Islam, Judaism, and Christianity - The Conversation Continued

please welcome the Reverend Amy hello welcome to my living room we're so delighted to be gathered this evening and to welcome home our Nancy and Crist who doesn't need a welcome here this is really his living room but I wanted to make sure with all of the information in the bulletin that you also were aware that Omar is the president of the Akeem Institute for Islamic research which is a big part of where you spend all your time and energy to so we're so delighted to be gathered and do take advantage of the texting I've got my phone ready to go for your questions so I feel like this is 2.0 after last year and I want to get us a little deeper into the connectivity and some of the ways that we are similar in different and so we'll just begin what's one belief or practice that each of your faith traditions has in common we all mark time we all distinguished between mundane time regular time and holy time and I think that it's sort of the essence of the religious path is to make distinctions to create boundaries and by designating those times that leads to a whole life of celebration of morning of birth and death of the rituals that we do so I think we all we all have that in common we do it a little bit differently but yeah yeah I would say Abraham peace be upon him I think it's it's it's often funny to me when we talk about the Abrahamic faiths but we don't talk about Abraham so I think that getting back to the person of Abraham peace be upon him and I go back to him and and he's always someone that I felt a deep connection to and I wonder you know this was a man who faced the rejection of his people including his own family and now is claimed by the majority of the world and I think it's profound and one of the things that in the Quran Abraham is where actually the word Muslim is traced to Abraham peace be upon him the word Muslim Islam means peace through submission and a Muslim is one who attains peace through submission and therefore Abraham peace be upon him being the hallmark of submission and attaining peace therein whether he was in a fire that he was thrown into by his father or whether he was commanded to sacrifice his son that submission and the peace that he attained their end is something that we as Muslims are called to so I think that if we go back to the person of Abraham peace be upon him and his calling and his theology his his being then we we can find a lot of commonality and I often I think we've said this before that Judaism and Islam theologically share a ton in common for example where even the terminology at times will come up so I remember speaking to a rabbi and the word core Bonnie came up which is the sacrifice it's the same word in Arabic and in Hebrew that you come near to God through sacrifice a lot of the terminology a lot of the theology is very similar and there's you know the way we view covenant and Scripture and salvation and then obligations and obligations correct rituals so there's a lot of similarity between the Creed's between Islam and Judaism and then with Islamic Christianity the person of Jesus Christ peace be upon him that there's a lot in common there so when we build off of start with Abraham and then I think it's important for us to build after that with with our partners it's a hard question only because there are so many answers there are so many things that we share I guess for me the obvious one is prayer we all pray and we have specific ways of praying each branch of our respective traditions have unique ways of praying and it's taken very seriously and perhaps it's a sliding scale of how seriously that's taken but prayer definitely routes us we have that spiritual experience when we do it and I think in all three traditions at least at least in some way there's a physicality of prayer that does manifest itself and is important let me just follow up on that with that sense of each tradition has a sense of direction in prayer can you reflect on that based on each tradition why why do we face a certain way why are why are our holy places holy sites situated in directional meaning so in Christianity East is important often churches are oriented such that congregations are praying toward the East you're not in one of those places [Laughter] it's fair it's true however East is still very important and and for us facing east is is is not critical right I don't think anyone I don't think any Christian traditions accept Eastern Orthodox traditions the Orthodox traditions tend to place facing east in prayer actually quite significantly the other Christian groups don't really make East that important but there is scriptural backing for that there are multiple examples particularly the New Testament where there are references to resurrection and a second coming in the son of man returning all from the east and so it's very traditional that worship spaces would be oriented toward the east I suppose out of respect and I also suppose maybe just in case it happens when you're in church you're facing the right direction so I think actually the facing east part the Jewish tradition is probably responsible for in there are references to it in the Hebrew Scriptures as well in Chronicles and in first Kings to face God's house and of course the temple was built in in well it's only East if you're in the West right it depends where you are so so do you depending on where you are in the world is it you leave Jerusalem yes so that and if you're in Jerusalem you face toward the Temple Mount and if you're at the Temple Mount you face toward the Holy of Holies you get as close as you you keep trying to face where God is supposed to reside I mean we know that God resides everywhere but but this is a this is a way of orienting oneself toward God and let me just say that even though this is very important in Jewish tradition temple Emmanuel right up the road the first prayer space where the ark faces east is the newest one just built about three years ago all the other ones face other other directions so you know but I think it's interesting about you know there's a historical reason for for facing east being facing toward the holiest place but I also think about the name Jerusalem where we face and that name means the heritage the multiple Heritage's and it's a name that is a plural name the word yerushalayim in Hebrew is in the plural and I think that in a way one could say that the inclination to to face in that direction has nothing to do with the land what it has to do with is the idea that God is a plurality and that God belongs to everyone and that as it says in Isaiah my house shall be a house for all peoples and so there is a sort of Messianic aspect to facing the Jerusalem the Temple Mount the Holy Poly's well if anyone would like to come to a place that's always been facing East Valley Valley Ranch Islamic center we always face ysou but but the story of the the prayer direction for us is I think it adds another dimension so initially with the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him the Muslims actually faced Jerusalem in their prayer direction and so the holy Kaba which I'll get to in a minute the Kaaba would be placed in Mecca the Prophet peace be upon him would face the Kaaba while also facing towards the direction of Jerusalem and it's literally called it quits at Auto dosa which is the Holy Land to us so initially they faced in that direction and that continued for the first fourteen plus years of the 23 year mission of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him when they were persecuted and run out to Medina a revelation came in the Quran that they would face Mecca in their prayer direction and there's something very profound about that unity of prayer direction for one I get asked sometimes do Muslims worship the black box do they worship the Kaaba and the answer is known it was never understood that way it was never understood to actually be an object to be worshipped but rather unites us in a prayer direction that that is the place that Abraham established a home built a house with his son Ishmael peace be upon him for God to be honored in worship so it unites us in direction and obligatory prayer so in congregational prayer in our obligatory prayers we must face that direction