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| 7/29/2009 8:59:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), left (with glasses), one of only two Muslims in Congress, discusses relations between Jews and Muslims with a group of European rabbis and imams who traveled to the Washington area as part of a mission focusing on interfaith dialogue. The others in the group are, clockwise from Ellison’s left, Imams Shahid Hussain of the United Kingdom, Marzouk Aulad Abdellah of the Netherlands and Abdelali Mamoun of France, two unidentified onlookers and an unidentified participating rabbi. |
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Will it play in Paris?
E.U. clerics in town, preparingto pursue U.S.-style interfaith talks
by Richard Greenberg, Associate Editor
Disneyland and McDonald's, among other Americana, have been transplanted to Europe. Rabbi Marc Schneier is hoping that another U.S. import will take root in the Continent, which is why he was in the Washington area last week.
The commodity in question is known as twinning, or pairing local synagogues and mosques in an effort to transform interfaith dialogue into a grassroots proposition, thereby reducing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other social ills.
The president and founder of the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, Schneier is the father of twinning, which is practiced by synagogues and mosques nationwide, including several in the Washington area.
With the goal of exporting that approach to Europe -- and ultimately globalizing it -- Schneier shepherded a contingent of 26 European rabbis and imams representing 10 countries on a four-day mission last week to New York and the Washington area, the first event of its kind, according to Schneier.
He said in an interview that Europe -- the site of many anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist attacks -- now represents "the foremost challenge to narrowing the chasm between Muslims and Jews. The clock is ticking."
The trip included a meeting a week ago Thursday with senior Obama administration officials at the White House, where the delegation presented a declaration pledging its support for American-style interfaith initiatives. The group's itinerary also included a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; an interfaith presentation at an Islamic center in Sterling; and even a night of baseball at Yankee Stadium, where the visitors watched the game from a luxury skybox stocked with kosher and hallal food.
Throughout the trip, the participants met with practitioners of twinning and heard their testimonials.
"It's good that they're letting Europe learn from American pluralism," said Rabbi Gerry Serotta, co-founder of Clergy Beyond Borders, a Frederick-based group that also promotes boots-on-the-ground interfaith exchanges. "There's enormous tension in Europe, so there is reason to do this. We are something of a model for liberal Western societies."
On Wednesday of last week, the rabbis and imams gathered in a conference room in the U.S. Capitol to hear both pep talks and words of admonition from an interfaith aggregation of politicians -- Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish, along with Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Andre Carson (D-Ind.), the only Muslims in Congress. Their presentations, translated into Arabic, each began with the traditional Jewish and Islamic greetings, shalom aleichem and salaam aleikem, meaning, "peace be unto you."
The listeners, a mini-United Nations of clergy, included both bearded and clean-shaven participants, some wearing traditional head coverings and some bare-headed. Several of the rabbis wore black fedoras, emblematic of fervent Orthodoxy. The delegation had one woman -- Rabbi Jackie Tabick of the North West Surrey Synagogue in Britain.
In his remarks, Ellison first noted the many linguistic similarities between Hebrew and Arabic. "We have so much in common," he said after relating an anecdote about Jews and Muslims once breaking their respective fasts together (for Yom Kippur and Ramadan) at his mosque in Minnesota. So many people came, however, that there was not enough food to go around.
"So everybody shared their food," Ellison told the rabbis and imams, "and then they shared pictures of their grandchildren and they shared telephone numbers. Everybody learned a lot that day."
Ellison, like the other two speakers, emphasized that religious leaders do indeed have a bully pulpit -- that is, they are powerful transmitters of ideas, for good or evil.
"Some of them vent the anger and frustration of their people through the pulpit," he continued as the attendees listened intently. "They're not helping their people. The safety of the world may depend on what you tell your people. Let's embrace the good and talk about it."
Nadler said he learned as a yeshiva student in New York (perhaps the only representative with that background, he pointed out) that it is "a sin against God" to discriminate against others, because no one is inherently better than anyone else. Why? Because all of mankind has common ancestry, Adam and Eve.
Although America has been a beacon to the world in terms of promoting tolerance, he added, the country "also has a shameful heritage" of intolerance in the name of national security, especially during wartime. A chief example: Japanese internment camps of World War II.
"It seems to be getting a little better slowly," Nadler said, adding, however, that some post-9/11 government actions taken in the name of national security have been "shameful." He called for "bringing some people to justice" for those infractions. "We have to look backward as well as forward," he added, conceding that his position is unpopular in some circles.
In his remarks, Carson said he initially encountered "a lot of misconceptions" regarding his faith when he ran for Congress. But that dissipated, he said, when his constituents learned that he could serve them well. "People are people," he added.
"I recognize very humbly that my influence and power are very limited," Carson told the group. "The real world-changers are in this room. You influence the hearts and minds of most of the people on earth." He encouraged them to use that influence wisely.
During the question-and-answer session, Imam Mehmet Kilinic of the German city of Bremen, noted that although he has lived in Germany for 40 years, including 15 years as a citizen, he is often treated as a second-class citizen.
"I miss what you have," he told the speakers. "What is this spirit that has given you this identity as a community?"
Following the program, Kilinic, 47, who sported a button reading "Never Again," was asked if he is optimistic that American-style grassroots interfaith dialogue can be implemented in Germany.
"In principle, I'm optimistic, but there's a lot of work to do," said the Turkish-born cleric, who has been involved in interfaith dialogue for decades. "The next generation will have it easier."
Rabbi Raphael Evers, 55, of Amsterdam is also a veteran of interfaith sit-downs, including one recently convened to defuse escalating tensions between Moroccon-born Muslims and Jews in Amsterdam. Evers, who confessed that he feels closer to Muslims than to Christians, said twinning stands a good chance of being adopted in the Netherlands.
"Yes, I'm optimistic," he said emphatically. "You must be. You have to be."
That evening, members of the delegation attended the program in Sterling, which was hosted by the All Dulles Area Muslim Society. (The mission as a whole was sponsored by Schneier's FFEU in conjunction with the World Jewish Congress United States and the Islamic Society of North America.)
The session's three speakers ----two Muslims and a Jew (Serotta) -- reaffirmed their commitment to bringing Jews and Muslims closer together by enabling them to get to know each other as individuals.
One of the speakers was Imam Mohamed Magid, imam and executive director of ADAMS and vice president of ISNA.
"We need to spread the kind of good works and create goodwill in both communities that will fight anti-Semitism and Islamophobia," he said in an interview the following day. If that message goes viral, he added, "then we can change the world."
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