Discovering Dialogue

As we climbed up a wadi, scrambling over boulders and avoiding the spiky bushes, my friend asked me more about my work at Al Amana Centre. I told her that I had been praying about starting a Scriptural Reasoning (SR) group with women in Muscat. My friend replied, “Two Muslim ladies from our hiking group might be interested.”

In March one of my hopes for interfaith engagement came true: Two Muslim and two Christian women met together in person for a SR session. Al Amana Centre uses SR regularly with visiting groups and university students, but there has not been an on-going SR group in Oman in a long time.

As we planned for our first session, one of the women noted, “This will be the first time I formally take part in an interfaith group. I’m looking forward to it!” We were friends and knew that our religion was important to each of us. Sharing specifically from the Quran and the Bible would be a new experience together. “For me it’s all about the learning,” one of us shared. “I grew up with parents that wanted us to learn about everyone so we could understand ourselves better.”

So far, we have covered the topics of neighbors and worship. This past month we talked about fasting, which was timely during the month of Ramadan.

We are excited to share this wonderful way to speak openly and listen respectfully to each other. We hope to grow our group, foster new local groups, and already have three new women planning to join this month.

Read about Calvin University students’ experience with an international SR group in the CRC news at www.crcna.org/news-and-events/news/students-different-faiths-share-scriptures.

Learn more about Scriptural Reasoning at alamanacentre.org/our-programs/#scriptural-reasoning