Last January, a Catholic nun from the College of Notre Dame and a Muslim imam from Baltimore County made the evening news in Morocco.

They were making a joint visit to the North African country with an interfaith group of two dozen American travelers, including a woman from Tuscany-Canterbury.

Why the publicity? Because it was unusual to see a Christian nun and a Muslim imam (Arabic for teacher) working together for peace, when the 9/11 terrorist attacks are still fresh in many minds and media coverage often perpetuates negative stereotypes about the world's two largest religions.

Next May, they plan to lead another trip together, sponsored by the College of Notre Dame. Sister Eileen Eppig and Imam Mohamad Bashar Arafat are organizing the 10-day interfaith, intercultural trip, this time to Jordan and Egypt, from May 26 through June 4. It's open to Notre Dame students and the public. The cost, $2,900 per person, includes airfare and two meals a day.

Arafat, a native of Syria, runs a foundation under contract with the U.S. State Department to manage intercultural programs with Islamic countries. Eppig is an associate professor of religious studies at the College of Notre Dame.

"Christians and Muslims make up 55 percent of the world. If we're not at peace, the world is not at peace," Eppig said during a recent interfaith workshop.

Like Eppig, Arafat believes in trying to build cultural and theological bridges between the United States and Islamic countries, at a time when tensions are high because of the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Arafat, of Woodlawn, was traveling and could not be reached for comment, but said in a recent posting on the State Department's Web site, "Today the mosaic of the American Muslim community who migrated from different countries can be a great bridge between America and the rest of the world."

About two dozen travelers made the trip to Morocco in January, including Notre Dame students who took the trip for credit, a reporter who went along as a private citizen, and members of the public, including retirees Sigrid and Philip Groves, of the Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood.

Arafat, who is fluent in English and Arabic, arranged visits to universities to talk with professors and students in Casablanca and Rabat, along with visits to a mosque and a Jewish museum in Casablanca and a Catholic church in Tangier, only eight miles across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain.

For purposes of this story, the reporter asked her fellow participants on the trip to e-mail indelible memories from it.

"Throughout the trip, we could observe the Muslims' devotion to their faith," Sigrid Groves wrote. "In Tangier, hearing the muezzin's call for prayer, an old man sank to his knees and bowed his head to the sand in the middle of the bustle of the city beach. In Fes, we watched men emerging from evening prayers, holding hands with young sons, before blending back into the narrow cobbled streets of the souk."

Philip Groves, a retired lawyer, was struck by what in the United States is typically a quick stop on the highway for food and fuel but in Morocco has an added dimension.

"I heard a recorded call to prayer and noticed that there was a tiny mosque there," he e-mailed. "I could see into the room, which had an open door, and it appeared to be full of truck drivers and other travelers who had interrupted their trip to pray and listen to the imam."

Directly experiencing another religion and culture and talking one on one with people is not the only way to build bridges by getting past negative stereotypes perpetuated by the media, say Eppig and Arafat.

Eppig co-facilitates a Christian-Muslim study group, which she founded with Attaulla Khan of Catonsville. It meets regularly at the Islamic Society of Baltimore's mosque in Woodlawn and at St. Matthews Catholic church near Good Samaritan Hospital.

Eppig, 62, and Arafat, 46, are co-writing a study guide for such groups, which they hope will be published next year.

Eppig is less than five feet tall, but there's nothing diminutive about her. She grew up in Catonsville, joined the School Sisters of Notre Dame at 18 and taught in Baltimore before moving to Florida and working for eight years in the early 1980s with a diverse group of migrant workers.

Committed to helping people, she is also passionate about learning, with a degree in sociology from the College of Notre Dame, a master's in theology and spirituality from Fordham University in New York and a doctorate in religious studies from the Catholic University of American in Washington, D.C.

In 1993, Eppig returned to the College of Notre Dame to teach, and has developed courses, including one about African-American Christianity. She also participated in a Christian-Jewish dialogue. She realized she needed to know more about Islam when a student said how important Jesus was to Muslims, who view him as a prophet.

The study group grew out of a study trip Eppig took to Jordan in 2007. She promised to find ways to foster Muslim-Christian dialogues.

"It started to blossom, and I realized this was a real calling from God," she said. "To build Muslim-Christian relations is so important to world peace."

As a teenager growing up in Damascus, Arafat also knew he wanted to devote his life to religion, despite a family preference that he go into business.

He earned a degree in shariah (religious) law at Damascus University and served as an assistant to a leading religious leader in Syria, who asked him to come to the United States in 1989 when he was in his late 20s. As an imam, he served at the Islamic Society of Baltimore and in the early 1990s helped found the Masjid An Nur mosque in Carney.

Arafat has also taught religion classes at local universities and served as a chaplain at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Baltimore Police Department. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Arafat spoke in public with Cardinal William Keeler and other religious leaders in efforts to foster understanding between Christians and Muslims.

Arafat founded and runs the Civilizations Exchange and Cooperation Foundation, which is under contract by the U.S. Department of State to provide services for exchange programs between Americans and Islamic cultures. Arafat is also a speaker for the State Department and has taken groups to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Indonesia.

"It is unfortunate that some people sometimes get confused between cultures and religion," he said on the State Department Web site. "To me, civilizations do not clash. In history, civilizations enriched one another."

For more information about the upcoming trip, e-mail eeppig@ndm.edu or call 410-532-5307. For more information about the Civilizations Exchange and Cooperation Foundation, go to http://cecf-net.org.

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