Sanity Prayers for American Jews and American Muslims

# # #  

The conflict should not tear the Jewish Americans and Muslim Americans apart; instead it should bring us together to build a cohesive America, and hopefully cohesive societies across the world where no human has to live in fear of the other.

Rabbi Elana Zelony of congregation Beth Torah in Richardson affirms the above, “With all the media about violence between Muslims and Jews, it’s easy to forget that many of us are yearning for peace. We will gather to strengthen one another with our prayers and affirm a vision of a peaceful world.”

It is easy to destroy the relationships with reckless language, and I urge everyone to use the language that restores goodness.  Of course when passions are flared, anything short of telling the other is 100% right amounts to outright rejection by both sides. That is the precise reason we have problems, we need a few of us who are willing to speak sanity. Let’s take this as an endurance test of our wits. I hope we come out unscathed as conflict mitigaters and goodwill nurturers, and not the ones who mess up.

Shaheen Khateeb of Indian American Muslim council shares the note from Andrea Winters of Pace University, “It really was lovely dinner and opportunity to reconnect- and share- felt good, all the more because of what is happening in the world. Very painful.. but it is heartening to know that important connections can be made and kept despite all the bloodshed elsewhere. Now the world has to figure out what to do about the bloodshed.”

Here is a summary of the conflict in the most simplistic expression; 

1. The Palestinians are made up of Christians, Muslims and others, before the creation of Israel, even the Jews from the area were referred to as Palestinian Jews.

2. When Jews were persecuted or discriminated throughout Europe and the US respectively, Arab and Muslim nations were a safe haven for Jews for nearly 1300 years of Islamic existence and India and Hindus for nearly 2000 years after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

4. The United Nations rightfully took the responsibility to settle the Holocaust survivors in the then Palestine. The land was given to Immigrant Jews (even the United States refused a Jewish refugee ship to land on our shores), and it was handled poorly without proper local consent and cooperation,  instead of dialogue and kindness people resorted to fighting and denying each other’s rights.

SOLUTIONS

We can offer the same deal to Palestinians; let’s welcome them to the United States to raise their families in peace and prosperity instead of fighting a daily battle for survival and their own land. We can help compensate the Palestinians from the same funds and offer lasting solutions for them as well.

There are always people who eke out their living by evil means. Indeed, they have successfully built up prejudice against Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular, and many of us Americans have lost a sense of fairness and justice.  There is no reason for us to be prejudiced against any people; we need to fight that instinct and live a prejudice free life.  We don’t have to be unjust to either Jews or the Palestinians (Christians and Muslims).

I have been to several Mosques during this month of Ramadan, and it was good to hear supplications seeking justice and relief to the Palestinians, but no hatred towards Jews was expressed and that was the right thing to do. What a relief it was to know that the bad guys are not Jews, Judaism or Israel, but the leaders who are hell bent on seeking revenge.

I will be visiting a few places of worship in the coming weeks and I hope to hear nothing but peace and goodness in our churches, temples, mosques, synagogues and other places of worship.