Saturday, June 14, 2008
Some things are always lurking in the background:
For the first time in five Sundays of gatherings, the small group of Washington area Muslims and Jews around the fireside table seemed like it was about to move from polite chat on religious history to something unavoidably combustible: Zionism.
An imam had taken out a book titled "Palestinian Holocaust" and quoted a tiny ultra-orthodox Jewish sect that opposes the state of Israel. An African American Muslim said Zionism struck him as apartheid-like. A rabbi cited the "billions of dollars" donors give Palestinians.
"This seems like a good place for a period," Khalil Shadeed, one of the two organizers of the three-month-long dialogue group, said gently. "I do recognize this is very challenging."
And with that, Shadeed stopped the two-hour discussion before it plunged too deeply into unnavigable waters. The clock had run out, and it was best, he said, to keep the discussion calm -- a mantra of interfaith dialogue...
Well that's kind of an indicator of the problem isn't it? Muslims, by and large, want to smash the Jewish State. And if you're a gutless appeaser of evil and intolerance, you come up with all sorts of rationalizations about Israel being a mistake, and sympathizing with "grievances" and all that rot...OR you stand firm for what's right and say that it's not about me, it's about you, and you'll just have to get used to it and change your goals. Else who's next?
Also interesting the partner in dialogue -- the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an Islamist organization, albeit a large one with a no-doubt diverse membership.
Precisely.
Have to admire the organizers, to the extent they're sincerely motivated and unbeguiling in their approach, but that admiration begins to diminish once any naivete begins to enter the equation.
Singing "kumbiya" around the campfire, while allowing one's friends to be knifed in the back, does not represent a substantial or coherent dialog, much less does it represent any realistic road to "peace".