Article from Islamicity.com

Christmas a time for bridge building
12/10/2009 - Interfaith Religious Social - Article Ref: IC0612-3182
Number of comments: 14
By: Abdul Malik Mujahid
IslamiCity* -

Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestinian is about 10 kilometers (6 mi) south of Jerusalem. The church is built above a cave where it is believed Jesus was born.

Treating Christmas with Respect

Christmas is an annual Christian religious holiday commemorating the birth of Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him. For many Muslims who do not even celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, it becomes an issue of what stand they should take.

There have been a number of legitimate criticisms of the holiday from Muslims and non-Muslims based on theological and cultural considerations. However, this cannot be used to disregard the holiday as merely an exercise in ancient pagan practices, for instance, or excessive consumerism. Muslims have to remember that for practicing Christians, Christmas really is about Jesus .

Prophet Muhammad , was so accommodating of Christians that according to the two earliest Islamic historians, Ibn e Saad and Ibn Hisham, the Prophet even allowed a delegation of 60 Byzantine Christians from Najran in Yemen to worship in his own mosque in Madinah. Lead by their bishop (Usquf), they had come to discuss a number of issues with him. When time of their prayer came, they asked the Prophet's permission to perform this in the mosque. He answered, "conduct your service here in the mosque. It is a place consecrated to God."

God expects us to stay away from mocking the religious beliefs of others, no matter how much we disagree with them. He says in the Quran: "And insult not those whom they (disbelievers) worship besides God, lest they insult God wrongfully without knowledge. Thus We have made fair-seeming to each people its own doings; then to their Lord is their return and He shall then inform them of all that they used to do" (Quran, 6:108).

We also have to remember that even if for many nominal Christians, the celebration is not really about participating in religious traditions, Christmas is a time for families to get together. In a number of cases it is the only time of year families get together, either because family members are scattered in different parts of the country or the world, because of communication and relationship problems, or because in America today, the family unit is becoming weaker and weaker.

Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus .

Christmas is a great time to relate to our neighbors. We should not forget though, that "relating" does not mean "preaching". Dawa cannot be made in a rude manner. Allah says in the Quran: "Invite (all) to the Way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful advice, and reason with them by ways that are the best and most gracious: because your Lord knows best, (those) who have strayed from His Path, and those who receive guidance " (Quran, 16:125).

In particular, when dealing with Jews and Christians, Allah says: "Do not argue with the People of the Book unless it is in the politest manner, except for those of them who do wrong. Say: 'We believe in what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you. Our God and your God is [the same] One, and we are Muslims before Him'" (Quran, 29:46).

This may not be an occasion to emphasis the differences as much as the commonality of our beliefs, unless someone is really asking you about them.

A starting point for a discussion about Christmas could be the Islamic belief in all Books revealed by Allah and all Prophets sent by Him. In this discussion, special emphasis could be made on Prophet Jesus . Non-Muslims are often surprised to discover that Muslims also believe in this noble Prophet and his great mother Mary (peace be upon her).

Remember that respect does not mean compromise. This article is not asking you to compromise anything. You have freedom of religion given by God to believe in what you believe in. But in a world where conflict is increasing, a Muslim should be a bridge- builder and a peacemaker. It was due to the Muslim practice of Islamic ideals of respect and tolerance that the key of the holiest Christian Shrine in Jerusalem, the church of the Holy Sepulcher, remains entrusted with a Muslim family, as it has been for over 1400 years.

These are the lessons which need to be learned by those extremists who attack Christians during their worship in Nigeria and those extremists who burn Masjids in the USA.

Abdul Malik Mujahid, is the President and Director of Sound Vision Foundation Inc. He is an Imam in the Chicago area and a founding member of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC).

A call and response

Please read the post in its entirety. I do not agree with the sentiments or arguments of the author of the first article. Read to the bottom for my response.

Peace
-Allison

The Call:

Are Muslims the Jews of Today?

Australian Lawyer Stephen Hopper thinks that Muslims are being dehumanized in the public discourse surrounding terrorism, in the same way Nazis dehumanized Jews before World War II. He’s not the only one to see such a connection. Kari Vogt, Norwegian Islam expert at the University of Oslo, has compared Ibn Warraq’s book ”Why I am not a Muslim” to anti-Jewish fabrications “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” Professor Bernt Hagtvet, also from the University of Oslo, sees many parallels, but also some differences. There are far more Muslims in Europe now than there were Jews before WW2, and their numbers are rising fast. Swedish historian of religion Matthias Gardell claims that Islamophobia is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy in the Western world today. Swedish writer and leftist intellectual Jan Guillou has stated that the rhetoric employed by the Nazis against Jews is now used to target Muslims. The Nazis thought that all Jews were part of an international conspiracy to control the world and subdue others in their own lands. Guillou thinks the exact same thing is now happening, only this time, Muslims are the victims of this hate.

