Fear, Not Islam, Is the Problem

 

I received a forwarded e-mail this week that deeply disturbed me.  It disturbed me for two reasons.  First, because of the statements about Islam in the e-mail, but second and perhaps even more disturbing, the fear that made it necessary for the person who forwarded the e-mail to me to do so.

 

The e-mail contents itself were repulsive.  A minister claiming knowledge about Islam, proclaimed it a cult.  More than that, a violent cult.  And more than that, a cult whose aim is to control the world.

 

Perhaps it’s because I’m Jewish, but I could see how easily the hate and intolerance contained in that e-mail could be transferred to Jews. 

 

Muslims, when they move into a new neighborhood, start “demanding” special foods from local markets (halal) the e-mail stated.  Hello, Jews, and particularly Orthodox Jews, want (“demand”) special foods too.  It’s called keeping Kosher.  This is something to fear?

 

Muslims have special courts and laws (sharia) the e-mail stated.   Hello, Jews have an entire book of laws (it’s called Deuteronomy) and many Orthodox Jews will look to the beth din (a Jewish court) for rulings on matters Jewish.

 

What I realized in reading this e-mail was that some sixty years ago, all you would have to do is remove the world “Muslim” and substitute the word “Jew” and you could have seen it in many a tract or newspaper.  Beware the Jews.  Don’t rent to Jews.  Jews are trying to take over the world.  It’s a wee bit out of date, but I would still recommend the movie “Gentlemen’s Agreement” to those too young to remember the 1950’s in America.

 

All this to say that Islam is not the problem.  Nor, believe or not, is hate.  The enemy is fear.  FDR, right yet again.  What we have to fear is fear itself.  And fear, more often than not, is born of ignorance.

 

This, for me, is where we really need to dig deeply.  The person who sent me this e-mail is a friend.  More important than that, this friend is a good, caring, loving human being.  This is not a person filled with hate.  But this is a person filled with fear.

 

At Passover each year, I make a point of telling the story that even many if not most Jews don’t know.  We traditionally open the door as the Seder starts.  This is NOT, as tradition tells us, for Elijah.  Doors long since became irrelevant to him.  The door is opened because during the Middle Ages Christians were afraid of Jews.  They feared that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood as part of the Passover service.  THAT’S why the doors were opened.  So that any passing Christian could look inside and see that their children were safe!

 

Today, some people will see a person who appears to be Muslim and begin to quake with fear.  So how do we answer that fear?  I would hope that we answer it calmly – that we answer it with education, not with anger or diatribe.

 

I remember vividly many years ago, when some friends were teaching a wonderful class in the World Religion.  I was asked to come and talk about Judaism because the teachers couldn’t get the Rabbi they thought was coming to show up.  Why wouldn’t he show up?  Because, as the Rabbi told my friends, “Those kids hate Jews.”  And his response to what he perceived as hate was to yell.

 

The kids, of course, didn’t hate Jews.  But they were woefully ignorant.  In my time I’ve been asked by ignorant (not hateful) people the following questions:

 

• Why did you kill Jesus?  (Actually, I wasn’t there)
• Do Jews have human sacrifice? (No, and that’s what the story of Abraham and Isaac is all about)
• How do Jews “do it?”  (Like everybody else)

 

And many, many others.  All asked out of ignorance, not hate.  Now I’ll admit, that there are some people out there who just flat out hate Jews.  But if you were taught that all Jews are responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion, that Jews sacrifice humans as a part of their ritual, and Jews are so unlike “us” that they make love in weird, inhuman ways, you might be tempted to hate Jews too – or at least to fear them!  But it’s rubbish.  It’s all rubbish. And it’s rubbish born of ignorance.  Not that ignorance can’t become fear, and fear become hate, but only if we leave it alone to fester and to grow.

 

There are indeed evil people who espouse Islam.  Just as there are evil people who espouse Judaism, Christianity, and Atheism.  A person who believes that his/her religion gives them the right to torture or murder in the name of God or (as in Stalin’s case) non-God is indeed evil.

