Rabbi Josh Stanton of East End Temple and Naz Ahmed Georgas were this week’s guests on Religion News’s Belief Podcast addressing issues of Faith, hate, bigotry, and antisemitism. These two faith leaders have forged a unique bond and faith partnership of shared values, convictions, and commitment to empathetic compassion. To listen to the podcast, please click here or use the player below.
The Pittsburgh Tragedy: Living and Dying in God’s Embrace
Interpersonal Accounts of Jewish and Muslim Friendship
“How they died is a testament to how they lived their lives…”
Cordoba House’s Executive Director, Naz Ahmed Georgas, joined hands with Rabbi Joshua Stanton of Manhattan’s East End Temple and the Anti-Defamation League of NY/NJ in a special event on October 23rd, to stand against hate and discrimination and pay tribute to the 11 Jewish Americans who were violently killed on October 27, 2018 in a horrific act of terror at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Speakers represented a variety of faiths leaders, individuals from the diplomatic and government agencies, including Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance; and Deputy Counsel General of the Consulate General of Israel New York, Israel Nitazan. CLAL President Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, Senior Pasteur for the Park Avenue Church Reverend Kaji Dousa, Associate Rabbi of Lab Shul Emily Cohen and Editor of Muslim Community Report, Sheikh Musa Drammah were also present.
Naz Ahmed Georgas delivered the following address to the assembled guests:
Rabbi Josh Stanton, esteemed guests, and friends,
It is an honor to be present with you here tonight to share this sacred moment. This evening I stand here to grieve – not as a Muslim neighbor who has come to “support the other,” but as a member of the family of East End Temple and as a friend to the Jewish communities of New York and beyond.
I come here every Sunday morning along with my three children and the children of many other Muslim families here in New York to an Islamic School weekend program which I founded years ago. Our school was founded on the Islamic values of compassion, pluralism, and inclusion – and being located here at East End facilitates this mission greatly.
Members of our Cordoba House community also come here for Frida weekly Jumma congregational prayers often joined by the Rabbi and members of the synagogue, for question-and-answer sessions about the topic of the sermon.
It is also here at East End Temple where our Cordoba House teens have gathered week after week in dialogue and friendship with Jewish teens, about common challenges and they face in New York – followed by a teen production facilitated by our respective music directors.
And it is here where I have found a friend in Rabbi Josh and the others in the leadership of East End Temple to dream together and support one another through multiple exchanges to accomplish our shared vision.
So when the Pittsburgh shooting happened, it was a personal tragedy for our community members – not only because we share programmatic space with East End Temple, but also because we have discovered that it is not just us adults who interact with each other but our children also play, study, and interact with one another in common schools on a daily basis.
Rebekah Shore’s (Co-President of East End Temple) daughter Sarah attends not just the same middle school as my son Isa, but was also in the same homeroom in 7th grade. We discovered this when my son Isa was invited to Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah, and Rebekah recognized my name on the invitation and I recognized her on the RSVP.
Another example of a friendship that has made the Pittsburgh tragedy a personal one for me is the one that I share with Miri kubovy. MIri is a Professor of Classics and Jewish Studies at Hunter College and is in the audience among us tonight. Miri does not attend synagogue, but she is here tonight because I do. Miri’s home though is a synagogue in itself. Miri and I know each other because my older son and her grandson have been the best friends since middle school and, even though they are in separate high schools now, the two boys continue to meet regularly. And Rabbi Josh, if you do not find me available to join you here at the temple during Rosh Hoshannah, its because my family and I are at Miri’s home celebrating the holiday with her and her family.
So having narrated the deeply personalized nature of this tragedy, I would like to remind myself as I remind others that tonight is about paying tribute to the 11 souls who lost their lives during the October 27th tragedy at the Tree of Life synagogue. As Rabbi Josh mentioned at the beginning of this evening, there are no words to express the sadness of this tragic incident, however there is a saying in our tradition that gives me comfort. The saying is that a human being is resurrected in the same state in which they die – and those who died in the embrace of communion with God, last year in Pittsburgh was a testament of how they lived their lives.