The curious thing about this mantra warning against “Islamophobia”, which is now commonplace in the media, is that very few bother to analyze it properly. If they did, they would discover that the Jews of today are, well, Jews. Jews are suffering attacks across much of Western Europe at worse rates than at any time since the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. In Sweden, an anti-Semitic crime is reported to the police once every three days. The Jewish congregations in major cities Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö are forced to spend up to 25 percent of their membership fees on security and hired guards. And most of these hate crimes are perpetratedby Muslims. Even some non-Jews from Sweden say they feel "liberated"when they go to Israel. In Israel, you know who the country's enemies are, and you are prepared to fight for your country and for your convictions. It is hard to overstate the extent to which Sweden is a politically repressed nation, thanks to self-proclaimed guardians of the Multicultural Truth such as Mr. Guillou. No dissent is tolerated, and the few "racists" who try to raise a debate about Muslim immigration are attacked, sometimes even physically.

Jews in the 1930s were a minority everywhere, and had no country they could call their own. Jewish refugees were rejected by many countries even when some of them tried to escape the rise of the Nazis. Muslims today count more than one billion individuals, and constitute the majority in about 60 countries worldwide. In most of these countries, non-Muslims face various levels of discrimination, or even in some the continuous threat of physical extermination. Jews in Western countries do not constitute a terror threat, and never have. Muslims do all the time. Jews do not have a history of more than 1000 years of armed attacks on Europe, India, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Muslims do. Jews do not cut the throats of Buddhist monks in Thailand, massacre Hindus in Bangladesh or stab Christian nuns in Egypt. Muslims do. Jews do not take hostages, decapitate them and distribute videos of their acts. Muslims do. Jews do not gang rape Christian women in Westernnations. Muslims do. Jews represent the most prosperous and talented ethnic groups in Europe. Muslims in Europe are ranked close to the bottom of all indicators of education and social achievements. Muslims, being 20 % of the world's population, have produced only three Nobel laureates in science and literature, whereas Jews, being only 0.2% of the world's population, have received more than 120 Nobel prizes in science, economics, medicine and literature. Jews before WW2 filled up Europe’s universities. Muslims now fill up Europe’s prisons.

In fact, the comparisons to the 1930s make a lot more sense if you compare Muslims to the Nazis. And there was a connection, even during WW2. Adolf Hitler is reputed to have stated his admiration for Islam, and thought it would be a better match for Nazism than Christianity, with its stupid notions of compassion for inferior people. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of Muslim fundamentalists in Palestine, resided in Berlin as a welcome guest of the Nazis throughout the years of the Holocaust. The Nazi-Islamic love affair remains strong. Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' is a bestseller in Islamic nations such as Turkey, at the same time as Turkish PM Erdogan wants anti-Islamism to be accepted as a crime against humanity in the EU. And not few Muslim leaders state their wish to finish what the Nazis started. Broadcasts from imams in the Palestinian Authority have stated that: “The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew."

In Denmark, professor of Islamic studies Mehdi Mozaffari tells of how he and thousands of others have fled burkas, sharia, blood money, muftis and Islamism in the Middle East, only to witness the same beast rear its ugly head in Europe. And he warns of the consequences: “Historical experience has shown that those people fear will win, eventually. We saw this in Nazi Germany. There were too many Nazis, and people were scared. I fear that this is where we are heading, once more.” Danish author Kåre Bluitgen had difficulties in getting artists to illustrate his book about Muhammad due to fear of reprisals from Islamic extremists. Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper, responded by asking 40 illustrators to make drawings of Muhammad, and published twelve. The decision has caused a stir among Muslims, triggered threats against the newspaper and a diplomatic row with many Muslim countries that is still going on. The most immediate victims of this climate of fear are Muslim women. A Pakistani man in Denmark recently murdered his sister in the street outside a train station because she had married a man against her family’s orders.

