Given the blatant and historic bigotry against Jews that is intrinsic to
Islam
it is astounding that some Jews, even a minority, would now seek
an alliance with Muslims. Especially since Hamas, the Iranian
Islamic republic, Hezbollah, and still other Muslim groups
seek the destruction of the state of Israel.
Some Jews, clearly, are suicidal.
The article -typical of some reporting in the NY Times- makes no effort
to identify the Jews it discussed. I will guess that what is really at
issue
are a fairly small number of ultra-Reform Jews, maybe non-observant,
in any case not very many. Yet the impression in the article is that
this is an incipient mass movement.
Still, how can any Jews be so misguided? Common cause with Muslims
is no different than Christians making common cause with the mafia,
it is asking for trouble and maybe asking for death.
Read and weep.
BR
-----------------------------------------------------
Both Feeling Threatened, American Muslims and Jews Join Hands
Laurie Goodstein ("The New York Times," December 5, 2016)
NORTH BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Jolted into action by a wave of hate crimes that
followed the election victory of Donald J. Trump, American Muslims and Jews
are banding together in a surprising new alliance.
They are putting aside for now their divisions over Israel to join forces
to resist whatever may come next. New groups are forming, and interfaith
coalitions that already existed say interest is increasing.
Vaseem Firdaus, a Muslim who has lived in the United States for 42 years,
spent Friday night at a Shabbat dinner for members of a women’s group
called the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, in a home here filled with Jewish art
and ritual objects.
Until Mr. Trump was elected president, Ms. Firdaus, who is 56 and a
manufacturing manager at Exxon Mobil, felt secure living as a Muslim in
America.
She has a daughter who is a doctor and a son who is an engineer, and she
recently traveled to Tampa with her husband looking to buy a vacation home.
But Mr. Trump’s victory has shaken her sense of comfort and security.
After joining in blessings over home-baked challah and sparkling grape
juice (instead of wine, out of consideration for the Muslims), Ms. Firdaus
talked with four Jewish women she had never met before, balancing plates of
Indian food on their laps. They found that the spate of hate crimes and the
ominous talk by Mr. Trump or his advisers about barring Muslims from
entering the country and registering those living here had caused all of them
to
think about Germany in the years before the Holocaust.
“When did you know it was time to leave?” Ms. Firdaus asked one woman who
had just recounted how her relatives had fled the Nazis. “The ones that
didn’t leave are the ones who went to Auschwitz.”
The Jewish women tried to convince her that they would not let it come to
that. “If Muslims have to register, we’re all going to register,” said
Mahela Morrow-Jones, who is helping to build the first West Coast chapter of
the Sisterhood in Santa Barbara, Calif. “You’ve got to believe it, sister.”
Groups are reaching out not just to clergy members, but also to laypeople,
including business executives, students and women.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League,
said in a recent interview: “Jews know what it means to be identified and
tagged, to be registered and pulled aside. It evokes very deep emotions in the
Jewish community.”
Mr. Greenblatt received a standing ovation when he declared at his
organization’s conference in Manhattan last month that if Muslims were ever
forced
to register, “that is the day that this proud Jew will register as a
Muslim.”
“All of us have heard the story of the Danish king who said if his country’
s Jews had to wear a gold star,” he said, “all of Denmark would, too.”
Nearly 500 Muslim and Jewish women, many wearing head scarves and
skullcaps, gathered on Sunday at Drew University in Madison, N.J., in what
organizers said was the largest such meeting ever held in the United States.
It was
the third annual conference of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a
grass-roots group that now claims 50 chapters in more than 20 states. The
first
conference two years ago drew only 100 people.
The women spread out inside an enormous sports complex and met in clusters
to study sacred texts on the racquetball courts, practice self-defense
techniques in the dance studio and, in the bleachers, discuss how to talk to
friends whose impression of Islam had been shaped entirely by news of
terrorist attacks.
Over lunch and in the hallways, they traded stories about the latest ugly
outbreaks back home: a brick thrown through the window of a Muslim-owned
restaurant in Kansas, apartments of Muslim families in Virginia hit with eggs
and graffiti, swastikas scrawled on synagogues and in a playground in New
York. Sisterhood chapters keep track of the incidents on their Facebook
pages and other social media.
“Ignorance is one of the key triggers of hate,” said Sheryl Olitzky, the
group’s executive director, in her opening remarks. “We need to show the
world that we are Americans. We are here because we love each other and we’
re overcoming hate.”
Ms. Olitzky, a marketing executive whose husband and two sons are rabbis,
started the first Sisterhood women’s meeting in New Jersey six years ago on
the theory that “women navigate the world through relationships.” She
baked the challah and hosted the Shabbat dinner on Friday night at her home.
The Sisterhood is one of several groups expanding their work on
Muslim-Jewish relations: The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding started an
initiative to elevate Muslim condemnations of terrorism, which are often
ignored by
the news media. The Anti-Defamation League is increasing its work against
anti-Muslim bigotry.
“It’s the Trump effect,” said Imam Abdullah Antepli, the chief
representative on Muslim affairs at Duke University, who attended the women’s
conference with his wife. “I see the Muslim community even more eager to reach
out
and to put aside the grievances of the past.”
The most prominent new initiative is a Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council
whose co-chairmen are Fortune 500 chief executives: Farooq Kathwari, of the
furniture company Ethan Allen, who is Muslim, and Stanley Bergman, of the
medical products distributor Henry Schein, who is Jewish.
The council, which was forming as Mr. Trump’s campaign was gaining steam,
includes both Democrats and Republicans. It was created by leaders of the
American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America in an
effort to have influence on public policy. The group intends to oppose a
registry, support immigrants and refugees, and push for accommodating
religious
practices in the workplace.
Despite the new cooperation, tensions over Israel continue to flare up.
Several Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, recently
declared their opposition to a bid by Representative Keith Ellison of
Minnesota,
who is a Muslim, to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee,
because of critical statements he has made about Israel.
And the embrace of Muslims is hardly universal. A few Jewish groups have
applauded Mr. Trump’s hard line on Muslims, and cheered his choice of Lt.
Gen. Michael T. Flynn to be national security adviser. The retired general
has called Islam “a cancer” and a “political ideology” masquerading as a
faith.
The selection of General Flynn prompted the usually stoic Ms. Firdaus to
rethink her situation. She abandoned the plan to buy a vacation home in
Tampa, or anywhere in the United States, at least for now. Instead, she and
her
family will spend Christmas vacation in Toronto, where they intend to open
a bank account and look for a condominium to buy — just in case they have
to flee.
Attending the Sisterhood conference on Sunday, however, Ms. Firdaus said
she was feeling a bit more optimistic. She was surrounded by Jews who
pledged not to abandon Muslims. Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey,
brought the women to their feet cheering with stories of how in history’s
darkest times, love had conquered hate.
“Sitting here makes you feel it’s really not so hopeless. This is food
for the soul,” Ms. Firdaus said. “But there were 60 million people who voted
for Trump. I’m not ready to leave, but you have to have a plan.”
--
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