When I was a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, that institution
hosted a very interesting speaker. Her name is Irshad Manji, and she is a
Canadian Muslim woman of Pakistani descent who may be one of the most controversial
figures in the Muslim world today. She is a journalist who has written a couple
of books on the idea of reforming Islam, and has been involved with projects
designed to bring change to the Muslim world.
Ms. Manji had recently published her first book, The Trouble With Islam Today, in which she identifies many of the things that we in the West see as problematic
within the Muslim world: its treatment of women, honor killings*, female
genital cutting, slavery, and, of course, international terrorism and
anti-Semitism. There is no question that much of today’s anti-Jewish and
anti-Israeli hatred is coming from Muslims. (Last I heard, the suspects in the
tragic bombing in Boston were Chechen; it is likely that they are Muslims.)
Knowing that she was standing before a group of Conservative Jews, rabbis
and cantors and future clergy, Ms. Manji expressed hope that, while the Islam
of the East is saddled with a range of social ills, the future of moderate Islam,
something similar to non-Orthodox Judaism, lies in the West. She also pointed
to a concept in historical Islamic jurisprudence called “ijtihad,” which
fell out of common practice around the 10th century CE. Ijtihad is
effectively the elevation of the self, the ability to think critically and make
one’s own decisions within the sphere of shari’a, Islamic law. Ms. Manji
advocates a return of ijtihad to Islam to bring the Muslim world into
modernity, that introspection and self-criticism coming from Muslims in the
West would yield a positive effect on the rest of Islam.
A brief grammar note: Arabic, like its sister language, Hebrew, has binyanim,
verb constructs that modify a shoresh, three or four root letters, into related
verb forms. One of these binyanim in Hebrew is reflexive, and is
referred to as hitpa’el, the “hit” at the beginning being the major
sign of reflexive-ness. When found in this binyan, a verb reflects back on
the speaker.**
I am by no means an expert in Arabic grammar. However, I do know that ijtihad
is a reflexive form of the root from which the well-known word jihad,
meaning “struggle”, is derived. So “ijtihad” literally means,
“struggle with oneself.”
Now, I have just mentioned shari’a and jihad, words which
have probably raised the hackles of more than a few of us in this room. Why is
that? I’ll return to that question in a moment. First, a few words about the Torah.
We read today in Parashat Qedoshim an
extensive list of laws known to scholars as “the Holiness Code.” They include
such diverse topics as honoring one’s parents, leaving some of your produce for
the poor, treating animals respectfully, dealing fairly with your business
customers, and so forth. It is a fascinating look into the world of our
ancestors and their expectations for how to interact with others. (It was also,
as luck would have it, my Bar Mitzvah parashah, and I appreciate it all
the more so today.)
Qedoshim (and the rest of
Jewish tradition) should be studied not just as a law code, not merely a
framework for righteous behavior, but also as a means to improving ourselves.
Why does the Torah need to tell us to leave the corners of our fields unharvested,
so that poor people in our midst can come and take food? Because our
inclination is to be greedy, to take more for ourselves. The Torah is therefore
challenging us to rise above our base natures, to struggle internally over what
we want to do vs. what we should do. And this is a struggle with which we are
all intimately familiar.
I would like to highlight one verse (Lev. 19:16):
לֹא-תֵלֵךְ רָכִיל בְּעַמֶּיךָ, לֹא תַעֲמֹד עַל-דַּם
רֵעֶךָ: אֲנִי ה'.
Lo telekh rakhil be’amekha; lo ta’amod al dam reiekha, ani Adonai.
Do not go as a gossip among your people; do not profit by the blood of your
fellow, I am Adonai.
While at first, the two halves of this verse do not seem to relate to each
other, the 12th century Spanish commentator Avraham Ibn Ezra tells us the
following:
Rather, “do not take a stand against the blood of your fellow” - do not conspire
with violent men against him. It is obvious that many people have been murdered
and otherwise killed on account of talebearing.
Ibn Ezra’s point is that talking ill of others causes bloodshed, because by
contributing to the fear and hatred of others in your midst, you might actually
inspire dangerous people to take action, even if that is not your intent.
I raise this because of the complicated issues surrounding the visit of the
infamous Pamela Geller to our community last Sunday. Geller is an activist who
decries the “Islamization” of America, and along with fellow activist Robert
Spencer, the founder of “Stop Islamization of America,” or SIOA. This organization
has been identified by the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) as “deeply problematic,” and characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “anti-Muslim,”
an analog to “anti-Semitic.” Geller is probably best known for leading the
charge against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.” You might also know her for
these signs, which were placed in the New York subways by her other organization,
the American Freedom Defense Initiative, only after a court battle to win the
right to place them:
In addition to these endeavors, she regularly makes inflammatory and “preposterous”
(according to the SPLC) statements. She promotes the idea of an extremist
Muslim conspiracy in our midst, involving our government, our media, and even
“left-wing rabbis” to impose shari’a on all of us non-Muslims. She
claims that there is no such thing as “moderate” Islam, and is fond of calling
her critics “Nazis” or “leftists” or “Islamic supremacists.”
