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Reimagining Muslim-Jewish Relations: A Response to My Jewish Critics

YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI April 29, 2014, 10:03 am 17
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Yossi Klein HaleviYossi Klein Halevi is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman
Institute, a member of the Institute's iEngage Project, and [More]

Last week, I wrote, together with Imam Abdullah Antepli, the Muslim chaplain
of Duke University, an article on The Times of Israel that attracted
considerable debate. We wrote supporting the decision of Brandeis University to
rescind awarding an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born
womens rights activist. The Brandeis administration reached its decision after
becoming aware of the fact that Ali had not only criticized Islamism but Islam
itself calling Islam an enemy against which war must be waged.
The central argument of the piece was that both Muslims and Jews need to stop
demeaning the other community by promoting and even honoring each others
renegades. Imam Abdullah and I defined a renegade as someone who damns his
or her community, as opposed to a dissident who seeks to change aspects of that
community.
I agree with my critics that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is courageous and does admirable
work. But our argument was not about Alis character or her work. Neither was it
about Alis freedom of speech. Brandeis has made clear that she is welcome to
speak on campus. Everyone is entitled to be heard; no one is entitled to an
honorary degree.
Our question to both our faith communities is this: How can we begin to heal our
increasingly pathological relationship? One answer, we believe, is that Muslim
and Jewish institutions must show restraint in celebrating those who
characterize the other as evil.
The point of our article was not to draw a symmetry between those Muslims and
Jews who repudiate their own communities. Rather, the symmetry we did draw
was in the need for both of our communities to refrain from promoting, let alone
honoring, those who demonize the other.
Can we demand that other faith groups whether Muslim or Christian stop
championing anti-Zionist Jews as examples of good Jews, if we endorse former
Muslims who call Islam an enemy faith? And is it really in the interests of the
Jewish people to identify with those who advocate war against a faith with over
a billion adherents?
I am concerned about a blindness within our community that either minimizes
the seriousness of expressions of contempt for Islam or else ignores those
entirely. Writing on the website of Commentary, for example, Daniel R.
Benson noted that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has said that her comments against Islam
were taken out of context and he left it at that. Would Benson accept that
response from someone who called Judaism an enemy against which war must be
waged?
The failure to distinguish between Islamism and Islam may explain a curious
ommision on the part of many of our critics, who seemed to miss the fact that
my article was co-written by a prominent Muslim American leader. Imam
Abdullah chose to go public, together with a Jewish Israeli, in urging both of our
communities to stop delegitimizing the identity and cherished beliefs of the
other. (That fact was not missed by Imam Abdullahs Muslim critics.)
Jews often ask: Where are the Muslims who condemn their own extremists? Yet
when confronted with a Muslim leader who does precisely that, the response is
often either to render him invisible or to patronizingly dismiss him as the
exception that proves the rule.
Imam Abdullah is rehardly a marginal figure in American Islam. He is the
founder of the Association of Muslim University Chaplains and is revered as a
role model by young Muslim Americans seeking a way to live as devout Muslims
within the American mainstream. Several years ago, Imam Abdullah led a
delegation of fellow imams to Auschwitz, to counter Holocaust denial in the
Muslim world.
Through Imam Abdullah, I am in contact with a growing number of prominent
young Muslim Americans who want to understand the Jewish people and our
story. I have been invited by Muslim university chaplains to speak on campuses
and by community leaders to speak in mosques.
In my encounters with American Muslims, I hear a great deal of anger against
Israel. But I also hear a profound respect for their Jewish neighbors, and a
need to understand why Israel is so important for the American Jewish
community.
This is hardly my experience alone. Former Israeli ambassador to Washington,
Michael Oren, sponsored an annual iftar the nightly meal breaking the Ramadan
fast at his residence in Washington. Dozens of prominent Muslim American
leaders attended, sending a clear signal to the Jewish community.
I believe that something different can happen between Muslims and Jews in
America, in part because it is America. But to begin a transformative dialogue,
both sides need to show the other minimal respect.
Finally, a word about Brandeis. Some of our critics noted that Brandeis had, in
the past, awarded honorary degrees to Desmond Tutu and Tony Kushner, both
vicious critics of Israel who have challenged Israels very legitimacy. Those
decisions, made by a previous Brandeis administration, are hardly worthy of a
Jewish-affiliated institution.
But Brandeis current president, Fred Lawrence, who assumed office in 2011, was
not responsible. Lawrences critics have ignored his principled stands on Israel,
including severing Brandeis relationship with the Al Quds University in
Jerusalem following a Hamas march on campus, replete with the Nazi salute,
that wasnt condemned by the Al Quds administration.
I appeal to Brandeis Jewish critics not to turn Fred Lawrence, a lover of Israel
and of his people, into an enemy. In defending our principles, lets refrain from
devouring each other.


Read more: Reimagining Muslim-Jewish Relations: A Response to My Jewish
Critics | Yossi Klein Halevi | Ops & Blogs | The Times of
Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/reimagining-muslim-jewish-relations-a-
response-to-my-jewish-critics/#ixzz30NmDbAT4
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