Interreligious Relations

By Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey - Voice of Reason

Keeping It Real While Feeling the Hope: A Response to President Barack Obama's Historic June 4, 2009 Speech at Cairo University

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 11:07 AM PDT

By Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey

Like many people who trade in the world of political commentary, I was prepared to write a response to President Obama's speech from the perspective of content analysis and criticism of not only what he communicated, but what, from my perspective, he left unsaid.

And I will still do that because there are areas of concern that many, including Muslim Americans have about the status of the relationship between the broader Islamic world, the Muslim American community and the policies and practices of the United States government.

SHARING OF SACRED FOOD AND NEW DIRECTIONS FOR
JEWISH-MUSLIM DIALOG IN POST 9/11 AMERICA
by Simcha Raphael, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of
Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language
and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.” 1
-Barack Hussein Obama

In his inauguration address January 9, 2009 Barack Obama became the first American President
to publicly name the diverse religious traditions comprising American life in the 21st century. Clearly,

By Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
Director, Human and Civil Rights Division
MAS Freedom (Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation)

A Note for the Serious: Anti-Racism is Not “Theater”

Comments on the “Ahmadinejad Show” at the Durban II Conference in Geneva

Three years ago, I wrote an essay with critical comments about a gathering in Tehran that focused, in my opinion, on strong revisionist sentiments concerning the European Holocaust (Shoa) of the 1930’s and 1940’s. I noted that the genocide that engulfed European Jewry was truly a monstrous crime against humanity, and attempts by modern anti-Zionists (and also anti-Semites and racists of other stripes) must not be conflated into the legitimate criticism of the modern Jewish state of the support for Palestinian self-determination and freedom from Israeli occupation. I believed then, as I do now, that Muslims, and all people of morality, must never deny the reality of the historical suffering and oppression of any people.

by Arthur Waskow

[This article is extracted from Rabbi Waskow's remarks to a Peace Gathering of Christians convoked in January 2009 by the Historic Peace Churches (Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren), which also invited a small number of Jews and Muslims to act as participant-observers and commentators. This transcript of his talk is appearing in the Friends Journal. Copyright © 2009 by Arthur Waskow.]

I begin with a renewed version of the blessing traditionally offered before learning Torah—sharing wisdom—together:

Blessed are You, the Breath of Life, the Inter-breathing Spirit of the universe, who breathes into us the wisdom to know that we become holy by breathing together, by shaping our breath into words, and by shaping our words so that they aim towards wisdom.

[This article, along with Avi Katz' illustration of scorching danger and solar healing, is appearing in the Jerusalem Report as my "word of Torah" concerning the Shabbat of April 4, 2009, just before Passover. For important connections between this article and the Passover and Blessing of the Sun that follows, see the note at the end of this message. – Arthur Waskow]

Jewish tradition assigns the last chapter of the last of the classical prophets – Malachi, who spoke about 2500 years ago -- to be read on the Shabbat just before Passover. Read this year, the passage takes on an uncanny significance for our generation: