|
Detroit Free Press – November 3, 2006
Rift over war tears Muslims, Jews apart
David Crumm
"Building Bridges," a new half-hour interfaith talk show that debuted Thursday, is being carried nationally by the Muslim-owned cable channel Bridges TV. In metro Detroit, the channel is carried by Comcast. The series will air at 9:30 p.m. Mondays, with reruns at 10 p.m. Fridays. Michigan Muslim leaders occasionally appear on the programs. Rabbi Bradley Hirschfield of New York is the cohost.
On the holiest day of the Jewish year, Rabbi Joseph Klein rose before his congregation in Oak Park last month to deliver a stunning sermon in which he apologized for working with local Muslim leaders and vowed to boycott interfaith events.
He accused Muslim leaders of complicity in "hate-filled and violence-promoting rallies" against Israel in Dearborn this summer, referring to protests in which Muslims carried signs equating the Star of David with a Nazi swastika.
The sermon was a thunderclap marking the edge of a storm that has been building for more than a year as local Jewish and Muslim communities pulled apart. Now, the tensions are open and obvious. Rabbis are avoiding events attended by imams and, when they do show up, conversation often becomes strained.
As a result, after years of pioneering efforts in southeast Michigan to create a haven for dialogue among Jews, Christians and Muslims, metro Detroit's world-famous interfaith tapestry is unraveling.
A month after they were spoken, Klein's words still are echoing across the Internet, cut and pasted into e-mails circulating among Christians, Muslims and Jews and leaving a trail of shock and sadness.
Meanwhile, another local Jewish leader urged a boycott of Thursday night's premiere at a Dearborn Heights mosque of "Building Bridges," a nationwide TV show about religious diversity, even though the show is coproduced by a New York Jewish organization…….
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006611030422
|
