Since 9/11, studying the relations between Islam and the West have become a growth field in academia. Among its leading proponents is Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a billionaire who has spent tens of millions of dollars via his Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation creating study centres at leading universities, including Cambridge, Harvard and Georgetown, with the goal of fostering interfaith dialogue and understanding.

(Photo: Prince Alwaleed in Kabul, 18 March 2008/Ahmad Masood)

In the wake of the Islamist attacks in Mumbai last November, the foundation’s executive director, Muna AbuSulayman said recently, the organisation is keen to set up a centre in India and also to foster dialogue between Muslims and Jews.

A Mumbai Jewish community centre was seized and its rabbi and his wife killed during those attacks, in which 179 people were killed in a days-long rampage by members of a Pakistan-based militant group. “What has happened in India with the shooting was a wake up call,” she said. “India and Pakistan have a history, there’s a reason they separated. We want to help them minimise that.”

During an interview in London, AbuSulayman, wearing a cream-coloured headscarf, talked broadly about the need for interfaith dialogue, and included Judaism in that. But she said the Alwaleed Foundation definitely wouldn’t open a centre in Israel even though it does support dialogue with Jews.

“Would we do something on Jewish studies? Most definitely. We really do separate the idea between Zionism and Judaism,” said AbuSulayman. “We do believe in this tradition of all of the Abrahamic religions being together.”

Saudi Arabia and Israel have no diplomatic relations, although last summer King Abdullah hosted a meeting of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists in Madrid.

“We wouldn’t get into the political part of it,” said AbuSulayman. “The prince really believes in academia as a way to solve problems, a way to ask uncomfortable questions.”

The prince, who has a majority stake in the Kingdom Holding Company and is among the world’s richest men, is certainly laying a very well-funded path towards greater dialogue.

But can the foundation really improve relations among people of different faiths — especially between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East — if debate remains solely within academia?

Two Jewish leaders due to meet Pope Benedict on Thursday say he has to ensure the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) changes some of its core views before current Catholic-Jewish strains can ease. We’ve run a news story on my interviews with them and a timeline on Catholic-Jewish relations. To give a fuller picture of what they’re saying, here are the transcripts of our talks.

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Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

(Photo: Conference of Presidents)

What do you hope to get from the meeting with the pope tomorrow? Can steps be taken to put this behind you?

Yes, I do believe that steps can be taken for us to turn this very negative experience into something positive and that is to use this as an opportunity, a pervasive opportunity in the Church, to root out those who engage in Holocaust denial or anti-Semitism of any form, for the Church to declare that there is no place within the Church for people who espouse such abhorrent views, that they renounce them and say that they will not countenance their presence. It is not just Bishop Williamson but members of that group, the organisation of which he is part, who have espoused anti-Semitic views over the years. I think it is important that before there can be an reconciliation with them, that not only there has to be a complete renunciation of those views and the Church establishing this as a standard and that the message will go out, especially at a time when we are seeing a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, that the Church can play a critical role in helping to stem it and to declare it morally objectionable and religiously unacceptable.

What do want to hear from the pope tomorrow and what do you think he must say to start putting this behind us?

There are several things we hope to hear from His Holiness tomorrow. I think that he must renounce the organisation and their views and make it clear that there can be no reconciliation until there is complete transformation in their views and public renunciation not only of Holocaust denial but of their anti-Semitic expressions as well and there will be an effort by the Church to address this within the Church itself and to the public to help make clear that there can be no justification for such views, that the views of people like (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, who espouses Holocaust denial, will find comfort in the fact that this group could be reconciled with the Church.

So, it is imperative for there to be a clear statement of declaration. There can be very great efforts by the Church and His Holiness tomorrow can help issue a clarion call about the rise of anti-Semitism, the unacceptability of anti-Semitism in any form, including those who call for the destruction of Israel, the de-legitimisation of Israel, a clear reaffirmation of the principles and tradition of Nostra Aetate. This I think (would be) a very important statement on the part of the Church at this time, for a group that renounces those principles and those provisions, to make clear that the Church stands by the commitments and that it expects all of the members of the Church to adhere to it.

Some members of the Vatican hierarchy say there were not aware of Bishop Williamson’s background. What do you think of that?

Well, it certainly raises questions, some of which remain unanswered, and we heard from the members of the hierarchy that they are deeply disturbed by the process. The question is at what point in the hierarchy were there people who knew but didn’t think it was significant or who may have even agreed with some of those views or didn’t believe that that this was reason
enough not to permit this process to go forward and to inform His Holiness, who has said he did not know about the views of Bishop Williamson and others. It seems this is a problem within the Church, not for us to decide, but for the Church itself to investigate and perhaps proper action taken to prevent its recurrence but also to hold to account those who were responsible.

