Beyond belief - The Rabbi and the Imam
Meet Rabbi Hershel Gluck and Imam Ismael Amaan. They are good friends who delight in confounding expectations even as tensions rise in the Middle East.
By Michael Skapinker, August 8 2003

Rabbi Hershel Gluck bustles through the streets of the east London borough of Hackney, pausing only to accept a fellow Orthodox Jew's congratulations on the birth of his first grandchild. He turns the corner and bounds up the stairs of the local Muslim community centre, where he is admitted with a flurry of handshakes and shouts of "Rabbi!" from a group of young men hanging around the entrance hall.

Rabbi Gluck is at home here. He strides into an inner room, tosses his black hat onto a chair, revealing his skullcap underneath, and greets two friends - Ismael Amaan, a Muslim community leader, and Mohamed Munaf Zeena, head of the Council of Indian Muslims. The three men are leading lights in the Muslim Jewish Forum, which they boast is the most tightly-knit example of co-operation between the two faiths anywhere in the UK, and, Rabbi Gluck claims, in the world. The grey-bearded Rabbi Gluck and the black-bearded Amaan are photogenic local celebrities, having appeared on a much-discussed BBC news programme about how Muslims and Jews can live as friends in the same community.

The two are considering a national tour, in which they will appear together in Muslim communities that have never seen a Jew and Jewish communities that know few Muslims, as well as large areas of the country that have never seen either group. "There are many parts of the UK where a Jew or Muslim is considered a mythical character, both by each other and by the country at large," says Rabbi Gluck, who enjoys telling stories about the sensation that Jewish and Muslim friendship creates. "I remember meeting a senior Muslim cleric. When we kissed each other the taxi driver said he thought he was dreaming."

Members of the forum constantly remark on how much they have in common. Both sides are deeply religious, follow strict dietary laws and believe in single-sex education. Amaan recalls that when the local education authority suggested that a largely Muslim girls' school should admit boys, it was Ian Sharer, an Orthodox Jew and leader of the Liberal Democrats on Hackney council, who led the successful fight to have the proposal quashed. Sharer says that when he recently attended a Muslim wedding at a Hackney mosque, "I was amazed at how similar the services are".

But it is not only religious Muslims and Jews, often following an agenda at odds with the wider, more permissive society, who have this sense of sameness. So do secular Jews on the left, who have campaigned with Muslims against racism and for the rights of asylum seekers. "I've noticed at meetings that even Jews and Muslims who are assimilated or lapsed tend to gravitate towards each other," says Rabbi Gluck.

Jews, religious and secular, observing the Muslims' struggle to establish themselves in the UK, cannot help but remember their own families' travails a few generations earlier. "Many Jews want to reach out to Muslims," Melanie Phillips, the Daily Mail journalist, wrote in her regular column in the Jewish Chronicle. "They are like us in so many ways. We see in them our own grandparents and great-grandparents, facing dislocation and prejudice as recent immigrants."

Hackney's forum is not the only place where British Jews and Muslims meet. There is the Three Faiths Forum, which brings together Jews, Muslims and Christians, and the Manor House Group, made up of Jewish and Muslim leaders who get together several times a year to discuss theological issues. The Maimonides Foundation, dedicated to forging closer ties between the two faiths, sponsors a range of activities, including visits between Jewish and Muslim schools, Jewish-Muslim university groups and the Daughters of Abraham, which brings together Muslim and Jewish women. There is Yad arts, which organises concerts and club nights for Jewish and Muslim performers, and Dream Dialogues, an art project involving 80 Muslim and 80 Jewish participants.

There are individual acts of inter-faith solidarity too. When someone painted anti-Muslim slogans on the walls of Birmingham's central mosque, Rabbi Leonard Tann of the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation telephoned the local radio station to express his outrage. And when Rabbi Shmuli Pink of the Leicester Hebrew Congregation was assaulted in the street, local Muslim (and Christian) leaders offered to walk him home from the synagogue. (The offer was declined as unnecessary.)

