A bearded Muslim man, Dylan Chown, was talking to a woman with a
face-veil. He paused his conversation with her and turned to greet me
warmly. Dylan then turned back to her
and apologised, with real feeling in his voice:
“I am sorry that I was rude to you”.
These brief interactions occurred as participants were arriving to the
Australian Islamic Schooling Conference. I observed the exchange and thought:
this is what Muslims call “Adab”. I had learned at the conference, that Adab
was something more than mere manners. Adab might be described as a set of
religious, respectful and sensitive practices. The two ‘turnings’ (towards me and back towards her)
can also be used as a metaphor for the challenge of balancing attending to the
priorities of our faith communities, while also relating to people outside
those communities.
Afeefa Syeed, the founder of Al Fatih, a Muslim school in the American
state of Virginia, spoke about an example of how her students expressed
solidarity with oppressed fellow Muslims. They visited George Washington’s
cemetery at Mt Vernon, as part of their study of History. They had learned that
some of the “slaves” (or, perhaps more appropriately, enslaved people (1)) had
been Muslims. They asked to be directed to where those slaves were buried. This
request was met with surprise: “why would anyone be interested in seeing that?”
The graves were neglected, but the students said a prayer there (2).
This anecdote touched me. Alongside our concerns for humanity, there
is a need, and great virtue in solidarity with one’s own community, be that a
community based on faith or place. One of the Torah’s villains, the evil
prophet and sorcerer Balaam, is described as being “without a nation” (3). Furthermore, this absence of national or
communal ties is deemed to be indicative of exclusion from heaven (4).
At the conference an Imam, an Australian Muslim school principal, a
Catholic educator (5) and I conducted a breakout session together. One activity involved exploring quotes from
Islamic and Jewish sources with similar messages. One set of these quotes was
the following pair:
……..and to parents do good, and to relatives,
orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion
at your side, the traveler, and those whom your right hands possess. (6)
...if a poor person and a rich person come to borrow money, the poor person takes precedence. ...If it is between one of the poor of your city and one of the poor of another city, the poor of your city takes precedence. (7)
...if a poor person and a rich person come to borrow money, the poor person takes precedence. ...If it is between one of the poor of your city and one of the poor of another city, the poor of your city takes precedence. (7)
In a similar vein, we heard how the Al Fatih students showed care
for their non-Muslim neighbours by adopting and cleaning the road near their
school for the benefit of all the locals and passing travellers.
I told the conference that navigating my ties to my Jewish community
and others has challenged me. I cited the verse: “You shall not mistreat, nor oppress the stranger, as you were strangers
in [Pharaoh’s] Egypt” (8). As a younger man, I was good at embracing the
second half of the verse, with my acute awareness of millenia of persecution of
the Jews, including my own grandparents. It was only later in life that I
engaged more strongly with the first and main point relating to the treatment
of “strangers”. Justice for members of minority groups requires proper conduct
not just in deed but even in word and thought.
Indeed the story of Balaam’s curses (9) is a dramatic example of how
words, spoken or prevented from being said, matter.
Speaking positive words and thinking kind thoughts about “Strangers”
can be difficult when there is conflict them and one’s own community. Afeefa
shared an inspiring example of how her students engaged with people who
appeared hostile. During the US presidential election many of her students felt
concerned about how Muslims were being talked about by Trump. The students were
encouraged to seek to understand, rather than demonise Trump supporters. They
approached voters on election day, and asked them who they voted for and why.
They heard from people who had lost their jobs and experienced other hardships,
voting out of pain, not hate.
We were asked at the conference if in the work of Together For
Humanity we talk about differences, or just the similarities. I explained that
we certainly discuss both. To do otherwise would be dishonest and ultimately
not helpful to building trust between communities.
Juggling similarities and differences is key to our work, and was
also part of my preparation of the quotes for the conference. I was aware of
the Islamic teaching that “...if anyone slew a person -
unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as
if he slew the whole people. And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he
saved the life of the whole people” (10). There is a Jewish quote that is very similar, but
with one significant difference. It compares the saving of a Jewish life to saving the world (11).
Fortunately, I was able to find authoritative sources for universal versions of
the same teaching, that equated saving any
life with saving humanity (12).
There was yet another
hurdle for me with these two quotes. One of the Imams I consulted about these
quotes pointed out to me that the full verse includes a critique of some Jews
failing to fully embrace this teaching. The full verse in the Quran has an
additional statement at the beginning and the end, it states: “We ordained for
the children of Israel, that if anyone slew a person ...Our messengers came to
them with clear signs, but many of them continued to commit excesses in the land”.
The Imam pointed out that it was not a comment about all Jews but some.
Notwithstanding the
challenges along the way, seeing the quotes side by side was heart-warming for
participants in our session, as they could see evidence of common values in our
two traditions. This commonality and the goodwill between me and conference
participants does not cancel out the differences between faiths and nations, or
the many challenges. Sometimes we will upset people in our own communities or
people outside them. We cannot be 100% focused on both at the same time. On
those occasions we will apologize like Mr Chown did, but we will persevere with
doing the right thing by both. Indeed, we must.
Notes:
1) Khaldoun
Hajaj, in a facebook post on 15.07.2019 challenged my comment about these human
being “slaves”. He wrote “my contention concerns the use of the word Slaves. No one
is a slave ... some of us are enslaved”.
3) Talmud
Sanhedrin 105a. It is a play on words, with the name בלעם
(Bilam or Baalam) linked to being בלא עם (Blo-
Am, without a nation)
4) The
Maharal, cited in Valdman, C. Y. in his commentary Yosif Chayim on Ein Yaakov Hamevuar, pub.
Machon Torah Mitziyon, Manchester, p. 446
5) The
Imam was Farhan Khalil, the Principal was Samir Halbouni, also a board member
of Together For Humanity Foundation, and the Catholic was Kate Xavier, Senior
Education officer of Together For Humanity.
6) The Quran 4:36.
7) Talmud,
Bava Metzia 71a.
8) Exodus
22:20.
9) Numbers
22:2-24:25.
10) The Quran 5:32.
11)
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a.
12) Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1
(22a), states: whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to
have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered
by Scripture to have saved the whole world. The context of this teaching is a
warning to witnesses in capital cases to speak the truth. It is a reference to
the murder of Abel by his brother Cain and how this murder destroyed not just
one man but practically half of the future of mankind. This context supports
the Jerusalem universal version. There
are several additional versions of this teaching that are universal, these
include, Pirkei deRabbi
Eliezer ch. 47, Eliyahu Rabbah 11, Yalkut Shimoni on Exodus 166, and
manuscripts from Parma, Italy in the mid-13th century, and from Cesena, dating
to about 1400. See http://talmud.faithweb.com/articles/schindler.html and https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/history-ideas/2016/10/the-origins-of-the-precept-whoever-saves-a-life-saves-the-world/