(Photo: Pope Benedict with cardinals and archbishops at the Vatican, 22 Dec 2008/Max Rossi)

Did this wipe out decades of dialogue? You are now on the road to recovery but do you thing that the pain will be there forever?

The pain is very deep, especially for survivors in our community who went through the hell of the Holocaust and then are told that it is denied by people and that the Church didn’t feel that that wasn’t a litmus test for the actions that were taken. And for the community as a whole it seemed as not only symbolic but substantively very significant. But I believe that everyone wants to go into a process of reconciliation, a positive and constructive cooperation. We want it, I know that the Church has told us they want it. The question is what steps will be taken now, how do we take this opportunity and the Church take this opportunity to assert positively its positions on the issues of concern, on the issues that we have raised and see to it that we turn a negative into a positive.

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Rabbi Arthur Schneier, senior rabbi at New York’s Park East Synagogue, where he hosted the pope last year

(Photo by Gary Hershorn, 18 April 2008)

You welcomed the pope to your synagogue last year in New York. How did you feel when the whole Williamson affair exploded?

I am a Holocaust survivor. I lost my family in Auschwitz. I am a witness of man’s inhumanity to man. Therefore it was a despicable ideology that has no place, no room in the Catholic Church after Vatican II. I must say that I think that Pope Benedict’s visit, the first papal visit to a synagogue in
America, was a very significant moment because it shows his personal outreach and commitment to the Jewish community.

What would like to hear from him tomorrow about Williamson, about anti-Semitism and about the SSPX?

I can rely on Pope Benedict to send the right message. He already made a statement, a very clear statement, a firm statement, condemning Holocaust denial but also describing the relationship between our two communities and therefore I think what needs to be reiterated is a reaffirmation of the guidelines of Nostra Aetate and a very firm stand against anti-Semitism. There is no room for anti-Semite or Holocaust denier in the Church post-Vatican II.

What do think of the SSPX? Is the problem deeper than Williamson?

I think the problem is deeper than Williamson because of what the Pius X Society stands for, that is why they were excommunicated to begin with, because they rejected Vatican II. But I must say, as a Holocaust survivor, you have to look beyond the moment and we have a great opportunity to even strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations after this particular event.

What do you think went wrong in the Vatican. Some people, like Cardinal Kasper, didn’t know about the decree until just before it was made public.

(Photo: Clouds over the Vatican, 12 Dec 2008/Chris Helgren)

Really, I like to be constructive. The meeting with Pope Benedict tomorrow, when I will present leaders of the American Jewish community to Pope Benedict, is a very important statement in itself. Second, we need to find ways to heal the wounds and the pain, and particularly as a Holocaust survivor you can understand that I don’t have to read history books. I’m an eyewitness. We need to heal the wounds and then just build on the future because we need each other. Catholics and Jews need to work together. There are so many issues facing mankind. For the benefit of our own communities and in service to humanity. So, let’s not get stuck. There has to be not only clarification, there has to be a reiteration of the policy of Vatican II which
is the basis, the foundation, the road map of a relationship that really has come a long way. We have made many, many achievements. I also thing that the forthcoming visit of Pope Benedict to Israel will also be a very significant moment to even strengthen our relationship.

Do you think the visit to Israel will help heal this the way his visit to Turkey helped heal the Regensburg affair?

Let’s be clear. This is not just a Catholic-Jewish issue. Holocaust denial, yes, it certainly afflicts those of us who survived the Holocaust and the memory of those who perished. It’s beyond that. I think the very basic commitment of Vatican II, the vision of a Church reaching out, inter-religious dialogue, which has happened, that is being questioned by the Pius X society. So it’s just not a question of the Jewish community vs. the Catholic Church position. We have worked together on Nostra Aetate and were are very proud of some of our achievements, considering the past history of tensions. But we are going to go beyond that. We will emerge, I’m convinced, much, much stronger, with better understand of one another and
working together. However, there has to be a very clear affirmation that those who reject some of the values that we cherish, that are very basic in the Bible, in the Torah, that those values of respect for human dignity, respect for your fellow man, human rights, religious freedom, these are basic rights that every human being has and these rights are, again, reaffirmed in Vatican II. As a result of the reaffirmation, we have been able to work together all these years and have made progress. We still have a long way to go, but still … so yes, I feel that, yes, this is a painful moment, but on the other hand also an opportunity to go beyond this crisis and emerge in the better understanding and cooperation that we need to have.

The Grand Mufti of Bosnia thinks the election of Barack Obama as American president is a gift from God that could help foster greater international tolerance of Muslims. “I believe that Obama is a divine sign to humanity,” Mustafa Ceric told me in an interview in Sarajevo. Americans “think that they have elected him, but I believe that he was elected by God.”

