This seems to be everybody’s individual mantra.   I usually stay away from “interfaith functions” where the purpose is not clear, although sometimes I go just to refresh my memory about why I don’t go. So I went to one recently where we were 7 panelists talking about the UN declaration on the Elimination all Forms of Intolerance (see my article “A modest proposal” at htttp://rubinfriedman.com/blog/?p47).

I found it as strange, interesting, menacing and amusing as ever. The 7 of us were I think Catholic, Scientology, Jewish, Unification Church, Muslim, Bhuddist and Bahai.  An eclectic mix you might think. 

In addition we were all different people so some of us talked about personal experience, some gave a detailed and referenced presentation based on texts, some gave a broad philosophical presentation on how to address evil and I did, as usual a little bit of everything.  But I am not sure it was a dialogue.  People were interested to hear our perspectives but there was only one seriously challenging question during the session. 

Someone from the audience asked the Muslim representative how he would explain the link between the Koranic text he quoted, that there is no compulsion in religion, and the fact that an Afghan had been sentenced to death by a Muslim court because he had converted from Islam to Christianity.  He found it hard to answer and basically just said that it was all politics. I am finding so-called moderates like him becoming more and more opaque lately.  They are extremely defensive and, I think, extremely nervous about saying anything that could be interpreted as a criticism of Islam as she is practiced. 

Because of this defensiveness, he ended up saying things like, “The Holocaust was a terrible event in Europe but now the people of Iraq are living through another Holocaust.”  Afterwards, he reacted to my mention of the Blood Libel during my presentation by citing some texts where Muslims are accused by Christians of forcefully circumcising Christians.  What is astonishing is that this very intelligent man seems completely unaware of how inappropriate these comparisions are. Meanwhile, my Catholic interlocutor starts to complain that the Holocaust is used politically to justify what is done to the Palestinians.  I immediately told him that he was treading on antisemitic ground, that no one except the enemies of the Jews uses this kind of argument. 

He then pointed out that Avigdor Lieberman was now a member of the Israeli government and wasn’t he promoting ethnic cleansing? I answered that Lieberman does not use the Holocaust to justify this action.  He uses the Biblical claim to the Holy Land and the ongoing hatred that the Arabs have toward Jews as his rationale.  I disagree with Lieberman and find it a terrible thing that he is in Cabinet but he does not use the Holocaust argument.  I also pointed out that he got into Cabinet as a direct consequence of Palestinian and Hizbollah actions. 

I think the vehemence I expressed about this may have made an impression on him but I am not sure.  I think people on the left tend to ascribe this kind of argument to Jews because it is the kind of argument THEY would use. The Bahai person who asked the difficult question of the Muslim panelist approached me later and when I said he had asked a difficult question, he replied, “The question was easy.  It is just hard for the Muslim speaker to admit in public that the punishment for apostasy in Islam is death.”  He cited the killing of Muslim converts to Bahai. 

These are the kinds of things we cannot say to each other in public, yet they are the essence of the kind of resentment each of us harbors.  How will we ever resolve these things if we, so-called moderates reaching out to  members of other religions, never actually say them except in little side conversations? I do not know how to do it.  No one else seems to either.  Which reminds me why I generally avoid these kinds of evenings even though the hosts were kind, the audience attentive and the cookies delicious. 

But jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war.  So I will likely go again and try again to get people to look inward as well as outward, to their own sources of envy, resentment and anger as well as the injustices they have suffered.  Perfection is hard to attain but man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?