for the voluntary prayers the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon would even pray on the back of a horse on the camel facing towards any direction the sense of uniting us and direction you know when when Malcolm X went to Hajj when he went to Mecca he he recognized something very powerful that you cannot experience true unity as a people until you experience a sense of unity of purpose so the idea of circling around the count by placing God at the center of your life not believing that God is constrained to up to that place of worship but rather people of all races white black yellow brown circling around praying in one direction wearing the same clothes treating each other as as human beings all as the creation of God fosters a great sense of unity so it unites us in prayer in our direction and it is our direction as Muslims when we're buried were buried facing our faces faced towards Mecca as well so it's sort of you you remain longing for God no matter where you are you always sort of faced in that direction so since we've stumbled into sacred writing Torah Scripture Quran talked about how law forms community in your tradition and you can feel free to reflect on a specific teaching or in general but at the basis of all faiths is a sense of God's law I guess I'll start that one the Quran is called a light and it's called healing and in the plan the Quran is very different as a sacred scripture because we view it as the Word of God Himself the beauty of the Quran and there are many things that are beautiful about it but it's pronounced and read the exact same way over 1400 years throughout the world so when you you Muslim in Kenya recites it the same way as a Muslim in Beijing recites at the same way as a Muslim in Texas and there isn't a Texas accent to the crime just recited sometimes you could hear the accent but every pronunciation is maintained to its perfection it's a science of how to pronounce the words and the letters of the Quran so that unified text that same sacred scripture that's been preserved over 1400 years and we look at it as the Word of God himself but I find it interesting as described as a light and what makes light powerful is that it's manifest itself and it manifests everything around it so it makes things clear around you and the description of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was as a walking Quran he was the represent him that way actually but he practiced what he preached that if you wanted to see the themes of the Quran of mercy of love of justice of worship and devotion first and foremost to that to that one God then you saw it in his person and so in a way you ask yourself how do I become a light to someone else so the Quran is definitely not just meant to be inspirational it's meant to be instructional it is as a community we're called to be out of quran in arabic which are people of the quran and a question that i think we have to ask ourselves when we talk about sacred scripture is what does your scripture look like embodied today in your context and I think that's where the disconnect is often found we see sacred scripture abused all the time we see it used to torture to punish to to terrorize to do all sorts of things and you know when when Jeff Sessions quoted the Bible to justify the family separation policy it took Christians to come out and to reclaim the Bible and to say no that's not what the Bible says in fact the Bible lifts up this and so as a Muslim for example I would say to my community you know one of the first verses of the Quran actually condemned a practice in Arabia which was to bury the daughter's life because girls were in a desert harsh desert climate they were looked at as being a liability not as a value and so they used to practice female infanticide and one of the first verses of the Quran was when the young girl who was killed unjustly is asked for what crime were you killed and so what I would challenge my community with is how can you read that verse and not make the connection with jackeline whose picture was broadcast all over the young girl from Guatemala who suffered who died for no crime that she committed so we have to make those connections between our Sacred Scripture and are very unsacred times that you know sometimes and and and ask ourselves how do we become light in the darkness how do we actually reflect that scripture and embody it in our dark times I see law and the Christian tradition is not well I think Christian leaders often create sets of laws around Scripture and think very clearly Jesus says the law is not what will save you and part of what I think we have to strive to do is reckon that message with our human need for structure you know we need some structure around us some parameters some expectations put around how we behave and that's where I think a lot of Christian churches can get off the rails is when they perhaps extrapolate that idea a little too far and they think they know just a little too clearly what Jesus was saying because I had someone once say that theology was developed in order to make something simple very complicated or else we'd actually have to do it and so mostly what we get in the Christian tradition from Jesus is you love God and you love your neighbor as yourself that's there's your parameter that's so broad and that is so open that we immediately say then how and it's at that moment that we can get in trouble and I think a lot of times what leaders will do is they will run that down so far and so finite that they've taken away all the opportunity for God to be there and that's when you get communities that act out of fear and act out of desperation and begin to draw conclusions that actually hurt people when clearly that was not the intention but we're human and because we don't necessarily we inherited obviously a brilliant complex legal tradition from the Jewish people but it was remade in a way that opened up almost too much interpretation and too many Christians don't know what scripture says so when they hear someone say scripture says X then they just kind of go with it because they don't know the difference and I think that it's our job it's incumbent upon us to really ground ourselves in what it says so that we know you can't just pick a verse out of some book to prove something you like to simple you've got to see the big picture and of course for Christians everything goes through the lens of Christ and so if something in scripture seems to go against the essence of Jesus well Jesus wins and we have to meet we just have to start there and these other human people who were great good faithful people are not Jesus and we don't have a scripture that we believe is literal words of God and so everything that we have whether they be letters or stories written by good human people although inspired still go through the lens of Christ so if I may oh this is this is a for the sake of conversation and it's actually not a push back but just to further elaborate I think that the issue is the subjectivity of the lens at times right and so an Islamic understanding sort of what you mentioned about Jesus wins the the Quran is actually not a very thick book 600 pages but it's not it's not a very expensive book the prophetic example of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him guards the interpretation of the Quran if you will so it's not so if you want to know how the pull-down is to be understood you look at the person of the Prophet peace be upon him then if you want to understand the person of the Prophet peace be upon him you look to his companions which are the his family his companions are sort of the equivalent of the disciples the idea is that a lot of times when fighting extremists interpretations you take it back to the original intents from an Islamic perspective and you say well that's not how the Prophet understood the verse and that's not how the early Muslims understood that verse and that's a way of actually pushing away interpretations that are unfounded and baseless and I think one of the great challenges of theology is to almost resist the constant changing times around them while still paying attention to them not becoming religion can't become stagnant it can't become unreasonable it can't become you know it cannot become a