(Photo: Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric, 27 Jan 2009/ Danilo Krstanovic)

“Barack Obama is one of these most noble goods of our time and our civilisation, that is why I think he is a gift of God,” he said. “At the moment we feel a trend to change. Whether this change will be really in practice and life, we need time to see.”

Sometimes called one of the world’s most liberal grand muftis, Ceric is considered a voice of moderation with an international reputation. He is active in dialogue with other faiths and discussions of how Islam can integrate into European societies.

Bosnia may be the European country where this integration is most evident. The call for prayer from Sarajevo’s hundreds of mosques wafts over cafes where alcohol is served in abundance and young couples cuddle in a mix of East and West traditions that has long characterised the capital. Women wearing headscaraves walk in the old quarter alongside others with revealing tank tops and uncovered flowing hair.

Yet the post-Sept. 11, 2001 atmosphere has impacted the image of Muslims everyone, from Bosnia to Indonesia. Ceric blames former U.S. President George W. Bush for fuelling further suspicions by using charged words such as a “crusade” against terrorism. The Republican president “will be remembered for creating a sort of Islamaphonia,” said Ceric, who was educated at Al-Azhar University in Cairo before receiving a doctorate at the University of Chicago.

(Photo: Sarajevo women read election posters, 2 Oct 2008/Danilo Krstanovic)

Even with tolerance embraced by Obama, the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are likely still to face stigma, the Grand Mufti said. “We are going to live with Islamaphobia for the rest of our lives, with the same way Jews are living with anti-Semitism from time to time,” he said.

We spoke before we knew the news of Obama’s interview with Al-Arabiya satellite TV, so I couldn’t ask his reaction to hearing an American president say things like “My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.”

But Ceric was quite positive about the last time he’d heard Obama speak, in the inaugural address last week that mentioned the variety of religions that make up the United States.“Barack Obama, he said that the United States is a country of Christians and Muslims, and this is for the first time that we have this kind of a phrase from an American president,” said Ceric, 56, who wore an Ottoman-style white turban and pin-striped robe as we spoke in his office. “He has a reason to be happy for being blessed by God to give hope to many people, not only in the United States but around the world, including my people in Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

(Photo: President Barack Obama, 27 Jan 2009/Larry Downing)

Bosnia is still struggling politically and economically 13 years after the end of Europe’s bloodiest fighting since World War Two, largely along religious and ethnic lines. Political abuse of religious divisions rather than the underlying faiths was to blame, Ceric said. Many Bosniaks, ethnic Slavs who converted to Islam under the Ottoman Empire, emerged from the 1992-95 fighting that killed 100,000 with stronger links to their faith.

“The experience brought many people back to religion,” said Ceric, who speaks fluent English. “When you are faced with death and when you see that humans do not help you and you are left alone for four years in besieged Sarajevo, therefore you cannot live alone, you have to seek some help.”

A leader of “A Common Word,” a group that has fostered meetings betwen the world’s two largest faiths, Muslims and Christians, Ceric participated in several major interfaith conferences last year, including with Pope Benedict at the Vatican in November.

“It was not easy but it was productive because it was open and honest and face to face,” he said.

What do you think of Ceric’s comments? Would other Muslim leaders say Obama is a “gift of God”?

(Photo: Pope Benedict and Grand Mufti Ceric at Vatican, 6 Nov 2008/Osservatore Romano)

Pope Benedict is reportedly planning to lift the excommunication of four ultra-traditionalist Catholic bishops who have defied the Vatican for decades by rejecting some central reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Andrea Tornielli, the well-informed vaticanista of the Italian daily Il Giornale, says the decree inviting the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) back to the Roman fold should be announced this weekend. If this is true (which, given Tornielli’s track record, it presumably is),  the unanswered question now is: who caved?

(Photo: Pope Benedict at the Vatican, 10 Jan 2009/Alessia Pierdomenico)

Our vaticanista Phil Pullella writes that lifting the excommunications “would be a major gesture by Benedict to resolve a crisis in the Church that surfaced in 1988, when the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre illegally consecrated four bishops without the requisite permission of the late Pope John Paul.”

The Swiss-based SSPX has about a million followers worldwide compared to 1.1 billion for the official Church. It maintains the old Latin Mass and rejects Vatican II reforms such as dialogue with other religions.

Benedict has already granted the SSPX several concessions in his attempt to heal the 20-year-old schism. In 2007, he granted widespread permission for the return of the old-style Latin Mass. Before Easter 2008, when it was unclear whether that meant the traditionalists could use an old Latin prayer on Good Friday that Jews consider anti-Semitic, he rewrote the prayer in a way that dissatisfied both Jews and the SSPX.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, the current head of the SSPX, has been running a two-track campaign for years to get the excommunications (which include his own) lifted. On the one hand, he has turned on the charm, professed loyalty to the pope and even launched a prayer drive in which the faithful prayed 1.7 million rosaries to the Virgin Mary over the past two months to have the bans lifted.

