AN ISLAMIC-JEWISH CONVERSATION

Bill Tammeus’s “Faith Matters” Weblog – November 19th, 2007

In my blog entry on Friday, I started to tell you about some of the things Dr. Judea Pearl and Dr. Akbar Ahmed said in the discussion between them that I moderated last week as part of the Festival of Faiths.

But I didn't get to that because I used up too much of my space talking about a passionate conversation that happened after the event. So I want to get back to some of the content of the evening because it was well worth hearing. (By the way, in the photo below you see in the first row, from left to right, Pearl, me and Ahmed. Behind us, left to right, are Festival of Faith organizers Priscilla Wilson, Janet Burton and Marilyn Brewster next to the Rev. Gene Augustine of the staff of Village Presbyterian Church.)

Let me begin by focusing on some things that Ahmed said.

He described what he called three models of Islam that today are "in play." In brief (and in my own words, not Ahmed's directly) they are: The mystic path of the Sufis. These folks are peacemakers who respect and want to love everyone.

Second are the Modernists. They want to live in harmony with the West and are fully committed to integrating their understanding of Islam into the wider world. (I'm sure Ahmed himself would identify himself as a Modernist.)

The third group is made up of what he called the Literalists. They believe that pretty much everyone else is wrong. And some of them -- but not all -- are so convinced that their understanding of Islamic theology is the only correct one that they are willing to kill others -- Muslim and non-Muslim alike -- in its defense. This group today, Ahmed said, is in the ascendancy, and that's a frightening prospect.

I asked Ahmed why those of us -- like my own family and like Pearl -- who have lost family members to terrorism perpetrated by Islamic militants should not be simply furious with Islam. In response, he noted that his own cousin died on 9/11 in New York and that it's both too easy and wrong to blame a whole religion or culture: "It's very easy to lump together 19 terrorists with a whole civilization. Don't lump them together."

And he's absolutely right. I myself have never been furious at Islam because of 9/11 and the death of my nephew. Rather, I have been furious at people who pepetrate terrorism in the name of Islam or of any other religion. And the point of my question was not to express outrage at Islam but to get him and Pearl to help the audience understand why rage about terrorism must be properly directed and not aimed as a broadside against a whole religion.

Ahmed note that there are roughly 1.4 billion Muslims in the world, and inevitably in that number "there will be lots of murderers, lots of terrorists and lots of psychotic characters."

Pearl agreed that "the whole religion should not be blamed for those who hijacked it," but he suggtested that the social and governmental structures -- what he called "the social organization" -- in predominantly Muslim countries have failed to create the mechanism that would prevent Islam from being misused by radicals. (This point was the subject of the post-discussion debate I described in Friday's blog entry.)

Religions and the societal structures in which they operate, Pearl said, should be able to marginalize the radicals and prevent them from doing lasting harm to the faith.

Well, enough for today. But I'm really glad that these two men of goodwill are engaged in this kind of dialogue. They have done these discussions more than a dozen times now and are committed to more. It is a model of interfaith talk that we need to find ways to copy and extend in our local communities

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