Mosque near Ground Zero?
ADL plans taskforce to address Muslim concerns
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PrintThe Anti-Defamation League, which has come under fire for its opposition to the planned mosque near the site of the World Trade Center, is launching an interfaith taskforce to help Muslim communities denied permission to build mosques in their neighborhoods.
The taskforce would “receive complaints, requests, [and] pleas from Muslim communities that run into … prejudice,” Abraham Foxman, the organization’s national director, said.
The initiative, Foxman said in a telephone discussion with The Jewish Standard last Friday, “needs a national specific focus and response. It will take a while because we need to find the partners.”
 | Abraham Foxman Courtesy ADL |
The initiative is not in conflict with the ADL’s stance on the New York mosque, he said, arguing that it had been misunderstood and distorted. “People didn’t bother reading what we said but what other people said that we said…. We were so careful in our words, so deliberate in making sure that our position is clear and understood…. It’s not a question of right or religious liberty; we raised a question of sensitivity to the location.”
Sensitivity to discrimination against Muslims is also part of the ADL’s tradition, Foxman said. “We have always stood [up] for victims of hate — and for victims of terror.”
“The Jewish community has been caught between two very strong emotions” regarding the New York mosque, Foxman said. One emotion comes from history. Because Jews were “personally singled out and separated out, we are so sensitive to human rights. This is our passion.
“The other feeling is of fear — fear of the forces that have captured Islam in the last 20 to 30 years. Not that all Muslims are radical and jihadist,” he was quick to add, “but there are still voices in the world” against Jews. “The leading advocates of anti-Semitism in the world today are radical Muslims.”
France in particular, Foxman noted, has been plagued by anti-Jewish Muslim behavior, and Jewish sites — and Jews — in Malmö, Sweden, have been targets of Muslim attacks.
“Jews are fearful [about the mosque] because all around the world Islam is threatening Jews,” he said. “There are a lot of questions being asked about the imam. By asking, you’re not a bigot, no matter what the mayor says.” (New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has forcefully supported the building.)
“What this issue has done,” Foxman said, “is triggered both passions.”
It has also triggered a “growing phenomenon” that Foxman called “troubling” in a different way: Opposition to building new mosques, even in states far from the World Trade Center attacks. Protests against them have been mounted in California, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. (The website islamicity.com lists more than 2,000 existing mosques across the country, but Foxman does not think they are facing opposition.)
“This is a classic phenomenon in American history,” Foxman said, “when immigrants come with a faith. There was opposition, when the Irish came, to Catholic churches.”
But, he continued, “established faiths have a responsibility to come to the aid of (Muslims) who face prejudice in their neighborhoods.”
More on: Mosque near Ground Zero?
Declaration of Beliefs of Muslim Moderates
I (We) are Muslims who want contemporary understandings of Islam to replace currently predominant harsh and radical (Salafi/Wahabbi) interpretations of our religion. We therefore declare that:
1- Redda Law, the Sharia Law that allows the killing of Muslims who convert to other faiths, must be banned in Islamic teachings and in Sharia legal doctrine. Islamic countries that practice Sharia must stop the practice of this law and must admit that Freedom of belief and the right to convert to other faith or believe is a basic right that must be given to all Muslims.
‘Good people can disagree’
Rabbi Jordan Millstein of Temple Sinai in Tenafly sent his congregants a pre-Shabbat e-mail message in which he discussed the mosque. Excerpts follow.
1. This is an issue on which good people can disagree…. The key to maintaining a civil society and healthy, dynamic Jewish community is not that we should all hug each other and sing “Kumbaya” (though if that’s your thing I am totally fine with it). Rather, it is the recognition that there is a human being inside that opinion he/she is wearing and that this human being was created in the image of God just as we were.
Cordoba House could ‘encourage more attacks’
Former Islamic terrorist urges moderation
If the Cordoba House is built in the shadow of the Sept. 11 site, radical Muslims will increase their efforts to attack America because of a perceived victory in their war to transform the United States into a Muslim nation.