On the other hand, he has until now steadfastly refused to accept the Second Vatican Council reforms as valid. When the Vatican challenged him last June to give “a commitment to avoid the pretence of a Magisterium superior to the Holy Father and to not put forward the Fraternity [SSPX] in opposition to the Church,” he gave a vague answer that even an SSPX spokesman described as “an answer without a response.”

(Photo: Bishop Bernard Fellay, 13 Jan 2006/Franck Prevel)

Until now, despite his sympathy for the traditionalists and their defence of the old liturgy, Benedict has insisted that the SSPX must accept Vatican II, especially its statements on religious freedom that stick in the Lefebvrists’ throats. The relevant documents here, especially Nostra Aetate on relations with Judaism and other non-Christian religions, are the basis for the interfaith dialogue and reconciliation the Vatican has conducted since the Council.  But only a few years ago, Father Franz Schmidberger, a top SSPX official who was Lefebvre’s right-hand man, said Benedict should tell Jews and members of other religions to convert because they are part of “false systems.”

So if the Vatican and the SSPX bishops have come to an agreement, who caved? Did the SSPX bishops agree to fully accept Vatican II? Or has Benedict loosened that requirement by making an exception for them? Or have they found a form of words that will let both sides say the SSPX bishops are loyal to the pope and Vatican II, but let them go on as before rejecting the reforms they don’t like?

Compared to an agreement Lefebvre signed with the Vatican in 1988 and later renounced, last June’s ultimatum was much less explicit. Its main point was that the SSPX had to accept the pope’s authority and stop criticising him in public. If this agreement is as vague, it seems that would allow the SSPX to continue much as today as long as it agrees not to make its disagreements so public.

There is also the question of whether all four SSPX bishops will return to Rome — or be accepted. After Tornielli’s article ran, the Times in London ran a story about how one of the four — British-born Richard Williamson — denied the Holocaust just this week in an interview with Swedish TV. See the video on the Daily Telegraph’s Holy Smoke blog. The German-born pope has already angered Jews to the point that Italian rabbis boycotted an Italian Church day this month commemorating Judaism. What will it look like if he brings a Holocaust denier back into the Roman fold?

Whenever the Palestinian issue heats up, the temperature rises in the gritty neighbourhoods the French call the banlieues (suburbs). These areas, best known for the low-cost housing projects that postwar city planners planted out there, are a vibrant and edgy mix of local working class, recent immigrants and minorities now in France for several generations.

(Photo: Police survey housing project in Paris suburb, 1 June 2006/Victor Tonelli)

Among those groups are Muslims and Jews, many of whose families came from the same parts of North Africa. About 7-8 years ago, at the start of the second Palestinian intifada, some of the far more numerous Muslims took out their anger at Israel on their Jewish neighbours. The official reaction against that wave of anti-Semitism was slow in coming back then, but leaders in France today — especially leaders of the main religious groups — seem determined to do their best to head that off this time around.

They have their work cut out for them. According to a French Jewish Students’ Union (UEJF) list (here in French), there have been 46 anti-Semitic acts in France since Dec. 27, when Israel began its bombardment of Gaza.  That includes several firebombs and several Jews beaten by thugs. Muslim and Jewish leaders have already issued several calls for calm. In some cities such as Strasbourg and Lyon, they have joined the mayor and their Catholic colleagues. After meeting President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday evening, the national heads of the Muslim, Jewish and Catholic communities said they would produce a joint appeal soon. See my story on this here.

The impromptu news conference in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace showed how delicate this project can be. Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, the Catholic archbishop of Paris, could simply say a few words about peace and not have to explain too much more.

(Photo: From left, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, CFCM head Mohamed Moussaoui and Grand Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, 12 Jan 2009/Charles Platiau)

But Mohamed Moussaoui, head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), and Grand Rabbi Gilles Bernheim were grilled about what they and their communities should do to avoid more violence. One reporter badgered them to say they would march together at the head of a parade for peace that, until now at least, has neither been suggested nor organised by anyone. Both thoughtful and soft-spoken men, Moussaoui and Bernheim made sure they showed enough support for “their” sides in the Gaza conflict without burning the shaky bridges between their communities here.

Moussaoui has already come under fire in the Muslim community for allegedly getting too close to the leadership of the CRIF umbrella group of Jewish organisations. He and CRIF President Richard Prasquier met last November and suggested creating a liaison committee to work together to defend human rights. They agreed to “create a common front against anti-Semitiism, racism and Islamophobia.” But when the Gaza operation started, the influential Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF) cast doubt on any further cooperation and the CRIF criticised the UOIF’s call for Muslims to protest and imams to preach “to make the faithful sensitive to the just Palestinian cause.”