source of anxiety for people but it still has to true religion has to find a way to resist societal pressure to we're honest conversations can still be had but you can't ignore societal issues you got to pay attention to your problems you got to pay attention to the issues you got to pay attention to how people are interacting with Scripture but I I think that's that's probably a great challenge that we all we all will face with ourselves is you know what is the lens right and how do we how do we actually maintain integrity as religious scholars as theologians how do we really maintain an honest discussion about what these texts were intended to mean as opposed to just becoming tools for us to where we use them how we find convenient as opposed to what was true to the intent of those revelations and I like the idea of you almost have concentric rings down to the core and you know for us you start with Jesus and then you kind of go out to his apostles and then you've got people who were then students of those people and you also have the tradition that comes in there and if things are pretty good then yeah take take all of that there are plenty of moments when agreement occurs but then you get I mean you brought it up you get someone like Jeff who pulls a quote from Romans and says then we can do this that is very destructive and very hurtful you know I've heard that and I thought listen yeah I'm not a lawyer but you just got in my lane and so that is not what that means and if you if we need to as a as a motive argument say well that's not the most center ring right so Paul good guy he tried hard and he wrote good stuff and still can make a mistake or wrote something very specific for a specific group of people trying to answer their questions to help them be faithful we can't then just cherry-pick a thing out written by one person for one group of people 2,000 years ago and say that is exactly what we do go beyond that and go deeper and what was the inspiration what was the essence of that writing so that it still makes sense today because that relevancy is very helpful you know I think I think too many people think that religion is static you've got this finished document and the end and then everything else that comes after that is just some kind of I don't know we ignore perhaps demands of today right when there are plenty of things about today that could not have been foreseen right and so we it is we are called upon to make those interpretive decisions but not at the room not in order to say we cannot sacrifice the most fundamental intent right of what those writings were meant to convey right what process here but I you know this is something else I think that we all have in common although we don't always recognize it because we do it differently in each traditions but you know the Torah the Hebrew Scripture is called the law often translated as the law but really what the what Torah means is teaching and it also comes from the root or which also means light so and I so the scripture is really about is a it's a textbook it's a opportunity for contemplation for wisdom for enlightenment and within it of course there are lots of different examples of judgment so we also have another word Deen which means judgment which also sometimes gets translated as law it's probably the closest thing we have we have lots of examples of that we also have lots of examples of raqqa meme of mercy and as we go out in those consiga from you know Torah out to the concentric circles of the so we call Torah the oral law was given orally then we go to the Talmud which is called the written law and if you and and it's there's a intermediary step but it's all trying to make sense of the examples in the text book and the Torah that are there and what does this mean for what I'm going through now in my context in my time period and that process continues throughout the and it continues to this day we still have something called response aware if there's a question that has to do with Jewish law what to do in a certain kind of situation someone can write to a group of Rabbis and/or a rabbinic Authority and get the sort of history of where this has come down but I think ultimately the main thing is that law becomes a case-by-case process it is not one law for time it is can it is context is important and motive is important and lots of things are taken into account to try to create an equitable Society one of the issues that rabbis and scholars deal with and in our say in the continuation of our sacred texts is that balance between what's called Deen judgment law and raqqa mean mercy and the rabbi's say in several different places in in interpretive law in interpretive texts that God actually always prays that God's mercy will supersede God's judgment and that there will be an opening of hearts and minds and I think about you know what we what do we try to do as parents obviously we all have to have rules and laws and and expectations and ways of doing things that create the framework for a life and we want our children to follow those and at the same time we want them to know that no matter what even when they don't follow them which they are like we are bound not we're human and we do that even even God does that right we see examples in our scripture I don't know about yours in ours God's you know not always making the right choices but you know we we hope that our sense of love for our children that our children will feel that love even when we're trying to get them to do what we think is the right thing and I think that's sort of the idea of law within Judaism that the the love is always there we don't talk about it as much as Christians but we have it that's the underlying expectation that God loves every single one of us unconditionally and at the same time there are there there's a way to live life that we learn from our history from our scripture from our tradition so I think a lot of the terms are used dean is a term we have as well rama is mercy so it sounds very similar but you know with Islam last last year we had that we went into like a deep theological tangent about the infallibility of the prophets and whether prophets were infallible incapable of making mistakes and making the wrong choices so from a Muslim perspective God does not err he cannot make mistakes he cannot make the wrong choices that he has an all-encompassing time all in all encompassing wisdom he knows what comes next and so he acts in accordance with that so there's a departure there I think that what what what happens in Islam is that there's this there's this intention to preserve the consistency of the Creed across the prophets and across time so that the creed should remain the same and creed is not subject to changing times that divinity salvation questions of questions of the essence of God and the essence of Scripture should remain across the prophets remain across all times and that should be maintained and then when it comes to law there are laws that are across all times as well and then there are laws that are organic and that's where the word jurisprudence comes felt so jurisprudence is meant to be organic it's meant to take into consideration changing times and the balancing act in Islam is the letter and the spirit of the law without sacrificing either one so for example if the letter of a particular law cannot be applied in a particular context because it would contradict the spirit of that law then the letter remains but the injunction would be suspended on the basis that what this means in our time what legal scholars would say in our time this means is something different and we have to maintain the mikasa so in Islam we have yes so the word Sharia don't get scared there sometimes it's like you know I got a I have to when I say the word show do you think of I'm not even gonna say what you think of I won't protect ya so the word Sharia which would mean the way the overarching way which in which actually means a path to water so I path to a path to guidance a path to water so there's the overarching way and the way that v jurisprudence is described is that the particular injunctions and jurisprudence and this is really interesting because there's a whole science over time called Mikasa Mikasa did not what were the objectives of the law