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May 2, 2003
Long history of conflict
Panelists dissect Muslim-Jewish relations.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
What was said may have been less significant than the fact that
it was said at all. A major community outreach effort took place
Sunday night at Temple Sholom, sponsored by Canadian Jewish Congress
and featuring some of the top Jewish and Muslim scholars of Middle
East affairs. The event, titled Past Reflections, Future Insights
into Muslim-Jewish Relations, was not uplifting in the sense of
bearing news of great hope, but it was a hopeful act itself in the
sense that hundreds of Vancouverites – including at least some
of the leadership of the local Arab, Muslim and Palestinian communities
– came together to address some of the issues that continue
to confound the quest for peace in the Middle East.
The speakers and questions from the audience addressed some of the
seemingly intractable historical and contemporary conflicts between
Jews and Muslims.
Rabbi Reuven Firestone, professor of medieval Judaism and Islam
and director of the Louchheim School of Jewish Studies and the department
of graduate studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion in Los Angeles, discussed the difficulties of finding an
unbiased historical assessment of events.
"The drivers of two colliding cars see the accident from different
angles," he said. The Mideast, where history is very much intertwined
with religious rivalries, has been subject to particularly complicated
analysis, partly because religious groups have a "sacred history."
In the case of the Jews, Firestone pointed out, that sacred memory
includes the Exodus from Egypt recently celebrated at Passover seders.
That event has no archeological or historical record other than
that passed down through the religion, he said, and that makes it
suspect as a factor in contemporary inter-ethnic discussion. As
a rabbi charged with educating prospective rabbis, Firestone said,
his responsibility is to inculcate in his students a love and admiration
for the sacred memory. As a professor at a university, however,
Firestone sees it as his responsibility to make his students understand
the difference between this sacred memory and the historical record,
which may be quite different.
The first step in communicating between groups is to divest each
side of its sacred history and create generally accepted parameters
of historical interpretation, said Firestone.
Prof. Emile Sahliyeh, director of international studies at Major
University of North Texas, is currently researching democracy in
the Arab world and, specifically, politics and democracy in Jordan.
Sahliyeh said the assumption at the end of the imperial era in the
Middle East was that democracy would take root and religion's controlling
impact on political life would wither away. The reverse has occurred,
he said, arguing that fundamentalist Islamism has taken strong root
in the region in place of democracy. This has occurred, he said,
because the 1970s rise in oil prices made some of the most conservative
Middle East states rich, giving them an influence in the region
and the world they had not held before. With the worldwide decline
of the left, most notable in the fall of the Soviet bloc, left-wing
forces in the Islamic world similarly declined. Meanwhile, the 1990s
saw high unemployment and massive inflation. As existing governments
lost credibility with their citizens, the religious-based conservatives
provided a ready source of opposition to the entrenched governments.
It was the religious groups that, in some cases, began to provide
social services that the governments were not providing, such as
day cares, emergency funds, resources for the needy and recreational
outlets for youth. On top of all this, the mosques, which are at
the centre of both Islamic life and fundamentalist activities, provided
the charismatic leadership, the access to cash and the physical
space to agitate. In totalitarian societies where freedom of association
and expression are carefully meted out, religion offered one of
the few outlets for contrarian thought.
"The mosque provides an ideal place to mobilize people,"
said Sahliyeh.
While he noted the internal factors that have led to theocratic
tendencies in the Muslim world, Sahliyeh also implicitly criticized
the United States and other countries that have tried to manipulate
regional politics. The priority of the United States and Western
Europe has principally been to promote stability – not necessarily
democratic values – in the region.
"The primary concern, especially for the United States, is
oil and the flow of oil," he said.
Prof. Ibrahim A. Karawan, director of the Middle East Centre and
an associate professor of political science at the University of
Utah, spoke of distinctive characteristics of militant Islamists,
some of which may seem counterintuitive to outsiders. For example,
militant Islam, despite what we see on television, is not a mass
movement in most Muslim-populated countries. The lack of a mass
movement does not deter these militants, however. On the contrary,
a lack of mass support enforces their view that most Muslim societies
have been so corrupted by infidels that only an enlightened few
could possibly see the right path which, in their critique, is the
imposition of Islamic fundamentalism by force. He was careful to
distinguish, though, between these potentially violent Islamists
and the broader group of Muslims who seek to impose Islamic values
in a society through nonviolent methods, such as those who contest
seats where elections of are permitted.
Prof. Elie Rekhess, senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Centre
for Middle Eastern and African Studies and director of the Program
on Arab Politics in Israel, is one of Israel's leading experts on
Jewish-Arab relations, Palestinian politics and Islamic resurgence
in the West Bank and Gaza. He discussed the unique place of Arab
citizens of Israel, concluding that, for the most part, Arab Israelis
are precisely that and would not queue up to move to any newly proclaimed
Palestinian state. The Six Day War, in 1967, however, introduced
the first significant sense of pan-Arabism among Israeli Arabs and
the increasingly accepted view that an Arab cannot be equal to a
Jew in the state of Israel.
The implications of this view are that thoughtful Israeli Jews and
Arabs have realized that the place of Arab citizens in Israel must
be addressed and no coexistence is likely until the relative rights
and responsibilities of Jewish and Arab Israelis are addressed.
To go further and suggest what the "solution" might be
would be akin to Canadians seeking an immediate, simple solution
to the "French fact"; in other words, according to Rekhess,
the first step is merely to acknowledge that the place of the Arab
minority in Israel needs to be addressed.
At the conclusion of the evening, Hebrew Union College's Firestone
made a final distinction in the crisis between Jews and Arabs over
Israel and a potential Palestinian state. There needs to be agreement
over whether the debate is an ideological one or a material one,
he said.
"Material resources have always been negotiable," he said,
suggesting that disputes over land or property can be resolved.
If the matter is an ideological one – that of two competing
civilizations in mortal conflict, as the picture is sometimes drawn
– the issues are likely to remain deeply insoluble. Ideology
is rarely open to negotiation, he said.
The event, which was moderated by CBC Radio host Kathryn Gretsinger,
remained uniformly civil. Nisson Goldman, chair of Canadian Jewish
Congress, Pacific Region, called the event "an outreach of
one community of faith to another" and suggested it may be
the first in an ongoing series of such efforts to build bridges
between historically divided peoples.
The meeting attracted about 300 people, despite competing directly
with Game 2 of the Vancouver Canucks' semi-final playoff series.
The Canucks lost 3-2.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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