Neighbours of different faiths

This lesson asks you to identify faiths that live side by side in a diverse society, to judge why a society marks a commemoration, to explain why it matters to learn about neighbours' beliefs, and to explain how a person's beliefs can affect the way he relates to others. The museum offers one commemoration in Canada, one historical agreement and one teaching of the Islamic tradition; your class adds the other faiths of your own community. ¹

Compare what each source shows: a month of learning, a treaty, a report about faith and a brother. Ask who is speaking, who is promised what, and what the people involved would need to know about each other for the arrangement to work.

Read one clause closely in the Constitution of Medina, as al-Mubarakpuri gives it in The Sealed Nectar. The Prophet agreed with the Jews a treaty that left them complete freedom in religion and property. The Banu Awf and other Jews had their religion, and they formed one community with the believers. They bore their own expenses, and the Muslims bore theirs ^{2 3}. Between them was support against whoever fought the people of the document, and support for the wronged ^{2 3}. The book says Medina and its surroundings became a state founded on concord, with Medina as its capital and the Prophet ﷺ as its head ³. Among the sixteen clauses it lists, God's protection is one, and the Jews who follow the believers have support and assistance, neither wronged nor allied against ^{4 5}.

There are three kinds of source here. One is a modern biography, The Sealed Nectar. It summarises the text of the treaty and does not give all of its wording, and the museum presents the clauses as a summary of Ibn Hisham's account ^{4 6}. The museum's record adds that the sources preserve parts of the document through Ibn Ishaq and others, and that the reports differ in the order and detail of its clauses, so each clause needs a source. One is the Government of Canada's page on Canadian Islamic History Month, which says it was first established in 2007 and does not name the parliamentary instrument that created it ⁷. One is a report of Anas ibn Malik (may God be pleased with him) in the Book of Faith of Sahih Muslim, of which the museum records the place and the chapter heading ⁸.

The Sealed Nectar describes a treaty in which each community keeps its own religion and bears its own expenses, and the Canadian page describes a month that invites all Canadians to dialogue and understanding. The Sahih Muslim chapter heading speaks of a "Muslim brother". Before you say how one person's belief affects the way he relates to neighbours of another faith, what would you need to find out from these sources, and why?

• Canadian Islamic History Month: how the Government of Canada's page describes it, and its campaigns in recent years.
• The Constitution of Medina: the sixteen clauses the book lists and the clauses on the Jews.
• Muslim 45: the report as the museum records it, with its book and chapter in Sahih Muslim.

Read Canadian Islamic History Month and the Constitution of Medina. Make a two-column list: what each source asked neighbours to know or to do, and what it left to each community.