But while these Muslim and Jewish contacts are numerous and growing, neither side can avoid the obvious: relations between the two communities are under enormous strain. For all the mutual recognition of what they have in common, there are issues that bitterly divide British Jews and Muslims. These are not British issues, although they have consequences for the communities' lives in Britain; they arise from events thousands of miles away.

First among them is the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, but there are others too. Most Muslims strongly opposed the war in Iraq. Jews were more divided: although several were prominent in the anti-war movement, the harsh anti-Israeli - and what some Jews perceived as anti-Semitic - tone of much of the opposition to the war made many uncomfortable.

Muslim extremists, such as Abu Hamza, the north London cleric fighting an attempt by the UK government to deprive him of his British citizenship, and the Al-Muhajiroun movement, which commemorated the September 11 attacks with an event called "A Towering Day in History", have added to the atmosphere of suspicion lingering among certain sections of the Jewish community.

The biggest shock to community relations came in April, when Israel announced that two British Muslims had been responsible for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed three people. Fuad Nahdi, publisher of Q-News, a Muslim magazine, wrote in The Guardian that the bombing did not surprise him. "What I find astonishing is that it took place in Tel Aviv, not Manchester. The descent into extremism of parts of the British Muslim community has been a long process, though 'community' leaders remain in a state of denial over the mess."

Some of those involved in Muslim-Jewish dialogue believe it is best to avoid talking about Israel altogether. Others argue that there is no point ignoring it, as it hangs over every discussion. At the Muslim Jewish Forum in Hackney they often talk about the Middle East, as friends who know each other well enough to disagree.

Neither Muslim nor Jewish attitudes to the Israel-Palestinian conflict are monolithic; there is a wide variety of views on both sides. Orthodox Jewish attitudes to Israel cover a wide range too, from the small Naturei Karta movement, which is stridently anti-Zionist and appears at anti-Israel rallies, to those who do not recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel, through to the fervently nationalistic.

What of Rabbi Gluck, whose synagogue is independent of any wider movement? "I am not a Zionist," he says, "but I certainly care passionately for Jews that live in that part of the world and for their rights." He loathes suicide attacks against Israelis, and his Muslim colleagues have no problem sharing his feelings. "We don't condone the killing of innocent people," says Zeena. "The loss of any innocent life is to be condemned."

The forum issued an unequivocal statement after the Tel Aviv bombing. "Whilst the British Muslim population has strong feelings regarding the Palestinian-Israeli situation, only a peripheral element advocates such illegal and un-Islamic acts," it said. "The vast majority of the Muslim community in the UK condemns such action, and seeks to remove from its midst rogue elements that spew forth such hatred and violence."

When they come together to issue such statements, the Jewish and Muslim leaders of Hackney build on a long tradition. Jews and Muslims have lived together in the area for decades. Jews settled here in large numbers after their arrival, mostly from Eastern Europe, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. When Muslims began arriving in the 1960s, they found Jews more receptive than many of the other established residents. "Jewish houses would have Muslim tenants, whereas others would say 'no blacks'," says Amaan. "Those little things right at the beginning made a very big difference."

Individual Jews became legendary for their helpfulness. Many Muslim arrivals went to David Elias, the Calcutta-born leader of London's Indian Jews, for advice on housing and jobs. Elias died last year, but the new generation of local Muslim leaders, such as Amaan and Zeena, still talk of him.

While many Jews moved away from Hackney to suburbs in north and west London, the strictly religious remained to form the largest concentration of Orthodox Jews in Europe. They share neighbourhoods, such as Stamford Hill, in north London, with a growing Muslim population. Relations are largely civil, but not always so. When Muslim youths started pelting a local synagogue with rotten fruit, Jewish leaders asked the police for help - to no avail. The attacks continued. The synagogue turned to the forum instead. Rabbi Gluck contacted Amaan, who went along to speak to the youths. The fruit throwing stopped. That, the two sides say, is one of the most important things they can do: defuse incidents before they get worse.

