About AFPI
Please see our Resources page for a list of allied organizations.
AFPI originated in Los Angeles, California because of the deep trust and friendship built up here among senior leaders from the three Abrahamic traditions who have been active together in the peace movement for several decades. Since the era of anti-Vietnam War rallies and through anti-nuclear campaigns and the first Gulf War, relationships and trust have been built in the local interfaith community.
Beginning in 2006, these same religious leaders organized a series of meetings in which active laypeople, clergy and religious educators came together to discuss the obligation for peacemaking, conversing both within their own faith traditions and across faith lines. An important aspect of the work has been self-examination – a willingness to confront troubling texts and principles in support of war and push to the surface the robust theological support for peace in each faith tradition. Dedicated Muslims, Jews and Christians continue to gather, to wrestle with their own traditions, and to share with one another their struggles and revelations.
There are many obvious examples of religion’s hand in warmaking, ethnic cleansing and genocide throughout the centuries and today. Religious justifications often underpin violence, standing alongside the claims of national leaders that their behavior is rational, required for national security, or even reflects the will of God. And although Christians, Jews and Muslims all claim that their religions are religions of peace, each has adherents who endorse and even encourage violence and wars.
The consequences of the United States’ misguided and unjust war in Iraq are devastating: 1.2 million Iraqis dead and tens of thousands wounded, half of whom are children; 4 million Iraqi refugees; a lack of basic services and security for law-abiding Iraqi families who remain in their war-torn country; the gross inhumanity of Abu Ghraib; and on the American side, 4,100 American soldiers dead with 45,000 wounded – and counting, as well as a rash of suicides among returning U.S. veterans. The physical destruction of Iraq and the suffering of millions are staggering.
Equally disturbing are the disease of spirit and the erosion of conscience in our own land. Americans have largely become morally inured to the destruction of the Iraq war, and our concern for loss of life, human dignity, and property can no longer be taken for granted. The war in Iraq is both a palpable tragedy in and of itself and a powerful example of how U.S. citizens have allowed an institutionalized predilection for violence and profit to lead our nation wildly astray.
In contrast, we assert that peacemaking – as a concept and an action — is absolutely central to Islam, Judaism and Christianity. We make this assertion as an interfaith group, respecting our differences of belief while working together to challenge the view that the Iraq war is necessary.