and in Islam the objectives of Sharia which by the way doesn't mean law surprise surprise Soriana Vermont law and it certainly did not mean the law of Saudi Arabia but the objectives of Sharia which are the which are the ways the overarching principles and ethics are v the preservation of religion the preservation of life the preservation of intellect the preservation of property the preservation of honor and so everything operates under that sense of preservation and then the particulars are interpreted in light of those in light of preserving the the ethics that were behind those particular injunctions and we have different categories in Judaism but Halle ha is also the way right it's it's also often translated as law another word that's translated as law but it technically you know from the root means the way how do you live your life how do you progress right saying does your religion encourage non-believers or non-members to convert and follow your faith if so how does one go about doing that I just wouldn't become a Christian a Jew Muslim there's a beautiful verse in the Quran called there's no that says there's no compulsion in religion like Roja 15 well the beauty of that verse like offi Dean there's no compulsion religion is that was actually revealed to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him when he was a head of state in Medina so it was not revealed as some Islamophobes which suggests when the Muslims were weak and they were kind of like don't force us into your religion of polytheism it was revealed actually when the Muslims were in a place of power to uphold the right of religious minorities to practice their religion properly Islam believes now obviously that's not how it it gets filtered throughout history there are people that abuse the religion there are people that persecute religious minorities past-president and I think that's true for Islam and Christians never persecuted religious minorities but you know Muslims Christians the point is is that people are people and we've said this right that there would be people that would abuse power and that would persecute religious minorities but technically speaking Islam has a tradition of legal pluralism where it was a group rights model where under the Ottomans for example they had what's called the middle that system the Christians practiced their religion they have their churches without being without having religion forced upon them the Jews practiced their religion with their synagogues with their scripture with their own laws who actually and so it's legal pluralism the rabbi or the the the priest or whoever it would be would report back to the to the Islamic Courts and so it was meant to be that way to preserve that sense of everyone's rights to their own faith and interestingly enough as Islam went into Iraq and Persia it was not the dominant religion for hundreds of years or Austrian ISM was because there was an understanding that we can't force even with the rule of those places we can't force people to abandon their religion religion is religion is meant to be a relationship between a person and God not between two people so taking away a person's to determine their own beliefs to come to their own conclusion about God is the most ungodly thing that you could do and so there's no compulsion in religion and in Islam we do believe in conveying the message so we have a principle conveyed don't convert we convey that if you give the message of Islam to people but you don't force it upon anybody whether you're in a place of power or otherwise you are not to convey the message of Islam to people so you know Judaism is in its origin meant only for the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob so it's very clear and that's not to say that that that would be the only religion but it's very clear that there's room for people to find their way to God without being Jewish and we have you know there's a there's an understanding of the laws that particularly that apply to everyone that are called the Noahide laws there are seven laws that are apply to everyone and the other 605 in the Torah are for the Jews so lucky yeah so anybody who wants to come and compare the bird to Judaism you know and the truth is that from for most of Jewish history it was not encouraged to convert there was a lot of dissuade of conversion and it's unclear how much of that was theological and how much of that was because we could get killed by Christians if we tried it but honestly you know there is a little of each of those and Jews and Muslims coexisted for over a thousand years very well yeah it was the Christians that caused this [Laughter] sorry did I write this more I just thought I just thought I'd see the more there are of us the more variations and extreme interpretations yet so there are more of you so give you a break but we won't cotton well we won't hold you accountable but yes so so yes you may convert to Judaism the reform movement in particular has become very encouraging of people who want to explore Judaism it's a long process of getting to know what the Jewish people is which is a little unique in terms of its you know there there are aspects of Judaism that are very hard to replicate or participate in without being born into it and so but there are also aspects of Judaism that people who are born into it never appreciate or end up expressing so we see especially in the reform movement that our our faith has been really enriched by people who have chosen to become Jewish I would say for Christians there's definitely a historical shift over time in the first few centuries it was not explicitly evangelical I would say it was very much like a convey not convert they were excited and they they loved what they had found and so people wanted some of that and I think that that was really attractive and that began to multiply when Rome got involved that's when stuff shifted so blame Rome right when in Rome so you know we often refer to that as the problem of Constantine is once Rome got involved with Christianity made it first legal and then official of the Empire it got too connected and I would you might even call it too politicized or secular for for that period of time and then if it's abdun flowed since then but I think there's no way around identifying Christianity as a more conversion centric tradition a more evangelical tradition and that's certainly what most Christians understand we talk or I like to talk a lot about the difference between an inherited faith and a chosen faith and I kind of like what Nancy was saying in the sense that when you inherit a faith take a lot of things for granted when you choose a faith then you really understand its essence you are excited about it I think you actually changed the way you live which by the way is the point and that makes a much bigger impact on your life and I cannot help but this is completely you know probably shouldn't even talk about it but one of my favorite scenes in Sex in the City because I love that one my one of my favorite scenes is when Charlotte York who is a very good Episcopalian decide she has fallen in love with a Jewish man and he will not marry someone who's not Jewish and so of course she decides that she's going to become Jewish then because she loves this man and so she puts on her pearls and she bakes a basket of muffins and puts him in and she trots herself down to the synagogue and she knocks on the door and the rabbi answers the door and she says hello I'm Charlotte York and I want to become Jewish and he looks at her he says we're not interested [Applause] so that's it well no there you go that would not happen yeah I thought we were gonna we agree back there to do football analogies you just took this to another what's your favorite scene from another question another question for the gathering so the discussion this evening that seems to be focused on the roots of each faith and how it informs and lives now so how do these religions how do your faith traditions see the future where are we going and I would add in here to this question knowing that we are a single global community and all the pressures that come with that and what challenges us as a global community climate all the resources we share are codependent on how do where's religion