September 21, 2006
Controversial Muslim leader Hathout gets award despite opposition
by Marc Ballon, Senior Writer
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ÂBut the scars from the bruising battle over Hathout's worthiness appear to have deepened the wedge between the Muslim and Jewish communities. Many Muslims seem especially upset, because the campaign against Hathout came just weeks after a prominent Jew protested the selection of another MPAC member, Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati for a religious freedom award from the local American Civil Liberties Union.
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"The fact that this slap in the face is coming from a community that has suffered so many years of abuse, alienation and discrimination is shocking and disappointing, mostly disappointing," said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Southern California Chapter. "I hope I'm wrong, but I think that Muslim-Jewish dialogue is not going to happen now. There's too much tension, too much disappointment."
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Jewish critics respond that meaningful dialogue between the two groups hasn't happened on a large scale for years because of a paucity of suitable Muslim partners. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, for instance, MAl-Marayati went on a talk show and intimated that Israel could have been behind the attacks. (He later publicly apologized for the remarks).
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"I wonder whether the most prominent local Muslim leaders, including Hathout, are genuinely moderate or are they closet radicals who have learned how to present a more moderate public face?" asked David Lehrer, president of Community Relations Inc., an L.A.-based human relations organization. Lehrer, who participated in the Muslim-Jewish Dialogue in the 1990s when he served as the ADL's regional director, recently coauthored an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times criticizing Hathout's selection.
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Large-scale Muslim-Jewish talks might, at best, be moribund, but several of Hathout's Jewish supporters continue to maintain he is a man of peace and a worthy partner. They despair that other Jewish leaders equate him to extremists such as Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. More than ever, they argue, Jews and Muslims need to collaborate on issues such as civil rights, separation of church and state, and combating rising anti-Semitism and Islam phobia.
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Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein of Wilshire Boulevard Temple spoke out in favor of Hathout at a Sept. 8 press conference at the Islamic Center, saying the Muslim leader twice sanctioned Islamic Center members to travel with Jews and Christians to Israel, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the Middle East.
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The journeys helped dispel Muslim preconceptions about Israel and Jewish misconceptions that much of the Muslim world is "Al Qaeda and Taliban," Stein said. The Muslims and Jews who traveled together, with Hathout's blessings, have forged close friendships.
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"We have to be able to listen to each other, and talk to each other," Stein said.
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Multiorganizational dialogue has become so difficult that the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and MPAC are now in the process of creating the framework that would allow up-and-coming Muslim and Jewish leaders to talk directly to each other. As envisioned by PJA Executive Director Daniel Sokatch, local Muslims and Jews, grouped by perhaps professions or age, would meet together with the help of a professional moderator to confront their respective prejudices and eventually join forces on such communal social justice projects as combating homelessness and poverty. The PJA-MPAC program is expected to launch in 2007.
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That other Jewish and Muslim institutions aren't involved highlights the estrangement between the communities and the singular lack of vision on both sides, Sokatch said.
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"Muslims have painted Israel as a singular wicked state. And American Jews have treated even legitimate criticism of Israel as reason not to talk," he said. "Neither side has exercised leadership or sensitivity to navigate these difficult waters during these dangerous times."
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The intensity of the criticism against Hathout has raised questions about whether bigger issues are at play. Is it possible the campaigns against Al-Marayati and Hathout are emblematic of a growing Jewish fear of all Islam? Roz Rothstein thinks not. The executive director of Los Angeles-based StandWithUs said Hathout's religion had nothing to do with her group's opposition.
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"This is simply about being divisive and careful with your words, which he isn't," Rothstein said.
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Yet David N. Myers, professor of Jewish history and director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, believes the Jewish community's outcry against Hathout might reflect a feeling of insecurity. Living in a post Sept. 11 "climate of fear," some American Jews and others have come to view the "Muslim world, writ large, as a counter civilization devoted to destruction-in contrast to Western Civilization, which, in their view, is the embodiment of pure enlightenment," he said.
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Seeing the world through such a prism has blinded many Jews to the reality that an American-Muslim can both castigate Israel and be a moderate.
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That's why subjecting Hathout and other Muslims to a litmus test based on their support of Israel makes no sense, said Shawn Landres, coeditor of "Religion, Violence, Memory and Place," a collection of essays to be published in October.
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"There is so much for us to be talking about and so much work to be done together," he said. "To do so, we shouldn't be completely derailed by legitimate differences of opinions on how to resolve the Middle East crisis."
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