Panel will promote faith cooperation

YATES COUNTY--The Penn Yan Area Council of Churches and Yates County Progressives will be hosting a panel Monday, Sept. 26, to address the discrimination and prejudice being aimed at Muslims. The panel will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the basement auditorium of the Yates County office building, located at 417 Liberty St. in Penn Yan. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.
"As a group, we want to provide a forum in Penn Yan to counter much of the negativity that is being aimed at the Muslim community as a result of ISIS and the presidential campaigns," according to a statement from the groups. "Therefore, I am reaching out to the Rochester Interfaith Council for help in this effort for greater understanding and acceptance."
The groups spoke to Dr. Muhammad Shafiq, professor and executive director at the Hickey Center for Interfaith Studies at Nazareth College in regards to having a speaker come to Yates County. Shafiq then proposed an interfaith panel, featuring representatives from the Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths. The panelists include Muslim Chaplain Tricia Pethic with the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervisors, Reverend Gordon Webster with the Rochester Presbyterian Home and Nathan (Neil) Jaschik, who has worked on the Commission on Jewish-Christian Relations and the Commission on Muslim-Jewish Understanding.
Pethic is Muslim chaplain at a women's correctional facility in upstate New York.
Webster is a founding member of the Nazareth College Hickey Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue.
Jaschik is retired from a career in transportation and land use planning. He has taught explanatory courses on Judaism at the Chautauqua Institute and, with a local UCC Minister and Muslim Chaplain, co-taught "Children of Abraham," a course covering practices of the three Abrahamic faiths, at Oasis, an adult learning program.