where's your religions voice in place in that for the future well I can I mean I think that there are two like everything else in our world today there's a polarization right there are you know the Jews who think we've gotta just batten down the hatches protect what we've got build our walls you know strengthen our our coffers and you know just get ready and and to survive in really tough times and there are others who say you know there's no way that that's going to ultimately lead to survival that we really need to be spending our time and effort and resources enhancing our relationships with other groups and not not becoming other groups but certainly doing things like we're doing tonight where we get to know each other better we get to trust each other and we work together to mutually combat the that would mitigate against our ability to live out our faith peacefully healthfully in an inclusive way in the world demographically speaking we are going to shift in a very significant way in the next 80 to 100 years specifically around religion so most studies show that presuming current birth rates and population trends and things like that that by 2050 yes what Nancy said earlier is there are more more Christians than any other single religious group in the world right now but by 2050 Islam will be very close there will likely be about as many Christians as Muslims in the world and by 2100 there will be far more Muslims than Christians in the world and so that shift demographically is just it's happening but sorry about that we might reconsider evangelism reconsider because we're going to stay small otherwise it's right then didn't will ban together a lot of kids we can I do think as you say Christians have more babies now that's Episcopal evangelism is having babies that's what we always say right so what what I do think that we have it took you a minute to get that didn't it what I do think is important if you look at the landscape of faith in the world going forward is that we really do stop pointing at differences between people of faith and realize that being a person of faith now and definitely in the future is going to become less and less common and so we have even more reason to find understanding and trust build all of that work together because people who do not ground themselves with a strong faith identity are ultimately more dif than those who do and I think that if we can seek that understanding and not lose ourselves not lose the differences that's that's not the problem the problem is misunderstanding our differences if we can understand those differences better then I think most of the time we're actually going to be seeking many of the same things seeking peace seeking justice seeking kindness seeking charity protecting those who are most vulnerable I mean we all hold that in common and I think more and more people who do not identify as faithful people don't exercise their actions in the same way so I'm from a historical perspective one of the greatest cop outs and you know consider me biased is that religion is amol is responsible for the most violence in history I do not believe that to be the case because I do not believe the Crusades were about religion right I don't believe that Isis is about religion right I don't believe that the the genocide of the Rohingya Muslims is about religion I don't believe that the Chinese persecution of the oilers is about religion these are political issues economic and political issues that get window dressed with religion and that's been the case historically and it's true today extremist groups exist because of political circumstances so when I talk about Isis for example like I know one you know Muslims have been in Iraq for a very long time and people didn't pick up the Quran and decide that they're gonna start killing people Isis exists primarily because the entire country of Iraq has been destroyed there is no infrastructure anymore it's complete anarchy and in the mosaic of militant groups and bandits and and and other types of militias that have that have developed Isis exists their imperialists will use religion historically for very evil means that's because to an P realist nothing is sacred religion is merely a tool of imperialism so I think that religion historically has been used for evil but it was not the source of most of the evil that's taken place in munch in Rome and we could go through the examples that have marred and tainted all of the faith traditions I mean I don't believe that the Ku Klux Klan that uses a cross actually has anything to do with that cross right I think that I don't think there's anything about Christianity in there and I and I think that if the cross didn't exist the Ku Klux Klan would burn something else right now with that being said when you when you mix religion with an evil political agenda it becomes particularly combustible and we have to acknowledge that and that's why it's important for us to push back on those interpretations to to rescue our religions from those that try to use it for evil means now here's what I'm gonna say and and this is what I believe what we're doing here which is special I think that the idea that the only way to coexist is for each one of us to relinquish a bit of ourselves in our faith traditions so that we can be more uniform I think that's deeply problematic the more I believed in my Islam the more I believe in the rights of mine are Muslim neighbor upon me the more I believe in my religion the more I believe in our humanity right and so discovering the purity of faith in a way that does not make us uniform but makes us truly united that forces us to co-exist not just by tolerating one another but in a relationship of service to one another and to our broader society I think that's special and I think what we are doing here in Dallas hopefully we can spread to different parts of the world and we can serve as an example we're not perfect here but I think that we're on to something and I think that if we're able to really move this forward then hopefully we can teach other people around the world about what it means to truly love your religion to believe in it even in the most Orthodox us while still having a deep sense of love for the person that lives next door to you that does not believe in your same features when using tonight as an example of going beyond that what I think you said is is perfect the Klan uses a cross most people in this congregation know that's not Christianity however when non-christian groups do something violent we don't always know that is not their tradition and it's the understanding and the exposure that is so critical which is why I think something like tonight although good is hopefully just the inspiration to then do more to get connected to people here in Dallas to learn from each other to learn what really the heart of these traditions are so that then we are confident that when someone does something in the name of a religion that we know it is them doing that that is not their religion and I totally agree you can look throughout history even modern history Northern Ireland is a classic example of this when surveyed people in Northern Ireland before the peace treaty ranked religious identity as fourth on the list of what motivated them to hate the other now we would say it's a lot of Catholic Protestant stuff because that's what was projected upon them but that's not what motivated them it was all politics if we can in this country you are so much more likely to be hurt or even killed by someone born here who is white than you are by anyone else and yet we're very quick to see some white person who does something bad and know that that was not Christianity that was a person who was sick but then it happens that someone else outside the Christian Church outside the Christian group or even outside America does something to hurt someone and we don't necessarily make that distinction and it's not being made for us because if it was being made for us then we wouldn't watch 24-hour news and they couldn't sell commercials and so the idea of making sure we are scared and making sure we are uncertain keeps us tuned in and it keeps the money flowing we can do better than that we can spend time with each other and really understand that at the root of all