Hi, welcome to another episode for our course
here at Florida International University. I'm
here with Philip Louisa, who is a graduate student
in politics, international relations, as well
as religious studies. And he's one of our most
talented students. We're really honored to have
him and to talk a little bit about his. academic
background, his interest in interfaith work,
and some of his research so that you guys know
kind of the excellent caliber of students and
research that's happening here at the university
in interfaith dialogue and interfaith relations.
So with that, I'll turn it over to Philip. Okay.
Thank you, Professor, for having me. Your words
are too kind. Again, yes, my name is Philip Louisa.
I am in the Religious Studies program on the
Master's side with a combined International Relations
PhD. As Professor mentioned, I'm here for the
long haul and my interest in interfaith is what
has kind of brought us together. Also, our path
kind of in terms of our backgrounds are rather
similar. I'm Tanzanian by birth. I came to the
United States when I was seven years old, but
I spent the early childhood time of my life,
about four to five years, between Tanzania and
the United Kingdom in Wales, where my dad was
pursuing a PhD at the University of Bangor. um
so during that time i grew in terms of my interests
in terms of the international stage being that
i kind of my earliest memory is being on a plane
uh being actually in the in an airport in egypt
i've got which one but that's kind of like my
earliest memory and also just walking around,
toddling around the University of Dar es Salaam
and as well as in Wales. So international relations
has always been a key interest of mine as well
as religious studies, interfaith especially.
My dad kind of I got I was babysat by most of
my dad's students. That's what I think. That's
how my dad kind of paid, you know, got his payment.
So from an early age, my first babysitters are
from Sri Lanka. So I remember having an early
being brought into like Buddhist, you know. thoughts,
Buddhist ideas. I was introduced to actually
Buddhist monks at like around like the age of
like eight, even though at the time I was growing
up as Catholic. So this was being interfaith
has always been a comfortable sphere that I've
sat in. And so taking that, I think it's just
this has been kind of almost like a homecoming
to now to actually be able to study it and to
actually make it a part of my career, where specifically
it applies in my own research. Working with Professor
Akhtar, we have been exploring youth agency in
terms of conflict and as it pertains to various
challenging areas. Specifically, we're looking
at Nigeria, the Nigerian youth, and then the
northern -southern divide when it comes to the
Islamic -Christian conflict. But then the multiple
layers as it relates to ethnicity and how that
kind of lends some complexity to what usually
is looked at as a purely Christian -Muslim conflict.
As well as my interest goes into South Asia as
well, specifically India. the challenges of the
smaller minority Christian population as they
continue to integrate themselves or to grow within
the subcontinent. That's amazing. I mean, I think
so. It's very interesting that like your exposure
early on in life allowed you to be able to kind
of see multiple perspectives in terms of international
relations and expose you to different cultures
and religions. I think, talk to us a little bit
about your own spirituality. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Okay. And your background there. Yes. So, yes,
I grew up Catholic, you know, very deep. And
many Tanzanians have a deep Catholic faith. I
think we're split around the middle, Christian
and Catholic, about 50, 50, 50 percent. And then
there's a small Protestant, a growing Protestant
population as well. So from an early age, I always
was going to church. My grandfather was a missionary
and kind of passed that on to me. as well. And
I really just kind of had a deep interest in
the Catholicism. I was, well, a lot of kids were
kind of running away from church. I was just
fascinated with a lot of the stories that I would
hear in the biblical context. And also, even
though my dad has a very deeply scientific worldview,
but he helped me understand how to look at religion
from a critical lens. So we would have conversations
like, oh, did the world, was the world really
created in seven days? I remember from an early
age, my dad would tell me, well, you know, seven
days to God may be different than seven days
to us. So maybe that's the way we should look
at it. And so I've always been comfortable in
the world of science and religion being sitting
very comfortably together because my father is
very religious. And at the same time, he's very
deeply scientific. So it's always come as a.
as a strange uh idea that science or religion
can't sit side by side because that's just kind
of how i i was raised um so in my as i as i continue
to grow i kind of Pulled away from my Catholic
faith when I got a little bit older and I went
to college. Many, many of us do. I mean, I would
go to church still during like Holy Days, like
Easter and Christmas. But I started kind of starting
to explore my own, you know, perspectives and
kind of wanting to be more like everybody else
around me. But I always found deep comfort within
the church. Then later on, as I grew into post
-college, I started... really, really truly start
to kind of leave my Catholic faith. And I would
say I was almost like I was a Catholic agnostic
where I did things more ritualistically, but
it really didn't mean much to me outside of that.
