Happy photos from today's journey

Needed some levity to my blog, so here are two happier photos from today's excursion:

Russian Orthodox Church on the Mount of Olives:

Church of All Nations, next to the Garden of Gethsemane, at the base of the Mount of Olives:

beginning

End of first full day in Israel.

My group has been asked not to do in-depth blogging while on this journey, as the trust and honesty built between our group is paramount to the mission of why we’re here, learning what we’re learning. So, in interest of maintaining integrity, I’ll only share tidbits of the goings-on here, with some commentary on what I’m experiencing and what’s running through my head.

After arriving in Tel Aviv yesterday (and opening an Israeli cell phone account and putting my new Israel SIM card into my Moroccan cell phone – a walk down memory lane…), our tour guide and driver took us to an overlook of the old city of Jerusalem on the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus. Clay and I have looked dreamily at the English language masters programs offered at Hebrew University – Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Biblical Studies, etc. – so I called him immediately and told him where I was. I really look forward to returning to Israel with him so we can visit the school together and get to know some faculty. I would love nothing more than to be a student at Hebrew University.

The view of the city from Mount Scopus is magnificent, and an entirely different viewpoint from the one I had when I was last in Jerusalem. On Mount Scopus we stood at the north end of the city, facing south. When I was previously in Jerusalem, we stood west facing east. It’s difficult to discern in the photograph, but from Scopus we could see the comparable size of the Holy Sepulchre dome to the Dome of the Rock, could see the Russian Orthodox Church, the Garden of Gethsemane and Church of All Nations, and just to our left, on the next hill over (an outfielder’s stone’s throw away) was the Mormon university. I identified it before our tour guide did, because I’m a nut and when I learned there was a Mormon university in Jerusalem months ago, I immediately scoured their website and learned what the campus looked like. So, yes, there I stood, looking once again onto the Old City, but strangely, with an eerie sense of calm and no nervous butterflies or chills up my spine. I just leaned my arms on the stone wall of the overlook, enjoyed the breeze, and felt comfortable in my surroundings. It has taken nine countries and some ten trips abroad to feel comfortable in a foreign environment. As I stood on Mount Scopus, I felt a great sense of peace and hope that I could return and live here, happily and perhaps for an extended stay.

We descended Mount Scopus and next visited the Western Wall. The first time I visited the Western Wall, I had been anticipating the visit for years – probably well over a decade. Ever sense I had read The Big Lie in third grade, and then read, and re-read Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (the last pages of my copy are tear-stained), I had dreamt and hoped and prayed about being at the Western Wall. Then, at 19, I toured Poland and visited Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Madajnek. My first trip to Israel was altogether momentous and lacking all comparison. I still cannot put adequate words to it. It’s an experience I share with all those who were on the trip with me, and particularly share with Dr. Russell and Dr. Jones. As a senior at Transy, my time in Israel would wander into my synapses and unexpected times, and then I would walk to Dr. Russell’s office, knock on the door, and say, “I was thinking about Israel.” We’d just look at each other, and smile knowingly, and that was all that needed to be said. Then, I’d walk away.

The Western Wall came late in my first trip to Israel – after visits to numerous archaeological sites, the Sea of Galilee, Tiberias, Caesarea Maritima, ancient churches, on and on. It was Shabbat, and we walked through the darkened tunnels of the old city, through heavy security screenings, and entered the Western Wall complex. It was FULL of people – in many places, shoulder to shoulder. I had excitement building in my stomach like I was just about to reach the crest of a roller coaster and be thrown into the fast downhill rush – but no, I was just about to experience Shabbat as I had never experienced it before. I heard shouting, singing, chanting, dancing, preaching. I walked to the wall that separates the worshipers from the crowd of onlookers, and stood up on a chair where I could see over into the crowd of men and boys below. I was enraptured. A huge, imposing Chasidic rebbe stood gyrating and preaching to the crowd, his speech peppered with higher-pitched staccato whenever he seemed to be making a really momentous point. He looked like a Southern Baptist preacher who’d been transplanted into old Poland or Lithuania, but no, here he really was, with all his faithful followers, preaching up a storm next to the Western Wall in the holy city of Jerusalem. My thoughts about the separation of men and women at prayer aside (and in this context my thoughts really aren’t vehement and truly don’t matter), there are few moments in my life when I have been happier or more in awe. I had walked through death camps and smelled remnants of Zyklon-B in the Madajnek gas chamber. And now, before me, standing below a proudly flown Israeli flag, were hundreds of Jewish worshipers, praying to God in the home of their ancestors, as the Divine Presence hovered above them and the wall.

