Terrorism Pulls at Jewish-Muslim Ties in L.A.

From New York to Los Angeles, American Jewish and Muslim leaders readily condemned the terrorist bombings in Israel, but weeks later neither side knows what to do next as they struggle to define their relationship in the United States.

Leaders on both sides agree there are issues on the American agenda that could unite them--from concern about maintaining their religious and cultural identities to their painful awareness of the dangers of stereotyping minorities. But events in Israel have overtaken what had been their fledgling interfaith talks.

Since Feb. 25, 62 people have been killed in four terrorist attacks in Israel reportedly carried out by militants within a Palestinian group known as Hamas, setting back the delicate Middle East peace process.

“The blood that spills there splatters all of us in the face,” said Rabbi Harvey J. Fields of Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

“For me,” said Maher Hathout of the Islamic Center of Southern California, “what happens to a Muslim anywhere in the world is a religious issue. For me I get religion and politics mixed up.”

One thing is certain, they said. Muslim-Jewish relations in the United States have reached a critical juncture. Nowhere is the daunting task of building interfaith and intercultural relations better illustrated than in Southern California, where there are 500,000 Muslims and 700,000 Jews, the largest and second-largest such communities respectively in the nation, according to figures from each side.

Last week, for instance, an awkward moment of silence preceded a meeting of three Jewish and three Muslim leaders, sitting elbow to elbow around a table at the Center for Near Eastern Studies on the UCLA campus, as each side waited to see who would speak first.

The group was hard pressed to agree how to pursue a continuing dialogue, but were in accord that one was badly needed.

One Muslim leader said talks here should be characterized by American civility and respect for pluralism that could serve as an example in the Middle East.

“Rather than acting as ‘foreign agents’ of the [disputing] parties [in the Middle East] we should act as Americans who can offer a model,” said Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a national group headquartered in Los Angeles.

But Al-Marayati was quickly countered by Fields.

“We may be expecting way too much from a dialogue here,” the rabbi said, adding that it was “inappropriate” for American Jews and Muslims to suggest what Middle Eastern leaders must do.

In the end, they agreed to issue a joint declaration condemning terrorist violence.

But it wasn’t until Friday, more than a week after their meeting, that the short statement was finally approved. Both sides said the press of other matters and changes in the final wording caused the delay. Jews and Muslims say that they can talk all they want about American pluralism and their common religious roots, but that any talks without reference to the Middle East are doomed to failure.

“You can’t talk to Jews without reference to Israel, or to Muslims without reference to Palestine,” Fields said.

“These are critical issues,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles. “If they are not handled correctly, we could step back and not forward.”

Jews in the United States are outraged that some Muslim clerics--particularly those in the Middle East--have not only failed to condemn the suicide bombings, but have incited young Muslims to terrorist violence.

“All of us feel very strong about the misuse of religion in the name of God,” Hier said. “It is very important for men and women of faith to express in clear terms that you can’t allow disciples to be recruited and to believe that by carrying out such attacks . . . what awaits them in the end is a banquet in heaven.”

For their part, Muslims--a distinct but growing minority in the United States--fear that they are again all being tarred with the same brush.

“We know we can’t solve the problems of the Middle East. But we also know the impact of events in the Middle East are having on us. We’re stereotyped as a terrorist religion,” said Al-Marayati.

Muslim leaders said they have long condemned the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians by whatever group or person. Immediately after the latest terrorist attacks in Israel, Hathout of the Los Angeles Islamic center said he faxed a statement to every mosque and Islamic center in the United States condemning the attack. He urged that it be read or made available in every mosque.

Moreover, Hathout said, the suicide bombings were condemned by the prestigious Al Azhar Institute in Cairo, said to be the oldest university in the world and an authority on Islamic law. Also condemning the bombings, Hathout said, was the Iranian government news agency, which speaks for the Islamic leadership of that state.

What is so grating to Muslims, they said, is what they see as a double standard. When something terrible happens in Israel, the world comes to its side, they said, while injustice or pain suffered by Muslims goes virtually unnoticed.

To date, efforts to improve relations in Southern California have fallen behind those in New York, Washington or even Detroit, said Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee, headquartered in New York. Muslim and Jewish representatives in New York meet five to six times a year, Rudin said.

But contacts in Southern California between Muslims and Jews have, for the most part, been largely limited to individual efforts, although Hathout now sits on Los Angeles’ inter-religious council.

“The state of the encounter [in the United States] is almost in direct proportion to the situation in the Middle East,” Rudin observed. “If there is real movement on both sides [in the Middle East] the fever drops and there is movement here. When you have a terrorist bombing, or a Jew shooting Muslims at prayer like happened in Hebron two years ago, there is a cessation of contact, or strained and awkward contact.”

The problem in Los Angeles, according to Fields, is that meetings between Muslims and Jews here have been triggered mainly by crises. “Something terrible happens and we all want to talk,” he said.

There is a sense of lost opportunities here, said Jonathan Friedlander, associate director of UCLA’s Near Eastern center. “We’re a pretty ghettoized city,” he said. “The [different] communities don’t interact. The elites interact.”

No formal structure exists in Los Angeles for an ongoing dialogue between Jews and Muslims such as those that have existed for years between Jews and Roman Catholics and now between Jews and African Americans.

Last year, for example, when several Jewish leaders, including Fields, proposed that Jews and Muslims seek a grant from the Jewish Community Foundation to underwrite a dialogue program, Fields said, Muslims told him they were not ready. Hathout, however, said he had no recollection of the proposal.

Indeed, Hathout said, Muslims have anxiously but quietly awaited an invitation to talk. But he said they did not want to “impose” themselves on the Jewish community.

“We know that within the Jewish community there is a lot of diversity and there is no single person to claim that he represents the whole community,” Hathout said.

Not knowing who speaks for Muslims in Southern California has been a problem for Jews, as well.

While Jewish leaders applaud the statements from Hathout and Al--Marayati, they wonder who they speak for or how many are listening.

Hathout says he represents the views of “mainstream Muslims.”

There are no ordained clergy in the Islamic faith. Leaders in mosques are sometimes known as imams, but they are, in effect, what Catholics or Episcopalians would call lay readers, though readers thoroughly educated in Islamic teaching. For practical purposes, Hathout said he is considered by many to be the imam for the Islamic center in Los Angeles. But he said he does not use the title.

Despite the problems and misunderstandings, the fact that American Jews and Muslims are asking such questions and searching for ways to expand their on-again, off-again dialogue is seen as a good sign.

It was just a year ago that Al-Marayati was complaining loudly that the Wiesenthal Center and American Jewish Committee had created “an environment of fear and hostility” toward followers of Islam.

Two weeks ago, Al-Marayati was among those sitting with Hathout in the Wiesenthal Center working on the joint statement with Jewish leaders condemning terrorism.

It was during that private meeting that Hathout said he was taken aback when his Jewish hosts charged that Muslim clerics were not speaking out against terrorism.

“I disagreed,” Hathout recalled. “But now I know where the sore spots are. I feel lighter leaving this place now that we’ll be talking to each other.”

Rudin in New York added, “This is the new frontier. . . . It’s very difficult right now. We look for better times.”