Bahrain’s Newest Ambassador June 2, 2008

King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain made a historic appointment on Wednesday, the appointment of Huda Azra Ibrahim Nunu to the post of ambassador to the United States. Ms. Nunu is Bahrain’s third female ambassador — the first being to France and the second to China — but it is not Ms. Nunu’s gender that makes her appointment so significant.

Ms. Nunu is Bahrain’s first Jewish female ambassador — and the first Jewish ambassador from the Arab world.

It was not initially known to which country Bahrain’s king would send the 43-year-old parliamentarian of Iraqi descent, but it soon became clear, Ms. Nunu was bound to represent her country in the United States. Ms. Nunu said she was proud to serve her country “first of all as a Bahraini”, and was quick to note that her appointment was not due to her religion, with one Bahraini official stressing that the selection of Ms. Nunu as envoy was “not propaganda”:

“This is not a public relations move,” the official told AFP, referring to the expected naming soon of Huda Nunu as the Gulf kingdom’s ambassador to Washington. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said King Hamad informed US officials during a visit to Washington in March of Bahrain’s intention to name Nunu…

“This move is not propaganda. It reflects a climate of tolerance towards minorities in Bahrain,” which is ruled by a Sunni dynasty and has a disgruntled Shiite majority…

“Nunu’s appointment stresses the seriousness of Bahrain’s reform policies … It shows that Bahrain does not differentiate between men and women in public offices and does not discriminate against citizens on the bases of their beliefs,” the official said.

Ms. Nunu’s appointment has drawn some criticism in Bahrain, where some have questioned the “political motives” which precipitated King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s decision.

Ms. Nunu’s brother Ibrahim was previously the first Jewish member of Bahrain’s Shura Council, the upper house of Bahraini parliament, and Ms. Nunu, a Shura Council member for three years, is herself the co-founder of the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society, and is the granddaughter of Ibrahim Nunu who, in 1919, served as the Bahraini Jewish Community’s representative under the British authorities.

Bahrain’s tiny Jewish community numbers no more than 40, but its members are well-represented in Bahrain’s business community. The community in Bahrain dates back to Talmudic times, and Bahrain’s capital boasts the only synagogue in the Persian Gulf. When asked about her Jewish observance, Ms. Nunu told the Jerusalem Post:

“We keep Rosh Hashana and Pessah and the other holidays in our homes,” Nonoo said, according to a report by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. “When my son had his bar mitzva, I flew a rabbi over from London for it.”

The Bahraini king’s decision comes amidst talk to grant “full citizenship rights” to Jewish returnees to Bahrain, whereby any Jews “who were residing in Bahrain and are of Arab or Iraqi roots who migrated from another country” can become full Bahraini citizens.

Ask Moses? Ask Musa! April 7, 2008

I recently stumbled upon a novel website, designed to explain about the fundamentals of Judaism and Jewish identity to the Muslim and Arab World. AskMusa.org is a project of a group of “traditional, observant Jews” from various Jewish organizations and presents answers to questions on monotheism and Jewish belief as well as an essay which asks “Who are the Jews?” — contrasting “sons of apes and pigs” with “contributors to society”.

A site too long in coming — but a pleasant change of place.

Visit AskMusa.org.

Dutch Jewish Producer: “Geert Wilders Is A Bigot” March 24, 2008

I feel like a broken record but I had to chronicle this little piece of Jewish-Muslim unity, from the Monthly Review Foundation’s MR Zine.

Jewish TV producer Harry De Winter has blasted Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam film aspirations with a provocative advertisement on the front page of the Dutch de Volkskrant:

TV Producer Harry de Winter, President of the board of the foundation Een Ander Joods Geluid [Another Jewish Voice], today placed a remarkable advertisement on the front page of the newspaper Volkskrant. De Winter puts Geert Wilders’s criticism of Muslims in the same category as anti-Semitism…

What is your message?