She spoke last Sunday here in Great Neck at the local Chabad synagogue.
There were perhaps as many as 500 people in attendance.
Ladies and gentlemen, I feel that Ms. Geller should not be given a forum at
any synagogue. She puts herself forward as a defender of Israel, but what she
and her organization are doing is characterized in no uncertain terms by the
director of the ADL’s New York office, Etzion Neuer, as “bigotry.”
There is no question that the Islamic world has much to answer for. Many of
the statements and actions by individual Muslims around the world that Ms.
Geller points to on her website and at speaking engagements are, unfortunately,
true. And those in their midst that tolerate hatred and despicable acts are
guilty accomplices, and should rightly be taken to task.
However, that does not give us a green light to engage in the same types of
hatred. And that does not mean that there is credible conspiracy to turn us all
into Muslims.
Ms. Geller and her partners, Mr. Spencer and David Yerushalmi, the guy who is working hard to get state
legislatures to pass ordinances that will prevent judges from consulting
shari’ah law, and who also introduced her at Chabad on Sunday,
promote themselves as fighting jihad. But what they are actually doing is
something truly nefarious: they are creating a fear of something that does not
really exist. There are no American courts that are giving American Muslims a
pass on honor killings; the few American cases that I could find through
Internet searches have resulted in jail time for the guilty parties. There is no
attempt by anybody to bring Islamic law to public schools, or to force anybody
to wear a veil, or to invade our public space in a way that violates our rights
to live and practice our religion freely as Americans.
To imply that these things are in fact happening, when they are not, is talebearing.
This is gossip. This is painting all Muslims with one brush.
Geller and her friends are really doing something shameful: they are
deceiving ordinary American Jews into fearing something that just is not there.
And they are further sowing division, not just between Jews, Christians, and
Muslims, but also causing a wedge between Jews right here in Great Neck and
elsewhere.
This is standing by the metaphorical blood of your neighbor. And we Jews,
with the lessons that we have learned from centuries of oppression, of blood
libels and pogroms and genocide, we know that fear and hatred leads to the
shedding of actual blood.
In 1790, following his visit to the Sephardic synagogue in Newport, Rhode
Island, he President George Washington wrote the following in a letter
to the congregation:
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves
for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy
of imitation... For happily the Government of the United States, which gives
to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that
they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is our duty as American Jews to continue to
maintain the ideals that President Washington invoked. To be pro-Israel, one
need not be anti-Muslim. And bigotry and persecution have no place in our
synagogues, in our holy places. We cannot lower ourselves to the level of the
anti-Semites, because that just gives them more credibility, and more ammunition
for their hateful ways.
Rather, it is our duty to reach out to and support the moderate Muslims in
this world, and there are many, particularly here in North America. As Irshad
Manji has suggested, by elevating the moderates, the ones who are willing to
engage in introspection through the ancient Muslim tenet of ijtihad, we
have the potential to change this equation for the better. Change will not come
unless we raise the bar of dialogue, rather than lowering it; Pamela Geller’s
hateful recriminations leave no room for respectful disagreement.
As a footnote, I would like to add that if Ms. Geller ever reads this
sermon on my blog, she will surely call me all sorts of names, as that is how
she works. She will suggest that I am part of the vast conspiracy to suppress
what she calls “the truth.” None of these accusations will be true; but her
doing so will prove my point.
The truth, ladies and gentlemen, is that we cannot be naive about the
dangers posed by fundamentalists and zealots of all stripes, Muslim, Jewish,
Christian, Hindu, and so forth. But there are more productive ways for us to
save lives and support Israel than to succumb to fear-mongering in our
community.
It is for sins of talebearing that Ms. Geller and her colleagues should be ignored.
They have a right to say what they want, just as anti-Israel activists do, just
as, I suppose, outright hate groups do, as long as it does not incite violence.
But let us not give them a forum; let us give bigotry no sanction.
Shabbat shalom.
~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
* The origin of honor killings is cultural, not endorsed by Muslim leaders;
while it is abhorrent, it far predates the birth of Islam, and is related to
the very principles we read in two separate passages in our parashah today,
that mandate death for forbidden sexual liaisons. While Jewish society never
enforced these killings, some traditional societies, including many which
became Muslim in the 6th century and thereafter, maintained them. It is of
course a shame and embarrassment that this practice still exists; perhaps as
many as 5000 people are killed by their own family members each year
world-wide. Muslim Men Against Domestic Abuse is one organization that is working to prevent these killings.
** Some Hebrew examples are:
- lehit’orer, to wake up
- lehitlabbesh, to dress oneself
- lehitpallel, to pray (literally, to judge oneself)
- lehitlonnen, to complain (interesting that this reflects back
on oneself - not so good for the Jews, right?)
