Dialogue with Radical Muslims is Dangerous for American Jews

by Jerry Gordon (January 2012)

Introduction

Brit Tzedek v Shalom,In this article we will demonstrate how aberrant and dangerous is the contemporary Jewish predilection to dialogue with its ancient Muslim enemies.

One Big Tent for Christians, Jews and Muslims in Brentwood

“One Big Tent: Jews, Muslims, Christians celebrate spirituality in a shared sacred space.”

Warren Buffet was once a member. It is called the Tri-Faith Initiative and it looks like the latest in inter-religious dialogue.

Rabbi Jonathan Hausman commented:

In a world of turmoil and political-religious animosity, it is remarkable that the plan has advanced this far without public controversy. Nowhere else is a community doing what Omaha has set out to do: Build a synagogue, a mosque and a church next alongside one another, along with a fourth interfaith structure.

Quiet fears that have been expressed range from the possibility of diluting the respective religions, to worries about intermarriage or even the chance that extremists could view the site as a target.

Nonetheless, a feeling of good will prevails, even as leaders acknowledge that support is not unanimous.

But no protests or ugly incidents have occurred such as happened last year in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where a longtime mosque was planning to expand.

Kelly cites liberal national Jewish newspaper, The Forward, as believing the Omaha Tri-faith project marks a first:

Even though the tri-faith groups represent about 2 percent of the metro population, the Omaha effort is being watched elsewhere.

The Tri-Faith project has the usual spin from Muslim radio commentators and local Omaha Muslim leaders.

For the mosque, Muslim leaders have hired a fundraiser who is Jewish and an architect who is Christian.

[. . .]

The often-unstated fear, given the world history of Muslims and Jews, is that disputes and protests someday could spill over into violence in Omaha or that the tri-faith site could be a target.

But according to Kelly all is not sweetness and light about the Tri-Faith project. Witness the objections to the project, an outgrowth of a new sanctuary for a Reform Temple and adjacent residential- commercial development in Omaha:

The tri-faith site, east of 132nd Street between Pacific Street and West Center Road, would be part of a much larger residential-commercial development called Sterling Ridge. When the Omaha City Council held a hearing, neighbors objected to parts of the overall development, but no one opposed the tri-faith plan.

Javitch said he wants to know whether future next-door neighbors, who would attend the mosque, wish ill on Israel.

Notwithstanding sources of funding for the new Reform Temple and Episcopal Church, where are the funds going to come from to build the Mosque? An indication of that possibility can be found in this post on the ACT! Omaha Chapter website about recent renovations to the existing Islamic Center of Omaha (ICO):

The ICO has been busy remodeling and the project includes the building of a new minaret. The question of whether or not this minaret will be sounded 5 times every day (starting as early as 5 or 6 am) is yet to be seen or rather, heard.

The ICO is deeded to the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

NAIT represents at least two things:

Then there is the past radical leadership of the ICO, Imam Ahmed Alzaree, who left Omaha in 2007 and resigned in controversy before he could take a new post at a Cleveland, Ohio Mosque.

Not enough due diligence has been done by the benighted Jewish and Episcopalian participants in the Omaha Tri-Faith Initiative on their ICO Mosque partners. Rabbi Hausman commented on what the non-Muslim Tri-Faith partners should address:

Noted theologian Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein commented:

Then, there is Mr. Freeman, Chairman of the Tri-Faith Initiative who was quoted in the Kelly article as saying:

Watch this You Tube video of the Tri-Faith Media Conference held on December13, 2011.

Twinning With Mosques at West Side Manhattan Synagogues

 taken to task Rabbi Marc Schneier of FFEU that sponsors annual twinnings of synagogues and mosques throughout the US, the EU and even, Turkey. You can see the list for the most recent twinnings that occurred over the weekend of November 18th-20^th on the FFEU website, here. There you will notice twinnings in the US involving MB front groups like the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Muslim Student Association (MSA), the latter with Hillel Chapters on some university campuses. When we interviewed Dr. Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), he talked about their uncovering a twinning event with Syrian terrorism sponsors and antisemitic Imams that forced the Buffalo, New York Jewish community to abandon that twinning episode.

Note this exchange during an interview with Jacobs on the Buffalo twinning fiasco:

Daisy Khan of the American Society for the Advancement of Muslims, wife of controversial Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf of the Cordoba House Initiative and what many believe is the failed ground zero mosque project. In the JTA account of that FFEU twinning event at B’nai Jeshurun, Ms. Khan uttered this taqiyya comment totally lost on her Jewish interlocutors:

Khan also noted the commonality between the traditions.

“Synagogue Hopes To Build Mosque's Trust.“ The Jewish Daily Forward story attests to the mindset of liberal Jews who venerate the liberal interpretation of the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam – “repairing the world.” It is about a twinning that never happened between the West End Synagogue in Manhattan and West African immigrants in Imam Souleimane Konate’s Masjid Aqsa Mosque in Harlem. Why? Because many members of the Masjid Aqsa Mosque, who hail from the Ivory Coast and Senegal, are “hard working” illegal aliens who were afraid of exposure to the authorities.

