answer-the-q-16

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QUESTION 1

  1. Brother Wayne, as a committed monk, wants Eboo and Kevin to consider converting to Christianity.





QUESTION 2

  1. Eboo has taken excellent teacher training courses in college and is well prepared for his first teaching job.





QUESTION 3

  1. At El Cuarto Año, Eboo learns from some of his students that they join gangs in part because they have no other community of people for whom they are somebody.





QUESTION 4

  1. After college, working as a teacher, Eboo eventually starts a weekly potluck and discussion group that appeals to others who are lonely for community in the city.





QUESTION 5

  1. Eboo and Kevin find the interfaith events to which Brother Wayne takes them to be exciting, stimulating opportunities to share their Muslim and Jewish faith with others.





QUESTION 6

  1. In looking back at his friendship with Brother Wayne, Eboo now realizes that he had harbored an “adolescent discrimination against the familiar,” meaning a tendency to discount his own tradition in favor of more exotic-seeming religious alternatives.





QUESTION 7

  1. The initial interfaith experiences Eboo had after college helped shape his vision for his own life’s work: to develop something new for young people.





QUESTION 8

  1. In meeting the Dalai Lama, Eboo and Kevin discover that he is more interested in their immersion in their own faith traditions (for Eboo, Ismaili Islam) than in their proficiency in Buddhist meditation.





QUESTION 9

  1. Eboo’s grandmother surprises him by both deflating his arrogance and modeling a much richer example of Islam in action than he had ever realized before – in fact, he later learns that she is considered a living saint of his tradition.





QUESTION 10

  1. In London, Azim Nanji helps Eboo explore and experience Islam as a “magnificent” tradition.





QUESTION 11

  1. The story of Yusuf Islam and Eboo’s father illustrates that all Muslims are required to sacrifice their love of music in order to be more fully devoted to God (Allah).





QUESTION 12

  1. In Oxford, Eboo experienced creation itself revealing to him the beauty and goodness of the life that God has entrusted to human beings, beginning with Adam.





QUESTION 13

  1. The Qur’an describes an “inner light” in each human being, inscribed on our souls by God and innately open to the love and mercy of God, which is called jahilliya.





QUESTION 14

  1. Through his mentors – from his grandmother to Fazlur Rahman and the Aga Khan – Eboo grows into the realization of Islam as a beautiful, ethical, service-minded religion, a vision of dignity and peace for human life that he wants to embody in his life too.





QUESTION 15

  1. Eboo founds the Muslim Youth Corps as a way to inspire other young and possibly alienated Muslims with the larger vision of Islam religion that had helped him.





QUESTION 16

  1. At one point prior to Luther’s time there were five rival popes all claiming to be the true pope.





QUESTION 17

  1. The reason Luther opposed the sale of indulgences was because it is wrong to try to profit off people’s spiritual needs and to put a price on what God gives freely.





QUESTION 18

  1. Luther insisted that the priesthood of all believers meant that ordinary human vocations that participate in God’s love for the world – even something as seemingly lowly as caring for a baby and changing its diapers – are just as holy before God as being an ordained priest.





QUESTION 19

  1. Despite his belief that human sexuality and love are honorable, Luther himself never got married.





QUESTION 20

  1. The “Diet of Worms” refers to the fact that when the church rebuked Luther for his disobedience toward the pope, he was ordered to eat worms as penance.