Away from Hackney, however, daily friction and co-operation are less common. In much of the rest of London, where the majority of Britain's 300,000 or so Jews live, few have the sort of daily contact with Muslims that is common in Hackney. There are plenty of London businesses, law firms and accountancy practices where Muslims and Jews work alongside one another, but generally the two communities live separate and parallel lives.

Outside the inter-faith groups, many Jewish and Muslim leaders and commentators have harsh words for each other. In the same article in which she observed how much Jews and Muslims have in common, Melanie Phillips wrote: "When it comes to Israel, many so-called moderate Muslims cease to be moderate at all. They simply abandon truth, logic and fairness; and the truly terrifying thing is that so many appear impervious to factual, objective, fair-minded argument."

Neville Nagler, director general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, urges people not to lump all Muslims together, as some were inclined to do after the Tel Aviv bombing. "We've always been careful not to tar all Muslims with the terrorist brush. We've always encouraged people to regard the Muslim community as a peace-loving community." He adds, however, that since the mid-1990s, the Board has been warning government officials that terrorists and would-be terrorists were active in the UK. There are some Muslim activists in Britain who have links with Hamas, which is responsible for many of the suicide bombings in Israel, says Nagler. The news of the involvement of British Muslims in the Tel Aviv bombing was not a surprise to him.

On the other hand, Nagler emphasises that the Board is in regular contact with the Muslim Council of Britain, which both sides regard as the most broadly representative Muslim body. "Relations are generally professional," he says. "We have disagreements on some issues but we're perfectly happy to work with them on others."

When the Farm Animal Welfare Council recently proposed banning the traditional Muslim and Jewish methods of animal slaughter, where the animal is not stunned before it is killed, the two bodies co-operated in their response. Iqbal Sacranie, the Muslim Council's secretary general, who also describes relations as "reasonably good", reels off several other examples of Muslim-Jewish unity, including sitting together on government committees on inner-city regeneration. The two communities co-operated to support the inclusion of a question on religious affiliation in the 2001 census. He also points out that the Jewish community, which, because it is regarded as a racial group, is protected by Britain's anti-discrimination legislation, has supported demands that religious discrimination be outlawed too, which would give Muslims the same protection.

But even as these two bodies strive to be civil to one another, the tension occasionally rises to the surface. Inayat Bunglawala, the Muslim Council's media secretary, upset the Board of Deputies with a letter to the Jewish Chronicle in April, in which he called the creation of Israel a "terrible mistake". Nagler says the Muslim Council needs to clarify its view on the subject. "I don't know if that's their concerted official opinion or not. I think it's important to try to establish that," he says.

Did Sacranie approve of Bunglawala's letter? "We will always have individuals who will have a view on such an important matter," he says, carefully. But whatever people think about how the state of Israel was established or the way in which it has expanded into Palestinian lands, "the fact is it's there," he says. "We have the two communities in the Middle East at the moment, whether we like it or not. They are there. They are going to exist. The only question for us is how they should co-exist and respect each other's entities. And that will only take place if we have respect for international law." And international law and the relevant United Nations resolutions provide for two states, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians? "Fair enough," he says.

What of the involvement of the two British Muslims in the Tel Aviv bombing? Sacranie says he is not prepared to accept at face value the Israeli government's announcement that the bombers were British. He insists that the circumstances are still unclear, not least how the body of one of the alleged bombers was found floating in the sea. "However, if there is evidence of a clear involvement of the two British Muslims, which we doubt - there's a clear doubt at the moment - then of course our position is very clear: that we, as British Muslims, are guided by the teachings that this is not acceptable." British Muslim involvement in suicide bombing, whether in the Middle East or Kashmir, is "criminal" and contrary to Islamic teaching, he says.

