Why I Try to Serve God and Others - by Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel

Founder, Interfaith Youth Core

“On Faith” panelist Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit working to make the forces of interfaith cooperation stronger than the forces of religious extremism. He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. An American Muslim of Indian heritage, Eboo has a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He is on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation and the Advisory Board of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center. Eboo is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select network of social entrepreneurs with ideas that could change the world. Close.

Eboo Patel

Founder, Interfaith Youth Core

“On Faith” panelist Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit working to make the forces of interfaith cooperation stronger than the forces of religious extremism. more »

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Why I Try to Serve God and Others

When I was living in community with homeless people at the St Francis Catholic Worker House on the north side of Chicago and teaching at an alternative school for returning high school dropouts on the grand salary of $12,000 a year, a few people would ask me what was the use of it all.

Did I think my meager act of solidarity was going to solve poverty? Did I think helping a few former gangbangers get their GEDs was moving us any closer to educational equality?

I didn’t have satisfactory answers to their questions. Guilt no longer motivated me, not since college. My illusions of saving the world were given up soon after.

So why did I do it?

The simple answer was this – I felt like I was meant to. I felt like, inch by inch, this was what life was about.

And the more I asked other people who were living lives of service why they did it, I found a similar answer. It was as if many of us were motivated by an invisible force – one both inside of us and far beyond us - that we all felt but few of us could put in words.

I had no language for it until I re-engaged the tradition of my ancestors, Islam, and sat down with its scripture.

In the Holy Qur’an, God tells us that He created Adam (both the first human and the first Prophet according to Muslim tradition) with His breath, and made Adam His abd and khalifa – His servant and representative – on Earth, giving him responsibility for stewarding Creation.
Then God called the Angels forth and asked them to honor Adam and his role as vicegerent on Earth. The Angels pointed out Adam's flaws. They said, “Will You put there a being who will work mischief on the Earth and shed blood, while we sing Your glories and exalt Your utter holiness?”

And God responded, “I know what you do not know.” (Qur'an 2:30)

God gave humankind's first representative a giant responsibility, and believed in our ability to accomplish the task, even in the face of the Angels' questions. (This is why I, as a Muslim, feel a strong religious connection to Martin Luther King's line "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." I believe that line contains within it an affirmation of the great goodness that God gave humankind with His breath.)

What did it mean to be God’s servant and representative? I found the answer to that question in another piece of Muslim scripture, one that pertains to Muhammad (who Muslims believe is God’s final Prophet). The scripture says of Muhammad: "We did not send you but as a special mercy upon all the worlds.” (Qur'an 21:71)

Here it was for me, clear as day. Prophet Adam was given a task for what to do– to steward Creation. Prophet Muhammad was given direction for how to do it – by being a mercy. And all of us were given the breath of God, and the gift of fitra: a natural inclination towards the good.

In the Qur'an was an articulation that confirmed what I had long felt in my being. The message is simple, the path is plain: serve others. It is what we were created for.

(for a longer explanation of the central role of mercy in Islam, see http://www.nawawi.org/downloads/article1.pdf )