Project Mosaic

Descended from Abraham: Exploring the Common Heritage of Jews, Christians and Muslims

Dr Ed Kessler, an expert on interfaith relations, told a large audience in London on March 24, 2011 that people from the three Abrahamic faiths were starting to build important mutual understanding, but much more work needed to be done.

Kessler, the director of the Woolf Institute, delivered the 2011 Project Mosaic Lecture on the topic of "Descended from Abraham: Exploring the Common Heritage of Jews, Christians and Muslims".

In reviewing relations amongst the world's 2.2 billion Christians, 1.6 billion Muslims and 15 million Jews, he said Christians and Jews had made encouraging progress in interfaith dialogue over the past nearly 100 years, but that the encounter with Islam was "a much more recent and fragile phenomenon".

Kessler urged a recognition that religious beliefs and cultural traditions varied widely amongst those living within the 120 Christian-majority countries, the 60 Muslim-majority countries and the one Jewish-majority country, Israel. He said Christians, Jews and Muslims needed to learn more about one another's religion -- to develop a "faith literacy" -- which would lead to greater trust, respect and sensitivity.

Kessler described the subject of Israel-Palestine as the "elephant in the room", an uncomfortable topic but one that needed to be addressed. He said many Jews considered the creation of Israel in 1948 as an act of national liberation after nearly 2,000 years of homelessness, while many Muslims described it as "The Disaster" because it displaced more than 700,000 Palestinians.

Kessler said Christians, Jews and Muslims needed to learn to talk about the Middle East, even when this involved strong disagreement. But he said this most difficult of subjects was not the place to start when initiating interfaith dialogue. The best place to commence, he said, was in recognising the similarities, not the differences, of the three faiths handed down by Abraham.

He said that Jews, based on their experience living in a disaspora for two millennia, could play a special role in helping Muslims to relate on a constructive basis with members of the Christian community. "Judaism is ideally placed to act as an intermediary in the essential encounter between Christianity and Islam, between the West and East," Kessler said.

 

Download Descended from Abraham - Project Mosaic Lecture by Dr Ed Kessler Mar24 2011

 

The Middle East in My Backyard: A Roundtable Discussion of Grassroots Change

On March 22, 2011 about 30 participants held a roundtable discussion at Project Mosaic in London on ways to help support peaceful co-existence between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

The discussion was led by Mohammed Fahili, the director of the Jewish-Arab Community Centre in Acre, in northern Israel. Fahili, an Israeli Arab, has dedicated his life to Arab-Jewish peaceful coexistence. Born in the Old City in Acre, he shared a single bedroom with seven siblings and lost his father when he was six. At 18 he went to study engineering in the United States and he returned to Israel with a vision to help young people - Arabs and Jews - from underserved neighbourhoods.

The roundtable discussion on March 22 brought together students and businesspeople, and those from non-profit organisations, the arts and local government.

Fahili identifies education as the best way to address high levels of unemployment, crime, and alcohol and drug abuse amongst young people in Acre. The Jewish-Arab Community Centre provides education and training programmes for about 2,000 residents, mostly youths, each week. The centre is also dedicated to furthering equality between men and women. Arab women study there to complete high-school education, acquire IT skills and prepare for the job market.

At the time of the birth of Israel in 1948, Fahili's family was uprooted from their home in the Golan Heights. Some relatives left Israel while his parents decided to stay. "I am an optimist. One has to look forward in life and not spend so much time looking back. Each of us can make a difference by helping others," he says. "The key is to get an education, make your life better, build a family. This is what most people want."

The roundtable discussion was part of the Project Mosaic Lecture Series, in which speakers address topics including ethnic diversity, prejudice, extremism, tolerance and conflict resolution.