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Interfaith work
toward building peace in the Holy Land
An important step toward building peaceful relations, says Sheik Ahdul Aziz Bukhari, is for Muslims and Jews to try to understand each other and build respect through interfaith dialogue.
Sheikh Bukhari is among dozens of top Orthodox rabbis and sheikhs holding interfaith meetings in recent years to help underscore common values and hopes.
What sets these little-known peace efforts apart front the rest of Israel's peace camp is a focus on religion, rather than politics, as the basis for dialogue and negotiation. Mainstream activists are largely secular.
The religious peace camp hopes to change the stereotype that religion is against coexistence. Setting the tone for new definitions of Jewish-Arab cooperation, they often refer to themselves as "the children of Abraham living in the land of the prophets".
While such commonalities have been the basis for numerous talks between clerics, the majority of meetings have been held underground. We were afraid sometimes to meet in public because of extremists on both sides, said Rabbi Bardea.
In December 2000, during Hanukka and Ramadan and some eight weeks into the intifada, the clerics decided that a public meeting might help redirect hostilities. Israel's chief Sephardic rabbi, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, opened his office to some 36 sheikhs and Orthodox rabbis, facing one another. Rabbis in black hats, long coats and side curls, and sheikhs in headscarves and white skullcaps could be seen nodding their heads in agreement.
Though the meeting was ground-breaking in some ways, it received little attention. The Israeli media likes to portray ultra-religious people as reactionary, said media analyst Moshe Negbi. They ignore those who don't fit the stereotype. On the Palestinian side, censorship prevents coverage of ideas that might contradict the leadership. Headlines stayed focused on violence and the event went largely unnoticed.
Behind the scenes some clerics expressed disappointment because this first public gathering strayed deep into political theory instead of focusing only on issues of religion. This division reflects two schools of thought in the religious peace camp: some want a role in political peace negotiations; others believe solutions cannot be political.
Jerusalem rabbi Dov Maimon is at the center of the camp that is not interested in dialogue with political leaders. His focus, he says, is to develop a 'theology of pluralism'.
Politics aren't the solution, he asserted. We work with religious texts and authorities of Judaism and Islam to speak out against abuse of religion on any side. We look at coexistence from a Jewish and Muslim point of view and try to create Jewish and Muslim principles. We will go to schools and to the masses to teach these values when we have principles acceptable to rabbis and Muslim leaders.