When there is a will, there is a way!! Perfectly applicable to the mutual invitations between Al-Azhar and Rabbi Dr. Robert Widom of Temple Emanuel of Great Neck, New York and Al-Azhar through me.
During my visit in December 2017 with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, I was briefed on the plan for a global conference on Jerusalem that was to be held in Cairo in January of this year. The purpose was to invite me to it, and to have me recommend leaders of other faiths to be guests of Al-Azhar and to speak at that conference. My prompt response was: "I would be honored to come, and to invite my distinguished friend, Rabbi Widom to join." As I sat facing Dr. El-Taiyeb, the enthusiasm for that response was palpable.
But the leader of that great Reform Temple, with which I have been associated as an "honary member" since 1974, had a conflict of appointments. He could not attend, but his support for a non-change of the status of Jerusalem as a shared capital for Israel and a future State of Palestine was well known.
It was Widom's fair-mindedness over the past 44 years of my proximity to him, to his thoughts, and to the congregation of Temple Emanuel, which led me to invite over the years senior Egyptian diplomats to address that congregation.
So from 1980 to nearly 1990, "the pulpit" of Temple Emanuel of Great Neck reverberated by the voices that authoritatively expounded Egypt's outlook on peace in the Middle East. Those voices belonged to the late Dr. Esmat Abdel-Mcguid, and to the then Ambassador Amre Moussa, Ambassador Abdel-Raouf El-Reedy and Ambassador Hussein Hassounna, who spoke at that time in the name of the League of Arab States.
It was that activity on behalf of an Egypt which has been for 7000 years a universal cultural bridge which the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo has never recognized. For in 2007, as I was visiting the country of my birth, I was asked at a public meeting if I would visit Mehdi Akef, the then Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In reality that invitation was a challenge couched in the form of an invitation. I instantly could perceive several pitfalls in such an encounter. Primarily, such a visit could not be of any assistance to the central purpose of my visit at that time to Cairo. I was in the process of gathering ideas and material in preparation for my new seminar at Fordham University School of Law in New York.
The graduate seminar which lasted from 2008 to 2015, was entitled: "Islamic Law and Global Security." My Cairo coordinator was my late beloved friend Dr. Mahmoud Mahfouz, former Health Minister.
Upon entering the offices of Mehdi Akef, who was surrounded by a dozen of his top lieutenants, Akef immediately shot an arrow across the bow of the conference. He asked me: "Do you speak to the Jews?"
As I learnt at the UN and through litigation as an attorney, an odd question belies an odd perception. And an odd perception, however offensive it might be, calls for a determined counter offensive. "Supreme Guide," I responded, "I am an honorary member at Temple Emanuel at a New York suburb. And why don't I interact with the Jews, any Jews, for the sake of mutual understanding in the Middle East. This is especially critical following 2 peace treaties between Israel and two Arab States: Egypt and Jordan." Then a call to the Noon prayer offered me the chance of a quick exit.
It is such an obscurantist mind which has plagued the Muslim Brotherhood throughout its history since it began in 1928. That is even after its assumption of supreme power in Egypt from 2012 to 2013 under a misfit by the name of President Muhammad Morsi (now an Ex).
Now back to my comfort zone: my speaking on May 11 at Temple Emanuel, during religious services. It was on "The New Religious Islamic Revolution." That is the title of my recent book, authored as Trump was undeservedly elected President of the US and inaugurated in January 2017.
Trump and his base have disastrously converted Islamophobia in America in a war on Islam. Trump's first National Security Advisor, General Flynn, has declared that Islam was "a cancer," and not a religion but "a political ideology."
Such malicious characterization, which was followed up by Trump's successive executive orders banning citizens of seven Islamic countries from US entry, was a clear signal on what was to come. The new American administration was victim of seeing Islam through the criminal eyes and acts of jihadis.
That circumstance was enough reason for me not only to write that book in response. It was also enough reason to dedicate the book to the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, and to Al-Azhar itself, from which my late father had graduated.
Appearing at Temple Emanuel on the evening of May 11 was in essence Al-Azhar going to the Temple. The road of interfaith communication does not only run through the advocacy by Al-Azhar Al-Sharif of "The New Islamic Religious Revolution." That road also collides with the retrograde thesis of Sam Huntington in his book on "clash of civilizations."
At my presentation before the enthusiastic congregation at the Temple, I set forth before them the primary sources of my book, published by Amazon, in December 2017. These were the very words voiced by Dr. El-Taiyeb, in 2016 and 2017, before the European Parliament in Berlin, and in France, Russia, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates. And in Cairo before leaders of the youths of Rohynga of Myanmar.
That torch held aloft by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, a graduate of the Sorbonne (Paris), as a trail blazer. His utterances were the essence of ideological attacks on ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and other criminal franchises. For those terrorists sought in vain to present Islam as a high dam separating Islam from the world of enlightenment.
Expressing that universalism at the Temple seems to have hit the mark: The Temple had arranged for me a reception after my speech featuring tens of copies of my book for sale. It was the first time for me as an author of more than a dozen of books to be in the role of signing copies of that book to a long line of Jewish purchasers of a book stating in English the very theme of the Islamic Revolution -namely: In faith, all of humanity is one.
And this is how I began that presentation at Temple Emanuel:
"I kept on drafting, then redrafting my remarks for us tonight: The topic of "the oneness of faith" has multi-layered meanings. It encompasses the existential question of "what is faith." Is it allegiance to duty or a person? Is it fidelity to one's promises? Is it sincerity of intentions? Is it belief and trust in and loyalty to God? Is it a firm belief in something for which there is no material proof?
We were born to think. And if you think, you have to believe that others think also -thoughts that crystallize in complex beliefs which we call faith. And all the questions which introduced my remarks are, in their totality, facets of faith."
A credible advocacy of a global cause needs an articulation in a language with which the global audience is familiar. Good English is a vehicle, so is good Arabic. Except that what is said in the Arab and Muslim worlds in classical Arabic has to be imported to America in classical English.
Otherwise the great culture of universalism shall always remain hidden from view. Not only by geography. But also by recognition that effective interpretation of words and concepts are truly the sinews of global understanding.
In this historic search for universal understanding, Al-Azhar and Temple Emanuel are but one as vehicles of interfaith.
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