The Children Of Abraham

From The American Islamic Forum For Democracy:

The local chapter of the Bureau of Jewish Education gave a summer course offering in Phoenix entitled Islam 101. Josh Sayles reports in today's Jewish News of Greater Phoenix about the course, its instructor, and the thoughts of local leadership.




His report is provided below [#1] and can be found online at this link. The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix also asked Dr. Jasser to provide commentary about the issue and it is also provided below [#2] and available online at this link.



1] Jewish News story as background (Dr. Jasser's commentary follows below at #2) :



Islam 101? BJE course on radicalism labeled as basics

JOSH SAYLES





Staff Writer





Rabbi B. Charles Herring, spiritual leader of Temple Kol Ami in Scottsdale, has been involved in interfaith dialogue for a decade now. Ten years ago, he founded Children of Abraham, a group of about 10 Muslim couples and 10 Jewish couples who meet monthly at one another's homes to socialize and discuss the differences and similarities between the two cultures.



Herring speaks freely about the parallels of the religions, comparing food restrictions, the lunar calendars and the fact that some popular Jewish hymns - such as "Adon Olam" and "Yigdal" - follow Islamic rules of poetry.



"When you spend 10 years together, you're not talking about (holidays) anymore, you're really talking about stuff that's fascinating," he said.



But when Herring launched the group, it wasn't without reservation.



"The first time that we got together, I was basically frightened," he said. "Muslims were being demonized, and I was warned that I was getting myself into deep problems by doing this because I was endangering my life as a Jew. In truth, there's no love lost between international Muslim groups and Jewish groups."



Over time, however, Herring has developed a deep friendship with the members of his Children of Abraham community.



"When you multiply the years we've been doing this, and the amount of time we've spent together - we know each other's kids, and we're in each other's lives. How can you hate the other? They're like your relatives.



"It's so much easier to hate somebody or to be afraid of them."



That is why Herring expressed concern when he learned the Scottsdale branch of the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE) had run a six-part course June 7-July 12 titled "Islam 101."



The course focused on radical Islam even though the subject matter was not specified in the name. The instructor, Dr. Carl Goldberg, is not without controversy - Azra Hussain, co-founder and director of the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona, as well as a member of Children of Abraham, said that Goldberg has appeared several times around the state at places where Muslim speakers were scheduled to lecture, handing out what she said are anti-Muslim materials outside of the venues.



Goldberg rebutted Hussain. He said that he has never "followed her or anyone else around the state" and that the only materials he distributes are those at his lectures and BJE class. One such handout is titled "Troubling Passages in the Koran," and includes 34 passages that Goldberg finds disturbing. Such passages include: "The unbelievers among the people of the book and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of hell; they are the vilest of all creatures," and, "Women are your fields; go then, into your fields whence you please."



"When I talk about the Muslim world, I'm talking about the 57 Muslim countries, plus the communities in the West, and I don't think there's any doubt in anybody's mind that these communities all around the world are pervaded by anti-Semitism," said Goldberg.



He said that for a year or two after 9/11, the media was "not afraid to link the terrorists with Islam, with the religion and doctrines of Islam, but that ended ... when President Bush came out and assured the whole country that Islam is a religion of peace and all we're doing is fighting al-Qaida."



Herring said that his Muslim friends get upset when people cite negative passages from the Quran in an attempt to denounce Islam. "My response to them is, 'Do you want me to give you all the page numbers in the Torah of horrible stuff? Because it certainly is there.' And they decline. They say, 'This is not the answer. We will speak intelligently.'"



Hussain agreed. "Anyone that's going around talking about heinous stuff - ugliness and killing and terrorizing - I can understand blaming people for that, saying that human beings are doing that," she said. "But saying a religion is teaching that, saying a religion is that corrupt and that ugly, you know that's not a place of truth.



