Rabbi Marc Schneier - Sons of Abraham: A Candid Conversation about the Issues That Divide and Unite Jews and Muslims

BEACON PRESS

BOSTON

To my beloved son, Brendan. I pray that the sentiments reflected herein will inspire his generation to fashion a world of greater understanding, cooperation, and peace.

Rabbi Marc Schneier

To my parents, who have been a source of strength, courage, and inspiration to me my whole life.

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER ONE
Child of the Soil

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER TWO
Child of a Dynasty

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER THREE
The Struggle Within

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER FOUR
The Empathetic Imagination

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER FIVE
From Suspicion to Trust

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER SIX
Growth and Evolution

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Chosen People

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER EIGHT
Kheir Ummah

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER NINE
Amalek, the Dangers of Literalism, and the Role of Oral Tradition

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER TEN
War and Jihad

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Love Thy Neighbor or Love the Stranger?

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER TWELVE
Understanding Sharia

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
What Israel Means to Jews

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Anti-Semitism

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Why Jews Should Care about Islamophobia

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Palestine

Imam Shamsi Ali

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Standing Up against Holocaust Denial

Rabbi Marc Schneier

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
At Home in America

Imam Shamsi Ali

The end of the Cold War laid bare, and in some cases rekindled, long-existing conflicts rooted in racial, ethnic, and religious differences. At the heart of many of these conflicts, from the Balkans to Russia to China to Indonesia to Africa and most recently in Myanmar, is religious identity. Sometimes they involve persecuted minorities. Sometimes the involve fighting within a religion, as when Sunni fight Shia. Sometimes they involve terrorism and false claims that the killing of innocent civilians, even others of the same religion, is sanctioned by God or a prophet.

Of course, the conflict with the most profound consequences beyond its borders is the long dispute between Jewish Israelis and Muslim Palestinians and their Arab supporters. It echoes across the world. It is at the root of how Jews and Muslims understand and misunderstand each other in the United States.

As president, I worked for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, used the power of the United States to stop the oppression and slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, and engaged in regular consultations with Muslim Americans on a wide range of issues. I also worked hard to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and other nations. Many attacks were thwarted, both before and after I left office, but not at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, or the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

After 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and dozens of terrorist acts across the worldmost recently the Boston Marathon bombingsit is tempting to say this is an unsolvable conflict, a clash of civilizations that cannot be defused. Of course, this overlooks the fact that the vast majority of Muslims in the United States and elsewhere are law-abiding, peace-loving, hard-working people who want to live in harmony with both their neighbors and their faith. The situation is not hopeless.

For the last several years, my daughter, Chelsea, has served as cochair of the advisory board for the Of Many Institute, the largest interfaith student group in the United States, at New York University. Led by Rabbi Yehuda Sarna and Imam Khalid Latif, these students live, talk, and do service projects together. NYU also offers a minor in interfaith leadership.

Still, there are too few people committed to reconciliation through honest dialogue. Thats why the efforts of Rabbi Marc Schneier and Imam Shamsi Ali to bring Jews and Muslims together, not only in the United States but also in Europe and the Middle East, are so important. Like true friends, they honestly face issues that divide Jews and Muslims, as well as what unites them as sons of Abraham. They not only talk the talk, they walk the walk. And their personal friendship is a poignant example of what is possible among people of deep faith and goodwill.

I have been inspired by their example, and I hope you will be, too, as you read this important book.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

On the weekend before Thanksgiving 2012, in principle a time to celebrate fellowship, the news of Muslim and Jewish interaction was a depressingly familiar tale of bloodshed and wrath. Israel and Hamas were in the midst of an eight-day confrontation that would ultimately claim nearly one hundred sixty lives. Israel had assassinated a terrorist leader in Gaza several days earlier, Hamas had responded by launching lethal rockets into the civilian areas of Israeli cities, and Israels retaliatory bombing had killed innocent Palestinians as well as armed militants. In their intractable enmity, the two sides not only seemed bound to endlessly make war on one another but also to irreparably poison relations between Muslims and Jews throughout the world.

Certainly, the toxin was already loose in the United States. The nation had just concluded a presidential campaign in which Jewish voters were implored to choose the Republican, Mitt Romney, who accused Barack Obama of having thrown Israel under the bus. While this strategy did not work, or at least not well enough for Romney to win, it compounded the divisive mood in the country. During Romneys drive toward the GOP nomination, several of his challengers for the nomination outdid themselves trying to be the most anti-Muslimone promising never to have a Muslim in his Cabinet, another flourishing the canard that Muslims want to install Sharia religious law, a third claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood had insinuated itself into the State Department. Well before the 2012 election had even begun in earnest, a congressional committee had conducted hearings on supposed Muslim subversion. In all of these demagogic episodes, American Jews were being asked implicitly or explicitly to take sides against American Muslims.

Yet on that same weekend before Thanksgiving, the members of a Jewish temple and Muslim mosque on Long Island came together to donate blankets, clothing, and food to the thousands of people uprooted by Hurricane Sandy. In Denver, Jewish and Muslim volunteers made a thousand peanut butter sandwiches to feed homeless and hungry people on the street. In suburban Detroit, young men, both Muslim and Jewish, played pickup basketball and then talked together about ways to improve the city. Just outside Washington, DC, Muslim and Jewish teenagers cleared debris and put down mulch in a park, then socialized over pizza. In the Bay Area of northern California, young professionals from Jewish and Muslim communities jointly discussed each religions teachings on business ethics.