Perhaps worst is the way the experience of Nazism has been turned on its head and used to promote the ideology of Multiculturalism. Any objection to mass immigration or the destruction of traditional Judeo-Christian moral values is deemed as racist, akin to support for fascism. As a result, in the name of Multicultural tolerance, we have allowed the creation of the brutal, anti-democratic monster of Islamism in our midst. It is a bizarre paradox that the hysteria over Nazism has encouraged Europe to be swamped by Islam, in which anti-Semitism appears to be an integral part of the creed. If criticism of Islam causes Muslims to behave badly, then what has 2,000 years of persecution done to the Jews? Surely the Holocaust and other pogroms in Europe would have made Jews start their own Jihad? Then how come Jews don’t go on the rampage throughout Europe? The comparison between Muslims today and Jews 70 years ago is nonsense, and needs to be confronted and dismissed as such. It is an insult to the Buddhists who are beheaded in Thailand, the Christians who are persecuted in Indonesia, the Hindus who are killed in Pakistan and the Europeans who are no longer safe in their own cities. But above all, it is an insult to the memory of the millions of teachers, artists, writers and intellectuals who were murdered in Nazi-controlled Europe.

As one Spanish observer notes, Europe herself may soon pay for having decimated much of her Jewry and replaced them with Muslims:

Europe died in Auschwitz

We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20
million Muslims!

We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create.

We must admit that Europe, by relaxing its borders and giving in
under the pretext of tolerance to the values of a fallacious
cultural relativism, opened its doors to 20 million Muslims, often
illiterates and fanatics that we could meet, at best, in places
such as Raval, the poorest of the nations and of the ghettos, and
who are preparing the worst, such as the 9/11 and the Madrid
bombing and who are lodged in apartment blocs provided by the social
welfare.

We also have exchanged culture with fanaticism, the capacity to
create with the will to destroy, the wisdom with the superstition.

We have exchanged the transcendental instinct of the Jews, who even
under the worst possible conditions have always looked for a better
peaceful world, for the suicide bomber. We have exchanged the pride
of life for the fanatic obsession of death. Our death and that of our
children.

What a grave mistake that we made!!!

posted by Fjordman @ 1:30 AM

http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/11/are-muslims-jews-of-today.html

The Response:

I think what's dangerous about this type of article is the alignment of all Muslims, everywhere and indiscriminately, with tribalism, bloody vendettas, honor codes, and general backwardness. There are more Muslims - especially those living within a Western cultural context - who are opposed to such behavior than there are those who support it. That is why there is such an inspiring movement afoot amongst American Muslims and many Muslims in more progressive countries to change Islam, to transform it, and to align it with its central message of peace.

Islam is just beginning its great transformative stage to align itself with the modern world. Christianity has been undergoing it for some time, and continues to transform. Not all of Christianity is there yet, and those who are still "backward" continue to show themselves, all over the world. Judaism has had ongoing theological and philosophical engagement with change and progress since the Talmudic era - just after Christ. Islam has some catching up to do.

And progressive, liberal, peace-loving Muslims need support and brotherly goodwill to continue their work to transform Islam. It's not going to happen if the rest of the world remains antagonistic and opposed to all Muslims and the religion of Islam, simply because there are radical, extremist, uneducated, and criminal Muslims.

Citizen diplomacy must march onward....

Statement co-authored by Rabbi Kline and Imam Bagby

Below is the statement, sent to me by Rabbi Marc Kline, which he and Dr. Ihsan Bagby (former imam of Masjid Bilal Ibn Rabah in Lexington) co-authored in 2006. Comments are welcome.

September 28, 2006

During this blessed season of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Ramadan, we, as prominent members of the Lexington Jewish and Muslim communities, call upon the members of our respective religious communities to engage one another in dialogue and cooperative work so that we might be an example to the peoples of the Middle East that Jews and Muslims can live together with respect and understanding.

We should start by affirming the many similarities between Judaism and Islam. We start with what should be obvious. There is one God. Allah is not a Muslim term, it is an Arabic one. Adonai is not a Jewish term, it is a Hebrew one. And while these respective words and languages are deeply connected to their respective religions and cultures, we know this to be true: Allah, Adonai, and God are three different linguistic ways of referring to the same entity. What ever the language or culture, we are all the children of Adam and Eve, and we share the home which God as made for all of us – this earth.