"If you came to me and told me that Judaism teaches all these ugly things, I'd look at you and wonder what you'd been eating, because to me, saying a whole religion is doing it is very different than saying some followers or some people who claim to be that (religion) are doing it."



Goldberg, who is Jewish, has a doctorate in history and is a former Russian-language instructor at Arizona State University, said he has no formal training in Islam other than that he has been reading up on it extensively for the last four or five years. He said he is qualified to teach Islam 101 because he is simply quoting "the most respected Islamic sources" and letting his students form their own opinions.



"I'm advising people to go to Islamic sources," said Goldberg. "I'm not advising them to take my opinion. That's the difference. If you have a non-Jew lecturing on Judaism who tells you, 'Go read the Jewish scholars,' I think that's legitimate."



Goldberg said his sources include Sayyid Qutb, Abul Maududi, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Robert Spencer. He said that he is not talking about all Muslims, only those who follow Islamic doctrines.



"It's important to know Islamic doctrines because those doctrines influence the behavior of millions upon millions of Muslims," said Goldberg. "That's what's the important thing. We have to understand what we are dealing with."



Islamic doctrines are the principal foundations of the religion.



Goldberg said that although the threat of Islam is greater in countries that follow Shariah, or Islamic law, there are anti-Semitic Muslim circles throughout the world - including throughout the United States - that pose a danger to Jews.



"What would you do if you had a Ku Klux Klan center, or Nazi party centers all over the United States propagating Nazi ideology?" asked Goldberg. "What would you do about it? It's quite similar, actually, because the ideology is not all that different.



"The (Islamic) organizations in the United States, they are derivatives of the Muslim Brotherhood (around the world), and there's no question where the Muslim Brotherhood stands on this. So they're all part of the same movement. And you may have occasional denunciations, general denunciations of anti-Semitism, but I don't think you have anybody demonstrating coexistence with Israel. So, I think, by extension you have to assume that they're not all that different from Muslim communities elsewhere, after all, that's where they came from. And until we do a survey or a poll that asks these questions ... I'm not sure we can say a whole lot. But the indications are that they support the rest of the Muslim world."



The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamic political group founded in Egypt in 1928. Its bylaws are published at ikwhanweb.com.



Bill Straus, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that he is familiar with Goldberg's position, that he has a problem with it and that he questions Goldberg's ability to teach objectively about Islam.



"Having heard some of Carl's allegations, and asking people in the Muslim community whom I feel I can trust, 'Is that true?' I always get the same answer: 'That's if you want to interpret it like the people who want to kill us, the most radical of the radicals,'" said Straus.



"Looking at the Muslim faith through the eyes of Carl Goldberg would be like studying the Jewish faith through the eyes of someone who is suspicious of Jews and views them as his enemy."



To that, Goldberg responded, "I would not use Bill Straus as an authority. He knows nothing about Islam. He's never studied it."



"No, I've never studied Islam," confirmed Straus. "But I'm an authority on prejudice, and Carl Goldberg, like everyone who insists that they have the answer and there is no other, allows that to prejudice his view of Islam."



Aaron Scholar, director of the local Bureau of Jewish Education, said he brought in Goldberg to teach the class not because he thought he was a "Muslim scholar," but because Goldberg has a doctorate in history and would therefore know how to research and use materials in the classroom.



"Our purpose at the bureau is just to inform people, not about the negatives of Islam, but about Islam, the positive as well as the negative ... and (to let the students) make the decisions," said Scholar.



Scholar said that of the 13 individuals who signed up for the class, one walked out "in disgust" after the first day, but he has heard mostly positive feedback from the other 12. Some have requested a follow-up course - Islam 102 - to be taught by Goldberg.



He said he has not yet decided whether Goldberg will be brought back to teach Islam 102 and/or another session of Islam 101.



"(In teaching Islam) you have volatile areas of tremendous sensitivity," said Scholar. "The bottom line is, it's the problems and the solutions we're trying to look at, not the (Muslim) people.



