Christian, Jew seek Muslim partners for ecumenical dialogue

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

An Episcopalian priest and a prominent Jewish leader are seeking suitable Muslim partners to join in a new interfaith dialogue that will be launched this fall out of a church in Summit.

The project is the brainchild of the Rev. Robert Morris, director of a program called Interweave, whose Web site defines it as “an ecumenical, interfaith community learning center for spirituality and wellness.”

His counterpart is Allyson Gall, executive director of the American Jewish Committee’s New Jersey area.

Financed by a $45,000 grant from Trinity Church, the historic house of worship in New York’s financial district, Interweave is planning its first interfaith meeting for November.

But both partners in the project acknowledge the difficulty in identifying Muslim partners who meet their criteria for coalition-building.

“They have to be against terrorism everywhere — including Israel — and they have to be for a two-state solution, not for the destruction of Israel,” Gall told NJ Jewish News.

“Beyond that, they can hate [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon — fine. Hate the [Jewish] state’s policies — fine. Hate the fence — fine,” she said. “Anyone who disagrees vehemently with Israeli policies is fine because Israelis do also.”

But Gall said among Muslims she has found “a sticking point for some of them. They publicly cannot be perceived as remotely supporting the state of Israel.

“We tried to make a bottom line that is actually a bottom line, and the only reason we set that bottom line at all is because we’ve been burned. We’re desperate to meet with Muslims and empower Muslims — the good guys, you know.”

Bringing Muslims and Jews together in a local dialogue “is the challenge we face,” said Morris, who operates Interweave out of Summit’s Christ Church.

“We share those bottom-line demands” that Gall has made for Muslim participation, he said. “We want to get together the kind of people who are against extremism and terrorism to build a kind of coalition in the face of that.”

Even though he is “happy to have such dialogues,” Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Forum, a foreign policy think-tank in Paterson, said he opposes preconditions for participation.

“We could insist on preconditions from Jewish participants about the right to our land and their acceptance of the 1967 borders” between Israel and Palestinian areas, he said.

According to Assaf, 90 percent of Arab Americans recognize Israel’s right to exist, “even though they may not be happy about it. The real issue is about Israel’s acceptance of Palestinian rights.”

Morris said the project’s intent is “to strengthen and extend the contacts between Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders in northern New Jersey. We will be doing educational events, invitational seminars. We are going to be running eight seminars a year that will specifically target rabbis, Christian clergy, imams, and lay people who are in key positions.”

Thus far, one organization, the Muslim Women’s Coalition — which has had a cordial relationship with AJC — has signed on to join in the dialogue.

Its executive director, Tasneem Shamim, an eye surgeon from Somerset, declined to comment on Interweave until she becomes more familiar with the program.

Gall noted that Shamim has been a willing partner in AJC’s Stamp Out Hate Coalition and a partner in raising funds for victims of the December 2004 tsunami.

“Tas is a great example of someone we are trying to work with,” said Gall. “We don’t want it to be just touchy-feely, because touchy-feely dialogues just don’t work anymore, period. We want it to be joint projects we can work on. But in the meantime, when we work with a group, we want to know in our heart of hearts when they’re doing this — standing up there and doing a joint press conference — that they aren’t going to be waving signs saying ‘Death to Jews’ on their time off. We just are being very careful.”

Morris has been running dialogues between Christian and Jews for more than 20 years, but “frankly, after 9/11,” he said, he became eager to include Muslims.

“Ultimately it is impossible to get inside people’s brains to see what they really mean. The only way you can verify it is to look at the consistency of their actions,” said Morris. “If people say one thing one place and do one thing at another, then clearly they are not representing themselves properly to you. That is something we will just have to take one step at a time.”

Aside from the Muslim Women’s Coalition, Morris said, Interweave’s “next step is getting another Muslim organization as a stakeholder, and we are hoping to have that secure in the next month. We have a variety of contacts in the Muslim world, both locally and nationally, and I’m going through those contacts. If I cannot find people who are accommodating, we are all doomed,” he said.

His agenda is to begin the sessions with “presentations and discussions on the fundamentals of their religions — because we understand these communities need to know more about one another.”

Morris said mutual trust is necessary before the group embarks on its most controversial issues.

“I think if you start with Israel, you start automatically with division,” he said. “I think we should start with commonality and overlaps and significant differences other than the political ones, and, as we establish more trust in the group, we work our way toward discussing more political things. It is certainly not our aim to bury those difficult issues but rather to build a coalition that has enough trust in it so those issues can be talked about in a an noninflammatory way.”

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.