 

But we need to fight the evil, not the religion.  And, for me, one of the greatest evils we have, an evil that warps and destroys more human beings than the plague itself, is ignorance – not hate: ignorance.

 

If for no other reason, and there are MANY other reasons, we need to learn to pray together.  Not to convert.  Not to convince.  But to learn to respect each other's deeply held spiritual pathways.

Interfaith Marriage

 

I was just reading about an increase in interfaith marriages.  According to CBS, in 1988 some 15% of marriages were “mixed faith.”  By 2006 that number was 25%, and still rising.

 

And it hit me, this is a hugely important reason I hadn’t thought of for offering an Interfaith Church.  Interfaith marriage is getting a bit more play at the moment because Chelsea Clinton, Methodist, is preparing to marry Marc Mezvinsky, Jew.  Heaven forefend!!  Can this marriage survive?? ask the tabloids.  How will they raise the kids?

 

Beyond all the whoopla are some real and important questions.  When people from two differing faiths marry, what do they do?  Does each go alone to his/her house of spiritual engagement?  That makes for strain and builds a chasm that may in time become unbridgeable.   

 

Does the couple, perhaps, trade off – one week at one place, another at the other?  In that case, one of them is always a visitor.  In a sense, it becomes a kind of: “OK, we’ll  have dinner at YOUR folks this holiday, but next time it’s MY folks!”

 

And then there’s Interfaith.  Pray together, stay together, respect each other’s deepest spiritual groundings, and in the process build a deeper spiritual understanding.  No one has to leave her or his faith at the door.  What a concept!  One home church, for husband and wife.  A spiritual home, where both are not only welcome, but where their spiritual paths are celebrated.

 

I begin to understand even more deeply how much the Living Interfaith Church is needed.  And it spurs me on to consider how important it is for us to develop a truly respectful Interfaith education for our children.

 

And more.  On my vacation I took Amtrak both ways.  It’s not only relaxing, but a wonderful way to share meals with people I might never have met otherwise.  At one of those meals I met a couple from southern California.  Good people.  I enjoyed the chance to chat and get to know them just a bit.  They were interested in Interfaith as a faith.  In fact, they wanted to know if there was a Living Interfaith church anywhere near them.  I had to confess that, no, right now there’s only one Living Interfaith church.

 

But that started me thinking yet again about the thirst and need for a faith community such as ours.  Lots of them!  Across the country and perhaps around the world.

 

First things first, of course.  While Living Interfaith has been meeting informally once a month for the past six months, we begin “officially” on September 12^th.  We’re just starting out and this is no time to get ahead of ourselves!  And yet … there is such a need.

 

Which brings me back to Interfaith marriages.  Living our Interfaith can be a solid, positive way not only to learn about differing spiritual paths, and to build community, but also to bring couples even more closely together. 

 

The further I immerse myself in the implications of Interfaith, the more humbled and amazed I become.

Our Need for Community

 

This Sunday, the Living Interfaith Church will look at our long path to community.  “Our” long path, as in humanity’s.  In some ways, from an historian’s point of view, we might, perhaps, better be looking at our long path away from community.

 

In a sense, this is a variation on a theme we’ve discussed before.  That there is no “them”.  There is only “us”. 

 

We certainly began with bands of humans.  Community of a sort was necessary for survival.  No one human could make it alone.  And I begin to wonder if it isn’t our technological advances that have allowed us to become so independent?  So unconnected.

 

And yet that’s the easy way out.  True, the bands of humanity, the communities if you will, were more interconnected amongst themselves, “way back when.”  A seminal example of how completely connected people felt comes from Hebrew Scripture, where it accepted as perfectly reasonable that if one member of the Hebrew community messed up, that God would work vengeance on the entire community. 

