Rebuilding Australia’s interfaith relationships

Some years ago Madonna belted out that she was a material girl living in a material world. Since October 7 I have felt like I’m a distressed guy living in a dystopian world. After that day I felt that the interfaith bridges we had built had all been burnt. I resigned from the Jewish Christian Muslim Association a week later, stunned by its lack of moral clarity and conviction.

Immediately after October 7, a Jewish Interfaith Task force for rabbis and leaders was set up across Australia. The aim was to explore our response to the trauma and the tectonic shift it had brought to our identity and place in the world. The consensus was that we needed a pause and that we could no longer engage with our Muslim counterparts if they failed to distinguish between Hamas and their own Islamic faith.

It also felt like we needed to reexamine our general interfaith relationships. Too much interfaith endeavour of the past was based on a small group committed to celebrating our similarities and shared customs rather than interrogating the thorny theological differences that divided us. Too much Kumbaya, too little “come let us debate our differences”.

Now we feel that we need to know their intentions regarding anti-Jewish, not to mention anti-Israel, teachings in their schools and mosques. And we need to be prepared to hear their pain about the suffering caused by what they perceive as Israel’s harsh occupation and how it erodes their faith in us and our morality.

We need to understand why they focus exclusively on mob intimidation and protests with an anti-Jewish flavour and why they are not on the streets protesting for a ceasefire in Sudan, where some five million face famine or protesting for their kin in Myanmar and China.

We also need to acknowledge Israel’s moral failings in its treatment of its Arab citizens, and on the West Bank, not to mention the apparent lack of food aid to the Gazans. But it’s not just the Muslim community. The deafening, or at best awkward, silence of many of our faith interlocutors, including some of our Christian friends, was deeply disheartening.

At our subsequent Task Force meetings, we explored whether we should allow our anger and dismay to guide our interfaith efforts, particularly with our Muslim cousins. We are, after all, not living in Israel but Australia. We have a responsibility as Australian leaders and citizens to contribute to the harmony and social cohesion of our country.

Despite the schadenfreude of some of our critics, we believe there must be a future. We will continue to live together in this country with its rich multifaith tapestry.

We surely have an obligation to reduce the bitterness and lower the temperature. If we are hurting, so are the Muslims, if we feel abandoned, torn by the loss and waste of life so do they, and if we got all of our newsfeed from Al-Jazeera  and BBC and a toxic social media, wouldn’t we also be marching on the streets?

There are clearly Muslims we cannot engage with-the radical Imams and preachers of Sydney, the extremist ideologues of the Islamic Council of Victoria. It’s a waste of time and energy to engage with fanatics of any faith -including our own. It is, however, surely time for moderate Muslim leaders to call out the radical preachers and leaders, just as it’s time for our politicians and security agencies to challenge and, where possible, prosecute them.

We cannot afford to dismiss these sermonisers as unrepresentative of Islamic teachings and ignore their dangerous influence on the naïve and especially disaffected young men they attract.

In engaging with Muslim leaders, we need to know who we are talking to — and they are entitled to know who they are talking to. We need to know if they represent “political Islam,” also known as Islamism, Salafism, Wahhabism, and Jihadism with its rejection of the West, and its agenda to impose a caliphate to replace our Western democracies. They need to know if they are talking to settler and radical right-wing apologists.

The issue is complicated by the argument over whether we can still have dialogue by avoiding the Israeli elephant in the room — that we should still engage in other interfaith issue (multifaith service, joint environmental action, etc) while not taking positions on Israel.

Perhaps attending Iftar dinners is tokenism if it’s not accompanied by a tacit recognition that almost all informed and serious Jews in Australia are Zionists in the Abrahamic tradition. The land of Israel is axiomatic to Jewish identity and does not mean an agreement with all or even many of the policies of the government of Israel.

It’s about a connection to this land of Israel that preceded Mohammed by centuries. Denying there was always a Jewish presence in the land of Israel is to deny history and reality and has no place in any interfaith initiative.

On the other hand, we can and should seek out dialogue with our Muslim counterparts even if it is currently in private. Unlike most of our Muslim counterparts who appear to be threatened by their co-religionists when they seek to speak to Jews, our fellow Jews may be verbally abusive and dismissive, but they don’t threaten our lives and our families.

Over the last several weeks, some of us have had conversations with Muslims, and a very small group of rabbis are meeting in private with Imams both in Melbourne and Sydney.

These meetings have been respectful despite our deep divide; there is surely a value in promoting peace and harmony and trying to avoid the pitfalls of competing victimhood. In a sense, we are all united by our shared sorrow over the horrible loss of life and suffering in this war.

In our anger and our pain over the horrific behaviour of Hamas, we need to be careful to distinguish between Hamas (and its toxic ideology) and other Palestinians. If we fail to do this, we allow the poison to enter into ourselves. As Nietzsche put it, one who fights monsters must be careful not to become a monster.

This awful time is also one of opportunity and growth. People of faith can fail and have failed us, but we don’t believe that faith is fatal and that to hope is an illusion. We know faith can falter but it can also renew, deepen and strengthen us; we dare not lose our hope which is fundamental to the Jewish experience.

Judaism has always taught us that we have the power to transcend tragedy and catastrophe — think the fundamental messages of Purim and Pesach; they didn’t happen to us, they happened for us.

People of faith are our allies and crossing cultures is a bridge not a chasm. To really listen —with all our heart, soul and strength — to the other is the beginning of mending bridges. It takes time, humility and patience to rebuild. It’s always easy to tear down, hard to rebuild.

I will continue to believe that there are enough courageous and genuine seekers of faith in each of our magnificent monotheistic movements to still make it a better world. Unlike optimism, hope is not passive but an active determination to make things better.