Members of “The Bridge” gather for a weekly meeting at a local home.

DEARBORN — When Steven Urenda, a Christian from California, moved to Michigan, he never imagined that he would become close friends with local Muslims here. 

But two years later, his participation with a group called “The Bridge” has changed his conception of the Muslim community.  

What started off as a small gathering with mutual friends in a basement, “The Bridge: A Jewish, Christian and Muslim Alliance” would soon form into a large group of interfaith friends who gather once a week to engage in dialogue that builds understanding and respect and eliminates misconceptions among differing communities.  

“It was really conceived out of a couple of natural organic friendships that developed by accident between me and a couple of Muslims,” Urenda told The Arab American News. “I never knew Muslims before this and as we got close, I started to realize there was so much I misunderstood about them. I found them to be such amazing charming people. My friends and I said maybe we can put something together where different people of the Abrahamic faiths could come together and hang out and see where our commonalities lies.”

Part of the group’s mission statement reads, “[The Bridge] is about changing things from the inside out at the grassroots level, by developing lasting friendships and discovering shared ideologies. We believe in mutual accountability and mutual investment by every member toward peaceful enlightenment in the face of false propaganda and bias.”

The group would grow from just to a few people to having more than 1,300 followers on its Facebook page; and it continues to blossom.

The Facebook group has turned into a page where users share inspirational messages on a daily basis and discuss their aspirations and goals in life. 

At the top of the page, a message pinned by Urenda states “We keep it respectful, so please speak to people in the right way. We don’t dismiss, we don’t argue, we don’t debate and we don’t mock in here. What we do is listen and learn.”

Outside of social media, the group holds weekly informal meetings at local restaurants, coffee shops, member’s homes or local places of worship. 

Every week, 15 to 20 people of different faiths gather to discuss weekly developments in their lives. 

On Easter Sunday, the group met to celebrate the holiday. The meetings are very socially driven, usually including a variety of diverse foods, hookah smoking and engaging in intellectual dialogue. 

Waad Charara, a Muslim American and  Dearborn resident, is a member of the group and has hosted meetings at her home, where the group has gathered for food and bonfires.  

“We just meet and discuss everything that happens to us that week,” said Charara. “It’s nothing that we plan. We talk about life, death and different things that we’ve experienced and what that means for us religiously and socially.” 

Urenda noted that he grew up around a religious community that limited his exposure to diversity. His only knowledge of Muslims and Arabs was what was being reported daily in the mainstream media. 

“You’ve got to understand, we are at the disposal of the churches and spiritual leaders,” Urenda said. “Within that leadership there is a tremendous amount of bias and misinformation. Within that culture we have become indoctrinated, where we take everything that is told to us at face value. For years that’s exactly what I was doing. It wasn’t until I developed actual relationships with Muslims where I realized everything I have been told is grossly wrong.” 

According to Urenda, the group gave him a fresh outlook on Islam and the Arab American culture. He’s discovered that the community strives for the same values that he does and share similar struggles as well.  

Charara hasn’t just used the group to debunk misconceptions against Muslims at a grassroots level; it also taught her about the Christian and Jewish faiths and the commonalities they share with Islam.  

Urenda also said he feels the group has revealed more similarities than differences among the interfaith involved. 

“We are much closer in what we believe than any of us even realize,” Urenda said. “Although we have some cultural differences and some logistical differences in how we look at scripture, salvation and spirituality, we actually have an overwhelming amount of commonalities between us in comparison to what we don’t share. We are all passionate about the same thing and we are all striving for the same thing.” 

Charara also discovered through the group that the best avenue into eliminating the rapid spread of ignorance against Muslims and Arabs is through education and dialogue and remaining patient during that process.  

“I’ve always been open, but I’ve learned to be more patient with people who don’t understand Islam,” Charara said. “People might come up to you and say something that might come off as ignorant, but you shouldn’t get upset. The media might feed them that and it’s best to teach them about the truth. It’s helped me to be patient with people in the real world, at work and out in public places.” 

With the group continuing to grow rapidly, Urenda said he fears that soon the meetings won’t be able to accommodate all of its active members. 

His vision is for multiple groups to form out of the Facebook page and to follow a similar precedent that has been set by the current active members.

“So many people are on the page now, but a lot of them want to get together as a small group and we are running out of places to fit everybody,” Urenda said. “We hope a bunch of small groups begin to come out of this page and do what we have been doing. The goal is to nurture those intimate relationships and small groups. Everybody should feel connected and experience what we have been experiencing.”

To learn more about “The Bridge,” visit their Facebook page at

//on.fb.me/1FRQOlz