Our two communities live under the dark shadow of the daily suffering that takes place in Israel and Palestine. We believe that the difficulty in achieving a just settlement between Israelis and Arabs stems in part from the grossly unjust inability of the parties to see each other as human beings. This is a transgression against God that violates both the Jewish and Islamic religious faiths. The time has come for our people to recognize each other’s inalienable rights to dignity, life and self determination—the very core values that have kept both Judaism and Islam vibrant and faithful religions. While we cannot change the history of estrangement and violence, but if we hope to effect change on the current struggles and create a future of hope, we must begin to change the way in which we move forward, and we must use our respective faiths to help us see more clearly than our brothers and sisters have in the past. Until these parties recognize each other as human beings, each imbued with God’s dignity, the news from this region will ever be difficult. They must accept that each has a right to be, and to that end, come to terms with each others reality and human dignity. They must begin with the commitment that Israel has a right to exist with security for its citizens, and that Palestinians have a right to a viable, independent, and secure state for its citizens.

The Lexington Muslim and Jewish communities must live up to the ideals of their faith and do our part to help solve the problem in the Middle East by demonstrating how Muslims and Jews can talk and work together with respect, affirming one another’s dignity as well as acknowledging each other’s pain.

Each of us has shared in building bridges in this community and on national and international levels of dialogue and work. We know in our hearts that this peace is real and is attainable where our hearts would turn to one another and not to the alluring voices of power that cause people to disregard the dignity of their brothers and sisters. Our hope is that our two communities will come together to engage in a series of candid and productive conversations and organize some projects that will allow the two communities to work together for a common good. Presbyterian Reverend Steve Pace of has agreed to join us in serving as a moderator for the dialogue. May God help us build a world that makes sense for all people.

Imam Ihsan A. Bagby, PhD

Lexington, Kentucky

Rabbi Marc A. Kline, JD

Lexington, Kentucky

A remarkable class - review of Rabbi Kline's visit

Follow-up questions for discussion (please respond in the "comments" section so we can keep the conversation going!):

1. What was most startling to you about Rabbi Kline's visit? Most enjoyable? Most thought-provoking? Most shocking? Most jarring/troublesome?
2. What part(s) of his visit do you think will "stick with you" for days/months/years to come?
3. What did you want to know more about? What lingering questions do you have?


Thank you all for being at class tonight. It was incredibly fun for me to be in Torah study with all of you! (Torah study always renews my love of scripture).

Shalom.

Our sacred stories and calls to love of neighbor

On the first night of class, October 21, we discussed and shared with each other the Biblical stories that call us to interfaith dialogue and love of neighbor. Of course, the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) was offered. The parable in Luke begins after Jesus is questioned by an "expert in the law," and, socratically, Jesus responds in questions: "What is in the law?" Jesus asks. "How do you read it?" And the man returns,
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself."

"You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live," Jesus says.

But the man is not finished. He needs Jesus to explain further, "Who is my neighbor?"

Then the parable begins. We know it well: a man is enroute from Jerusalem to Jericho, where he is robbed and beaten and left for dead. A priest passes him by, and then so too does a Levite. It is only the third traveler, a Samaritan, who stops to help the man.

An explanation of the 1st-century Jewish relationship to Samaritans is needed. The Samaritan and Jewish communities of the 1st-century CE were at odds over which community had legitimate legacy as the People of Israel following the Babylonian Exile in 587BCE. When the Persians allowed the exiled Jewish people to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple, the Jews found a group -Samaritans - still living there, following what it claimed to be the laws of the Torah. The Samaritans hold themselves to be descendants of the tribe of Joseph through his sons Ephraim and Manasseh, but in the 1st century, they were characterized by the returning Jewish exiles as illegitimate interlopers in the promised land. They followed a divergent form of the Torah that differed from the one held by the returning exiles. Disputes arose between the two groups over the reconstruction of the Temple, and eventually the Samaritan community built a temple of their own on Mt. Gerizim, where they believed Abraham had nearly sacrificed Isaac. The center of Samaritan religion grew to be Mt. Gerizim and their alternate temple.

In the latter centuries of before Christ, and in the 1st century CE, the Samaritans were a despised group, followers of a different religion - not the one true religion of the Torah.

Herein lies the meat of the matter for students of the Abrahamic traditions, and for individuals yearning for mutually respectful interfaith dialogue. In this parable, one of the most famous, Jesus uses a Samaritan - someone not of his ethnic or religious group, someone distrusted, disliked, and thought to be illegitimate by the Jewish people - to teach the "expert in the law," and, by proxy, all of us, who our neighbors are.

