THE VALUE OF UNCOMFORTABLE LISTENING

--By Ari Alexander

I was invited to put together a panel on Muslim-Jewish relations at the 44th annual conference of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in Chicago last Sunday. By the time I arrived, there was already a buzz about the rabbi who got the weekend’s only standing ovation.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union of Reform Judaism, addressed the conference, attended by over 30,000 delegates, with a strong message of support for sustained Muslim-Jewish dialogue programming between ISNA and the URJ. What he did not say, though what his presence and message implied, was that the largest Jewish organizations in North America currently refuse to partner.

Since co-founding Children of Abraham in 2004, I have spoken to officials at the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, United Jewish Appeal, and the World Jewish Congress about these official and unofficial policies of non-engagement with large Muslim organizations.

Essentially, the policy is about ‘playing it safe’ because ‘one never knows’ who will turn out to be tied to terrorism. I have repeatedly expressed my frustration with the misguided position that is self-defeating and counter-productive for the relations between our two communities.

My friend Rabbi Eliyahu Stern of the Bronfman Foundation spoke brilliantly right before me about the need to move beyond slogans. Jews and Muslims, he said, tend to listen to each other for key phrases or sentences that determine whether or not we feel comfortable. We want to hear what we feel to be our core beliefs or ideas echoed in the words of our Muslim spokespeople.

And so it continues. Jews – otherwise very smart and sophisticated on a range of topics – can allow paragraphs of thought-provoking and nuanced material to go right over our heads, if we do not hear the speaker utter ‘I support Israel’s right to exist’ or ‘I condemn every killing of innocents in the name of religious or political ideologies.’

And Muslims – similarly --- typically turn off their active listening faculties unless and until Jewish speakers say something like ‘What is happening in Palestine is wrong. Israel is the aggressor and the occupier and Jews have a responsibility to put an end to the Israeli and US-backed military campaign.’

Speakers who say these key statements, who pander to the audience’s needs, often get heard. In a world of near total separation between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East, for example, both Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky addressed large crowds in Beirut in 2002.

Similarly, Ayaan Hirsa Ali has become the toast of the AJC and other large Jewish organizations. Born a Somali Muslim, she is infamous across the Muslim world for having verses from the Qur’an written across bare female flesh in her film, Submission. Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-American, similarly achieved heroic status in the American Jewish community for speaking out about anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. Her courage was undermined by the fact that she herself, like Ayaan Hirsa Ali, renounces Islam and points to the religion as being the problem.

Muslims feel less anti-Semitic if they say ‘Finkelstein and Chomsky spoke here and they were great. And they are Jews. I don’t hate Jews.’ And Jews feel less anti-Muslim when they say ‘Ayaan Hirsa Ali is a Muslim. Wafa Sultan is a Muslim. Listen to them. They’re being honest about their world. It’s not us saying it. They’re saying it.’

We need to learn to listen to Muslim and Jewish voices that are grounded in and proud to be who they are, who do not denounce the foundations of their identities in order to connect with the mainstream point of view outside of the community.

After Sukkot, I am relocating to Paris to work with French Jewish and Muslim community leaders to figure out how best to address the extreme tension that exists between the two communities. Several officials in the new Sarkozy administration are keen to see real action in this area.

I am not looking for people who tell me what I want to hear, who affirm my positions. I am looking for people who have constituencies, who are rooted in their traditions, proud of whom they are, concerned about inter-group relations and open to working with people who are different than them.

Let’s work hard in the next year to move beyond ‘I have a Muslim friend she’s a great supporter of Israel’ and ‘I have a Jewish friend and he believes that Israel is to blame for the current chaos in the Middle East.’ Let’s work harder to listen to the voices that make us a little uncomfortable. We usually have the most to learn from them.


- Ari Alexander is the Co-Executive Director of Children of Abraham, www.childrenofabraham.org. He has Masters degrees in Comparative Ethnic Conflict and Modern Middle Eastern Studies. Most important, he served as a junior congregation leader and Torah reader at the PJC in 2006.