these traditions is peace and once we know that then fear is taken out of the hands of the people who seek to manipulate us and if I could say there there is a you know a lot of a lot of I think a lot of people don't understand why Muslims are particularly allergic to calling a group like Isis Islamic or using the term Islamic terrorism why are you giving a group who ninety-eight percent of their victims are Muslim 98 percent of the victims of Isis are Muslim why are you giving them that legitimacy that they crave so much when you actually give in and you call and a lot of Muslims for example you know right now we have the Rohingya genocide and Myanmar and there's the term Buddhist extremists yes the people that are ethnically cleansing Muslims in Myanmar are saying they're doing it in the name of Buddhism I would never call them Buddhist extremists because I will not give them that legitimacy that Authority I will never call the KKK a Christian group Boko Haram in Nigeria an Islamic group the Lord's Resistance Army in Central African Republic a Christian group they are the devil's army right there's no we should not we should not give these groups the legitimacy in our religions that they claim especially when the majority of the victims of their religious persecution are hugely people that belong to their same brutally and I think that this is where the question here or the term understanding what is understanding right what does it mean to really understand someone there's a quote from from Malcolm X who often is associated with hate but he said something really beautiful when he came back from Mecca 1964 he said we need more light about one another lights creates understanding understanding creates love love creates patience patience creates unity and if you actually walk through that statement light creates understanding when we talk about building bridges of understanding are we just talking about coming to the table and I have to accept the conclusions that you've already drawn unfairly about my faith and not have a chance to actually undo some of the misconceptions that you have because you think you've gotten them from a trustworthy source and you swear on your mother's grave that Tucker Carlson is telling the truth about Islam and what he has said is fact and we must accept that that's the same mistake that a Muslim who lives in the Muslim world that has never met a Christian will take that every Christian is a colonialist and a crusader because you know Isis uses the word Crusaders and they use that to describe American militarism here it's civilization Jihad's when you use words like that you create you already project a conclusion on another group of people and so you rob that person of the right to represent themselves and their own terminology their own epistemology their own theology if you really want to create understanding then I have to be willing to sit at a table and do away with my do away with my conclusions it takes vulnerability to create understanding you know what tell me what I don't know tell me what you want to know what you want me to know about you and know about your religion know about your culture know about your way of life if we believe that human beings have been created in a way that's essentially good where are you and why are you there and tell me about yourself I'm not gonna force you to work within my moral framework or within my conclusions of you I actually want you to represent yourself light creates understanding when we learn to understand each other that way we're able to love one another when we love one another we're patient with one another because we are understanding of each other's concerns and why people are in so much pain and that patience creates unity the only way we can get to that unity is not in the name of some meaningless empty usage of the word peace it's not going to come through treaties it's not going to come through forced agreements what it will come through is actually building bridges of understanding I think you've jump right into one of the questions from The Gathering which is what is the greatest challenge to interfaith relationship so part of it is creating that understanding and that opportunity but is there more that is the challenge to building an interfaith understanding or way of being what is it that keeps us apart I remember last year after this panel a year ago what I heard most often at the reception were from people who attended who are not Christian who were so surprised to be treated well here and on the one hand I'm so glad they felt they were treated well here but on the other hand that they would have shown up here not expecting to be treated well is unfortunate because I think in essence we all sort of suspect that someone from outside our tradition is either doesn't really want to know us or worse that they are afraid or going to judge us or actually dislike or hate us and that's a big barrier because that could be true listen I know plenty I hear plenty of Christian leaders some in this city who are ugly and I get that impressions of Christians can be pretty bad because I watch many Christian people on TV and I don't like them either and so you know I might love them because I'm supposed to but don't like them and I think that if we could perhaps jump the hurdle to know that people likely do want to know well what I really want to say is let's start from the place that people want to know each other I don't know if that's true I want it to be true I really do want for us to believe that but maybe that's not and maybe we can do better no I think you look echo chambers are very comfortable it's comfortable to have someone paint your entire world for you or through your TV screen or your computer screen and then accept all of that and live your life thinking that you've got it all figured out and you've got everyone else figured out because those that set of conclusions has been customized for you to make you comfortable complacent and you know at the same time you know it allows us to not take responsibility for ourselves it's like baby food you don't the work at it one of the challenges is that Muslims and Jews are a very small minority in there you know it's just hard for us to you know they're sometimes first there to be enough of us even to get to reach the kinds of numbers of Christians that there are in our community and and by the way there are other religious groups in our city as well not just Christians and Muslims but you know what I'm finding is that people are coming together around issues I you know one of the challenges right now is we're all isolated from each other it's not only what we hear when we're in our echo chamber it's that you know we're being sort of socialized to be an echo chambers we're and to be isolated from people and we feel lonely and so when we feel lonely we gravitate to her people who make us feel comfortable and who we don't have to grapple and and who don't cause us I mean the other thing is I think sometimes people don't enter into these conversations because they feel like they don't know enough about their own tradition to be able to be knowledgeable enough to enter into the conversation and I think that's a big barrier that you know that we face so you know I think part of it is just starting with asking as many questions about our own faith and what it means to us and where and what it calls us to do as asking other people about it you know first we have to start with you know with our own reckoning with ourselves and being brave enough to ask those questions and take the time you know to do it okay I think look getting to know someone who you've been taught to believe is inherently out to get you takes a lot of courage on your part one of the things that these groups are doing that these media outlets are doing that in our politics is happening is that you are being you said socialized to think that you can't trust anyone's niceness because there's an agenda at play so if someone if someone acts different from what we told you they're supposed to act like which is utter barbarians then that means that's because they want to take over and subject you to their barbarity but they're just they're just playing it low-key right now that that's the same wasn't that used against