The UOIF even issued a fatwa saying that Muslims who miss their afternoon and dusk prayers because they are demonstrating could say them at midday and evening to compensate.

(Photo: Protester in Strasbourg, 10 Jan 2009/Vincent Kessler)

“Peaceful demonstrations to support just causes such as that of Palestine are an act of adoration and connection with God,” it said. A more militant group called the Party of Muslims of France, based in Strasbourg, has been holding daily demos in the centre of the Alsatian city which have ended with occasional unrest.

It’s hard to say what if any connection this rhetoric has with the actual anti-Semitic acts that have been reported so far. Police have not issued any official overall figures for attacks. French mayors interviewed by Le Monde say the mood is strained but they think their local dialogues with youths and with religious leaders have kept the situation from deteriorating further.

Cardinal Vingt-Trois said the joint appeal by national religious leaders was due “in the coming days” but if any delay comes, it would probably not be from the community that has the least at stake in this story.

P.S. The last paragraph does not mean that only Muslims are responsible for the mentioned anti-Semitic attacks or that none were committed by people with a Christian background. There may well be non-Muslim anti-Semites who take advantage of the current climate to vent their hate. Since there are no official statistics on the perpertrators, it is hard to say with certainty who is committing these acts. But the general assumption among police, politicians, religious leaders and media is that all or almost all of these cases are in the “Muslim-vs-Jew” category. Vingt-Trois plays less of a role here — despite the impression the photo of the three religious leaders above might give — because the majority is mostly sidelined in this story.

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The author is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. He is writing a book about Interfaith and Civil Society.

By Matthew Weiner

The last day of 2008 was a bad day for interfaith relations in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had his annual Prayer Breakfast at the New York Public Library, where several hundred religious leaders gathered (see video here). As usual there were prayers offered from many faiths. The Hindus were miffed, because a Sikh got their usual slot. Instead of praying, the Sikh explained Sikhism for a bit too long. The Buddhist monk also prayed too long, and the translation took forever. But poor staging was not the reason for the dark cloud that hung over us all.

(Photo: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, 3 Nov 2008/Lucas Jackson)

Instead, it was the bombing of Gaza. Or rather it was the Mayor’s response the day before that created  tension in the audience. The night before, Bloomberg had sided with Israel in the conflict. “I feel very strongly that Israel really does have a right …to defend itself,” he said. The mayor said nothing about the loss of innocent life on the Palestinian side.

For him, the current situation is not a story with two sides. While he is the mayor for all of New York, and while there are more or less as many Muslims as Jews here these days, on this day he spoke for one side of his city.

This, anyway, is the way the Muslim leaders in New York who I spoke to see it. Their frustration is not that Bloomberg criticized Hamas, but rather that he took sides instead of calling for peace or a cease fire. The many Muslims who came to the breakfast were ready for battle.

“I thought not to come,” said one leader. “Then I was reading Gandhi on Non Violence, and I realized that I could not let his one sided political response stop me from joining a public forum.” Another Imam added, “If he had repeated what he said last night, I would have had to stand and walk out.”

Every Muslim I spoke to agreed. They also did not stand when the mayor got an otherwise standing ovation. Nor did not laugh at his jokes, the way others were. When I asked a rabbi afterwards if he noticed this silent protest, he had not.

In further quiet protest, the Muslim Consultative Network handed out a protest statement to participants. It was eloquent: “While one generally agrees with his simple point about self defense…it ignores the Palestinians, who have been dying in great numbers.” It goes on to say that there is a need to acknowledge the common humanity of both Jews and Arabs.

Bloomberg did not repeat his comments in front of this interfaith audience, and one can only guess that he was astute to the tension in the air. Perhaps this is a good thing.

(Photo: New York Public Library, 14 Dec 2004/Mike Segar)

But there is, I think, a serious problem here. It is not one of life and death, but one of perception and honesty when it comes to the public sphere. Interfaith events are intended to serve two basic purposes: to create a symbol of unity (call it the unity model), or to discuss and debate a problem at hand (call it the discourse model). In the unity model, religiously different groups stand together to condemn something, call for peace, you name it. It is a symbolic act, but a powerful one, and one done with a shared conviction of its power.

In the discourse model, interfaith can serve as a venue for debate and discussion. Interfaith is a part of civil society, and therefore a kind of public sphere. It’s what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls communicative action, where rational people debate an issue with the goal of a shared better understanding of the truth and the potential for shared action. Both kinds of interfaith happen in New York City and around the world every day. Every day, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and others join together successfully in this kind of public interfaith. It makes for a better democracy.

