A Muslim woman walks into a Unitarian church ..

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — Some church-going families in the Western world would recoil at the thought of a Muslim being responsible for their children’s religious education. But Farzana Hassan, activist, writer and advocate for Islamic reform, isn’t your average Muslim, and the Unitarian Congregation in Mississauga isn’t your average suburban church. Hassan, former president of the […]

(RNS1-MAY05) Farzana Hassan, who describes herself as a “secular Muslim,” was recently hired by the Unitarian Congregation of Mississauga, Ontario, to direct religious education programs. For use with RNS-MUSLIM-UUA, transmitted May 5, 2009. Religion News Service photo by Leanne Larmondin.

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — Some church-going families in the Western world would recoil at the thought of a Muslim being responsible for their children’s religious education.

But Farzana Hassan, activist, writer and advocate for Islamic reform, isn’t your average Muslim, and the Unitarian Congregation in Mississauga isn’t your average suburban church.


Hassan, former president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, was recently hired as the director of spiritual exploration at the Unitarian Congregation in Mississauga, a suburb 15 miles west of Toronto. The part-time position in the self-described “liberal spiritual community” sees her working with up to three dozen children, ranging from 3 to 18 years old, every Sunday.

The kids, broken up into age-appropriate groups, are instructed in their own faith, other religious beliefs, social responsibility and sexuality.

Hassan, who is finishing her Ph.D. dissertation on Pakistani madrasas, was hired after an open candidate search. Calling herself a “secular Muslim,” she endorses a strict separation of church and state. Two of her books, “Prophecy and the Fundamentalist Quest” and `Women and the Challenges of Today,” have tackled issues of Islamic fundamentalism and the roles of women in the Muslim world.

While she observes Islamic holy days like Eid and Ramadan, she does not believe that her faith is threatened by associating with people of other faiths. She said her friends and family see it as a bridge-building opportunity.

“Muslims feel they’ve been under attack for some time because of some of the things that Muslims do abroad and even here in Canada; there have been so many Muslims incriminated as far as extremism and terrorism are concerned,” said Hassan, a mother of three grown children who previously taught at a local private school.

“When something like this (job) happens, they welcome it. They see it as something that will perhaps elevate the image of Muslims in the community.”


Hassan is perhaps one of the more striking examples of the blurring lines in North American faith. In Seattle, an Episcopal priest was recently defrocked for simultaneously embracing Islam, while an Episcopal bishop-elect in northern Michigan is fighting to save his job from conservatives’ complaints about his embrace of Zen Buddhist meditation.

Increasingly, faith is remarkably fluid. Just 24 percent of Americans view their religion as “the one true faith,” according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, while 70 percent say “many religions can lead to eternal life.”

While someone like Hassan might raise eyebrows in other denominations, “the nuance of the Unitarian Universalist identity provides a little more leeway,”said Kathryn Lohre, assistant director of Harvard University’s Pluralism Project, which examines religious diversity in the United States.

Unitarians, said Lohre, are defined by their tolerance, so Hassan’s hiring is not as surprising as it would be in a more “mainline denomination.”

Lohre did not know of any other church that had hired a Muslim for a key ministry position, although in 2004, St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Denver hired a Shiite cleric to lead its Abrahamic Initiative, a bridge-building effort among Christians, Jews and Muslims.

A fledgling program in Omaha, Neb., is trying to build an interfaith campus for Muslim, Christian and Jewish houses of worship, and a number of downtown congregations across the U.S. have hosted shared-space arrangements with Muslim or Jewish groups.


There are about 1,000 Unitarian Universalist congregations in North America, 50 of which are located in Canada.

Unitarianism — a non-creedal tradition that embraces the teachings of many world religions, including Christianity and Judaism — can easily be reconciled with many beliefs. Within a Unitarian congregation, there may be pagans and Christians sitting alongside Jews and Muslims.

It was that openness that attracted Hassan to Unitarianism, even before she imagined working for the congregation.

“I’d been thinking about Unitarian Universalism for a long time myself,” said Hassan, who attended Catholic schools in her native Lahore, Pakistan. “I felt my own philosophy aligned with it in many ways, and I’d been thinking of even joining the congregation.”

Hassan was already familiar with both the Unitarian Congregation and its minister, the Rev. Jeff Brown, through their work in the community and with the interfaith chaplaincy at a local hospital.

Perhaps not surprisingly, hiring a Muslim did not shock anyone in the decidedly liberal, inclusive congregation, Brown said. His flock has never been reticent to take steps that would be considered radical in other religious communities.


“This congregation was the first mainstream congregation in North America — by mainstream, I mean, we’ve been part of the Canadian landscape for 150 years — to call an openly gay minister, back in 1982,” he said.

Until three years ago, the congregation provided shelter for a group of Ismaili Muslims for 25 years, sharing their buildings and a community garden. Brown said the decision to hire Hassan was, in many ways, the next logical step.

“We did not require the person to be a Unitarian Universalist,” said Brown. “But the person needed to share the values of openness and curiosity, of a real welcome of diversity that we see as hallmarks of the congregation.”

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