And then as I ended up, I ended up moving to
Florida, at which point I was engaged to. an
individual who would become the mother of my
child. And during that formative time, I kind
of started to have some spiritual angst and difficulties
and challenges, a walk in terms of which I dealt
with various issues in terms of understanding
who I was. And through that period, I ended up...
Really looking deeper into this idea of spirituality
and asking myself and wanting something deeper.
And in that sense is when I started walking toward
where I am now, which is Protestant. I left the
Catholic faith and became a Protestant Christian.
And in that perspective, I wanted a deeper and
richer experience. And, you know, I became, you
know, I made Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.
And that started to shape my worldview even more.
It pushed me further into discovering more of
who I was. So for me, religion has allowed me
to have a better understanding of who I am as
an individual outside of what the world has kind
of told me I should be. It has given me an authenticity
and a perspective that I don't think I could
have had without my faith. Okay, very interesting.
I know you're doing a little bit of work with...
Christians in India. So talk to us a little bit.
What is the situation of Christians in India?
Okay. Yes. So... During my journey, I had the
opportunity at a church here in South Florida,
Church by the Glades, where I met up with a pastor
named Pastor Shibu Josephs, originally from Kelara.
And we started to speak because at that time
I was starting to get more involved in wanting
to understand Christian persecution in specifically
South Asia and as well as Somalia. And while
I was speaking to him, I did. realized that he
was in an area where there was a lot of Christian
persecution, which is, and Professor, I'm going
to say it wrong, in northern India. And so we
started to speak and he started telling me about
the fact that he's been working to build a community
of believers with Christian believers in northern
India in that specific part of the world, which
is Right now rift with a lot of religious tensions
as kind of a background, there is an anti -conversion
law that has been on the books in India for the
last couple of years, and that has made it a
little bit more difficult for the evangelical
side of the Christian faith to kind of continue
the practice of what many people see as proselytization.
And this has led a level of suspicion in terms
of many of the local communities, specifically
outside of the periphery of the main largely
Hindu population in the southern parts of India.
And so he kind of walked me through the history
of the challenges of Christianity's growth in
India, even though Christianity has been in India
since its infancy, since Thomas came to India.
So India is very well acquainted with Christianity,
but it has struggled in terms of its growth.
I think at the current term, it's like somebody
will correct me too. 2 % in terms of population.
And so I've gotten more, in spending time with
him, I've gotten a better understanding of asking
why has Christianity had such a deep struggle
of growing, and then the increased persecution.
Historically, I think at the time of independence,
there was an attempt to kind of maintain a very
sumless piece of divide between the different
religious groups. I think the challenges were
more between Muslim and Hindu, but Christians
fell in kind of the crevice of the in -between
in terms of challenges. But there is a continuing
growth of the Christian population within India.
And with Pastor Shibu, I've had an opportunity
to meet a lot of those people. And I know you're
doing work on the situation in Nigeria. Yes.
So talk to us a little bit about the relationship
between Christians and Muslims and kind of your
general perspective on the challenges of sort
of interfaith dialogue between Christians and
Muslims. Yeah. So this is a very sensitive particular
topic. My interest in India also kind of shed
light in the fact that there's other areas where
there is this complexity when it comes to the
relationships between the multiple faiths. So
Nigeria is split along. various ethnic groups,
but also as well as an underlying factor as well
as a religious split with a largely northern
Muslim population and then the south made up
of the majority's Christian population, a mixture
of Catholicism and Protestant Christianity. The
difficulties that have been occurring for the
last couple, actually since the infancy of independence,
but more in the last 20 to 30 years has been
the advent of a form of, I'm not going to correctly
express my fundamentalist, but more I would say
like they have been a Boko Haram and other kind
of splinter groups that have taken a perspective
of Islam that is kind of extremist. Thank you,
Professor. And in that sense, this group of people
which have kind of taken advantage or exploited
the challenging socioeconomic issues that are
going on in northern Nigeria have used this as
an opportunity to kind of co -opt and really
kind of recruit a lot of young people into their
groups and use this as a way to attack various
groups both christians and muslims i want to
make that very clear it's been both christians
and muslims that have been under attack various
communities i know in the last like i think three
years have been fulani uh herdsmen who have gone
and encroached down into the southern part so
i think southeast part of nigeria and attacked
a lot of christian groups so there has been in
the last couple of weeks specifically a highlighting
of the persecution of christians that has been
happening um and i i think the number has been
put up with like a hundred thousand uh in terms
of deaths that have uh people that killed Again,
I always want to emphasize that, yes, there is
a persecution of Christians. But as Professor
Akhtar and I have been going in terms of our
talks, there is a layer of ethnic division that
kind of underlies that. So it's not clearly just
a pure Christian Muslim attack. religion is used
as a tool, as an excuse to act upon egregious
differences and divisions that have been there
for a while. And political, economic, social
grievances and historical sort of challenges
between these communities. So it goes back to
the colonial period and even before then as well.