And Bloomberg has been good on interfaith in many ways. He was the first mayor to hold regular interfaith services and work with leaders from every faith. The problem with Bloomberg’s interfaith service this particular time around is not his own opinion (he is entitled to one) but that he held an interfaith event, while skipping both legitimate reasons for having one. He talked about the good work of his administration and the economic crises. Yes, this is indeed a shared issue for all, but it totally ignored the issue at hand, and (most importantly) his opinion on it. It left one side of his citizenry very angry- not because he did not take their side, but because the moral reasons for joining interfaith — to make a symbolic statement, or to discuss truth and shared action — were ignored.

Jewish groups may be happy with the mayor’s strategy, but what do we lose in the process?  Many mainline Jewish groups will not even discuss the conflict with their Muslim colleagues who they work with on so many other issues. As one rabbi who works for a Jewish agency said during breakfast, “My hands are tied.” This means that regardless of what he thinks (and I cannot pretend to know what he thinks), his agency will not let him work on a shared statement about the current crises. And yet he is mandated to work with Muslims on other issues.

While interfaith appears to go on as normal here, the tension and frustration run deep. It at least must lead us to ask the question of which public sphere we want interfaith to help create? Maybe this is a New Year’s question, as opposed to a contrite resolution, to hold onto.

There’s one thing you have to say about the World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace — when they disagree about something, they don’t mind saying so. The final session of their third conference in Paris on Wednesday was the stage for an exchange of dramatic charges and counter-charges abut the perennial problem of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The atmosphere was tense in the UNESCO conference room where the 3-day session took place and several participants spoke up to calm down their more agitated colleagues. Since this was the only session the media was allowed to witness, it would have been easy to conclude that the imams and rabbis needed to seek peace among themselves first before preaching it to others.

(Photo: An imam in Berlin, 3 Aug 2007/Fabrizio Bensch)

But there were actions that spoke louder than words in the hall. Several participants were frowning as the finger-pointing progressed. Others turned to the nearest participant of the other faith to chat. At one point, a rabbi in his Hasidic black hat and coat walked over to an imam wearing a karakul hat, embraced him warmly and sat down for a lively talk. A television camera would have had a field day contrasting the words and the deeds in evidence there.

(Photo: A rabbi in Debent, Russia, 17 Sept 2007/Thomas Peter)

At the news conference ending the session, the organiser Alain Michel announced there had not been enough time to agree on a final resolution — a sign of a serious disagreement, as any reporter who has covered summit meetings could tell you. But he proceeded to say the meeting had agreed to set up a steering committee that would work out joint statements whenever there were major acts of violence in the name of religion. Names of the committee members were read out and all seemed to be satisfied that this was progress. Here is my news report about the meeting and here’s the official programme.

When it came to question time, I couldn’t help asking how they expected us to think of them as imams and rabbis for peace when they fought so much during the debate. Several got up to defend the meeting, saying they had made progress and it was only natural that there should be tension when it came to Israel and Palestine. Several participants came up to me afterwards, during the lunch, to give their view on why the meeting was more constructive than it seemed to be.

(Photo: Yahya Hendi)

The question elicited several nice quotes. “The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom,” said Yahya Hendi, the Palestinian-born Muslim chaplain at Georgetown, a Catholic university in Washington. “Blunt talk is not against the process, it’s part of the process,”said Rabbi Tsion Cohen of Shaar-HaNegev in Israel, who added that his community was near Gaza and often got hit by missiles from there.

A rabbi and an imam — both from outside the Middle East — pulled me aside to say basically the same thing about their respective sides. There’s a Middle East view and an international view (the rabbi called it the “diaspora view”) at discussions like this, and the occasional Middle Eastern clash is hard to avoid.

Rabbi David Rosen, president of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, said that freewheeling session would have been better at a different time. “It’s not a bad thing if you do that at the beginning of the program. People feel they got it off their shoulders, they made their point and they get on to more practical things,” he said. Despite the programme, the meeting worked, he said, because it showed that imams and rabbis can meet and work with each other, contrary to a general impression many people have that they are fundamentally opposed. “It is not only possible but imperative for Islam and Judaism and their leadership to live in mutual respect.  That’s the real significance of this meeting.  Tha’ts the message that needs to get out,” he said.

(Photo: David Rosen)

Imam Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, an Italian Muslim leader, participated both in this meeting and in the Common Word conference with Catholic experts at the Vatican last month. He told me the imams and rabbis should keep their focus more narrowly on religious issues and not politics, as he said the Common Word group did. “We want to be involved in politics but not follow a political agenda,” he said. “We have to stick to our role” (as religious leaders). That last quote echoed a comment made by a rabbi during the open discussion.

