Disparate Faiths Hold Peace as Common Prayer : Religion: Words and visions of Christians, Jews and Muslims may conflict, but they share the desire to end the killing.

At the Temple Israel in Hollywood, they would read from the book of Psalms and say a special prayer for peace. At the Islamic mosque on Vermont Avenue, they spoke of dignity and of persecution and asked for Allah’s guidance.

And at an ornately Gothic Protestant church on Wilshire Boulevard, worshipers who came for a wartime prayer service spoke of the horrors of hostilities in a faraway land, where young people are killed.

On Friday, a day held holy by two religions, worshipers of many faiths were asking their God for help and comfort. Their petitions had a common theme--the plea for peace and an end to the killing--but they also struck an occasional dissonant chord.

“As soon as you start to put Muslims, Jews and Christians together . . . prayers for peace start to look very different,” said the Rev. Alan Jones, senior pastor at the Wilshire United Methodist Church in the Mid-Wilshire area.

“We pray for peace, recognizing we all see peace in a different way,” he said.

Sometimes there are differences even among the practitioners of a single faith, he said. Within each faith, there are those who find justification for some acts of war, and there are those who oppose war on all grounds.

Jones’ church, like many of the nearly 400 United Methodist congregations in Southern California, began this week holding a daily noontime prayer service that is to continue while the war in the Persian Gulf region goes on.

On Friday, a handful of church members attended. Seated in the wooden chairs usually reserved for the choir in the cavernous sanctuary of the landmark building, each took turns in speaking his or her mind.

An elderly woman told of her anguish at hearing a report of a child in Israel who was smothered by her gas mask during Thursday’s Iraqi missile attack. A younger man chastised President Bush for referring to U.S. troops as “our kids.” They are not Bush’s kids, the man said, but the children of regular Americans with little voice in the war.

One congregant prayed for the people of Baghdad, now under American air attack. They must be living in such fear, he said. Another felt deceived that U.S. officials had promised a quick war; now some are speaking of weeks.

Jones said he offered a prayer for the people of Israel. “I really feel for their plight,” he said later.

For Friday night’s Sabbath service at the Temple Israel, Rabbi John L. Rosove wrote a peace prayer imploring God for the safety of Israel.

“Even in the midst of war,” the prayer says, “may we be forgiven that once again we have not been able to solve our problems peacefully.

“May this war limit the capacity of nations in the future to further evil policies which rely upon the principle that might makes right and ends justify any means. Remove from our hearts the very seeds of war, all enmity and selfishness, bigotry and strife.”

Rosove also chose special peace-theme music, including the “Shalom Rav,” a prayer that is sung: “May a great peace descend upon Israel and all the world.”

Rosove, a leader in the Peace Now movement--a group of Jewish activists supporting dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization--planned to talk to his congregation about the missile attack on Israel.

He would praise Israel’s “extraordinary” restraint, but he would also argue on behalf of Israel’s right to defend itself.

“I don’t want to see Iraqis die any more than I want to see Israelis die or Americans die,” he said. “The point is not killing people. The point is eliminating a terrible menace in the Mideast and the world”--a reference to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Tragically, Rosove said, war is sometimes unavoidable.

At the Islamic Center mosque on Vermont Avenue, the largest in Los Angeles, about 200 Muslims gathered for noontime prayers. Friday is the Muslim Sabbath, and this Friday was the start of Rajab, a holy month that the Koran says should be observed by avoiding conflict.

The a z an (call to prayer) reverberated up and down Vermont Avenue. Inside the mosque, local television camera crews took their place behind the male worshipers who knelt on carpeting. The women, heads covered, sat in the back. Dozens of pairs of shoes lined shelves along the walls.

Hassan Hat-hout, president of the Islamic Center, led the congregation in prayers.

“We Muslims . . . never before did we live under the kinds of tensions that we are exposed to these days,” he said. “Never before did we suffer the agony and pain that we are suffering now.”

He urged the congregation to live by the values of Islam--peace and justice--and lamented the treatment some Arab-Americans have reported receiving since hostilities erupted in the gulf.

“It breaks our heart as good Muslims and as good Americans,” Hat-hout said, urging Bush to formally condemn abuse of Arab-Americans.

Hat-hout urged the diverse congregation, which includes Muslims from the world over, not to be polarized by events in the Mideast.

“This is not the Mideast. This is not Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt. This is the United States of America. We should not import the Mideast here.”

Afterward, a woman dressed in black railed at the TV cameras. “Why this war? Israel has the same bombs . . . Israel kills. They don’t do anything. Why?”

A Palestinian Muslim who gave his name as Rajae agreed. The war, he said, is “dead wrong.”

“You cannot meet evil with evil. What Saddam Hussein is doing is crazy. But what the coalition is doing is crazy.”