May God then, for whose sake they lived and died grant them and their families’ peace from His eternal presence in the highest of paradise. Amen.
– Naz Georgas, Executive Director of the Cordoba House.
Sunday School: Fall 2019 Registration is Open!
We are grateful and happy to announce that registration for the Fall 2019 semester at the Cordoba House Sunday School is now open!
The mission of the Cordoba House Sunday School is to teach and advance the compassionate values at the heart of Islam, aiming to build an inclusive and nurturing experience for children that is both authentically Muslim and relevant to contemporary American life. We warmly invite you to join us in this mission and become part of our growing and supportive community by registering your children for this educational, spiritually enriching, and fun-filled program.
Register Now
To get started, please tell us if you are registering new or returning students so we can direct you to the correct registration form:
What Makes Our Sunday School so Special?
– Our classes are taught by committed teachers recruited from leading universities.
– We welcome children of all ages, levels of knowledge, and backgrounds.
– We teach from a cutting-edge curriculum that places a strong emphasis on each child’s personal spiritual development.
– Our lessons emphasize the practical application of Islamic values in a modern day context.
– Through partnerships with other faith institutions, our Sunday School program emphasizes interfaith dialogue and forming friendships across lines of faith.
– Sunday School families are a strong community of like-minded people who share the same spiritual values and commitment to education.
Have Questions?
To learn more about the Cordoba House Sunday School, our curriculum, and our history, please click here.
If you have any questions about the program, feel free to send an email to Naz Ahmed Georgas, Executive Director, at naz@cordobahouse.com.
Wishing You a Blessed Eid-ul-Adha!
“For those who are patient in adversity, and true to their word, and truly devout, and who spend [in God’s way], and pray for forgiveness from their innermost hearts” (3:17)
| Cordoba House wishes you a blessed Eid-ul-Adha! |
Imam Feisal at the United Nations: Countering Terrorism
Dear Friends,
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf spoke about the transformative power of spirituality in combating terrorism at a United Nations panel on June 24th entitled “Countering Terrorism and other acts of Violence based on Religion or Belief: Fostering Tolerance and Inclusivity.”
He expressed that when human beings live in the orientation of God or The Absolute, the propensities towards violence diminish and iterated that “we become unified within ourselves and with God – an imperative that Muslims call Tawhid and are commanded to work towards. In this initiative state, we see with God’s eyes and understand with God’s understanding…”
In addition to Imam Feisal, key panelists included Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, the Permanent Representative of Pakistan, Ambassador Feridun Hadi Sinirlioǧlu, the Permanent Representative of Turkey, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Permanent Observer of the Holy See, Mr. Vladimir Voronkov, Under-Secretary General for Counter-Terrorism.
I invite you to read the full speech below.
With Warm Salaams,
Naz Georgas, Executive Director
Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
May God’s peace and blessings be upon you all, Assalamu alaykum.
The terror attacks all over the world mentioned by the previous speakers, taken as a whole, altogether prove that no religious community in any country or region has either a monopoly in perpetrating violence in its name, or is immune from being victims. Terrorist violence has become globally systemic and needs to be addressed as such.
We therefore congratulate Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez on his welcomed launch last week of the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action Against Hate Speech. As he pointed out, combating terrorism successfully requires a multi-pronged globalized approach, involving the joint commitment of governments, law enforcement agencies, religious experts, civil society, the private sector, digital media experts, and an effective media campaign.
One strand of this Initiative has to be the religious dimension; and to this I will now speak.
I have found, over the course of my work in interfaith dialogue, that religious people have more in common than we may think. We all orient ourselves towards a domain of the Sacred that we characterize in different ways. Perhaps the most inclusive term for the shared life focus of religious people is simply the Absolute. Everything but the Absolute is relative in some way-to change, to diminishment, to death. As the Quran puts it, “everything on it [the earth] will vanish, and what remains will be the Face of your Lord.”(55:26-27).