(Photo: Yahya Pallavicini)

Rosen made another interesting point. Opening the conference on Monday, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade invited the imams and rabbis to hold their 2009 congress in Dakar. Wade is the current president of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and an interfaith meeting hosted by him could draw some high-level participation from across the Muslim world.

There are quite a few dialogues between imams and rabbis going on in different countries but they don’t seem to be that well known. We’ve written about some of them here. Are you surprised to hear there may soon be joint Jewish-Muslim declarations denouncing terrorism? Do you think they will succeed in doing this?

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. Matthew Weiner, the author, is the Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. He is writing a book about Interfaith and Civil Society.

When terror attacks like those in Mumbai occur, many people of faith want to stand together despite their differences to condemn them with one voice. Faith leaders in New York, having seen their own city targetted in 2001, quickly responded with a show of support for their sister city in India. Their news conference on the steps of New York’s City Hall on Monday was an example of how faith communities in the world’s most religiously diverse metropolis can join hands to speak out against such violence.

(Photo: New York interfaith meeting, 1 Dec 2008/Edwin E. Bobrow)

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, senior vice-president of the New York Board of Rabbis, Mo Razvi, a Pakistani-American Muslim and community organizer, and the Interfaith Center of New York organized the meeting while Councilman John Liu got the green light to use City Hall as the venue. Potasnick worked through Thanksgiving weekend to make it happen and insisted on having representatives from every faith. “It is very important to condemn the attacks…but it is imperative we stand together with one voice,” he said.

Indeed almost everyone was there. Imam Shamsi Ali of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York spoke condemned the attacks by Muslim extremists as un-Islamic. Jaspreet Singh of the United Sikhs spoke on behalf of a community rooted in the Indian Subcontinent. Imam Syed Sayeed, a Muslim from India and longtime New Yorker, recalled his homeland has been a religiously plural place for thousands of years. Ven. Kondannya of the New York Buddhist Council called for a non-violent response to the attacks, as did Jain community representative Naresh Jain, who lost a friend in the killing. Members of Chabad, the Brooklyn-based Hasidic community who lost a rabbi in the attacks, were also present.

Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, said she had trained in a Mumbai hospital that treated many victims and remembered the discussions that students of different faiths used to have there. “In Mumbai now, they are getting back to work,” she said. “This is all we can do. It is what the terrorists want to stop us from doing.” Dr. Mysorekar had held a prayer service with Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn just hours after the attack and prayers have continued at her temple in Queens ever since.

(Photo: Taj Mahal hotel, Mumbai, 27 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)

“We know how hard it is to build relationships across difference in times of crisis, and our hearts go out to Mumbai,” Said Rev. Chloe Breyer, the Executive Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. In fact, it was not easy to assemble members of all the main religions represented in Mumbai; in the rush to arrange the meeting, we could not contact the Zoroastrians in time. But how often do Hindu, Ultra Orthodox Jewish and Muslim leaders get together?

Actually, they get together more often than one would think. Potasnik and Mysorekar first met at an Interfaith Center news conference two days after 9/11. It was there that Mysoekar witnessed the courage of a dozen Muslim leaders denouncing those attacks and realized how interfaith contacts could help keep the peace. She invited a Muslim speaker to her Hindu program in Queens, which did not go over all too well among some of her more conservative members.

In the years since then, many of these faith leaders have met regularly despite reservations in their own communities. Monday’s press conference was not be held at Mysorekar’s temple in part from fear the Orthodox Jews would be uncomfortable. Many Muslim leaders were invited but there are serious tensions among some of them and the Jewish leadership in this city, tensions that will not go away with this small victory. But the day-to-day ties forged since 9/11 helped assemble this interfaith group quickly to respond to the Mumbai violence. To date 13 different local Muslim organizations have condemned the Mumbai attacks.

(Photo: World Trade Center, New York, 11 Sept 2001/Brad Rickerby)

On Wednesday, the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Interfaith Center plan a program in Queens with mostly Hindu and Jewish groups (including an Indian Jewish congregation). Dr. Mysorekar wants to hold another program at her temple and all will be invited. The work of interfaith dialogue in the world’s most religiously diverse city goes on.

Muslim and Jewish leaders across the United States and Canada plan to meet this weekend to discuss ways to fight anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia.

The meetings and panel discussions from Friday to Sunday — dubbed the Weekend of Twinning — are part of a broader movement of interfaith dialogue taking place against a global backdrop of tensions between religious groups.

Several of the rabbis and imams have broadcast a public service announcement on CNN appealing for interfaith understanding (see the video above) and published a full-page ad in the New York Times available here in PDF form.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and co-organizer of the weekend talks, told me in a brief telephone interview that “it was a realization among Muslims and Jews that as children of Abraham not only do we share a common faith but we share a common fate … It is necessary for us to champion the causes and the concerns of the other.”

