HARMONY DIALOGUE GROUP

The Harmony Dialogue Group (HDG) is a non-profit organization that is in founded by a group of volunteers comprised of business people, academicians, and students. It grew out of the need to address the question, "How can the citizens of Canada continue to live in peace and harmony while retaining their nation’s diverse, multicultural, multinational, multi faith nature, and present a functioning paradigm to the rest of the world?” From this question a conversation took root and began to grow. Discussions on diversity do not have to digress into confusion, fighting, and anarchy. On the contrary, peace can be achieved by sharing different perspectives, by listening to each other from the universality of love, respect, tolerance, mercy, and compassion.

Our Mission

1. To promote mutual understanding, respect, and collaboration between followers of different traditions.
2. To encourage respect and tolerance for differences among followers of all faiths in our community..
3. To deal with issues related to living together as part of society.
4. To foster efforts towards education and communication among people of different background.

Our mission is to promote fully expressed dialogue within the global community and to maintain its objectivity. HDG is not affiliated with any political or government agency, foreign or domestic. HDG has made a commitment to maintaining its stance for compassion and respect with regard to free expression of spirituality throughout communities.

Dialogue

Our main focus will be on intercultural dialogue. Although most of us are familiar with our own cultures and religions, we do not have much knowledge of other cultures. This lack of knowledge can be a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary tension in our society. We believe that the solution to this problem can be found through dialogue. We believe that peace in the world can be more easily achieved when people know each other and understand each other. We hope that our endeavor would be a humble step towards this goal.

The purpose of Dialogue

The primary purpose of dialogue is to learn; that is, to change and grow in the perception and understanding of reality, and then to act accordingly. A person who shows interest in a custom of someone with a different background has actually taken the first step in dialogue. In order to achieve a just community, people have a duty to help each other break out of cultural, educational, political, and social isolations.

The functions of Dialogue

One of the functions of dialogue is to guide participants in describing and observing their culture in their own terms. It should be recognized by groups in dialogue that any religion or ideology claiming universality will also have its own interpretations of other religions and ideologies as part of its self-understanding.

Dialogue gives us an opportunity to realize and eventually overcome misunderstandings towards different belief systems. We should place an emphasis on the commonalities of different faiths. Generally accepted values such as love, respect, tolerance, forgiveness, mercy, human rights, peace, brotherhood, and freedom are all values exalted by religion. Most of these values are accorded the highest priority in the messages of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad (peace be upon them), as well as in the messages of Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, and the Hindu prophets. Whether in the form of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or other world religions, religion commands love, compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness.

One of the goals of the Harmony Dialogue Group is to organize various cultural and social activities and conferences, bringing together all types of ethnic groups, to support and advance the harmony and cooperation among cultures and faith traditions. We believe that respect of plurality and dialogue are the keys to world peace.