 

Still, “even” back then, there were those who were “them” and those who were “us.”  For me personally, one of the more chilling passages in Scripture is from 1^st Kings 19:40.  “Take all the prophets of Baal, and let not one of them escape.”  None does.  They are all slaughtered.  They were “them” and not “us”.  A “them” is always so much easier to kill. 

 

Today, July 9^th, is the anniversary of the execution of the Báb, a forerunner of Bahaullah, and the Baha’i faith.  To the Muslim clerics of his day, 1850, the Báb wasn’t one of “us.”  And could therefore be killed.

 

One of my heroes has always been Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..  I’ll quote him at length on Sunday.  But for now, the book’s title must suffice, for title gives the thrust of the entire book.  “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”

 

A quick look around us tells us that we seem to be lurching ever onwards towards chaos.  We are deeply divided.  We are divided over race.  We are divided over economic status.  We are divided over gender.  We are divided over nationality.  And we are divided over religion.

 

And underpinning it all, it seems to me, is our division over religion, since it is our spiritual orientation that drives us towards all of our divisions – or drives us to community.

 

In the face of increasing global turmoil we need spiritual community.  In the face of not only climate change but the very real threat that we are turning over to our children a toxic planet, we need spiritual community.  We are brothers and sisters.  All of us.  There is no them. 

 

This has been a month of huge transition for me.  I’ve departed from the UU Fellowship where I lead the choir for ten years.  I’ve departed from the Interfaith Community Church where I’ve been an Associate Minister for three years.  And of all the weird things to do at my age, I’ve written a book on Interfaith and, with some wonderful help, started the Living Interfaith Church.

 

And the single most driving reason is the belief that there is no them.  There is only us.  And we need to build a communities that not only realize that, but practice it.

 

Now, all I need to do between now and Sunday is put together a sermon that makes that come alive. 

The Fourth and Interfaith

 

This Sunday, a lot of fireworks are going to go off.  A lot of parades will take place.  A lot of hotdogs will be eaten.  And, with the 4^th on a Sunday, there will be a three day weekend, with many if not most people taking Monday off.  All truly happy things.  I would like to add one other joy to that list.

 

Most people seem unaware that when Abraham Lincoln wrote, “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”, he was referring to the Fourth of July, not victory at Yorktown, or the establishment of the Constitution.

 

It was the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution that stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

 

“All men are created equal” was, and unfortunately remains a radical thought.  That it took nearly a hundred years to abolish slavery is one example of why the thought was and is so radical, but it’s not the only one.

 

People talk of the First Amendment as establishing freedom of religion in the United States.  But possibly even more important is Article VI Section 3, which declares that there shall be no religious Test to hold elective office.  Several of the states had such tests.  Indeed, some opposed ratifying the Constitution because Article VI meant that Catholics, Jews and other “heathen” might hold office. 

 

Indeed, it took until 1960 for a Catholic to be elected president.  And our current president had to prove he was a Christian, as the thought that a non-Christian might be elected was reason enough for many to vote against him.

 

From a purely Interfaith perspective, what calls to me about “all men are created equal” is that as we are created equal, so are our spiritual paths.  We do not hold up one religion as better or more “right” than another.  As always, it’s what we do with our religion that counts.  Just as it’s what we do with our freedom that counts.  We are free to be selfish and free to be generous.  We are free to live lives of intolerance or of mutual respect.  Lives of love, or lives of hate.

 

I ponder another radical thought.  I wonder if the 4^th of July might become in addition to the happy, fireworks displaying, hotdog munching day that it is, a serious reflection on that radical thought that we are all created equal.  And what that means.  And where we still fall short.

 

Might we not, as Lincoln suggested at Gettysburg, use our celebration to rededicate ourselves, that there might be a “a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

 

Of the people.  Not government of the corporations, or of the wealthy, or of any one favored religion or any other group: but government of, by and for the people.  Now that IS a radical thought.  And one worth embracing as well as celebrating.  Happy 4^th of July!