The Interfaith student interns for the Center for Spiritual Life hosted a panel that took religion to the extreme.
The panel, entitled "Religious Extremism: Faith or Framework," was held in the Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media's Watson Forum Tuesday night.
Three DePauw professors, Smita Rahman, Geoffrey Goble and Akshat Vyas, each having knowledge in vastly different fields, took turns fielding questions asked to them by sophomore interfaith intern Grace Oczon, along with questions from members of the student audience.
A major theme of the panel was the idea of perspective, and who dictates what constitutes extremism and what does not. Other terms discussed at the panel include radicalism, violence and legitimacy.
"I think when we're talking about terrorism, it becomes more of a question of what forms of political violence do we grant legitimacy to?" Rahman said. "In these definitions, it's a question of who do we grant power to in terms of accepting them as legitimate and who do we marginalize?"
The other panelists were fast to agree with Rahman, and all three professors stressed that perspective plays a crucial role in what is deemed extremist.
"Any religious tradition contains a multiplicity of voices and perspectives," Goble said. "Who among those voices gets to determine who is radical and who is not?"
A major goal of the panel, Oczon explained, was to open up discussion to a taboo subject and allow people to understand that extremism exists throughout all religions.
"We all wanted to do something that isn't really talked about that often, and is sort of taboo to approach," Oczon said. "We associate religious violence with a particular faith tradition. We never really think of our own as extremist."
First-year Kainat Akmal, an Interfaith intern representing the Muslim religion, believes that events such as these are important because they help to deter stereotypes of extremism as being associated with one faith over another.
"For me, this was an important event because I wanted to show that radicalism is across all religions. It's not something that's just particular to my religion. Anyone can be a radical," Akmal said. "It's one of those topics that's always brushed under the rug."
While none of the panelists specialize in religious extremism, Akmal appreciated the distinctive expertise that each professor was able to bring to the discussion.
"I personally loved the interaction between the analysts. They kind of bounced off of each other's ideas," Akmal said. "I like how we had a variety of perspectives."
The interfaith interns include students from the Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu religions and Atheist/Secularist. Next semester, they hope to organize an event at the Putnam County Library where they will teach children about religion to continue this discussion.