Judeo-Christo-Fascism Awareness Week Comes to American Campuses!
Dear Friends,
Did that title make the hair on the back of your neck bristle? Did it feel like a bigoted attack on Christianity and Judaism?
OK, I'll tell you a secret. That week is imaginary. But one like it, with a different target, is NOT imaginary. And this imagining is important for us all to do.
When the imaginary feature film sent out for use in this imaginary Week -- which focused on the disgusting Christian-led war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the disgusting Jewish-led killing of Muslim children by airplane bombng raids on Gaza -– also included interviews with a few peacenik Quakers, Methodists, and left-wing Jews, criticizing that war and those bombings, did you relax, feeling it was a balanced presentation of Judaism and Christianity?
NO??!! -- Your guts, your kishkes, felt that practically all Christians and Jews were being set up as potential – indeed probable -- bad guys? Could-be terrorists who – often manipulated by governments that Christians or Jews controlled -- -- hated other religious communities but had not yet got around to buying the plastique for their bombs?
And since Christians are a huge majority in America but Jews are a small minority with a past of being persecuted, did you especially fear for the impact of Judeo-Christo-Fascism Awareness on Jews and Judaism? That this Week might incite anti-Semitism?
Did you urge universities to condemn this "travesty" and institute instead a real Judeo-Christian Awareness Week that looked at the wonderful achievements of Christian and Jewish prayer, charity, and social justice; the history of their persecution; AND the history of their violence against others? That did look closely at the murders of Muslims by Baruch/Aror Goldstein – but as an aberration? And looked at the support of Nazism by the leading respectable Lutheran theologians of Germany as terrible – a mistake? That discussed the genocidal passages of Torah as a long-ago transcended worldview in the light of Hillel's teaching, "Do not do to your neighbor what would be hateful if your neighbor did it to you?"
Wow. Now THERE'S a concept! -- Do not do to your neighbor what would be hateful if your neighbor did it to you!
So what are you doing about the fact that there is NO such week about to appear on US campuses, but on many campuses this coming week, there WILL appear a whole industrial machine called "Islamofascism Awareness Week"?
If you think it would be hateful toward you to have somebody produce Judeo-Christo-Fascism Awareness Week, what do you owe your Muslim neighbors? Or is Hillel's teaching (and of course Jesus' parallel interpretation of "Love your neighbor as yourself") a mere utopian joke aimed at naïve children?
Are there some Muslims who claim the authority of God to kill and destroy? Yes. Are there some Jews who claim this? Yes. And Christians? Yes. What do we do about this?
There are two valid responses, aimed at loving connection-making rather than at demonization. One is to learn about what drives SOME of the members of EVERY religious community – even polytheistic Hindus and compassionist Buddhists -- to using aggressive violence SOME of the time.
How do we brighten the threads of peace and justice and healing in ALL our traditions, while bleaching toward calm and caring the fiery blood-red threads of violence in all of them? Truly, what tugs us toward compassion, what toward war? Scarcities or plenitudes of water, of oil, of safety, of health care, of honor and respect?
The other path is to learn from and with each other rather than preserving our ghettos of fear and alienation.
On Labor Day weekend, I had the honor and the pleasure of being one of three rabbis who spoke at the national convention of the Islamic Society of North America -- an immense gathering of more than 35,000 American Muslims, held in hotels near Chicago. ISNA is the umbrella group for American Muslims.
The other rabbis were Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Reform movement, and Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, vice-president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the Reform rabbis), who is slated to be the next president of the CCAR. Both of them were eloquent, and both were welcomed with excitement and long applause. I will come back to them.
My own experience was joyful. I shared a panel on interfaith relations with, among others, Shanta Premawardanha, associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches. We both spoke about plans for the October 8 Interfaith Fast, and its meaning. Dr. Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, executive director of ISNA, chaired the session and added his own excitement that Jews and Christians were ready to take part in one day of the Ramadan fast, and his hope that mosques everywhere would welcome others to their prayers.
And then I went wandering the ISNA bazaar. Books bound in silver. Flimsy pamphlets on how to observe the New Moon. Arabic calligraphy. Jewelled crescent moons. Head scarves. Robes in white, in black, in purple. Meditation beads. Travel agents for trips to Mecca, Karachi, Fez, Istanbul, Nairobi.
And the people:
Every shade of skin, every twirl of hair. Jeans. Head scarves. Business suits. Long robes. Full-body covers, leaving only the eyes open to the world – and such eyes! From one ear, I heard "Asalaamu aleikum." From another ear, "Wossup, bro?" Palestinian-Americans. African-Americans. Kuwaiti-Americans. Indonesian-Americans. Pakistani-Americans. Anglo-Saxon Americans.
One thing I did not hear, or see: Speeches or conversations or pamphlets that were anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, anti-Christian. Maybe there were some in Arabic, or other languages. But the lingua franca of the conference was English.
Oh yes. ISNA, like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic relations) was named by the US Department of Justice (under Attorney-General Gonzales) an unindicted co-conspirator in a case alleging a Muslim-American charity was funneling aid to Hamas.
AND – the FBI placed a full-page ad in ISNA's program.
What is going on here?
Best-case scenario: Is the present government of the United States just crazy, does not know its right hand from its left? Worst-case scenario: is this good-cop/ bad-cop tactics? The government intimidates Muslims to cooperate with any intrusions the FBI cares to make, by smearing their name until they submit?
This "unindicted co-conspirator" label is both clever and vile. The government does not even have to persuade a grand jury – almost always ready to do what any prosecutor wants – that there is enough evidence even to begin trial. And once it puts the"co-conspirator" label on someone, there is no way to get acquitted – because you are not standing trial.
So they stuck this label on ISNA and also on CAIR – the Council on American-Islamic Relations. I have worked with both in efforts to end the Iraq war and to condemn terrorism.
While ISNA is a broad Islamic umbrella, CAIR is more analogous to the American Jewish Congress when Rabbi Joachim Prinz and later, Rabbi Henry Siegman were its directors and the AJCongress was still vigorously committed to protecting the human rights and civil liberties of Jews as well as of others.
In that vein, the feisty CAIR has condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, while in the name of God and Islam it has also condemned terrorist attacks upon Israelis. It has built strong American constituencies in local areas where there are sizeable Muslim communities.
Result: It is often condemned by those official Jewish organizations that brook no criticism of Israeli governmental policy and actions. It is accused of supporting terrorism although its website is full of condemnations of attacks by Palestinians on Israelis and of Al Qaeda on America. Thank God (and I do mean thank God), centrist American officials have rejected these attacks and have honored CAIR's presence in the fabric of American life – as Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and former Admiral, now Congressman, Joe Sestak – did when they spoke at the annual CAIR dinner in Philadelphia.
I have gotten to know the staff of two local CAIR chapters -- Philadelphia and Florida – as co-members of the Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah. Since the Tent (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) meets for extended retreats, sharing our spiritual journeys, our social-change work, and our prayer lives -- I have gotten to know them in depth. I have been deeply impressed by them.
Back to Rabbis Yoffie and Dreyfus at the ISNA convention. Rabbi Dreyfus said, in part:
She was greeted with long and vigorous applause. For her full text, see --
http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1303
And Rabbi Yoffie, speaking to a plenary session, said:
