How Bloggers Can Advance Interfaith Understanding
The rap on the blogosphere is that it’s all talk and no action. The Middle East Interfaith Blogger Network believes otherwise. Blogs can be a space for open dialogue, an opportunity to connect with people across borders, and a venue for organizing activism online and in the streets. Here’s a guide for what you can do to contribute.
Start your own blog. Go to www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com to get started.
Put up logo for the Middle East Interfaith Blogger Network on your site.
Start a discussion with someone with a religious outlook you have never encountered before.
Stand up for the right of Middle Eastern bloggers to express their opinions: for example, join the campaign to free Kareem Amer, an Egyptian blogger sentenced to four years in jail for criticizing Islam and the president of his country.
Monitor religious hate speech in your community. If you encounter hate speech, fight back.
If you find an instance of hate speech done by a leading public figure or institution, we can set up a petition campaign to demand a retraction. Send us an alert and we can have the campaign up within a day.
Introduce your friends and relatives to the Interfaith Blogger Network. Suggest they start by reading a few blogs by people who come from communities of religious minorities in the Middle East.
If you are a student, bring the interfaith discussion from the blogs into your school. Put up posters advertising our network, write an article about our network for the school newspaper, and encourage your classmates to join in on the discussion.
Send us any ideas you have for what we can do in our communities to help.
