 |
| Imam Shamsi Ali and Rabbi Marc Schneier on the stage. |
The death of a beloved pope is the bridge that connects two men from two
worlds tormented with rage, anger, hatred, bloodshed and prejudice.
The
first man is Imam Shamsi Ali, a Muslim scholar born in Tana Toa, South
Sulawesi, in 1967. Growing up, he resented Jews as he was taught as a
child that all of them were “evil”.
“Whenever there was a naughty kid, we always called him ‘you Jew brat’,” Shamsi said during a discussion in Jakarta.
Shamsi’s
sentiment was further fuelled when he attended Muslim schools in
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where he was taught that Jews intended to
destroy Islam and its practitioners. As Shamsi progressed his education
to become an imam, he continued to view Jews with hostility.
Shamsi
eventually moved to New York in 1997 to lead the Indonesian Muslim
community and to act as an imam in a newly built mosque. While his move
to the US gave him a much more open-minded view of other beliefs, he
still could not let go of his resentment of Jews.
On the other side of the spectrum is New York-born Jewish rabbi Marc Schneier.
Like
Shamsi, he also grew up in a very orthodox community wary of outsiders,
particularly Muslims. With 17 generations of rabbis before him along
with his passion for Israel, he became suspicious or even hostile toward
Muslims.
Shamsi and Schneier’s paths finally crossed when they
were both invited by a television station to comment on the impact of
Pope John Paul II’s life on communities of all religions after his death
in 2005.
Shamsi said he remembered the first time he met
Schneier. They only loosely shook hands and were unwilling to look each
other in the eye.
During that first meeting, both Shamsi and Schneier only talked about the pope and had no interest in talking further.
“I
had no relationship with the Muslim community. I saw Muslims as the
enemy. I did not trust Muslims. I thought Muslims were out to destroy
Jews and the state of Israel,” Schneier said as he recalled his first
meeting with Shamsi.
However, a few months later, Schneier
suddenly contacted Shamsi by phone and asked for a meeting to chat. This
was the start of reconciliation and a journey filled with brotherly
love between the two men.
Schneier said he contacted Shamsi
because he wanted to learn more about Islam and its tradition following
an eye-opening visit to an Islamic school.
“I had been invited to
speak in the largest Islamic high school in New York. That was the
first time they ever had a rabbi,” he said.
“I accepted the
invitation but I was a little anxious, I’d never been in a Muslim
institution before and when I walked in, it was such a genuine, sincere
exchange between the students and me.”
Schneier added that he also saw in the school a similar dynamic between the tradition of Islam and Judaism.
“The [similarity] peaked my curiousity and I began to reach out to some Muslim leaders,” he said.
During
their second meeting, Schneier and Shamsi agreed that they needed to do
something so that they could not only free themselves of their mutual
suspicion but also free their respective communities.
“When we
met for the second time, we decided to launch a conference of imams and
rabbis in the US. We managed to gather 25 imams and 25 rabbis. The
conference was not easy as most of them only debated the issues of
Israel and Palestine,” Shamsi said.
“The rabbi and I then decided
we needed to do something that went beyond the conflict. So we
formulated a program called ‘weekend of twinnings’.”
In this program, they exchanged visits to mosques and synagogues.
“On
Saturdays, I brought my mosque members to synagogues and on Sundays,
the rabbi brought his Jewish congregation to my mosque,” Shamsi says.
“During
visits, each community observed how the other conducted prayers and
rituals. Afterward, we ate together. As time went by, this activity
consistently erased all suspicions between Muslims and Jews in our
communities.”
Shamsi said he faced a lot of resentment from his own community when the program first started.
“The
biggest challenge we faced was from my own community. I was accused of
being a traitor to Islam and to the struggle for a free Palestine,”
Shamsi said.
Schneier, on the other hand, said he too faced the
same challenge when he tried to convince his congregation members to
visit Shamsi’s mosque.
“I remember the first time I took my
congregation to the Imam’s mosque, I heard questions like ‘will we be
safe, rabbi?’ or ‘are we going into the den of terrorists?’. You can
imagine the comments,” Schneier says.
Despite of the resentment
from their own communities, Shamsi and Schneier persevered and now their
program has been adopted in over 30 countries where Jews and Muslims
live side by side.
To chronicle their journey in understanding
and respecting with each other, Schneier and Shamsi co-authored a book
titled Sons Of Abraham in which they shared stories about their
experiences dealing with their own inner suspicions and eventually found
a passion to build tolerance.
Schneier said his friendship with
Shamsi and their work to reconcile Muslims and Jews had transformed them
into better religious leaders and better human beings. He said their
relationship could only be described in one word: “Brothers”.
“I
went through my own personal transformation and today I’m a great
defender of Muslims, particularly in the US. I’m very blessed to have
the imam as one of my closest and beloved friends,” Schneier said.
“Our
work goes beyond dialogue. Our work is about fighting for the other.
Our work is about Jews speaking out against Islamophobia and is about
Jews against anti-Muslim bigotry. It’s about Muslims speaking out
against anti-Semitism and holocaust denials.”
“When American
Muslims are attacked in the US, that is not [only] the imam’s fight but
my fight as a Jew. Just like when American Jews are attacked in the US
or anywhere around the world, imam Shamsi Ali has made it his fight to
defend and protect Jews.”
Contributor : Hans David Tampubolon
Source : The Jakarta Post
No comments:
Post a Comment