Luke 10:36-37
³⁶"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

³⁷The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

The parable has been so domesticated that its profound impact is not entirely heard by many Christians. Even when we grasp its importance, we have to return, time and again, to learn Jesus' lesson. Jesus is pushing the "expert in the law" and, likewise all of us, to step outside ourselves, outside of our communities, beliefs, religions, and attitudes, and to love our neighbors. ALL of our neighbors - especially those entirely different from us in terms of identity, religion, language, nationality, behavior, practice.

In his Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus is re-forming and re-telling the same story God had been telling his people for centuries: I love all of my children. Recall Jonah, again a domesticated prophetic story which normally brings to mind a whale or a big fish. Jonah is cranky and cantankerous, refusing to listen to God's call to him to preach to the people of Nineveh so that might repent and turn to the way of the Lord. God reprimands Jonah by having a big fish swallow him. When the fish finally coughs him up on a beach, he complains and whines and says nasty things about the Ninevites again. Finally, he gives in and follows God's will. The people of Nineveh repent of their misdoings, turning to God's will. The important thing to note in this story is that it is not a story of conversion, in the way in which Christians and Muslims may imagine it. It is a story of turning to God, accepting the will of God, and is not exclusive to a faith tradition. The story of Jonah and Nineveh teaches us that God loves all of us his children, and desires all to turn to him and live in relationship with him.

The same ideas are developed in the Qur'an. Note particularly this translation of Surah 2, line 62:

Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.

another translation:
2:62 Lo! those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve.

The Structure of Religion

Setting the Stage
Using Paul Jones and William Leffler's model ("The Structure of Religion: Judaism and Christianity, the following bullets are from page 18), let's identify the following components of the three traditions:

• The Individual
  
• The Bridge-Link: This term identifies the vehicle that both initiates the process of the Individual self-consciously joining a religion and connects him to the Essential Element of that specific religion.
• The Essential Element: This phrase refers to the constitutive, core component of that religion, which if it is removed from that religion no longer exists, though it may still be a religion of some sort.
• The Religion: this word identifies the specific religion. For our purposes [in the Children of Abraham class, this means] Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.

Judaism's Structure

• The Individual
  
• The Bridge-Link: Conscious Self-Identification as a Jew, and a member of the Jewish people. "...a belief in one God is not sufficient to make a person a Jew. Rather, it is one's Conscious Self-Identification as a Jew, an identity that has been learned and acquired ...through participation in the Jewish community..." (Jones and Leffler 22)
  
• The Essential Element: The Jewish People (in Relationship to God). The essential element is the "historic Jewish People, the people who stood at the base of Mount Sinai so many centuries ago and said 'yes' to God... Judaism is the Religion of this viable and visible group of people throughout the pages of history from that ancient time until the present,...extending into the future.
  
• The Religion: Judaism.

Christianity's Structure

• The Individual
  
• The Bridge-Link: Faith-Belief. "Failure to subscribe to normative standards may cause a person to forfeit his place in the community of faith, that is, to be considered non-Christian by other Christians" (19).
  
• The Essential Element: Christ (God). Without Christ, there is no Christianity. "...the triune structure innate to Christian experience, and therefore Christian belief, mandates that Christ, plus God, be the Essential Element" (20).
  
• The Religion: Christianity

Islam's Structure (developed by me, with some trepidation, for the purposes of this class)

• The Individual
  
• The Bridge-Link: The Shahada. The Shahada has sometimes been called the Creed of Islam. It is a declaration of belief in one God who has no associates, and that Muhammad is the prophet of God. "Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah wahdahu la sharik lahu, wa-ashhadu anna Muhammad 'abduhu wa-rasuluh." Translation: I testify that none is god except Allah, He is One without associates to Him; and I testify that Muhammad is His servant and His Messenger.
• The Essential Element: Revelation of God to Muhammad in the Qur'an. Without the revelation of God to Muhammad, recorded in the Qur'an, there would be no Islam. Muhammad lived in the tribal Arab peninsula amongst Jewish, Christian, and pagan/polytheistic tribes. His earliest followers were well-versed in the stories of the Hebrew Bible and of Jesus. The Qur'an contains a multitude of references to well-known Biblical figures without explanation; the text assumes previous knowledge of the Abrahamic/Judaeo-Christian worldview. Without God's revelation to Muhammad, however, a new religion called Islam (a word used in the revelation) would not have been born. The monotheists and monotheistic sympathizers in the region may very well have evolved an Arab form of Judaism or Christianity. It was God's revelation to Muhammad that birthed Islam. Muhammad is considered the final and latest prophet of the continuous line from the prophets of the Hebrew Bible (Abraham- Ibrahim, Moses- Musa) to Jesus (Isa), and God's revelation to Muhammad was meant to reform and guide the previous mistaken interpretations and behaviors of the earlier Abrahamic communities.
• The Religion: Islam, which means "submission to God." It derives from the Arabic root sin, lam, mim, or S, L, M, which is the same root used to form the word salaam, meaning "peace."
  

