For the past four years, I have been representing the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in a variety of dialogue and social action projects with the Muslim community in the U.S. and abroad. These engagements have been conducted on the local, national, and international levels. This essay surveys those efforts and offers some brief assessment of preliminary outcomes. The essay is a personal view, as I have been involved as a participant in every program described here, up to the time of this writing (Dec. 31, 2008).
Where should the dialogue go from here? Is there a particularly effective set of inter-religious programs that has emerged from the Jewish-Muslim engagement?
Just as there are many divisions amongst Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhist, there are divisions amongst Muslims as well.
It all depends on whom you wish to have a dialogue with and whose interpretation you are seeking whether it be Exoteric based on Sharia only or Esoteric based on a Spiritual Interpretation of the Qur’an.
There are Whabbis from Saudi Arabia (no such religion exist in the Qur’an), Sunnis (4 school of thoughts: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi or Hanbali), Shias (Isna-Ashari, Boras, Ismailis) or Sufis (Shia or Sunni)?
Islam is spread throughout the world, not only in Middle East, there are Chinese Muslims, Russian Muslims, Indo-Pak Muslims and Eastern European Muslims, etc who are not Arabs and don’t speak a word of Arabic.
FYI: just because someone can converse in Arabic is not an automatic indication that they can read and understand the Qu’ran in it’s original document.
There are 3 types of Arabic: Conversational, MSA (middle standard arabic) and Quranic Arabic. Less than 1% of Muslim can read Qur’anic Arabic.
For example, how the word ‘Jihad’ is used, is based on the interpretation.
Poetising the Prophet’s teaching, Nasir Khusraw, the 11th century Iranian poet-philosopher, also extols the virtue of knowledge.
For him, true jihad is the war that must be waged against the perpetrators of bigotry, through spreading knowledge that dispels the darkness of ignorance and nourishes the seed of peace that is innately embedded in the human soul.
So, if you are a truth seeker, you might want to reach out to the community who follows an esoteric or the spiritual interpretation of Islam based on the Qur’an.
http://www.theismaili.org/cms/14/The-Aga-Khan
**********************************************
The article below written by Dr. Ezra Chwat, at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem can set some background and give us a reality check.
Great Rabbis of the Muslim Empire
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/muslim_rabbis.html
Of the innovations that the rabbinic world inherited from the Muslim empire, this probably had the greatest impact. Essentially, the Talmud discourse is structured …