[De Winter:] “We Jews know better than anyone else what this sort of discrimination can lead to. Wilders claims that the Muslims must be dealt with and that the Koran is a fascist book. That’s how the persecution of Jews once started, by generalization. Therefore, it is time for a sharper criticism from the Jewish community. If you say the same thing about the Jews or Israel, you are considered an anti-Semite and ostracized. It is good that this feeling of justice is so strong, but, for me, there is no difference between the yarmulke and the headscarf.”

The ad reads:

“If Wilders had said the same thing about Jews (and the Old Testament) as he does about Muslims (and the Koran), he would have been ostracized a long time ago and accused of anti-Semitism.”

Anti-religious prejudice — whether Islamophobia or anti-Semitism — is never OK and baruch Hashem Mr. De Winter has come out publicly to say so. He says he hopes to “get support from the whole Jewish community” — he already has mine.

Y-Love at SXSW 2008: The Revolution Begins March 18, 2008

Those of you who are avid readers of This is Babylon know that I haven’t been blogging for a few days.

This year, I was part of the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, the music-fest which draws thousands of bands from all over the world, vying to be noticed in perhaps the most influential music conference of the season.

Some bands are content to go there to promote their music, sell some CDs, and leave as quietly as they entered. Y-LOVE, on the other hand, has a bigger agenda, one of interfaith and intercultural unity, and to this end, on Saturday night, after cries of “last call” were ringing at every bar, I decided to spread my message of “peace, love, unity and respect” in the streets.

An impromptu anti-prejudice rally ensued, and as you can see, the results were beautiful.

Jewish-Muslim Unity… in Kuwait’s Al-Watan! March 11, 2008

It’s about damn time. Baruch Hashem and AlhamduliLl-h for Abdallah Al-Hadlaq.

Writing for the Kuwaiti Al-Watan newspaper, Mr. Al-Hadlaq wrote a scathing opinion piece (Arabic) condemning the “terrorism” of Hamas and Hezbollah in last week’s massacre at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem. Mr. Al-Hadlaq, among other things, calls the attack “a barbaric murder of eight children who were engaged in religious study” and says that the “odious and inhuman terror attack exemplifies the extremist and inhuman path of the terror organizations Hamas and Hizbullah.”

Indeed, as the Jerusalem Post notes:

The writer goes on to assert that “the terror attack must prompt the free world to comprehend the magnitude of terrorism and its threats and to realize that a clear and unequivocal stance must be assumed against it. There can be no negotiations with terrorism that indiscriminately aims itself at students, women and babies without any consideration for the means and the targets.”

Contrasting the terror attack with the IDF’s operations in the Gaza Strip, the writer explains that “there is no link between a murderous terrorist act and the inadvertent killing of civilians in response to the firing of rockets by Hamas.”

The piece presented a stark contrast to the main current in the Arab press, which presented almost sweeping praise for the “heroic operation.”

The Google-translated version (which I’m sure does not do the original Arabic piece justice) shows Mr. Al-Hadlaq referring numerous times to Hamas as a terrorist organization, and speaking of the incident as ” الهجوم الارهابي /al’hajoum al’irhabi” — the terrorist attack carried out by the “evil Alliance” of Hamas and Hezbollah.

(On the other hand, here’s a contrasting opinion on Hamas from a local chapter of an American organization.)

Scathing criticism of Hamas — هجمات الارهابي (hajmaat al’irhabi), the terrorist organization — and calling terrorism for what it is — in defense of murdered innocent Jews engaged in the service of G-d. At least one person is standing up for human life — indiscriminately — in the face of a pro-Hamas media deluge.

A brilliant display of unity. Well done, Mr. Al-Hadlaq, and well done, Al-Watan. Kudos. May the anti-terrorist voices only multiply exponentially throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and the world as a whole.

Judaism On Prejudice January 30, 2008

A beautiful article on Chabad.org caught my eye today at random. Normally I don’t read Chabad’s The Jewish Woman, but doing a Google News search for “Torah” led me to this beautiful article by Ms. Stacey Goldman, teaching about this week’s Torah portion. The piece is called “The Spirit of the Laws”, a phrase I am usually used to hearing in a different, more judgment-centered context — “don’t do X, it would violate the spirit of the law”, if not the letter — to justify the prohibition of any number of things.

