Jews, Christians, and Muslims working together » usa

Audio: Yehuda Stolov on how to run an interfaith encounter

Dave Moskovitz — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:59:41 +0000

Chicago Public Radio recently ran an interview with Dr Yehuda Stolov, the Executive Director of the Interfaith Encounter Association in Israel and Palestine.

Based in Jerusalem, the IEA has 29 ongoing groups. Stolov says that they are not an interfaith organisation in the regular sense. For IEA, interfaith dialog is a tool that they use to build better relationships between people.

Stolov talks about how when the encounters began seven years ago at the height of the intifada, the Jews involved had never met had never met Muslims before, and vice versa – they only information they had about each other was via the media, whose chief message was that the other group only wanted to kill them. By the end of the encounter weekend, many strong friendships had been formed.

The necessity of Jewish Muslim dialogue

Dave Moskovitz — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:04:57 +0000

Mike Ghouse, of the Foundation for Pluralism in Dallas, Texas has written an excellent piece on the importance of Jewish-Muslim dialogue, in which he describes a screening of the film “The Monster Among Us” at the Dallas Jewish Community Centre. One of the film’s central theses is that the new face of European antisemitism is Muslim.

Ghouse says some brilliant things in his article:

Watching this film (as well as other films in the past) and listening to the responses of the audience has confirmed my belief that one of the primary obstacles to peace is simply inadequate communications stemming from the unwillingness to see another point of view. There are certainly rotten apples in the barrel, but focusing on them to the exclusion of the positive only exacerbates the problem. Muslims and Jews need to dialogue without keeping a score or blaming the other.

The guardians of traditions have a role to preserve their way of life for their respective communities. Occasionally their role has led them to marginalize the “other”. We need a change, and this change will need to come from the hitherto silent moderate majority in both communities. This is a responsibility we need to step up to.

This very much mirrors my own “Don’t tolerate intolerance” line … but Ghouse’s key statement is this:

If you are a Muslim and don’t say anything against anti-Semitic rhetoric; if you are a Jew and smile when you hear anti-Arab or Anti-Muslim rhetoric; if you are a Baptist and rejoice anti-Mormon rhetoric; if you are a Catholic and remain silent when some one belittles the practices of Hindu, Wicca or Pagans; then do you have the right to complain if some one is anti-you? This is a serious question, the more you are silent about it, the more you are justifying anti-sentiments against your own creed. No, if it is not good for you, it is not good for others either.

The whole article is well worth a read, and the above statement is particularly worth reflecting on. If we remain silent in the face of bigotry against others, we lose our right to complain when others are bigoted against us.

Dave

Twinning Muslim and Jewish congregations

Dave Moskovitz — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:46:45 +0000

JTA reports on a great initiative to “twin” Jewish and Muslim congregations across the USA. The programme was kicked off by a weekend themed “Confronting Islamophobia and Antisemitism Together”, an indicator that American Jews and Muslims are making earnest attempts to reach beyond the Middle East conflict to join hands in battling prejudices within and against their communities.

Far from there being “too many dialogues“, the more point-to-point connections we develop, the stronger we are as a community of communities. While we can rely on our umbrella organisations to support our endeavours, the real progress is made by people getting to know, and working with, other people.

What is your religious group doing to extend its hand in friendship to others?

Dave

Abrahamic alternatives to war

Dave Moskovitz — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:49:28 +0000

The United States Institute of Peace recently released a report, Abrahamic Alternatives to War: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on Just Peacemaking.

Summary

Jewish, Muslim, and Christian sacred texts all contain sections that support violence and justify warfare as a means to achieve certain goals. In particular historical circumstances, these texts have served as the basis to legitimate violent campaigns, oftentimes against other faith communities.
Many of the passages from sacred texts in all three religious traditions that are misused in contemporary situations to support violence and war are taken out of context, interpreted in historically inaccurate ways, or can be better translated. Finally, all of these passages need to be understood within (and constrained by) the primary spiritual aims of the individual faith.
There are also a great many teachings and ethical imperatives within Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures that promote peace and present the means to achieve it. These include mandates to strive for political, social, and economic justice; tolerant intercommunal coexistence; and nonviolent conflict resolution.
The three religious delegations that participated in the conference leading to this report presented slightly different and yet overlapping methods for peacemaking articulated by their sacred scriptures. The considerable overlap led the scholars to affirm the existence of a coherent “Abrahamic Just Peacemaking” paradigm, which began to take focus through their rigorous interfaith debate.
Further work is needed to articulate fully this Abrahamic Just Peacemaking paradigm. The conference scholars committed themselves to continued development of this model in pursuit of a rigorous and effective faith-based program to promote alternatives to war.

