Additions to My Blog Roll

Contemplative Activist, who lives in England, recently began trying to promote inter-religious awareness and understanding by adding some blogs and web sites from other faith traditions - partiularly Islam and Judaism - to her blog roll. I am stealing the idea, and even stealing some of the links she used, as well as adding some of my own. In my case, I am listing these sites under the category "Interesting Non-Quaker Sites". "Non-Quaker" might seem like a rather presumptuous way to lump together Catholics, Jews, and Muslims. A little like calling everyone but the three people on earth who share my last name "non Accetta-Evanses". Still, as far as it goes it is accurate. Perhaps I can add some Protestant, Buddhist, B'hai, Hindu, Jain, Sikh and indigenous tribal religious sites as time goes on.

The tensions between religions are not the only important and dangerous tensions in the world today, of course. They may not even be the most important. How much of what gets labelled as "inter-religious" conflict is really conflict between haves and have-nots, between the militarily powerful and the militarily weak, or simply between people of different cultures (quite apart from religion) who have not learned to respect each other? What kind of "dialogue" or "understanding" could make these kinds of tensions more fruitful and less prone to result in violence?