"We're all responsible for factual information. All religions have had serious problems over the ages. Islam, or at least parts of Islam ... or the misreading of Islam - however you want to look at it - is the one that seems to be a threat at the present time. It isn't Catholicism that's creating a problem for society today, it isn't Protestantism, it isn't Judaism. Right now, the focus is on Islam, so the point of any instructional unit is to find out what that part of the religion is all about. It's that simple."



Rabbi Reuven Firestone, professor of medieval Jewish and Islamic studies and executive committee member of the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, said that he runs into Islamophobia and anti-Semitism on a regular basis.



"People are frightened and anxious and they tend to assume the worst," he said. "The irony is that we as Jews sometimes engage in the same kind of scapegoating that anti-Semites have traditionally directed toward us.



"I don't think, frankly, that people who scapegoat other people ... are doing it because they're evil, but because they're frightened, and that can result in hate and violence. I think there are some people who really push (the envelope) and maybe are in the category of evil, but I don't really know any, and I know lots of anti-Semites and Islamophobes. Mostly they're afraid."





2] Dr. Jasser's commentary for the Jewish News.



A course on Islam



by M. ZUHDI JASSER









On the surface, the Bureau of Jewish Education was perceptive and timely in its offering this summer of a course titled "Islam 101." However, knowing the materials distributed by the course instructor, Carl Goldberg, a Ph.D. in Russian history, a more fitting title would have been "Islam: The totalitarian ideology."



Goldberg conflates various oppressive theocratic interpretations of Islam as "the Islam." A recent missive he sent me stated, "Only by deviating from Islamic doctrine can Islam become compatible with democracy. But, that is logically absurd because then Islam would cease to be Islam."



Goldberg defends his claims by stating that he is simply reporting the "truth" as taught by "leading" Muslim scholars. When presented with alternative modern scholarly interpretations of the Quran and Hadith, he ignores them as contrived, illegitimate or hopeless. His responses to Muslim reformists would certainly make Bin Laden and Imam Al-Awlaki proud.



This is not about Goldberg or the Bureau of Jewish Education. This is about understanding both our enemies and our friends. They are both Muslim, and they both practice a form of Islam. By inexorably linking supremacist ideologies to the entire faith, we are surrendering one-quarter of the world's population to a supremacist mind-set that leaves nothing for the future but a global clash of religions.



We need to recognize the validity of devotional anti-Islamist Muslims and marginalize the ideas of political Islam. We need not one but many courses on Islam, political Islam, salafism and jihadism to name a few. But these courses must teach about the debate going on within the faith. The House of Islam is not monolithic. It has a diversity wherein lies the future of its own political modernization and thus our security.



We need an open and frank discourse about the religion of Islam. Radical Islam is but a symptom of political Islam, which seeks to incorporate Shariah into government. The only way to truly defeat global Islamist terror is to instill in Muslims the ideas of liberty that will give them the strength to reject the supremacy of the Islamic state. This process will not happen in a setting that dismisses the entirety of Islam.



Sadly, the comfort our Founding Fathers had with a critical discourse on religion has been lost. The negative perceptions nationally about Islam have almost doubled since 9/11, beginning at 23 percent negative. Leading Islamist groups in D.C. - Muslim Brotherhood front groups - have only served to fan the flames and advance the ideologies of transnational political Islam. These Islamist groups have ushered in a prevailing perception among Americans that Muslims are disengaged from American security and in denial over the need for real, deep reform.



Education is a journey whose direction and destination should be open and thoughtful. Instruction that castigates an entire faith for the global theo-political movements within it leaves students with nothing but anger. A teacher's responsibilities go beyond repetition of a few facts; they lie in discussing the solutions our students may go on to implement. Without a reasoned Muslim-based solution, there will be only a dangerous vacuum from which no one can benefit.



M. Zuhdi Jasser is the founder and president of the Phoenix-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy