Muslim American Leader Speaks Out

Here is a letter from a Muslim American leader that makes us hopeful about the future.
We need those signs of hope these days....
From the Desk of Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey

MAS Freedom Civil and Human Rights Director

WASHINGTON, D.C. (MASNET) March 7, 2008 - On March 6, 2008, the world
received news of yet another tragedy in the ongoing conflict between
the Palestinians and Israelis. In an apparent act of revenge, armed
Palestinians infiltrated a Rabbinical school in Jerusalem and attacked
a group of teenage Jewish students, leaving eight of them dead. They
were not combatants, and the act did not take place in self-defense or
in the heat of combat.

Most of the world, especially in Israel, was stunned and horrified by
the killings. But in Gaza, at least according to news reports, people
were jubilant in their celebration of the deaths.

Should Muslims in the United States also feel a sense of joy and
vindication? No. We must recognize the attack for what it was: an act
of murder. And we must now ask ourselves the difficult question of how
we, as activists in support of the people of Gaza and Palestine, can
go forward in the wake of an act of senseless brutality that could
threaten to derail some significant support for the cause of ending
the occupation and respecting the human rights of the people in Gaza
and the West Bank.

Sadly, acts of deliberate murder are hardly rare in the context of
this part of the world. I remember, a few years ago, the act of murder
in a mosque in the West Bank that left nearly 30 Muslim worshippers
murdered by a fanatic named Baruch Goldstein. The Muslim world, and
most people of conscience, were enraged. Yet some extremists in Israel
not only celebrated the killings, but actually made Goldstein (who was
killed after the attack), a cult hero among some ultra-Zionists.

But murder, by whomever, is simply a crime against humanity and
against the Almighty. And the killing of Jewish students in Jerusalem
was exactly that kind of abomination.

The pursuit of liberation is a human response to oppression, and one
that is common to all oppressed people, in all periods of history. But
there is a moral and practical, distinction between legitimate
political struggle on one hand, and acts of criminal revenge on the
other.

As Muslims, we believe that struggle against oppression, and
self-defense, are not only legitimate, but also required. The killing
of innocent people, on the other hand, is morally repugnant-and Haram.

I hope that the Palestinian leadership, and especially Hamas, will
recognize that the celebration of these murders will only serve to
further isolate them, and make it more difficult for them to claim
some moral high-ground in the eyes of world opinion. I also hope that
they will consider that activists throughout the world, who support
the rights of the people of Gaza, must now labor under yet another
burden of suspicion, and even outright rejection, by opponents who are
all too anxious to equate the Palestinian cause with savagery and
terrorism. Further, it obliterates, in the consciousness of many, the
nonviolent responses to the occupation that would ultimately be more
effective as instruments of liberation vs. sensational and
counter-productive acts of killing and mayhem.

As I have said in a previous essay, it's long past time to end the
violence, and the killing, in Israel and Palestine. We mourn the
deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, especially in Gaza.

But now, we should also mourn the killing of the Jewish students in
Jerusalem, and call for the respect for human life as a core value for
both sides of this conflict. I, as a Muslim in America, offer my
condolences to the families and communities of the young people who
were killed in this act of violence.

The struggle for freedom has no room for the murder of innocent
people. It is not acceptable in the modern world.

An eye-for-an-eye, as Dr. King reminded us, will simply make both
Palestinians and Israelis blind.

American Jewish Leaders Welcome Letter from the Muslim Community Calling for Dialogue and Understanding


Last week Muslim scholars from the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations issued an open letter to the Jewish Community calling for dialogue and understanding. (see entry on this blog for February 28.)

In response the leadership of the Reconstructionist, Reform, and Conservative Jewish Movements in North America made the following statement:

We deeply appreciate the hand extended in a letter from Muslim scholars at The Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations, and we clasp that hand willingly. That we have much to learn from and about each other is clear – sometimes painfully clear. We look forward to the shared work of thoughtful dialogue.

We appreciate in particular the letter’s assertion, regarding the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, that “The loss of every single life is a loss to humanity and a bloody stain on the tapestry of history. We call for a peaceful resolution that will assure mutual respect, prosperity and security to both Palestinians and Israelis, while allowing the Palestinian people their rights to self-determination”. We whole-heartedly share that perspective, and hope that our exploration of the troubling issues will enable us to understand each other’s narratives and to come together in explicit and stern denunciation of terrorism.

Clearly, the time for a respectful consideration of the issues that unite us and also of the issues that divide us has come; indeed, it has been too long postponed.

So let us begin.

The statement was signed by Dr. Carl Sheingold, Executive Vice President of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation; Rabbi Jerome Epstein, Executive Vice President of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism.

Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement Founded in Los Angeles

This is hot off the presses. Rabbi/Professor Reuven Firestone of Hebrew Union College(pictured here) deserves kudos for helping launch this important endeavor.

USC Launches New Online Resource for Muslim and Jewish Engagement


LOS ANGELES, February 28, 2008 -- USC’s Center for Muslim-Jewish
Engagement proudly announces the launch of its website,
www.usc.edu/cmje. This new website provides important resources for
scholars, groups, community leaders and individuals working to develop
interfaith partnerships between Muslim and Jewish communities in the
United States and beyond.

The website includes the following resources:

• Scholarly and community-based resources to address critical
issues in Muslim-Jewish engagement
• Best practices to foster and enhance community partnerships
• Articles, videos, and links to interviews with world-renowned
scholars on important topics such as;
Abraham and his sons, women in Islam and
Judaism, and dietary laws from a Muslim and Jewish Perspective.
• Links to dialogue groups and organizations that facilitate
interactions and scholarship
• A calendar of national and international events

The Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement (CMJE) is a community resource
for training in inter-religious outreach, an online resource center for
materials on Jewish-Muslim relations, and an academic resource for
journalists, scholars and community leaders. CMJE works to promote
dialogue, understanding and grassroots, congregational and academic
partnerships among the oldest and the newest of the Abrahamic faiths
while generating a contemporary understanding in this understudied area.

The Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement is a partnership between three
institutions: the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation, Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and USC’s Center for Religion and
Civic Culture at the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. The
collaboration of a Muslim Foundation, a Jewish seminary, and a secular
university is itself an example of the types of partnerships that CMJE
envisions and hopes to promote locally and internationally.

Q: What do these two men have in common?

A: Read this article from the Los Angeles Jewish Journal and find out.

Students at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) were surprised to learn last month that for the first time their professor for a course in contemporary Islam was, in fact, a Muslim.

Ismail Bardhi had arrived as a refugee a few weeks before through the college's Scholar Rescue Fund. The former dean of the faculty of Islamic Studies in Skopje, Macedonia, Bardhi was beaten and stripped of his title because he refused to cede to the vision of Kosovar nationalists, who in rising to power were marginalizing secular Muslims and "Islamic humanists" like Bardhi.

"In 1939 and 1940, Hebrew Union College had a program to rescue a number of scholars from Europe," said Rabbi David Ellenson, president of HUC-JIR. "One of these men was Abraham Joshua Heschel. I thought of that when I received [the] initial request to find a place for professor Bardhi. I recalled how HUC had done this for Jewish scholars who were in this kind of situation 50 years ago and felt there really was a Jewish imperative to provide refuge in this case as well."

Reuven Firestone, an Islamic studies professor at the Los Angeles campus and at USC, brought Bardhi to Ellenson's attention, and his efforts went beyond convincing administrators to create a visiting professorship for Bardhi and ensuring that the U.S. government grant him entry. Firestone also needed to secure the funding.

HUC-JIR's scholar's fund matches whatever funds Firestone raises for Bardhi's income, up to $20,000. Some of the needed funds will be provided through honorariums for speaking at a number of Los Angeles congregations, including IKAR, Valley Beth Shalom and Temple Isaiah.

Firestone first met Bardhi in Macedonia six years ago, when the latter was helping organize an international conference on religion and peace, the first to bring together the country's Muslim Albanian and Orthodox Christian Slavs.