the Japanese wasn't that used against the Jews in America that wasn't that use against Catholics it's used it's such a it is so comfortable so easy so low so cheap so lazy to just say no matter how they act just know that they really have this nefarious agenda and that that's something that we have to have the courage to overcome it takes a lot of vulnerability to talk to someone and to admit that you don't know anything about them and to be courageous enough because you know you mentioned we have to know about our own faith traditions and that's I think what it is is that sometimes there's an insecurity if we if we mingle too much we might lose ourselves you know if we talk too much to other people then what's going to happen to our core identity I'm not sure I can turn to a conversation that means that you have an insecurity and so it takes being secure with yourself to be able to truly sit and appreciate the other and when it comes to interface I'll say this you know I've had I've been a part of a lot of interfaith dialogues as I'm sure we all have thank you and one of the things that can happen we can remain at the level of dialogue and it can become very you know we call kumbaya or sis let's all hold hands sing Kumbaya we're all the same let's not talk about our differences let's not mention the differences because we're not going to be able to deal with those it might get awkward it might get uncomfortable here's the thing is interfaith really about embracing our differences or is it embracing each other despite our differences and I think that's that that's the nuance that we have to have when we come to these places and not just embrace each other despite those differences but then show how my being a Christian my being a Jew my being a Hindu my being a Buddhist and then of course in my case my being a Muslim makes this place better makes our world better how we can actually form coalition's around uplifting causes that we can agree are a part of who we are rooted in our scripture rooted in our being I wanted to share this with you all because this is something you won't hear in the news there were six mosque attacks in the two months after Donald Trump's inauguration as president in January as we sat here the next day there was a mosque that was bombed yep and you know in Texas yesterday in Katy there was a gunman that opened fire on a mosque and drove off in Katy Texas you don't hear about that stuff that's the cost of hate and we saw it in Pittsburgh in that synagogue there's a lot of programming that goes into a person before they walk into that church in Charleston or that synagogue in Pittsburgh or that mosque in Quebec and murder a bunch of people there's a lot of programming there and one of the things I asked one of those protesters cuz we got those armed protesters are show up to our mosques self-proclaimed white supremacist that hold their guns and hold up their you know their confederate flags and come in front of our mosque i asked i just asked one guy one time i said you know did you ever think about actually walking into the mosque without your gun and talking to us before you decided to come outside the mosque and hold your big old rifle and yell at little children did you ever think maybe just maybe i'm wrong let me walk into a mosque and talk to people so that apprehension that you mentioned that a non-christian might feel when they walk into this church i want to invite all of you to actually come to our mosques just walk in i promise you you won't be hurt you will be welcomed and please know that you will be you will be shown love much like the love that's been shown to everyone as they came to this church all of you because i think one of the differences that you'll model for us is what is it about your faith that you cherish the most and so can you be vulnerable and share that in in whatever ritual practice belief teaching years history but what is it that you just cherish it's sort of the heart of your muslim identity the heart of your jewish identity the heart of your christian identity well i think about a passage from our morning prayer service that says that every day in every moment god is creating the world anew and that you know creation is an ongoing process and our role is to open our eyes to learn to allow ourselves to be enlightened by what's happening in every moment and to be shaped and changed and not to be afraid to be changed by the by change and to be changed by change you ready Chris look like you're indeed you better not pull out another show reference TV John I'm not ready to go so I would say look for me I actually I had a conversion process of sorts so I have a interfaith family you know my mom grew up in Bethlehem and so we Palestinian Christians and Muslims on my mom's side and I did have the opportunity as a teenager to really dive in Scripture I met several Christian pastors and several rabbis and one of the people I met in Baton Rouge Louisiana was Jimmy Swaggart who told me I was going to hell but that was fun I left with a appreciation of people so I can appreciate how people had their own journeys so that's one thing that one of the reasons why I feel so blessed to be in companionship I just love meeting people that are sincerely devoted to their faith in a way that doesn't make them a jerk it's it's so refreshing when you see someone that is truly a devoted Christian a devoted you are devoted whatever and it doesn't make them a jerk it actually makes them a good wholesome person with some set of consistent principles and morality and and decency like that to me is special I value that for me personally with Islam Islam has a great sense of clarity it's it's very clear in its concepts it's very pristine so the concepts of tawheed of monotheism and what monotheism means the concepts of of Justice which are very near and dear to me calming justice is something that I was oriented with growing up I had a humanitarian family Malcolm was asked what he valued so much about Islam he said how explicit the anti-racism scripture was like you didn't have to extrapolate from passages on equality you there are scriptures about you know the last speech of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was that there's no superiority over of an Arab over a non-arab or a white over a black those those scriptures on gender equity those scriptures on economic equity and anti exploitation I did a series which I invite all of you to actually view online called 40 hadith on social justice hadith is a prophetic tradition in sama saying of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him in 40 hadith on social justice and just covers everything from racism to animal rights to environmental rights and it's so explicit and clear and to me that really spoke to me the clarity of belief the clarity of principles and how how the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him himself was so devoted to those things and you could see it in his own life and that was that was something that that spoke to me as well and looking at the examples of the prophets I often say this that you know it's it's just it's it's a blessing to be able to look at the lives of Moses peace be upon him and Jesus peace be upon him and Muhammad peace be upon him and Abraham peace be upon him and Maryam Mary the mother of Jesus and hacia the wife of Pharaoh all of these found in our Quran and draw inspiration from their steadfastness in very clear beliefs steadfastness and part of the steadfastness came from the clarity of vision and the clarity of belief so that that that's might been my faith journey you know when you dressed like this people often feel one of two things happen either they repel and just turn the other way or they feel like they need to confess something to you and so oftentimes people will confess that they have not been to church for a while and I regularly say well we're in the redemption business so come on back but I think that's probably what I think is most precious is that I think at the root a lot of people talk about love that's great love is great but I think that redemption is perhaps what I find and most compelling most important and my favorite scripture passage is the very end of the Gospel of Mark where Jesus has resurrected and the women are there