Female worshipers praying at the wall

Israeli flag fluttering in front of the Western Wall

So, having that climatic experience of the Western Wall in vividly and permanently ingrained in my memory, this visit was far less moving. It was 100 degrees of hot, there had been no community building within this group - yet, we were all exhausted, dragging our feet, sweaty, stinky, and had just deplaned after 12 hours on our butts. Those things being said, I was able to have a calming moment of prayer at the wall, after which I departed slowly, walking backwards so not to turn my back to the Divine Presence. I returned to my group, and we made our way back to the bus, finally to the hotel to rest and refresh ourselves. Of course, before I allowed myself a moment to recover from the trip, I went wandering around the hotel looking for a place to work out. I discovered ballrooms in the depths of the hotel where I did some dance exercises and developed a good sweat before I got back to my room and took a cold shower and changed clothes for dinner. Dinner was delicious, as meals always are in Israel, and… to fast forward, breakfast was amazing this morning as well. Pickled fish, smoked fish, fresh mozzarella, hardboiled egg, hummus, bread, and thick creamy yogurt. I live for breakfasts in Israel (and Greece…… but that’s another time and another set of stories).

Today was our first day of actually doing fact-finding. I won’t share details with you about the people we spoke to and all of what we learned, but I can tell you some of the fascinating places we went and my reactions. First, we visited Sderot, an Israeli town on the border of the Gaza strip, and spoke to a high-ranking IDF officer about the situation in Gaza and Israel’s response to it.

Gaza strip in the distance, viewed from hill in Sderot

(so close we could clearly hear gunfire in Gaza City)

In 2000 and 2001 alone, over 4,500 rockets and 4,250 mortars were launched from Gaza into Israeli towns, killing innocent civilians in their homes. Children grew up in Sderot with the daily threat of bombings. Now, the sea blockade is an effective means of keeping high-range missiles and rockets out of the hands of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Among the many conversations we had today with Israeli officers, legal analysts, and others in the business of protecting Israeli civilians, I heard this idea presented, in different words, through different means, and by different people, that “If you open the sea gates, within TWO MONTHS, Hamas would have 40,000 rockets that could reach Tel Aviv.”

Later we visited the IDF base in Tel Aviv and met with experts in international law. The very real dilemma of the asymmetrical war Israel is fighting with terrorists became deathly clear. What is a sovereign nation to do when its opponents (here we’re talking Hamas militants) dress in civilian clothes, attack from civilian residential areas, hospitals, schools, and use children as human shields, and will not, under any circumstances, come to the table to discuss ceasefire or peace? What does a sovereign nation do when the opponent does not hold itself to, and neither do any other countries demand that it hold itself to, established rules of war – as enshrined in the Geneva Convention, sculpted by modernity from Augustine’s just war theology?

I can speak more about this later – in greater detail and with more depth – but I ask you in the meantime to consider how terrorists and terrorism, particularly the tactics employed by Hamas, challenge their victims to remain committed to the basic principles and laws of armed conflict:

1. Military necessity: That an army may not launch a military offensive unless it has just cause and justification to do so.
2. Distinction: That a clear distinction is drawn between civilians and combatants, and civilian objects and military installations.
3. Proportionality: That collateral damage (civilian casualties and destruction of civilian installations) cannot be excessive to the military advantage gained.
4. Humanity: That civilians and victims of war are dignified as human beings (i.e. granted access to Red Cross and other medical care, that civilians are given opportunities to remove themselves from impending sites of military action, etc.)

I’ll conclude with this idea. My senior thesis project revolved around Moroccan religio-political identity issues, and the construction of memory, history and identity within the Amazigh (Berber) and Islamist movements in Morocco.

What kept tumbling through my mind today was the idea that became the thrust of my thesis: that identity creates memory creates history creates memory creates identity – and the cycle falls over upon itself over and over again, agitated by the waves of movements, ideologies, and events.

In Israel, in Palestine, in our own country: what memories do we allow to shape our history, shape our identity, and then cycle back to create new memories? What memories do we co-opt as our own, from others’ testimonies, from history, from our identity? What memories, histories, and identities do we construct out of thin air?

What is the mantle that we wrap around ourselves? And do we have the courage to take it off, and objectively analyze, cleanse, reconstruct, or destroy it if necessary?

We are a sad lot, we humans.

Charcoal graffiti:

"Gaza," in Arabic

"FilisTin," or "Palestine" as written in Arabic

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.