Ms. Goldman’s Torah teaching, however, sheds light on a beautiful concept expressed by Exodus 21: G-d’s eschewing of prejudice between humans. Her story begins autobiographical, lamenting her ironic “loss of Jewish identity” as her Jewish observance grew:

It sounds bizarre, but I have found that the more I live my life as an observant Jew, the more I seem to lose my Jewish identity. When I was growing up in Minnesota, Jews made up less than two percent of the mostly Scandinavian, German population. My dark, curly hair was a constant reminder of my minority status. I never saw this as a negative aspect to my identity. On the contrary, I relished my membership in a global club of Jewish people all over the world…I didn’t discriminate; I would beam at every person regardless of age, gender, length of skirt, head covering or lack thereof. Invariably, I would receive a nod and a smile in return. Yes, we are one of the same; we shared a history and a destiny.

When I was accepted to an East Coast university, I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm at the prospect of constantly being surrounded by my People…I increased in my Jewish observance, got married and started to have children. I still smiled at other Jews, but I noticed that I was only smiling at Jews who looked suspiciously like me - the new religious me. In fact, I had lost my ability to identify other Jews who weren’t wearing the telltale uniform of Orthodox Judaism. I had found the Torah of Israel, but I seemed to have lost my sense of the Nation of Israel that had come so easily before I even knew about the commandments.

I hear this complaint far too often from non-Orthodox Jews — that Orthodox Jews don’t want to interact with them, that Orthodox Jews “think they are better” intrinsically, that Orthodox Jews are standoffish and clannish. This is especially painful when someone’s path to observance is dashed because - how were she supposed to know she wasn’t supposed to wear that..? - someone cut them off or embarrassed or admonished them when they were taking their first steps to Torah.

Ms. Goldman finds her way out of her mindset through learning Exodus 21, and what she learns is far bigger than just relations between Jews — she learns lessons for all of humanity:
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Jewish-Muslim Unity In the News December 3, 2007

The Muslim Council of Britain has finally voted to end its almost seven-year boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day:

“The MCB has always placed a lot of emphasis on inter-faith work and building ties … so this was becoming a problem.” — MCB assistant general secretary, Inayat Bunglawala

In Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, the 6th Annual Dialogue Project Teach-In was a huge success with people of all religious stripes coming together for “no feuding, just talking”:

At another session, an imam explained that Christians and Jews were to be respected and welcomed as equals in true Muslim nations. He went on to explain that much of the radicalism associated with Islam was not consonant with a true interpretation of the faith.

“Many of the fatwas that get issued, they are issued by scholars who are unqualified and therefore they are unacceptable,” said the imam.

In South Africa, Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Dr Warren Goldstein and the Premier of the Western Cape, Ebrahim Rasool will speak on “Jews and Muslims: Faith, Community and Country” at the Chief Rabbi’s Enriching Tomorrows: Sharing Ideas for the Future public speaking forum.

Rightwing British politicans scheduled to speak at the Oxford Forum at Oxford University in England were greeted last week by a joint protest from Oxford’s Union of Jewish Students and Islamic Society:

The Union of Jewish Students and Oxford University’s Islamic Society carried a huge banner marked with the symbols of both organisations. Some Muslim demonstrators carried posters proclaiming “Hands off our Jews”, while the Jewish Society carried others saying “Hands off our Muslims”.

This beautiful interfaith “holiday service” would have been better if it had a rabbi, but whatever…

And finally, in Washington, DC leaders of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities came together to fight a common problem: poverty and inequality, two things all faiths consider to be front-burner issues.

May we see the end of religion-driven violence speedily in our days, and may all religious leaders come to realize the huge benefits reaped by humanity when bridges are built instead of walls.

Jewish-Muslim Unity: JAM on it! October 31, 2007

First of all, I wanted to thank and sent out my heartfelt acknowledgements to everyone who I met on the PLP conference I was attending in Santa Monica, California this week. A city whose beauty is surpassed only by its warm inhabitants, the beach and sun served as the perfect backdrop for the conference of idea exchange and bridge building among Jewish leaders and professionals. I thank G-d for giving me the merit to be part of such an event.