It's a big challenge. What about living here
in Miami? How has your experience been in terms
of engaging people of different faiths? Yeah.
So Miami is interesting. In the internal Christian
discourse, from the evangelical circles that
I am in, Miami is looked as, there's a lot of
churches in Miami. um there is a large christian
uh people who call themselves christians um what
we do see it as is a rather under churched area
which meaning the particular people do call label
themselves christians but they a large percentage
don't actually go to church um so and this is
a a a difficult or a reality, as I'll put it
out there, in a lot of the United States. And
so it's a microcosm of that within the Miami
area. The other interesting aspect of it is the
fact that there's a growing desire to touch or
to reach out in terms of connecting with indigenous
or different religions that are outside of the
historical context of which the Abrahamic religions,
especially within the Afro -Caribbean diaspora
as well. And so that's something that's been
a growing, especially amongst the young people,
there's been various religions that are kind
of outside of the usual context, which is also...
influenced a lot of the Catholic and Christian
perspectives as well. So that has lent itself
to a very different kind of viewpoint than what
I kind of was seeing in New York. Now in New
York, it was very, very different, which was
a greater kind of divide in terms of the non
-religious and the people who were calling themselves
a Catholic Christian, we'll just label in this
context as Christian. Florida, South Florida
specifically, I think has more people who are
more comfortable with calling themselves Christians
than I saw in New York. The opportunities that
I've seen here are the fact that Because there's
a greater comfort in having that dialogue outside
of more, I would say, academia, there's an opportunity
to kind of reshape the perspectives of what people
see as traditional Christianity, as more of a
kind of encroachment into your life without any
kind of real... you know, positive product. And
so that's a lot of the work that I've been doing,
working, you know, with many leadership, people
in leadership, working with, I work in prison
ministry. I work actively in other social areas,
just to kind of change the perspective that there's
this idea that Christianity lends nothing to
itself besides trying to damn you to, you know,
some kind of hell. But this, I think when we,
you know, one thing Professor and I have in common.
When we study scripture, whether it's the Quran
or whether it's the Bible, we see a very different
perspective than what we see on the outside world.
And that's kind of what I'm trying to lend to
as well as in the interfaith community. Absolutely.
That's wonderful. And to students here at the
university or anywhere else that are interested
in learning about other religious traditions,
what would be your advice to them? I would say...
One, be very open -minded. Explore for yourself.
And I would say start with the scriptures, whichever
religion that you're interested in. There's a
lot of people, I would call them talking heads.
Many of us go to a YouTube page or we go to a
podcast. But I always say the best place to start
with it is in the particular books. The books
themselves speak very clearly. With those of
us on the evangelical side, we believe that the
Bible is ordained by the word of God. So it in
itself speaks to you and the truth is through
that word. And I think in the same very essence
in terms of Islam, when you read those particular
books, they carry a rich history and they carry
a rich narrative that's able to engage with the
individual. And if you're open to it, the second
part of that is. I say reach out to your local
pastor, priest, or imam and sit down and be open
to asking questions. Again, trying to stray away
from the talking heads that are out there who
are trying to sway opinion, whether it's pro
or con. But if you have that kind of open mindset,
open to sitting down with a religious leader,
many of them are more than happy to engage with
you and sit down. And even one thing I've learned
from Professor Echter is that So there's many
of us, I would say, practicing academics that
are more than happy to sit down and talk about
whichever particular faith that you're interested
in without really trying to push you in any direction.
We are open to the fact that we do practice our
faith and we're very happy and loving of our
faith. But our key goal, I think, is always to
bring an enriching environment to our student
population in terms of. being open and not just
being pushed by the fact that there's a very
negative narrative that's out there, much of
it because of the Christian context, a nationalist
idea that's been pushed out there, which I think
differs very greatly than the perspective that
you'll see in the scriptures. Well, thank you
so much, Philip. I appreciate it. It's been a
wonderful interview and I'm looking forward to
working with you. Thank you, Professor. Thanks
a lot.