It would be hard to image two co-authors as mismatched as Rabbi Marc Schneier and Imam Shamsi Ali. One is a modern Orthodox rabbi, the descendant of generations of rabbis who grew up in privilege and access to power in Manhattan. The other is an Indonesian-born imam, the son of a farmer who grew up in poverty and, after time in an Islamic university in Pakistan, came to America to lead a Muslim congregation. In the end, however, it is their differences that make this book so important, readable, and compelling.
Both the rabbi and the imam grew up in worlds that feared and demonized the other. Rabbi Schneier was deeply suspicious of Muslims, believing them all to be anti-Semitic and bent on the annihilation of Israel and all he held dear. Imam Ali believed that Jews were untrustworthy, devious, and the sworn enemy of Islam. Rabbi Schneier and Imam Ali tell their stories in alternating chapters in which they also tackle the most difficult issues that divide Jews and Muslims, like the notions of chosenness, jihad, Israel/Palestine and Holocaust denial.
My favorite anecdote in the book is when Imam Ali arrives at JFK Airport in 1996 beset by nightmares that America is filled with Muslim-haters and gets into a taxi driven by a Muslim. He writes: “I quickly realized that, despite my fears, the first person I had an interaction with in this country was a fellow Muslim, and that he and I were not alone in an angry sea of white Christian evangelicals.”
Rabbi Schneier’s initial outreach beyond his Jewish world was to American blacks. In the 1990s, he established the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which works to rejuvenate the old alliance between blacks and Jews.
The rabbi and the imam first meet at an interfaith meeting in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and forged an unlikely friendship that eventually led to dialogue and invitations to address each other’s congregations. Both leaders encountered hostility from co-religionist who thought they had gone too far in reaching out. Their opponents argued that they had compromised their religious heritage. But this book boldly demonstrates that they represent the best in their religious traditions and have forged a model for others to emulate.
