Saudi Iqra TV: “Would You Shake Hands With A Jew”? November 29, 2007

I never do this.

I never, ever quote Little Green Footballs. LGF and I rarely agree on any issues — LGF being a neo-con platform and me being, well, me. But my boy Nick posted something from LGF on MySpace Jews that I felt compelled to write about.

This is lamentable for a number of reasons. First of all — it is not as if there are absolutely no suras and no ahadeeth which allude to interfaith coexistence, on the contrary. But bigger than this, this shows what happens when people are raised inside of an abject lack of dialogue with any member of a certain group.

How many of these people had ever had a conversation with a Jew? How many of them ever met a Jew — for more than 5 seconds, and not in an airport check-in line?

Chat the Planet, a project from NextNextEntertainment, is an example of interactive dialogue-building that is sorely needed in Saudi Arabia. Chat the Planet produces things like Hometown Baghdad, a “look into the everyday lives of students in war-torn Iraq.” For the Jerusalem Project, they set up laptops and webcams — and kids on two sides of the world sat and talked and gave their opinions, perhaps the first times in the participants’ lives ever having heard such points of view.

Saudi Arabia needs this. Someone — because there may not be an internal awakening to do so — has to have the courage to say, “let’s see if this is correct, if the ‘Jews’ of today are the people referred to negatively in the Qur’an, or if they are really respectable ‘People of the Book’ who worship All-h”. These Saudi young adults need someone to initiate dialogue and build a bridge leading to them.

Because, if you listened to that last guy, he’s not really planning for peaceful idea exchange at this poiint.

Bridges — and not walls — must be built if humanity is going to survive and prosper.

So a hat tip to LGF. G-d willing, in a few years, Saudi TV will have Jews and Imams shaking hands in peace.