Source: Monsters & Critics
Wire Service: UPI
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- A delegation of Arab-Israeli Muslims are in the U.S. to raise funds for the building of an interfaith peace research and conference facility in Galilee.
Plans are to construct the Cultural Center for Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue and Understanding over the next three years, a $7 million campus with space for meetings, academic research, education in communication and technology, and a library. The Israeli government has donated seven acres of land to the project in this area, almost entirely populated by Muslims.
According to Mahmoud Mufare, deputy mayor of the four-village region called Bustan el-Marg ('Garden of the Valley') where the center will be built, an interfaith approach to peace is important because 'Religion both facilitates and complicates the solutions.' Overall, however, Mufare added, 'Religion helps bring the different communities together, and that is the road to peace.'
Mufare and the mayor of Bustan el-Marg, Ahmad Zoubi, are making the rounds of Muslim leaders in the U.S., trying to raise the remaining $5 million needed to begin construction.