal.
People may belong to one church and they may fight with one another. It is just as well that they should belong to different churches, and yet understand each other and respect each other's religion, and tolerate one another. People may belong to one institution and disagree with one another. Then what is the use of that institution?
Therefore, it is not at all the mission of the Movement to make the whole humanity followers of one special movement, but to give to humanity what God has given us, and destined it, that we may serve His cause.
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