The conference coincided with a violent build-up between the two ethnic groups -- including shootings, retaliation shootings and torchings of churches and mosques -- that put the young nation on the brink of civil war. But the dialogue that began with Bardhi and his Orthodox Christian counterpart helped dissolve the tension, and the conflict fizzled.

"In Skopje, Mr. Bardhi was the voice of Muslim moderates who greatly promoted in a nonpolitical manner the process of reconciliation between Albanian Muslims and Macedonian Orthodox," Paul Mojzes, organizer of the conference and co-editor of The Journal of Ecumenical Studies, wrote in a letter of recommendation. (Last March, in an essay titled, "Orthodoxy and Islam in the Balkans," Mojzes identified Bardhi as "the best Muslim proponent of inter-religious dialogue in the Balkans.")

The Macedonian peace, however, was short-lived, and two years ago, when Bardhi was nominated to become president of the Islamic Religious Union of Macedonia, he discovered that the problems had bled into his own religious community. After a former student who had become affiliated with the Muslim nationalists smashed Bardhi's face with the butt of a gun, Bardhi spent weeks secluded in his home, withdrew from the political race and eventually lost his job for political reasons, he said.

"During the latest elections within the Islamic Religious Union of Macedonia, professor Bardhi has been the most prominent and trusted candidate," Ahmet Sherif, a professor at Macedonia's Institute of National History, wrote in a letter to the Scholar Rescue Fund. "But unfortunately, due to the threatening and sinister actions toward him and his collaborators he chose to withdraw his candidacy as an act of protest."

Bardhi's problem was an unwillingness to politicize his faith. He is, as Firestone described him, an "Islamic humanist," a religious progressive willing to see Islam as "the perfect expression of the divine will," but not alone and superior on the world stage.

"My topic is quranic exegesis and how we have to be more open between the Quran and Torah, to see how they could speak together," said Bardhi, 50. "We have spent too long using religion against each other. This is not good for religion or for human beings."

A slight man with light skin, gray hair and a pointed goatee, Bardhi speaks four unrelated languages -- South Slavic, Albanian, Turkish and Arabic -- and is quickly learning conversational and professorial English. HUC-JIR Dean Steven Windmueller said Bardhi will expose students to a different version of Islam, and Los Angeles' most prominent Muslim organization, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), was pleased to hear of his arrival.

"For there to be this visiting professor from the Balkans, which has experienced a lot of ethnic tension, obviously, could be very eye-opening for students at HUC," said MPAC spokeswoman Edina Lekovic, whose family is from nearby Montenegro. "To look at ethnic tensions in unfamiliar settings can sometimes shed new light on old conflicts. His experience of ethnic tensions in the Balkans might allow people at HUC to step back and add another dimension to their approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"If we want people to get a more three-dimensional aspect of faith in the modern world," she added, "especially these days when it comes to Islam, there is no better place to get it than the horse's mouth. Everybody asks, 'Where are the moderate Muslims?' Well, it's great that there is one right at HUC."

Bardhi plans to stay through the spring semester, which ends in May, and then return home. Why? So he can teach his compatriots how to live in an ethnically and religiously diverse community, something he hopes to learn a lot about in Los Angeles.

"We have to clean up religion to get it back to what it should be," he said, "a spiritual endeavor."

Muslim Scholars Address the Jewish Community

CMJR(see post below for more information about the group) with the support of Muslims scholars throughout the world facilitated the following letter to the international Jewish community.

This letter is intended as a gesture of goodwill. Its aim is to build upon existing relations in order to improve mutual understanding and to further the positive work in building bridges between Muslims and Jews.
Full letter (in pdf)

The letter was introduced by Prof. Tariq Ramadan(see photo) at CMJR in Cambridge on Monday 25 February.

This is an important letter. Perhaps even historic. I hope it will form the basis for many good conversations between Jews and Muslims.

Institute for Muslim-Jewish Relations in Cambridge, England

I recently learned about the work of an institute in Cambridge, England that is addressing the issue of Muslim-Jewish relations. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of England, is involved with the group as is Professor Tariq Ramadan, a leading scholar in the Muslim world.

To find out more about this group, check out their website at


www.woolfinstitute.cam.ac.uk