Friends,

On behalf of “Family of the Heart” and my own self, I would like to welcome you today, to the seminar.

Before we go to the introduction of today’s speakers and the subject itself, for the information of those participants, who are here for the very first time, and are wondering what this “Family of the Heart” is all about, I think it is important that I present a brief introduction of the group itself.  

Family of the Heart is a group of creative people, who promote the cause of free thinking and dialogue. The only purpose behind the formation of this group is to promote genuine dialogue between different schools of thought. Our desire is to develop personal and affectionate relationship between friends rather than the one, based on religious, linguistic or nationalistic affiliations by breaking down walls of prejudice and intolerance and build bridges of compassion, creativity and dialogue.

We hold regular meetings and seminars which turn out to be very productive and thought provoking. In our forums, it is very normal to have serious disagreements about religious and political issues, but we have learnt and are still learning, to deal with it in a respectful way, rather than passion and loud talk.

We always make sure that the believers and non-believers are equally respected and given equal opportunity to express their views openly and honestly. Our core belief centers on not only freedom of religion but also freedom from religion, depending on personal choices.

In the last few years, the family has not only grown from ten to hundred but have also touched friends all over the world. Since there are no elections and no office bearers, general atmosphere of the meetings is cordial, in the words of Dr. Sohail; we have an atmosphere of cooperation rather than confrontation, acceptance rather than judgment and encouragement and inspiration rather than rivalry and jealousy. They are all generous in sharing their time, energy and resources when needed.

Family tree has started to take roots and is now at the verge of bearing fruits of creativity, friendship, tolerance, dialogue and peace. We hope that friends all over the country and abroad could come and join us in one of our meetings or seminars or a debate on line.

Regarding today’s seminar, we have a number of speakers from different schools of opinions.

·        My name is Najeeb Kazmi and I will act as a moderator today. I have no hesitation in saying that my depth of knowledge about this subject is quite limited, and would take this opportunity to learn, and broaden my horizons of knowledge, as related to different faith systems.

·        We will start with Dr. Khalid Sohail, who is well known to most, if not all of you. He is the nerve centre of our family and is, basically a psychiatrist by profession. He has been writing poems, stories, travelogues, novels and essays for the last more than two decades which have been published in English, Urdu and Punjabi languages.

·        Farzana Hassan Shahid is the president of “Muslims against Terrorism”, Canadian Chapter and is also very active in many areas of social emancipation and women’s right issues.

·        Arliene Botnick has been Director of Education at Solel Synagogue for the past 18 years. She was also granted the title of Reform Jewish Educator from the National Association of Temple Educators. Arliene is involved in several community organizations, details of which are available at our web site.

·        Don Joshua worked as a Civil Servant in the early part of his career in Pakistan. In Canada, in addition to his career in the life insurance field, he has been the Canadian Director of Middle East Christian Outreach, a missionary organization. He is also involved in volunteer work for World Vision.

·        Ziauddin Ahmed had a celebrated career in multi-national outfits in Pakistan and Middle East in the area of Marketing, Sales and Market research. On the creative front, he has translated selections from the Urdu poetry of Ghalib, the famous poet philosopher of the East, in English and has written a number of philosophic articles and essays.

So, coming back to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution….

Just what is all the hype about?

Debates about evolution sometimes take the form of a conflict between two competing ideas, namely evolutionary theory and creationism, sometimes resulting in creating a general assumption that the two are incompatible and mutually exclusive.

Are evolution and religion complimentary or contradictory?

Whether or not creationism and evolution contradict each other depends entirely upon what is meant by "creationism," It appears to be more of an exploitation of this ambiguity for political and religious purposes. If by "creationism" we simple mean the belief that the universe, the world, and/or life itself was originally caused by God, or other supernatural means, do creationism and evolution in this case contradict?

If evolution is about the development of life; can a person accept evolution as the best explanation for the diversity and development of life on Earth while also believing that the Earth and the life on it were first caused by God?

Lots of questions on this subject need to be addressed.

The time, today, is limited and the subject is very vast, so I would like to request all the respected speakers to limit their deliberations to the allocated time of 20 minutes, and then we will take short questions from the participants. We cannot address all questions today, so, I suggest we continue our debate through our web site, online. Any and all of you are invited to join the dialogue.

Thanks you.

Najeeb Kazmi