The Jewish Daily Forward picked up the threads of this complicated tale:

Others from the congregation offered material support. Jerry Posman, who serves as vice president for finance and administration at City College, expressed his desire to collaborate with Konate in setting up scholarships for undocumented youth who wish to pursue higher education.

We wonder if the rabbi and his congregation would dare to ask Imam Konate how many members of his mosque have polygamous marriages and take their daughters back to the Ivory Coast for female genital mutilation procedures.

When Dr. Arnold Eisen was appointed Chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), many in the Conservative movement thought this might be the start of a new era. That was the hope given his earnest outreach meetings with Conservative congregations across the US and Canada.

That prospect ended with the JTS announcement of a program on October 25^th, 2010.

The Jewish Theological Seminary, in partnership with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Hartford Seminary,  was hosting  an innovative roundtable discussion, “Judaism and Islam in America Today: Assimilation and Authenticity.”

The JTS objective in sponsoring the program was spelled out in the announcement:

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, and rabbi, theologian and D.H.L., honoris causa from JTS, Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein in his book, Jihad and Genocide.

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Maimonides noted this about Mohammed in the letter written in 1172 C.E. to Jacob Ben Netan'el al-Fayymi, who headed the Jewish community in Yemen.

Then there is this additional comment from the Iggeret Teiman

Grand Jihad plan of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. That Grand Jihad plan would insinuate Sharia Islamic law supplanting the US Constitution, with its guarantees of free speech and equal justice for all.

member of the facultymove on in June 2012 to a comparable academic post at the Anglican Theology program of Huron University College (HUC) affiliated with the University of Western Ontario. Her endowed chair at HUC is funded in part by local affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood. During her tenure at the Hartford Seminary, Dr. Mattson headed a program for certifying Muslim Chaplains for our armed services and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. ISNA was one of several Muslim Brotherhood front groups in America cited as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2008 Federal Dallas Holy Land Foundation trial. ISNA, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) and the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) engaged in funneling upwards of $36 million in funds to Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization designated by our State Department. In the course of that trial, federal prosecutors unearthed and presented evidence of the secret Grand Jihad plans of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. ISNA, NAIT and CAIR tried unsuccessfully to petition the Federal court in Dallas to expunge their names from the cited list of unindicted co-conspirators. The Federal court rejected the petitions based on the evidence of the record in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

Wahhabism denies the rights of free worship by non-believers in Saudi Arabia something that we hold precious in our Constitution. A Constitution that Wahhabism considers Jahiliyya  (man made ignorance) and a shirk (or sin) for professing Muslims to lawfully follow.

She engaged in moral relativism juxtaposing Western criticism of Islam and terrorism with the late Osama bin Laden using Islamic doctrine to commit violence.

al- Qaida on the one hand, and Osama bin Laden citing “Islamic theology to justify violence against Americans” on the other.

in the October 2009 New English Review, Rabbi Jon Hausman underlined why our Constitution is paramount for Jews and all Americans.

the law of the country is binding).

In September 2010, after mildly criticizing the Ground Zero Mosque project in New York, the ADL under its long term executive director, Abe Foxman, formed another ecumenical group, the Interfaith Coalition on Mosques (ICOM) to defend Mosque projects elsewhere in America. The ICOM-ADL filed amicus curiae brief in the Murfreesboro Chancery Court proceedings. The ICM-ADL brief paralled one the US Department of Justice filed in support of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro expansion plan project, the subject of the Murfreesboro Chancery Court Hearing. A hearing brought by community plaintiffs contesting approvals by the Rutherford County Planning Commission and County Commissioners.

Lauter allegedly told the Los Angeles Times that if all the members of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro were public cheerleaders for Hamas, it would still be illegal to discriminate against them because the First Amendment protects freedom of worship.

post, I noted the exchange:

Opinion: “The Threat of Sharia Law: It's All a Matter of Myth Making”The threat of the infiltration of Sharia, or Islamic law, into the American court system is one of the more pernicious conspiracy theories to gain traction in our country in recent years. The notion that Islam is insidiously making inroads in the United States through the application of religious law is seeping into the mainstream, with even some presidential candidates voicing fears about the supposed threat of Sharia to our way of life.

[. . .]

But the anti-Sharia bills are more than a matter of unnecessary public policy. These measures are, at their core, predicated on prejudice and ignorance. They constitute a form of camouflaged bigotry that enables their proponents to advance an idea that finds fault with the Muslim faith and paints all Muslim Americans as foreigners and anti-American crusaders.

If the hysteria over Sharia law continues to percolate through our political and social discourse, there is bound to be unintended consequences.

Istanbul Process Conference on Combating Intolerance,The Forward in a December 9, 2011 article reported:

Imam Abdullah Faaruuq of the ISBCC and Dr. Charles Jacobs of APT June 26, 2009

Charles Jacobs confronts the moral blindness of the Boston Jewish community

A former friend who struck a deal with prosecutors testified about a 2004 trip he and Mehanna made to Yemen in hopes of attending a terrorist training camp. They planned to go to Iraq after that to fight American troops.

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