Asked how he rated Jewish-Muslim relations in America at the present, he replied: “Virtually non-existent” — a response that underscores the task ahead.

Many American Jews are politically liberal and strong supporters of Israel; many American Muslims feel they are regarded with intense suspicion in the wake of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

The talks, panels and seminars will be held in 50 mosques and synagogues across the United States and Canada. The Weekend of Twinning resulted from a resolution passed at the National Summit of Imams and Rabbis held last year in New York and hosted by The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.

The Weekend of Twinning is co-sponsored by the Foundation of Ethic Understanding, Islamic Society of North America, World Jewish Congress and Muslim Public Affairs Council. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim group in North America, says the 50 mosques and 50 synagogues participating in the weekend represent over 100,000 Muslims and Jews.

How effective do you think campaigns like this are? Can Muslims and Jews in North America find the common ground so difficult to achieve in the Middle East?

The news at the Catholic-Muslim Forum today is that there is no news.  No news in the MSM (mainstream media) sense. Nobody’s walked out of the talks, there have been no enormous blow-ups, outrageous charges, etc. It would take something like that for a story about interfaith dialogue to have any luck in the MSM on the day after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president. In fact, several Catholic-Muslim Forum delegates I spoke to today first mentioned how pleased they were at Obama’s victory across the ocean before they got around to talking about their meeting here.

The other reason the Forum has “no news” is that what’s happening seems like mostly good news, which by the usual MSM definition (see above…) is no news. These pioneering talks between Muslim signatories of the Common Word manifesto and Vatican officials and Catholic Islam experts moved ahead on their second day with what participants said were open and useful discussions. “The discussion is not getting derailed where it could get derailed, if someone wanted to do that,” one delegate said.

That’s interesting, because today’s topic — human dignity and mutual respect — was the natural place for a strong stand by those Catholics who want this dialogue to focus on reciprocity, or giving minority Christians in Muslim countries the same rights as Muslim minorities in western countries. Actually, the talks got around to that topic late in the first day of talks yesterday and the debate apparently got quite spirited. Both Catholics and Muslims told me it was lively but respectful, a useful face-to-face exchange of what is usually only said about the other. Let’s see what the final communique on Thursday says about this.

The delegations also discussed the more philosophical issue of how each religion handles the threat they see in secular modernity. The world’s two largest faiths can easily discover how much they have in common (along with other religions) when they get together to discuss what they see as the godlessness of modern times. As one delegate told me, the Catholic side defended the legal separation of church and state, what Pope Benedict would call “positive laïcité.” The Muslim side made a difference between a secular state in the American mold and a militantly secularist outlook, such as France’s decision to ban headscarves from state schools.

There was some discussion of practical measures to take going forward, such as drawing up lists of recommended books about each religion for teachers to use for courses about the other faith. There was also a suggestion that the Common Word’s use of the first two commandments as common foundational doctrines of Christianity and Islam might be expanded to cover all ten commandments. That could open up an interesting discussion about what’s called the Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritage. Again, let’s see what develops here.

One Muslim delegate noted that Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Catholic delegation, had said before the talks that theological discussions with Muslims were quite difficult. But, he said, the Catholic delegates got straight into debating theology with the Muslims. “They very much want to be in a theological discussion, not just in another polite bridge-building exercise,” the delegate said. “Europe is in a state of religious apathy, some of which arises because people see us in dispute. We could do each other a favour if we get along. It could be an argument against atheism.”

Thursday will be an active day, with an audience with Pope Benedict in the morning and a public session at the Pontifical Gregorian University in the afternoon where the final communique will be read out. It has to be said that the audience looks in advance like a missed opportunity, because it will be a highly choreographed papal encounter during which Benedict will deliver a prepared speech and two Muslim experts will present their views. There will be no debate, no discussion, no dialogue to tease out the implications of what a speaker has just said.

Now a prisoner of Vatican protocol, the man who as Cardinal Jospeh Ratzinger used to hold (and hold his own in) public debates with agnostic and atheist philosophers cannot engage in an open debate. I have no doubt it would be a fascinating exchange to listen to, but apparently it’s not the done thing for a pope to venture into uncharted waters like that. So, unless he tosses his text aside at the last minute and speaks off the cuff , he will simply read out his prepared speech, listen to his guests’ and then end the audience. The baroque Vatican ceremony is probably all any of you will see of this meeting on TV or in news pictures, if the media are ready to look further afield on Day Obama +2. But the most important part will be in Benedict’s text.

By the way, the Catholic-Muslim Forum is getting a lot of attention in one newspaper, the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano. It rated a front-page analysis on Monday, just before the three-day talks opened. It’s the long article on the right in the JPG image above. The headline reads “A choice for the future” and the text is available here in PDF (in Italian).