So says Dr. Tawfik Hamid, senior fellow and chair for the Study of Islamic Radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. Hamid is a former member of the terrorist Islamic organization Jamaa Islamiya with Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who later became the second in command of Al-Qaeda. For more than 25 years Hamid has spoken out in favor of reformation in the Muslim world based on peaceful interpretations of Islamic texts.
Questioning character of Cordoba imam ‘just inappropriate’
Tenafly man recalls long relationship with Rauf
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the head of the Cordoba Initiative, should be praised for creating bridges between moderate Muslims and people of good will, according to Tenafly resident Alan Silberstein.
The pair’s relationship goes back decades to their days as engineering students at Columbia University in 1967. Rauf’s father was an Egyptian diplomat and the family had recently relocated from Kuwait. When the Six Day War broke out, the two students were working side by side at summer jobs in the religion department. They often ate lunch together and, rather than drive them apart, the war sparked discussion and mutual respect.
Teaneck officials call Cordoba House case a reminder to protect freedom of religion
The New York Islamic center is a distraction from the real issues facing America, said Teaneck’s Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin.
“Regardless of whether this goes up, it’s not going to create jobs, it’s not going to get us out of the recession, it’s not going to make America safer,” the mayor told The Jewish Standard earlier this week.
Hameeduddin is the only Muslim mayor in New Jersey. The Teaneck Township Council appointed him and Deputy Mayor Adam Gussen, an Orthodox Jew, in July, but the two have known each other since their days at Teaneck High School. They have not seen the mosque issue drive a wedge between them or Teaneck’s fragile unity.
“We don’t agree on everything,” Gussen said. “The goodwill we’ve put in the bank over a decades-long friendship carries us through any differences we may have.”
Locals call Cordoba House ‘the wrong place’
All of Islam bears some responsibilty for 9-11 and the epidemic of terror carried out in its name and by its adherents,” wrote Rabbi Benjamin Shull of Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley in Woodcliff Lake in an e-mail to The Jewish Standard.
Asked to elaborate, he added, “I realize that there are many Muslims who practice a moderate form of their religion and who do not condone terror or violent jihad, but it is obvious to anyone who has studied the history of Islam that the violence we see today is not a mere aberration. There is endemic to Islam an aggressive and imperialistic strain that, many times in the past, has reared its head and brought much religiously fueled violence to the world.
Jewish-Muslim dialogue team speaks out on Cordoba House controversy
On behalf of this newspaper, Rabbi Steven Sirbu asked members of the Temple Emeth-Dar-Ul-Islah Mosque dialogue team how they felt about the Cordoba House controversy and what effect, if any, the controversy might have on relations within the two communities. Below are some of the replies.
Stephen Friedman, a board member of Temple Emeth, said that while initially (before joining the dialogue team), “I had to overcome some trepidation and irrational fear, due to the frequent media association of Islam with terrorism that had filtered into my consciousness … after a year of dialogue I count my Muslim colleagues as my friends.” This does not mean, he said, that there are not differences needing to be addressed, “but the fact that as a group we were able engage in meaningful dialogue on challenging issues like the Middle East conflict was very encouraging.”
‘This could have been us’
Cordoba House supporters cite religious freedom as crux of debate
Some local groups strongly support the mosque.
While their reasons range from First Amendment freedoms to trust that rank-and-file Muslims are well-intentioned, they speak with passion about the right of their fellow citizens to build houses of worship.
Rabbi Steven Sirbu, whose Teaneck synagogue has partnered with the town’s mosque, Dar-Ul-Islah, to create an ongoing Jewish-Muslim dialogue group, wrote to his congregants, “I have long believed that Muslims occupy a similar place in American society today that Jews occupied about a century ago.”
Yes, no, maybe
Flag CommentI’m afraid I have to award Rabbi Sirbu and the folks from Teaneck game, set, and match. The reaction should be the same as it would be if a Jewish Congregation in any city wanted to build a new and larger temple and local residents took the position that it should be located a “respectable distance” from Christian Churches to avoid offending those who might be be upset by the reminder of The Cruxifiction of their Savior by a Jewish mob.
