At JCC, Common Ground for Muslims and Jews
By Josh Richman
Muslim-Jewish understanding can come only through knowledge and respect, the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco believes — and maybe through some old-fashioned head-to-head debate.
And so, last month the JCC hosted Judea Pearl — father of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was slain by Islamic extremists in Pakistan in 2002 — and Souleiman Ghali, the Islamic Society of San Francisco’s founder and former president.
Their dialogue, moderated by journalist Peter Waldman, was a keystone of the JCC’s program Salaam/Shalom: Where Judaism and Islam Converge, parts of which began in September and will continue into 2008. The program includes an exhibit of Israeli photographer Harel Stanton’s images of devout Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus at worship; classes in basic Arabic and Islamic beliefs; poetry readings and author lectures; musical performances by Israeli-Moroccan singer Smadar Levi and master lute musicians from Azerbaijan, India, China, Israel, Afghanistan and Iran, and much more. The wide-ranging event is the JCC’s first-ever large-scale program to focus on relations between Muslims and Jews.
“In America there’s an overwhelming, systemic fear of Islam. It’s palpable, and it needs to change,” said Lenore Naxon, director of the JCC’s Eugene & Elinor Friend Center for the Arts. “If we get five people to show up for basic Islam or six people to show up for Arabic — I think we need to do this every single year — that’s how we’re going to change the world: one person at a time, one performance at a time.”
For the Pearl-Ghali dialogue, the JCC’s 480-seat hall was almost full.
Pearl, who has done similar dialogues with Pakistani Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed elsewhere, said that his son’s murderers “schemed to sow fear and division among us” but instead triggered sympathy, good will and energy that must be harnessed to build bridges between the Jewish and Muslim cultures. He feels a “sense of historical responsibility” to listen and to understand, to communicate without trying to win an argument; the dialogue is his son’s victory, he said.
“Truly, from my heart, I think you’re an extremely courageous person, and God bless Daniel for what he did,” Ghali replied. But then he said of Daniel Pearl’s murderers: “I understand where… these people come from. I have been there myself.”
Ghali explained that while he grew up as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, he and his peers were indoctrinated with hatred of Jews wrapped in the guise of Muslim faith. It was only in coming to the United States to study, in working and socializing with Jewish people, that he came to realize true Islam doesn’t embrace hatred.
The pair tossed around various topics, agreeing that Islamic leaders generally could and should do more to condemn terrorism and antisemitism, disagreeing gently over the purpose and symbolism of the Israeli security barrier, going back and forth on media portrayals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and so on.
Ghali said he supports a two-state solution, but later he seemed to get under Pearl’s skin by asking whether he would prefer Israel as a theocracy or as a democracy; Pearl replied that it should be a Jewish democracy. As Pearl expounded that Israel is a national Jewish state rather than a religious Jewish state, and Ghali noted the Orthodox influence on Israeli policy, Waldman had to pull the plug: Time had run out.
“You’re going to have to take this outside,” he quipped.
Josh Richman covers politics and legal affairs for California’s Oakland Tribune and Bay Area News Group.
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That last bit is interesting, and it goes to exactly the same issues as Saeb Erekat's pronouncement that he could never accept a Jewish state as states are not designated for religious groups. In a nutshell, it is possible that by promoting this "Jews-Muslims" parallelism, the JCC does some harm by encouraging Muslims -- like Mr. Ghali -- to see Jews as a religious group in the way that Muslims are a religious group, one which transcends ethnic and national boundaries. But Jews are not simply a religious group, even if religion is part of our shared culture. Jews are a people. An "aam", as we say in Hebrew, and an "ethnic group" -- albeit one of extraordinary hiistorical complexity -- as we say today. That is probably the single most important, and yet the simplest, fact, that anti-Zionists have utterly failed to grasp. I do not wish to speak about Zionism or Israel here, but it remains that what motivates many anti-Zionists -- like Mr. Ghali -- is a single, foundational lie: the idea that there exists no Jewish people. I suppose I think it is a good idea to promote friendliness between Jews and Muslims. Indeed, it is a good idea to promote friendliness in general. But, in doing so, it should be emphasized that Jews are not simply a religious group in the way that Muslims or Christians are -- indeed, that the concept of "religion" as a separate realm of thought or practice or identity is quite alien to the Jewish people, and arose only subsequent to our foundation as a people. The hatred with which Mr. Ghali and others were indoctrinated rests in large part on that essential idea: that there exists no Jewish people (and, therefore, that no right to self-determination can exist, either, as that right is reserved under international law to "peoples"). The JCC should be very careful to explain that that lie is just that -- a lie, a fount of hatred, and the basis of much racism designed to eliminate the Jewish state.
“You’re going to have to take this outside,” he quipped. Well, ha ha ha! Because of the Arab refusal to recognize Israel's existence it's been "taken outside" since 1947 and before. These "dialogues" are a waste of time because they always end this way. This is an insouvable conflict and will remain so as long as the Arabs refuse recognition.
In the early Sixties, we were taught at the University Hillel organization, that indeed Jews are A People, not simply a religion. We were taught at that time that the only other group called A People, were the Japanese. When the Inquisition and the Holocaust took place, Jews were persecuted as A People. Conversion to Christianity, a Century earlier, did not save Jews. Similarly, being an atheistic Jew did not save those Jews either. Indeed, we now have neo-Nazi Jews coming from Russia to Israel. Yet, they still qualified as Jews under the Law of Return. On the other hand, the Vienese Jewish Community excamunicated several ultra-othodox who attended the Iranian Holocaust Denial Conference. Perhaps, we might consider this remedy to clean house of some of the jailed lobbyests and other assorted so-called "ultra-orthodox" who parade our religion to court and to their sentencing, and then on to serve their jail sentences.