In Ridgewood, a Muslim group holds regular meetings, rent-free, at St. Elizabeth’s.
In Kinnelon, an interfaith vigil is held at St. David’s in response to a Quran-burning incident.
In Allendale, a Muslim-Christian interfaith discussion panel is organized at Trinity in response to controversy over plans to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero.
In Montclair, the rector of St. John’s attracts both hostility and support after hosting an interfaith service that began with the Muslim call to prayer.
In these ways and others, congregations throughout the diocese have worked to build bridges between Christians and Muslims. And as the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks approaches, “it’s vital that we cultivate these relationships” to overcome hostility and prejudice, said the Rev. Lisa Green, the diocesan ecumenical and interreligious officer.
On September 11, the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Trinity & St. Philip’s Cathedral in Newark will host “Compassion in Action” at 3 p.m. This service is co-sponsored by the diocese, the Cathedral and the Newark Interfaith Coalition for Hope and Peace, a group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders who seek ways to help overcome violence, addiction and poverty among young people in the city.
Among other efforts, the Interfaith Coalition has sponsored a mural competition, which led to the installation of a colorful mural on the side of Integrity House, facing Broad Street. Bishop Mark Beckwith, Newark Mayor Corey Booker and over 500 Newark students helped paint portions of the mural. The mural says “Support and Protect Our Children” – a message that translates well into any faith.
Bishop Beckwith and the Rev. Robert Morris, the executive director of Interweave, both serve on the coalition’s steering committee, as do Rabbi Matthew Gewirtz of Temple B’Nai Jeshurun of Short Hills and Imam W. Deen Shareef of the Masjid Waarith ud Deen cultural center of Irvington.
Imam Shareef has been working actively to build bridges with other faiths for years. In 2005, he participated in an interfaith panel at St. George’s in Maplewood, along with a rabbi, an Episcopal priest and the pastor of a fundamentalist Protestant church.
In an interview just days after the terrorist attacks in Norway – acts allegedly committed by an extremist Christian with a deep hostility to Islam and to the country’s growing Muslim population – Shareef said, “We need to address extremism in whatever context it’s being expressed.”
The rector of St. John’s in Montclair, the Rev. Andrew Butler, has received a couple of dozen “hate mail” letters and emails since he hosted the interfaith service on May 22. It was planned as a “worshipful” event, not just educational – and “there was a sense that the Spirit was among us” during the service, Butler said.
But correspondents from as far away as New Zealand complained via letter and email after the service was described on an Episcopal News Service website. “A lot of them are saying I’m being unfaithful to Christian teachings and to my ordination vows … for inviting [Muslims] in to participate with us in our worship service and to hold them up as equal,” Butler told the Montclair Times.
The publicity led to what might be called a counter-backlash – with people going out of their way to praise Butler and his church for their initiative. “We had a lady who dropped in the other day, just to express her support,” he said.
In Ridgewood, St. Elizabeth’s rector, the Rev. John G. Hartnett, was vacationing as this article was being researched, but he has described his parish’s interactions with the Ridgewood Muslim Society in an unpublished essay. Mahmoud Hamza began attending monthly meetings of the Ridgewood Interfaith Religious Leaders group shortly after 9/11, and quickly became a respected and active member of the group.
In one conversation, Hamza told Hartnett that the Muslim community of Ridgewood had no local place to meet.
“St. Elizabeth’s was in the final stages of completing its new Parish House at this point, and I invited Mahmoud to come to see if our new space might be suitable for what he hoped to begin,” Hartnett wrote. “‘It’s beautiful, it would be perfect,’ he said, and then added, ‘but we could never afford to come here.’ It was my turn to be surprised. I told him that we had never intended to charge anything — we had been blessed with the ability to construct a beautiful new space, and part of its purpose was to enable us to welcome our neighbors to our part of God’s house as our guests.”
The Muslim Society subsequently planted two trees along a prominent walkway near the Parish House, with a plaque expressing the society’s gratitude and friendship.
In Kinnelon, St. David’s rector, the Rev. David DeSmith was moved to host an interfaith event on April 6 in response to a minister in Florida who burned a Quran the prior month, setting off riots in Afghanistan that killed 12 people. “This is in our parish’s DNA,” DeSmith said, describing incidents in the 1980s and as far back as the 1960s where St. David’s provided meeting places for a Jewish congregation and a Catholic youth group that could not find a welcoming home elsewhere.
Trinity Church in Allendale’s rector, the Rev. Michael Allen, sponsored a discussion panel on December 8 in response to protests against the proposal to build a $100 million mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.
“We can fight against each other, or there’s a lot of good stuff we can do together for the betterment of society,” Allen said.
Speaking from the Muslim perspective, Imam Shareef said he believes America as a whole is less hostile toward Islam than are some countries in Europe and elsewhere. “I’ve seen a lack of knowledge and a lack of understanding of the Muslim community here,” he said. “Probably more fear than hostility. There’s more tolerance here, but I’d like to move beyond tolerance to acknowledgement” – acknowledgement that different faiths represent different ways of working toward a relationship with God. He thinks interfaith efforts can help make that happen.
Green agrees. She told the story of a Muslim whose neighbor had placed a toilet on the neighbor’s front lawn, with a sign advertising “Quran flushing, every day at 1 p.m.” To say the least, it didn’t seem a likely start to a productive interfaith dialogue. But instead of just being angry, the Muslim went and knocked on the neighbor’s door and told him calmly why he found the display offensive. To his surprise, the neighbor voluntarily removed the display.
“There is always the possibility for these kinds of transformative encounters,” she said. “We need to seek opportunities for learning by just reaching out to people we encounter every day.”