and they're stunned and they want to run back and tell the Apostles what has happened and the witnesses who are there at the tomb say go tell the disciples and Peter that he has gone ahead of you and I remember reading that for the first time and thinking why and Peter except Peter is the one who explicitly denied him now when Jesus was most vulnerable and being most poorly treated and was about to be put to death Peter who was the rock who was the number one who could have at least had the integrity of claiming him did not deny him and so upon the resurrection the message is very clear go tell the disciples and Peter that he's gone before you so no matter what we do nothing can separate us from the love of God that God's love is complete and everlasting total and that I think is perhaps the most the beautiful thing for me because we are so messy and we make mistakes all the time and I I grew up Roman Catholic and one of the things we always had to do was go to confession before all the big feast things and of course you'd go into confession and I was a really good kid and I didn't do anything and I was boring and so I would have to make stuff up when I go into confession and I would you know I would I would say something you know whatever I talked back and I was mean to my sister and that's what's up and so not that time so but I remember you know we would we would get out of confession and of course you almost have this matrix right so you do this bad thing and the priest would say we'll go say three our fathers and ten Hail Marys and it was sort of like this much sin equaled this many prayers and then you're good and I would do that and it never really made too much sense because in a moment we then stray again we're just we're human and whether it's what we think or what we do or what we say it's always imperfect and yet God's perfection surrounds us all the time and we are told again and again and again to come back that we may turn away from God but God never turns away from us and that Redemption is constant and always present and I think that's that's always stuck with me I think we're drawing nice so I have a last question for you all and it's really just an opportunity what haven't I we asked you that you wanted to make sure you were able to share this evening that you wanted to make sure we heard from you well I mean I guess what sought weighing on my mind I look around this room and I've been in some other rooms this week up here in North Dallas and I guess you know how does our connection as people of faith going to impact the divides in our city which are not so much faith divides as divides of race and opportunity and way of life and you know I think I think that's a big question that that we could try to start you know I think people are starting to try to answer that and it's a big one similarly I don't want this to be enough for you I don't want this to be enough it's so nice and I'm glad you came and I hope things stick but I hope that action follows the thinking because you are so needed we are all needed to take action and to actually affect change for the good and so don't be satisfied with being a good person and coming on a Thursday night to an interfaith panel it's just not enough and take this and go do something different do something different in the next week or month don't put it off because you won't do it so leave tonight make a choice go act differently and maybe that's gonna meet a person that you don't know but that you might suspect has a different faith tradition than you and have a conversation go sit in a Starbucks somewhere you're gonna see somebody and then you can just grab them and scare them and want to want to know more about them but but do take action because it's it's so needed too many people are passive too many people think that they cannot make a change that they are not important that they are insignificant to go up against whatever negative dangerous fearful stuff is out there and you are not insignificant you are not too small you have power in you and you can go and spread this in such a meaningful way that our future can be brighter than our yesterday guess I start off with note 2 Muslims don't go to Starbucks because I'm gonna try to stick to this note because it is something that I think is very important to us you know we talk a lot about privilege and we talk about urgency and you just run sin the North and South Dallas thing I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make is we always wait until we cannot afford disunity or we cannot afford to be ignorant to try to unite and to try to come to know about one another and maybe we wait too long because we have restricted the definition of peace to calmness in my life and in my circle so for example if I have peace in North Dallas then there is peace no matter what's happening in South Dallas if I have peace in my life in the sense of calm then the poverty that exists outside of my life is not a disruption of that peace therefore I don't feel compelled to strive for peace if we have peace in America in our country and I really want us to think about this for a moment because I think that 9/11 shook us up and every mass shooting shakes us up as it should shake us up and I think that I would hope that we recognize in a time when our government is literally dysfunctional when our society is this deeply polarized when things are this bad that we can't afford to wait anymore one of the things that I like to push back on is to say that was there truly peace before 9/11 was there peace before mass shootings became a daily norm is my peace served by being conscious of the lack of peace that exists in other parts of the world sometimes due to the bad foreign policy of my government is that on my conscience I'm disturbed by the lack of peace that that child has at the Tijuana San Diego border I'm disturbed by the lack of peace that that child in Yemen has I'm disturbed by the lack of peace that the child in South Dallas has my conscience does not allow me to have peace even if the effects of that lack of peace aren't showing up on my doorstep I'm disturbed so when we talk about peace when we talk about justice you know there's a saying that justice can't be just us only about us only about our lives if we truly want to expand our hearts we have to expand our worlds and we have to expand our view of the world and we have to expand the burdens that we are willing to take upon our expanded hearts because we believe in the scripture that calls us to that expense and a humanity that that scripture is supposed to speak to that calls to that expanse and so don't always wait for something to show up on your doorstep and that's what dr. Martin Luther King jr. probably the most appropriated figure in the history of the United States most celebrated yet neglected said that peace is not the absence of tension but it's the presence of justice so long as injustice persists inequity persists and I have something that I can do about it and I don't then I need to push myself to do a little bit more even if that lack of justice is even to my benefit privilege has responsibility all of us have some layer of privilege what are we doing with that privilege to benefit those that have been robbed of it or do we only wait until it becomes too violence too tense for us to be able to in our own in our own privilege so make yourself uncomfortable before you get uncomfortable that's what I'm actually trying to say make yourself uncomfortable because there's too much discomfort that's out there that we're called to heal and I think that that's how we set ourselves apart I would hope is that we actually live our scriptures in healing the world around us and that starts with South Dallas [Music] I believe we have a reception to attend thank you all think thank you all [Applause]

Channel: SMAADallas

Views: 2,502,649

Rating: 4.8149161 out of 5

Keywords: islam, Judaism, Christianity, dallas, texas, religion, church, saint michael, Omar Suleiman, Nancy Kasten, Chris Girata, Amy Heller, Episcopal, interfaith, dialogue, episcopal, smaa, smaadallas, st michael, saint michael and all angels, panel, discussion, imam, rabbi, priest

Id: tWtOlwv3Qg8

Length: 83min 46sec (5026 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 18 2019