But Sacranie is not prepared to condemn suicide bombings by Palestinians. The Palestinians are fighting an occupation, he says. "It's been said: what do they have left now? They've been fighting this war of occupation now for quite some time, without any arms, without any tanks or whatever, [with] stones all their lives." When Palestinians become suicide bombers, "who am I to either condemn or condone it?"

Sacranie is unyielding on another point of dispute with the Jewish community: the Muslim Council's refusal to participate in Britain's annual Holocaust memorial day, which was first observed on January 27, 2001. The Council, he says, does not seek to minimise the importance of the Holocaust. "The issue of the Holocaust has been very clear, and if you look at our press releases it's absolutely clear: there's the fullest sympathy and understanding with the Jewish community over the atrocity that happened." But the lesson, he emphasises, is that genocide must not be allowed to happen again, and the organisers of Holocaust memorial day refuse to recognise that it is happening again - to the Palestinians. It is a view that infuriates the Jewish community, but Sacranie is unrepentant. "People would argue that what is happening in Palestine is not genocide, but does genocide mean that we have to see tens of thousands of people being killed at a stroke to classify it as genocide?" Palestinians are being killed constantly, he says. "That is genocide as well."

Sacranie has his own complaints about many Jewish commentators who, he says, are far too quick to condemn any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. When Muslims express an opinion "against the brutalities committed by the state of Israel, that is somehow construed as though we are anti-Semitic," he says. "It is tragic, because this curtails the right to express a view."

The atmosphere is far less charged at a meeting at the House of Lords in early July, where yet another group of Muslims and Jews is gathering. The streets outside the Palace of Westminster are bristling with armed police and a long queue is waiting to be frisked. But that is not because the police are expecting any inter-faith trouble. It is the centenary of the Rhodes Trust, which brings Rhodes scholars to Oxford, and security has been stepped up because Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are due to attend. A smaller crowd of Jews and Muslims slips inside and makes its way to the Moses Room.

Looming over the proceedings is a picture of Moses bringing the tablets of the law down to the Israelites. The symbolism is not lost on those assembled beneath. "Moses is someone that our two communities share," says Lord Simon Haskel, the Jewish co-host for the evening. There are some familiar faces present: Rabbi Gluck and Amaan are in whispered conversation. The event is presided over by Dr Richard Stone, who was an adviser to the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and is president of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality and head of a commission into Islamophobia. The aim of the evening is to present a study detailing as many examples of Jewish-Muslim co-operation as the two young researchers, Fiona Hurst and Mohammed Nisar, can find. Their study runs to 31 pages and a second report is planned.

Once again, the speeches are full of references to the common experience of Muslims and Jews. Lord Nazir Ahmed, the other co-host of the occasion, says Muslims should see Jews as allies in their fight against prejudice. "Nobody knows better than the Jewish community, who have themselves been victims of discrim-ination in the past," he says.

Abduljalil Sajid, a Brighton-based imam, tells the meeting about a trip to Tel Aviv and Taba, in Egypt, in the company of Stone. The imam was due to speak on Islamophobia; Stone on anti-Semitism. Chatting on the flight, they decided to deliver each other's speech.

Speaker after speaker says that it is in the UK that the two communities must get along. "I always say, 'let's keep Israel-Palestine out of the discussion'. We washed up here in this north-west corner of Europe for all sorts of reasons," says Stone.

The only cautionary note comes from Keith Kahn-Harris, a sociologist who helped with the Jewish-Muslim report. No one really knows the extent to which all these groups and projects reflect grass roots links between ordinary Muslims and Jews, he says.

"A lot of this dialogue goes on between leaders. Jews and Muslims interact on a daily basis and I think we need to know more about what happens there."

There is a lot happening at Highbury, home of Arsenal Football Club, on a sweltering Sunday afternoon in mid-July. Muslim and Jewish children aged between nine and 12 - mostly boys, but girls too - are rushing around two indoor football pitches. As they stream off for a half-time break, Mehri Niknam, the Iranian-born Jewish organiser, frantically presses cartons of fruit juice into a forest of outstretched sweaty palms. This annual get-together of young Jewish and Muslim footballers, over three consecutive Sundays, goes from strength to strength. There are 150 children taking part this time and the Maimonides Foundation, which sponsors the event, had to turn others away due to a lack of space.

