Community Corner

Muslim and Jewish Organizations Forge New Relationship

Glencoe's Am Shalom invited a Muslim leader to speak at its 9/11 memorial for the first time.

This story is part of a Patch series examining the Muslim experience 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks. Read other stories in the series .

Members of in Glencoe attended the Sept. 11 memorial ceremony just as they had for the past nine years: same place, same flagpole, same bell echoing into silence.

But this year was different.

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A new speaker walked up to the podium on that Sunday morning in September, began to read aloud to a crowd of about 100 people and slowly chipped away at the separation that can exist between Jews and Muslims on the North Shore.

Earlier:

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Imam Adnan Balihodzic read a prayer for peace alongside Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein, who invited the Muslim leader from the in Northbrook to speak.

“For years, we never contacted the Islamic center, thinking they had other connections,” said Lowenstein. “When we found out that they did not have other interfaith ties, we started a relationship several months ago.”

The interfaith relationship started during Ramadan, when members of the Jewish synagogue visited the .

Interfaith work in North Shore

The 34-year-old Balihodzic, who moved from his native Bosnia a few months ago, says the two religious centers are like “neighbors,” noting the Quran’s teachings to foster “good relations between humans, to respect Christians and Jews.”

Lowenstein agrees that interfaith work is of great value.

“For me, it’s about understanding of other people’s religions, and not what makes us different but what makes us similar,” he said.

Islamophobia

The rabbi, who became the senior rabbi at in 2002, said Islamophobia was a real issue after 9/11.

“The Muslim world took a lot of heat and a lot of pressure and continues to do so,” he said. “There’s a great sense of Islamophobia, as I’ve built relationships with Christians and Muslims. And even though we’re different, we need to celebrate, embrace and explore [the issues] together.”

One Glencoe resident who attended the 9/11 ceremony described the imam’s reading as “extraordinarily positive all around.”

“I haven’t seen a lot of interaction with Muslims in the community,” said Susan Klingman, who believes that the more interaction there is, the more tolerant the society. “There’s a lack of understanding and knowledge about Islam, and most people don’t know there’s an Islamic center five minutes away.”

Shared ideals

Klingman said she was particularly moved when Balihodzic cited a line from the Quran that paralleled the Torah.

“The line is something like ‘If you kill one person, it’s as if you killed everyone, and if you save one person, it’s as if you saved everyone,’ and it showed our shared ideals.”

Balihodzic said he chose the line because it highlighted the similarities in faiths and inspired him.

“To be honest with you, this was what was on my mind that particular hour, on that morning,” he said.

Moving forward

Klingman believes the community as a whole needs to shift its perception of its Islamic neighbors.

“There’s not so much the kind of inflamed, negative rhetoric that you might hear on talk radio or TV, but it’s that people don’t have a sense of the other as human beings with whom they may share social and community activity,” she said.

David Rosenstein, president of and a Highland Park resident, said that collaboration will be a focus for the congregation in the future.

“Within our congregation there’s patches of constituencies who believe we need to come together more … because the lack of understanding causes the gap that the two communities have had in the past,” he said.

Rabbi Lowenstein agreed that people are “realizing that not all terrorism is from Muslim fundamentalists, and not all Muslims are terrorists.”

Lowenstein said plans are in the works for a future book discussion on Abraham or trip to the in Skokie.

For now, the Sept. 11 ceremony was a big step.

“It is pretty remarkable given the magnitude of the events of 9/11 that here we are standing in front of a flagpole as a community memorializing 9/11 with people from our community of diverse backgrounds and faiths,” said Rosenstein.


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