Eboo Patel Among Top Leaders Of 2009

U.S. News has honoured Eboo Patel's work within the interfaith community naming him one of the best leaders in America of 2009. Patel’s passion for interfaith was formed by his early childhood experiences. As a Muslim born in India, who early in his life moved to Chicago, Patel was a constant victim of religious stereotypes and profiling. Patel recalls running for the seventh grade student council when a white classmate told him "Nobody would vote for people like you." Peer taunts such as "curry-maker", and worse, left Patel feeling on the edge of religious hate. In Patel’s searching memoir Acts of Faith, he describes "a gut-wrenching feeling of being excluded from mainstream society . . . a vague sense of being Muslim . . . a growing consciousness that people with whom I shared an identity were being horribly treated elsewhere, often by people who looked just like the ones who were bullying me here."

Patel’s mentality shifted while studying at the University of Illinois. He realized that while all of his heroes (Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Aga Khan) came from different faiths, they all lead through common principles of faith. This made him question why religion has always been the root of so many of the world’s conflicts. He realized that in order to overcome interreligious intolerance, communities must be created where human connections rise above differences of faith, culture, and race. Patel says "I recognize now that believing in pluralism means having the courage to act on it." This is essential for pluralism to succeed because as Patel describes, "Action is what separates belief from merely an opinion."

All of Patel’s life experiences inspired him to found and lead The Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC); a nationwide non-profit interfaith program present in over 140 universities across the United States. For the past decade, Patel and the IFYC have empowered countless young minds to promote religious pluralism and cooperation. For this alone, many would agree that at the tender age of thirty-three, Eboo has already achieved excellence beyond his years.

Patel’s horizons were expanded when President Obama named him, among twenty-five others, to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships this past February. The advisory council is part of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships which, as stated in an official press release from the White House, acts as a "resource for nonprofits and community organizations, both secular and faith based, looking for ways to make a bigger impact in their communities, learn their obligations under the law, cut through red tape, and make the most of what the federal government has to offer." The Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships works alongside the President’s Cabinet Secretaries and each of the eleven agency offices for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships, to make community groups an integral part of economic recovery, support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need for abortion, encourage responsible fatherhood, and to foster interfaith dialogue with leaders and scholars worldwide. As a member of the advisory council, Patel has been given a platform to guide the President to address interfaith issues with more urgency.

As the founder of the IFYC, a member of the advisory council, and the writer of "The Faith Divide," a featured column for the Washington Post, Patel has become the leading voice and an inspiration for interfaith relations within the White House, in America, and around the world.