The football programme, now in its third year, recruits children by contacting Jewish and Muslim schools, synagogues, mosques and community centres. The foundation is named after Moses Maimonides, medieval Judaism's foremost philosopher, who was born in Muslim Spain in 1135, spent much of his life in Egypt and wrote in Arabic and Hebrew. Niknam, the foundation's executive director, says the aim of the Arsenal scheme is to take children too young to have preconceived ideas, mix them up in teams and let them get on with it. If their parents meet and chat, all the better.

There is not much chatting in the parents' viewing gallery on this final Sunday of the event. As at any swimming pool, park or playground, the parents are keeping one eye on their kids and hanging around until it is time to go home. Nabeel Gul, a Muslim investment banker, whose son has gone off on a group tour of the famous old stadium, says of the event: "It's great. Catch them while they're young. They're just children playing together. It's the normality of it. I was born in London and in my school we had all types. We had Jewish kids as well. I hate to say it, but some of my best friend... " Have the Muslim and Jewish parents struck up any friendships? "Not really," he says. "Maybe you're expecting too much. It's only three Sundays."

Craig Pollack, a Jewish solicitor, is reading his newspaper while his son dashes after the ball. "With my hand on my heart, I can't say the inter-faith thing brought him here. He sees them all as kids, to be honest. But I think these are troubling times for the Jewish and Muslim communities and it's encouraging to see that they can get things together and that this goes off without a hitch."

Some of the children understand the point of the exercise entirely. Michael Franklin, an engaging and ferociously articulate 11-year-old, emerges pink-faced from his exertions on the pitch. "It's great. We get to play football at Arsenal, we get to go on the tour and I think that it promotes inter-faith. The first way to get peace is to get people to meet each other."

Michael dashes off with a shriek to demand a hug from the passing "Gunnersaurus", a clearly revered Arsenal mascot in a green dinosaur costume and Arsenal cap and shirt. "I'm a passionate Arsenal fan," Michael explains by way of apology when he returns. What has he learnt from these three Sunday kickabouts? "That's a tough one. I don't think I would have been prejudiced to start with, but, sadly, my social circles don't extend much beyond Judaism. I go to a Jewish school." Have the organisers succeeded in bringing people together? "I think it's emphasised the message they're trying to get through."

All the children are wearing Maimonides Foundation T-shirts with the slogan "Harmony through Dialogue". What does it mean to them? "That you should respect others. We are all on the same planet," says Sohail Shah, who is coming to the end of his time at a north London primary school. Did he make Jewish friends on the course? "Lots." Does he think he will see them again? Probably not. The Jewish kids do not live near him. "It's a pity," he says. "I'd like to learn a lot of their skills." Interesting. What sort of skills? Sohail throws out a don't-be-stupid look. "Football skills."

Arsenal officials have brought along the FA Cup, which the club retained this year, and put it on a low table for the children to ogle. The course over, they march up one by one to receive a certificate from Rami Shaaban, Arsenal's towering Egyptian goalkeeper, who managed a few games for the club before breaking his leg.

The formalities over, the young footballers are told to sit down in rows. Like all kids at the end of a long and sweaty day, they chat, laugh and punch each other. But when Niknam says, "Hands up those who know what inter-faith is," a fair number of hands shoot up. "Yes?" she asks one boy. "It means different people come together," he says.

In a final speech, Niknam says, "We hope that you will go back to your schools, friends and families and tell them it doesn't matter which religion you belong to. We are all living in this country. We are all British. We are all friends. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," they say, a little uncertainly. Niknam raises her voice. "Does that make sense?" "Yes!" they roar.

Michael Skapinker is management editor of the Financial Times, London.