Initiatives of Change

Ashafa and Wuye are co-directors of the Muslim-Christian Interfaith Mediation Centre in Kaduna, leading task-forces to resolve conflicts across Nigeria. Their story of moving from violence to working together for peace is told in the award-winning documentary The Imam and the Pastor (more info and ordering details available in PDF).

On the evening of 2 April, they spoke to an audience of 35 convened by IofC and hosted by Will Elliott and Ajay Rao of Crown Agents USA. The diverse audience included the President and members of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, a Nigerian journalist and sports writer, a priest who runs the Office of Interreligious Affairs at the US Catholic Bishops Conference, an Israeli professor of conflict resolution from George Washington University, employees of Crown Agents, and others.

Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye in Washington

There was a lively discussion after the showing of part of the film depicting the reconciliation between these two men, the establishment of their Interfaith Mediation Center, and the public acknowledgment of and apology for massacres in 2004. Paul Wee, a professor at George Washington University who formerly worked with the US Institute of Peace, said that he was with Wuye and Ashafa at the public gathering where apologies were extended and accepted by representative leaders of the religious/ethnic communities which had participated in reciprocal massacres. A Muslim woman had pushed through the crowd, following the apologies, and held out her infant to him. 'I was shaking. I knew it was one of those moments you can't prepare for. A Muslim woman handing her baby to me, a foreign Christian man! Then the baby started screaming. Wuye started to laugh. Ashafa too. Handing a child to a stranger is a sign that tells everyone that trust is at work in the community.'

Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye, whose mutual respect and affection is evident, made it clear that they hold unswervingly to the doctrines and teachings of their own faiths – a key to their authority and credibility in their own communities – but deeply respect the humanity of the other and are committed to live and work together.

A young Swede, studying at an American University, commented afterwards that Imam Ashafa’s connecting peace in the world to peace inside oneself struck home with many. Asiya Mohammed, currently working with IofC in Washington, commented: 'It was a great honor to meet both the Imam and the Pastor in person. They walk into a room and command respect, but yet they demonstrate a great amount of humility. They left us with a great gift about imagination and idealism. Peace is not a dream; instead it is an attainable reality.'

The Catholic priest wrote afterwards: 'I wrote my doctorate on the Tibetan saint, Milarepa, whose story is also a story of conversion from the pursuit of revenge to the pursuit of spiritual evolution and enlightenment. I felt that the same story, in Muslim and Christian terms, was being dramatically confirmed in the lives of the Imam and the Pastor. It is very important to understand their story as being something more than the conversion, however miraculous, of two individuals. Their message is that entire communities can be moved to change by spiritual means- the 'moral re-armament' at the roots of Initiatives of Change. In order to keep a great spiritual initiative going, it is important that communities be supported in putting flesh and blood on the spirit.’

Randy Ruffin and Charles Aquilina