Nostra Aetate - In Our Time

86 and collaborate for the common good. Observing this rich and promising legacy of interreligious initiatives over all of this time including, of course, the formation of KAICIID in 2012, it seems natural to ask: “Where do we stand today?” Based on my short 15 years of experience and engagement in interreligious efforts, despite tremen- dous progress, there remains a need to enhance, expand and accelerate this movement. Interreligious dialogue, to be effective, needs to be genuinely supported, espe- cially financially. It must be encouraged, reinforced and strengthened but, even more important than this, inter-faith dialogue and cooperation must go beyond declarations and lead to concrete action. There is a need for individuals, we as faith-believers, to remain genuinely and seriously true to the common religious principles of self-transformation through con- stant prayer. The day you miss prayer, you have missed something else. You must have constant prayer and self- less service and good inter-faith education. This needs to begin at home within families and to continue through schools and institutes of higher education and should ultimately guide politicians, legislators, governments and multilateral organisations. We have to be serious about faith. I keep saying that faith has been margin- alised. We have to bring faith back into the equation. We are living in a unique period of history. Global has become local and local has become global, where humanity has been, in a sense, squeezed and lumped together. Borders are shifting. At the same time, we have amassed weapons of mass destruction. We could have guided missiles in the hands of misguided people. We have brilliant communication technologies, the internet and powerful media, but we have to get closer to human- ity. Violent extremism, mass migration, financial crises, growing mistrust, human trafficking and exploitation, poverty and disease, lies, deceit and double standards, a lack of accountability and transparency are occurrences, catastrophes and challenges of our times. In order to make progress, to create human flour- ishing, we need to nurture good human beings with value-lead education. Education begins at conception and continues during the nine months that we are unborn. We learn so much from our mothers during that time. Yet, we are living in an age and societies where divorce and fractured marriages are now far too common. In England, we have a population of 60 million and nine million people are single parents, two-thirds are divor- cees, 30 percent of people are living together but not on talking terms. In such an environment, where will we learn compassion? Where will we learn sacrifice? We have to look and unpack the colossal impact that this has upon our families and communities. The simple fact is that global issues require global solutions, and global solutions require us to recognise that we have shared responsibilities. Each one of 7.3 billion people has a shared responsibility for this planet. And it is these shared responsibilities that compel us to share wisdom through broadening interreligious dia- logue and collaboration, which is in fact the essence of Nostra Aetate . Talking of responsibilities, from a very early age, I used to say that we have a universal declaration of rights, but there is no universal declaration of responsibilities. Why not? To my utter delight and surprise a univer- sal declaration of human responsibilities was drafted by the Interaction Council in 1997. Who were these people? They were predominantly ex-prime ministers and ex-presidents who came up with 19 articles in 1997. In 1998, 50 years after the formation of UN, they wanted to piggy-back this universal declaration of human responsibilities onto a universal declaration Guru Nanak Interfaith Prize Award presented to Bhai Sahib, Bhai Mohinder Singh Ji by Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz BROADENING INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AND COLLABORAT ION FOR OUR T IME