About the Report

Eight Muslim scholar-leaders, six Jewish scholar-leaders, and eight Christian scholar-leaders met from June 13 to 15, 2007, in Stony Point, N.Y., at a conference sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace and the Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy. Conference participants specified practices within each of the three faith traditions that could lay the groundwork for nonviolent alternatives to resolving conflict and addressing injustice, while also identifying roadblocks in the sacred texts of their traditions to creating such processes. The scholars ’ teachings found that these ancient religious teachings on peace and justice are often consistent with modern conflict-resolution theory. This report examines passages that support violence in each tradition’s scripture, presents definitions of “just peacemaking” in each tradition, summarizes places of convergence that might create the foundation for a program offering an Abrahamic alternative to war and presents a joint statement and series of commitments reached at the end of the conference.

A fantastic initiative, and a fascinating read!

You can also download the full PDF.

Dave

Peace Camp Initiative

Dave Moskovitz — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:48:01 +0000

The Almanac, a Silicon Valley newspaper, recently ran a story on the Peace Camp Initiative. Three kids from Israel, Adam Horovitz, Zahi Tuama and Ahmed Hamudi (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) were taken to an American summer camp, and used Aikido as a method of conflict resolution.

At the end of the camp, the three boys listed each other as their closest friends at the camp.

Robert Kent, who came up with the idea, hopes eventually to take 12 peace campers per year through the programme.

Interfaith Youth Core

Dave Moskovitz — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:41:10 +0000

The Interfaith Youth Core is a Chicago USA based organisation whose goals are to “1) build widespread public support for interfaith youth work; 2) equip youth-focused institutions to positively engage their religious diversity; and 3) cultivate long-term impact by emerging leaders in this movement.” They’ve been around since 1998, have an impressive (if somehow almost overly “establishment”) board of directors, and are being supported by Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation. They’ve partnered with a number of high-profile Not-For-Profits.

Many North Americans that I meet complain that there’s little happening on the interfaith scene; organisations like Interfaith Youth Core provide evidence that good stuff is happening, but not receiving widespread attention.

At least Voice of America (not a source that I find myself visiting regularly!) found it interesting enough to run a story on the Interfaith Youth Core.

You can listen to (or download) the audio:

Dave

Muslims and Christians get closer on two continents

Dave Moskovitz — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:50:44 +0000

There are two encouraging stories in the media today in which Christians and Muslims are engaging in ever deeper dialogue. In North America, Yale University will be hosting a conference on “A Common Word”, and England’s Archbishop of Canterbury has invited Christian and Muslim leaders to a conference in October to tackle religious violence and freedom of worship.

Both gatherings are important. A Common Word was a groundbreaking invitation by Muslim religious leaders worldwide to engage in wider dialogue with Christians and Jews, and fully deserves a further engagement. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s appeal has a more practical slant in working to stem religious tensions.

As with the Saudi-led interfaith talks in Spain that began today, the real challenges will be (a) translating talk into action, and (b) taking the message from the leadership to the grassroots. The former will enable the latter, as the proof of the sincerity of the participants will be in the outcomes that they are able to achieve once they get home.

Dave

New Orleans Christians worship at synagogue

Dave Moskovitz — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:05:09 +0000

Gospel Music Bites reports that members of a New Orleans African American church displaced by fire will be temporarily worshiping at a Jewish temple.

After a fire burnt down the Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, Temple Sinai’s Rabbi Edward Cohn invited the displaced parishioners to worship at the synagogue.

“Christians and Jews, blacks and whites at the temple on Sunday said they hope they can work together in the future and that more unions like this one should be happening around the world.”

Habitat for Humanity's House of Abraham

Dave Moskovitz — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:51:17 +0000

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry that works against homlessness and poverty. They invite people of all backgrounds, races and religions to build houses together in partnership with families in need.

Recently, an article about a “House of Abraham” project caugh my eye, or rather my newsfeeds. The project to build an affordable Habitat house for a local family was planned, funded, and built by a local group of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. A little further web research shows that there are numerous other similar projects both underway and completed throughout the US.

What a fantastic idea, a grand project, a great way to bring people together to work together for something that’s literally constructive.

Dave

Audio: Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb's interfaith mission to Iran

Dave Moskovitz — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:15:34 +0000

Chicago Public Radio recently ran a story on Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb’s interfaith mission to Iran.

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb is the Director of Interfaith Inventions and Co-founder of the Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish Non-Violence and the Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk. She often leads delegations to the Middle East as part of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. She is ordained in the Jewish Renewal movement, and has been rated in the top 50 American rabbis.

Jews have lived in Iran since 586 BCE. Despite the Iranian government’s well-documented hostility toward Israel and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s holocaust denial, Gottlieb reports that Iran is “a country of mystics”, and she was welcomed as a Rabbi with open arms by the Iranian people.