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy

"Orthodoxy is not the best term to use when characterizing Islam's sense of right religion. A better term is orthopraxy, which means 'right practice' and comes much closer to the reality of Muslim devotion and obedience to God. Here Islam is much closer in spirit and practice to Judaism that to Christianity. Christianity stresses doctrinal clarity and understanding by means of creeds, dogmas, and theologies. Islam and Judaism, on the other hand, view religion as a way of life and a ritual patterning of that life under God's lordship...

The fact that a Jewish-Islamic religious blending did not succeed does not mean that fundamental similarities and structural as well as functional affinities were lacking; it was because of the Jews' and Muslims' differing views on the provenance of Muhammad's prophecies."

Frederick Mathewson Denny, An Introduction to Islam, page 103

Plan for October 21

When I first hatched the idea to have an interfaith class, I had no idea how much I would struggle to prepare. How do I convey the right things to a class of people with varying degrees of knowledge about our sibling Abrahamic traditions? How do I touch on the most important aspects of each faith tradition? How can I do the world's Muslims and Jews justice and honor?

Whew! Ok, deep breath....... step back.

There are a few things I have to acknowledge so that I am not disappointed:
-I have five weeks, an accumulated 7.5 hours.
-There are three Abrahamic traditions.
-The religious culture of these faith traditions spans over 3,000 years.
-I CAN NEVER and WILL NEVER be able to do everything I want in such a short period of time. I can't hold myself to an impossible standard.

God will do God's work - the Spirit will move through the class. And with God's help, I will convey something to someone that is meaningful.

Oh dear God, I hope so.

And so, this blog will be a resource for the class to use between class meetings to cover all those little things that didn't get said during the class.

I'm very excited about the class.

Al-Fatihah

Has al-Fatihah ever sounded more beautiful?

Children of Abraham

The Children of Abraham: Interfaith Understanding class at St. John's Episcopal Church begins Wednesday October 21, and lasts five weeks - each Wednesday night from 6:30-8:00pm.

I am passionate about interfaith dialogue - particularly among the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) - because I am terrified of the consequences of silence, fear, prejudice, and slander. Fear of the other leads to prejudice, stereotyping, and lies, which in turn lead to a violent theology and demonization of the other, finally to brutality and murder.

As a Christian, Episcopalian, and a spiritual seeker, I cannot, in good conscience, say the words of my baptismal covenant, swearing to "seek God in all persons and respect the dignity of every human being," and remain aloof and uninvolved in the quest for interfaith understanding.

I studied Religion at Transylvania University, traveling to Poland, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Egypt, and spending a semester in Morocco - pushing, pulling, trudging, trekking, and digging through questions of faith, belief, ethnicity, politics, gender, language, and history. I'm still not satiated in my quest for answers; I came away from my undergraduate experience having figured some things, but I am just as full of questions now as I was at 18 years old. These questions motivate me; my memories and stories inspire me to continue learning, searching, and to start to share.

Children of Abraham is my first substantial attempt to share my experiences in a church setting in order to begin a conversation. St. John's is a loving, welcoming, and progressive place; I very much look forward to the class and the discussions that we will have.

When I was living in Morocco, I had ample time for reflection and meditation. I spent a lot of time reading and writing, and found a renewed enthusiasm for prayer and the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. I used the Psalms - conveniently included at the end of the BCP - often to calm my mind, focus my thoughts, and to pray to God.

Psalm 133 has for a long while been one of my favorites, and while living in the bustling capital city of Rabat, it spoke to me in a powerful way.

Psalm 133
1 How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!

2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron's beard,
down upon the collar of his robes.

3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

It still resonates as a powerful injunction to all believers (e.g. monotheists) to learn to live together in peace.