involvement in the region are dr marc open director of the center on religion diplomacy and conflict resolution and. mason university's institute for conflict analysis and resolution and author of healing the heart of conflict also joined us an adulterer an award winning like for an author of witness in palestine a jewish american woman in the occupied territories thanks so much for joining us tonight so do these well we're seeing what we saw this weekend at the israeli borders the annual commemoration this is nothing that this is nothing new perhaps invigorated by the sentiment of the arab spring does it rise to the level of incursions at this point well i think i think that it's it's unprecedented for very complicated political reasons of what's going on inside of syria and also the new relationship between. between hamas and and the fatah and what happened in egypt so for all of those complicated reasons this particular knock but they had a new feature people on it on all of the borders in an unprecedented way so numbers wise size wise how do you think it compares to previous not

religions and muslim-christian relations. council on economic relations, washington, d.c. director of public relations. two years. national naval medical center, washington, muslim chaplain, three years and currently, georgetown university. muslim chaplain. one year and currently. yahya hendi. >> yahya hendi, imam, you are a muslim theologian, is that correct? >> i think so. >> how many years did you spend studying muslim theology? >> i would say about 15 years. >> how does the koran depict jesus? >> well, jesus is looked at as a prophet, as a messenger of god. there are 15 chapters in the koran out of 114 that talk about jesus christ. the total verse he is that mention christ in different ways are 93. he's seen as the born baby of mary, virgin birth. >> virgin birth. >> yes. >> in the desert? >> he was born in palestine. >> near a palm tree in a desert? >> yes, yes, indeed, near a palm tree in palestine. >> does islam accept the notion of jesus assess dense into god? >> well, muslims believe that jesus was not crews tied. muslims believe there was an attempt to crews phi him, crewsify him but he called upon his lord asking him not to, and ob

about it >>> on that matter of religion, you say here in your book, we must absorb the immense realization is there an over arching truth encompassing all of our religons. we are at the center of a new universe. we got into that somewhat but are we equipped for that set snup. >> we are in it. whether we are equipped or not and the fact of the matter is we now understand this enough and we tried to make it clear enough in the book, every religion explainsnshere people came from. how the world originated and so forth but basically they use the story that was prevalent at the time that religion began which means most of these stories are very limited. >> are you saying that there is no other? no all together other? >> other? >> other. you know, heaven. are you saying that? are you saying that we are inside the other? >> we are inside the universe. and the universe is expanding and we are all evolving with it. now we are extremely unusual beings because we can talk about exractions perhaps no other animal each understands the idea of exractions. but we can talk about it by using met force and the met force we use, for example, heaven and a metaphor and divine is metaphor call.