Speaking of meritorious events, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, a group of students at Yale University had the foresight to realize that there was a need for dialogue with Muslims, especially between Jews and Muslims, and that bridges needed to be built after the towers fell. A group of undergraduate students formed JAM (Jews And Muslims) to bridge gaps and unite communities. Now, six years later, JAM has launched its own blog, as the Yale Daily News tells us:

Yale students with opinions about the relationship between Jews and Muslims now have an online forum in which to air their thoughts.

On Sunday night, Jews and Muslims at Yale (JAM) launched a new blog called “Jews, Muslims and Dialogue” that members said they hope will be a vehicle for discussion about issues ranging from the concept of justice in Islam and Judaism to student reactions to Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz’s LAW ’62 visit to Yale earlier this month….

The blog should be an online meeting place for people of all ideological views to listen to each other and their opinions, Blau said.

“I don’t want people leaving feeling like ‘Oh, now I see,’ ” Blau said. “[But at least] they can see why their colleagues would think something like that.”

Altaf Saadi ’08, a JAM member who served as its co-head last year, said she hopes the blog’s dialogue will serve as a model for discussion of controversial issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We are such a diverse body of students at Yale, with such varied thoughts and opinions, that there needs to be constructive forums like JAM where all those ideas can be exchanged in a respectful way,” Saadi said in an e-mail. “Our hope is to try to bridge those gaps and points of misunderstanding, real or perceived,” Saadi said.

Jeremy Avins ’10, one of the current co-heads of JAM, said both the Jewish and Muslim communities feel threatened. This reciprocal fear has led members of each group to “dehumanize” members of the other, making mutual understanding difficult, he said.

“It’s too easy to dehumanize a people you either don’t know or feel threatened by,” Avins said in an e-mail. “JAM is one of many efforts to bring the human back into the equation.”

Battling mutual fear with open and respectful idea exchange. May this be the way all of humanity begins to cope with its fear of communities and ideologies.

JAM’s blog can be found at jewsandmuslims.blogspot.com.

Like JAM say, “Peace, Shalom, and Salaam.”

Why A Non-Muslim Observes Ramadan September 18, 2007

Today, Dave Matthews, (ha!) a non-Muslim writing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, decided to observe the Muslim holy month this year, as a non-Muslim:

OK, I’m not Muslim. In fact, I can’t claim to be of any religious persuasion. I practice Sufism, but that isn’t like practicing medicine. In the community of Sufis I belong to, we understand that we are forever striving but never really achieving Sufism.

Be that as it may, I have for the past several years decided I would observe Ramadan. You might well ask why.

OK. Why?

For my children’s sake and as a model for my community, I observe Ramadan in honor of my brothers and sisters in the Muslim world. In honor of their suffering. In honor of their pain. In honor of the truth of their teachings.

The world we inhabit seems to be splintering apart around me. All the hopes I have harbored for peace on the planet, in the Middle East, even in my neighborhood, seem to be floating forlornly to the ground like the last autumn leaves.

This powerful, remarkable nation that I have lived in all my life seems incapable of wielding its influence in a responsible way. Every move by our current administration seems to dig us deeper into the pit of hatred and anger that has already manifested on our shores with the deaths of thousands of innocents. Radicals on all sides seem to command the lines of communication. So that instead of hearing the pope speaking about loving everyone in the way that Christ taught, he is famous for insulting the Muslims. Instead of hearing of Muhammad’s call for peace and tolerance, we only hear of jihad and a call to murder.

It’s hard not to feel powerless in the midst of the ubiquitous strife and fury. But in some small way, perhaps we can work within our own communities and our own relationships to demonstrate a different reality.

May we all succeed in doing so. May this Ramadan drive all of its observers to “demonstrate a different reality.” May we all work together to usher in peace and unity.