“My experience teaches me that, beyond the specific theologies of the various religions, religious people all worship the One Divine and Transcendent Absolute…”
My experience teaches me that, beyond the specific theologies of the various religions, religious people all worship the One Divine and Transcendent Absolute, Whom Muslims, along with Arab-speaking Christians and Jews, call Allah. The Quran describes Him as unlike anything and unlike anyone [laysa ka-mithlihi shay’, wa lam yakun lahu kufuwan ahad]. For the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, the Absolute is the Godhead that transcends the Christian Trinity. For Jews, The Absolute is the Ein Sof, the Infinite, Without End. The Katha Upanishad of Hinduism calls The Absolute Nirguna Brahman, “beyond name and form, beyond the senses, inexhaustible, without beginning, without end, beyond time, beyond space and beyond causality, eternal, immutable.” For Taoists, It is “The Tao that cannot be spoken.” Buddhists prefer to focus on the individual personal experience of The Absolute, beginning with the experience of Enlightenment and culminating in Nirvana.
My experience also teaches me that when we live in orientation towards the Absolute, the propensities within us towards violence of any kind diminish. We move towards violence from some violence or conflict within ourselves. But within the embrace of the Absolute, all internal conflict vanishes. We mirror within ourselves the Oneness of the Absolute. We become unified within ourselves and with God – an imperative that Muslims call tawhid, and are commanded to work towards. In this unitive state, we see with God’s eyes and understand with God’s understanding, so to speak. We are at peace and for peace in the world around us. This is the experience which, more effectively than any other, personally transforms a potential or actual terrorist into a human and humane being.
All the religions have within them this transformative power. Muslims experience it when they pronounce the shahadah sincerely with all their heart, for by those words they witness to Oneness with their own inner eye. Jews experience it when they pronounce the Shema, by which they hear the Oneness with their inner ear. When Jesus commands his followers to “love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and might” and to “love your neighbor as yourself,” he takes them on wings of love to the same experience of unity in Oneness, whence they speak and act through the power of the Holy Spirit.
“A global goal of the religions in this time of systemic global terrorism is to invite all and sundry into the experience of the Absolute, by whatever means It communicates to them, through whatever religion or spiritual practice.”
Terrorism is one consequence of losing the experience of the divine Oneness. Outside the Absolute, our inner drives lose focus in a chaos of relativities. What the Hindus call illusion, or maya, masquerades as truest reality – wealth, status, or simply our own ego. These relativities misdirect our energies in ways that are inevitably conflictual. As the Buddhists teach, ignorance yields craving and hatred-the “three poisons.” When they are frustrated, our egoistic cravings enflame. We’re on the path to terrorism.
A global goal of the religions in this time of systemic global terrorism is to invite all and sundry into the experience of the Absolute, by whatever means It communicates to them, through whatever religion or spiritual practice. This is the distinctly religious balm for the violence within the terrorist’s soul. And this is the distinctly religious contribution to the end of terrorism.
The United Nations joins the nation-states of the world in common cause towards peace. What if it were also to unify in common cause all lovers of the Absolute? What if the United Nations spoke not just for all the values the nations share, but for all the values the religions share? For under the banner of the Absolute, the religions do unite. And yet no world organization speaks forcefully and consequentially for that unity. What a force for peace the united religions of the world would be, not merged with each other, but reflecting off each other the distinct face of the Absolute each one sees. This, to me, is the unfinished business that now cries out for the UN to incorporate into its mission.
All of you present here today, including especially HE Archbishop Bernardito Auza, are the best qualified people in the world to lead the way on broadening the UN Charter to empower qualified voices within the UN structure to represent the religious communities of the world in the love they share for the Absolute and for mankind.
While the struggle to achieve this is collectively ours; the victory shall belong to God and to humankind.
May we raise our collective voices in action and in prayer, and may God grant us success, Amen!
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
Chairman, Cordoba House
Cordoba House is dedicated to leading, engaging, and promoting a distinctively moderate, open-minded, forward-thinking, pluralistic, and spiritual multi-national American Muslim community. Help build a more peaceful world by making a donation to support our work!
