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The Banyule Interfaith Network (BIN) was publicly launched in December 2012. Since then, our first venture into interfaith dialogue has been to hold public forums with a panel of speakers, then everyone breaking into small discussion groups.Our first forum was in April on the topic ‘Faith and Marriage’. ‘Rites of Passage’ was the mysterious topic we chose for our second forum on September 15th – with a subscript ‘Fostering Faith from Birth to Adulthood’.

Again, we proudly chose speakers from among our own ranks of BiN members – Hindu, Christian and Baha’i (and we have had Jewish previously) - as our aim is to have ordinary people speaking to other ordinary people about what they believe. We were also delighted to have the Imam of the West Heidelberg mosque, Riad Galil OAM, speak about Islam. Mr. Galil is the current President of the JCMA (Jewish Christian Muslim Association) and a wonderful advocate for interfaith dialogue.

The discussion groups raise questions around the topic and are particularly interactive – and also very popular as revealed in the questionnaires we ask attendees to fill in. BiN aims to encourage interfaith conversations among the people of Banyule and future plans include public forums and celebrations but also visiting faith members where they worship, to introduce them to other faiths.

By Shaaban El-baset (Chairperson) & Gillian Hirst (Secretary)
Banyule Interfaith Network