In Case Anyone Was Still Denying The Holocaust… September 10, 2007

The Associated Press today ran a story on Roman Catholic Rev. Patrick Desbois. Rev. Desbois and his small team of investigators have undertaken the daunting task of asking elderly Ukrainians for their first-hand recollections of what they saw during those horrible times:

From the porch of her mud hut, Vera Filonok saw tens of thousands of Jews shot, thrown in a ravine and set on fire. Many were still alive and they writhed in the flames “like flies and worms.” The memories of what she saw in 1941 have seared her soul for six decades, but until recently she had talked about it with no one except neighbors in her remote Ukrainian village. Then a soft-spoken French priest came to town.

Roman Catholic Rev. Patrick Desbois and his small team of investigators have spent six years canvassing the towns and villages of Ukraine to patiently hear elderly people tell of what they saw during those terrible years when they were young.

He says his team has pinpointed more than 600 mass execution sites, about 70 percent of them previously unknown. It has surveyed about a third of Ukraine, he says, and estimates there are at least 2,500 such sites throughout the Texas-sized country…

Vera Filonok was 16 when she witnessed the blaze from Konstantinovka, a village lying across the quiet Bug River. “We sensed the smell — of burning hair, clothes, bones — a very strong, acrid smell,” she said, raising a hand to her wrinkled face. “People were being burned alive. For me that was the most terrifying thing.”

After the fire came gunshots, recalled Filonok’s neighbor Raya Trofimova. A German soldier living in her family’s home lent her his binoculars; through them she saw victims kneel in front of a gully in their underwear, their valuables piled beside them.

“They would line them up before the ravine and shoot them … they would tear away children from mothers and just throw them in there,” said Trofimova, now 85…

Anatoly Veliminchuk was 11. He said he saw people thrown into two wells, many still alive.

“I felt bad, it was painful — what did it matter that they spoke their Jewish way and we spoke Ukrainian or Moldovan?” he asked as he pointed to what used to be the wells — now two small pits in a field covered with dry grass and discarded plastic bottles.

Kudos to the Rev. Desbois. His organization, Yahad-In Unum (Hebrew and Latin for “together”) is “devoted…to healing wounds between Catholics and Jews”.

May G-d bless his actions, and may our world have a refuah shleimah.

New Hampshire Jews, Muslims Come Together To Feed Needy December 26, 2006

Another example of interfaith unity accomplishing wonderful things.

From Boston.com:

N.H. Jews, Muslims serve meal at shelter
December 26, 2006

MANCHESTER, N.H. –New Hampshire Jews and Muslims say serving Christmas meals to the poor on a Christian holy day shows that different faiths can work together. Volunteers from the two religions were at the New Horizon shelter Monday. They worked in the kitchen and on the serving line where turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes were on the menu.

For more than 25 years, members of a local synagogue have volunteered Christmas Eve and Christmas at the soup kitchen. This year, members of the Islamic Society of Greater Manchester joined in.

Ken yirbu.

Holocaust Conference Aftermath: Muslim-Jewish Unity December 21, 2006

The Washington Post gives us this heartwarming story of Muslim-Jewish unity borne out of the Tehran Holocaust conference:

Local Muslim leaders lit candles yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.

American Muslims “believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again,” said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.

“We stand here with three survivors of the Holocaust and my great Muslim friends to condemn this outrage in Iran,” said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museum’s director, addressing a bank of TV cameras in the room, known as the Hall of Remembrance.

Major American Muslim and Arab-American organizations have condemned the Iran conference. The Muslim speakers at yesterday’s ceremony did not mention that event but called for recognition of the suffering Jews experienced in the Holocaust and condemned religious hatred. Asked afterward why they did not single out Iran, the Muslim leaders said the problem was broader than the recent conference.

“The issue here is: There might be somebody from X and Y country, a Muslim, saying the same thing,” Magid said. If anyone wants to make Holocaust denial an Islamic cause, he said, “we want to say to them: You cannot use our name.”

And just to show how important this cause was to Imam Magid:

Bloomfield, the museum director, noted that Magid delayed his trip to Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage by a day to attend the ceremony.

“That’s a pretty strong statement,” she said.

To reach out to Jews in an unprecedented gesture of Muslim-Jewish unity, the Imam delayed his hajj. You’re right, that’s a strong statement. Quite strong.
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