Many Faiths, One Humanity

The ATISHA INTERFAITH COUNCIL BANGLADESH (AIFC Bangladesh) is a collective faith based initiative that aims to facilitate multi-religious actions for advancing inter-religious dialogueand communication. The initiative will also focus on some broader context of  ‘Freedom of Religion and Belief (FoRB)’ or ‘Religious Liberty’ and promoting basic tools on Peace building, Trustworthiness, Religious Literacy, Religion and Development, Religion and Worldviews, Understanding Nonviolent Communication, Secularism, Conflict Transformation, Connectivity, Fellowship, Responsibility, Reducing Violence, Extremism, Enhancing Social Cohesion within different religious groups, faith practitioners with focus on shared responsibilities for uplifting one humanity within the mother earth. 

Achariya ATISHA DIPANKAR, was a great saint scholar and a humanitarian Buddhist monk who was an enlightened son of the country. He played an incomparable role for services to unbounded humanity, preaching loving-kindness, and the message of universal peace within Bangladesh and the Asian region. There are also many generous people and religious masters who have an incomparable role to universal responsibilities, uplifting human dignity, community well beings as well as world humanity to ensure societal peace, inter-religious harmony and sustainability. We encourage all religious and faith communities, religious and traditional peacemakers to uplift positive initiatives for common good locally and generate it globally for the benefit of many.

 Bangladesh is a country of religious diversity where Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian as well as various indigenous groups generally live in peace and harmony across all religious divides and cultural diversity. Though religious tensions have existed for many decades, overall positive religious pluralism is a part of Bangladeshi identity. But in recent times, the rapid increase of religious intolerance, violence, conflicts, religious motivated extremism, radicalization of youth, hate speech, hate crime have become  threats to societal peace and sustainability in Bangladesh and South Asian region.  It is urgently needed to engage the religious, traditional and civil society actors in peace building initiatives, to cultivate mutual respect and understanding in the societies, deep analysis and actions on religious conflicts, majority-minority protections, inclusivity ( Gender and Youth), reducing hate speech/hate crime, use positive language that is religiously and culturally suits, increase the number of peace messages and narratives that contribute to social cohesion efforts and promote positive understanding, enhance basic skills of on negotiation/mediation, conflict transformation, discourage hard line engagement, intolerance, identify areas for collaboration and ways for advocacy, understanding secularism, worldviews, development policies, human values, ethics etc.

Atisha  Interfaith Council Bangladesh (AIFC Bangladesh) emphasizes  on promoting  inter-religious understanding and cooperation for sustainable peace, amity, tranquility and harmony. Also enhancing connectivity through advancing dialogue for peace, fellowship and responsibility  based on truth, mutual understanding, love, compassion and respect on uniqueness of religious identity, views, rituals and cultural diversity and so on initially from greater Chittagong, Dhaka to all over the country.