Interfaith Ramadan: Jewish and Christian Meets Muslim

Beads collected in Senegal, Mauritania, Mali and Benin. Photo: Susan Katz Miller

One of the great joys of writing Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family has been the opportunity to develop relationships with interfaith activists who are Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, and more. While acknowledging our differences, we tend to share a belief that love can prevail over hate, and that life is richer and fuller with all of us in conversation, and working together.

My personal response to the continuing religious violence in the world is to transcend boundaries with love. As someone with a Jewish (and interfaith) identity, I seek out the progressive and feminist Muslim community in particular, mainly through the miracle of Twitter. Some of my favorite Muslim interfaith activists on Twitter include @ImtheQ, @MuslimahMontage, @MelodyFoxAhmed, @HindMakki, @NajeebaSyeed, @HiddenHeartFilm, @ChrisMusForum, @IslamicChaplain, @PearlBLawrence, @Ingrid Mattson, @EbooPatel, and @SaritaAgerman.

This is the month of Ramadan, and many of these interfaith activists have created great projects (including #RamadanReads and @TheBigIftar) to complement the introspection and community-building of this period of fasting. Sarah Ager (@SaritaAgerman), is a preacher’s kid and a convert to Islam who describes herself as a “postmodern Anglo-Muslim” and writes a blog called “A Hotchpotch Hijabi in Italy.” For Ramadan, she publishes an entire month’s worth of reflections from Muslims, and everyone else, on Ramadan, in a project called #InterfaithRamadan, and then tweets it out under @InterfaithRam.

Sarah had noticed some of my blog posts on my positive experiences with Islam (perhaps here, here, or here), and invited me to write a piece for #InterfaithRamadan this year. I started with a scene from my book, and then had a new epiphany about how growing up in an interfaith family prepared me to encounter those with other religions. (UPDATE: Sarah’s blog is gone from the internet, but my post is preserved here).

Interfaith Ramadan: Jewish and Christian Meets Muslim

I moved to Dakar, Senegal, just three days after getting married in 1987. When our plane landed on the other side of the Atlantic, I stepped into a new role as a Jewish girl from an interfaith family, married to a Protestant working for a Catholic organization, in a predominantly Muslim country.

Growing up in a small New England town, everyone I knew seemed to fall neatly into one of two religious boxes labeled Christian (the religious majority) or Jewish (the tiny religious minority). But on a deeper level, as the child of an interfaith marriage, this strict binary always felt forced. I knew that the religious world, and my own identity, had to be more complex.

In Senegal, I was immersed in a rich, interfaith mix. Many Senegalese ethnic groups celebrate indigenous African religious traditions predating the 11^th century arrival of Islam in Senegal, often alongside or intertwined with Sufi Islam or Catholicism. My background as an interfaith child, absorbing two different religious systems from birth, gave me a framework for thinking about religious pluralism and fueled my desire to understand Senegalese religious practice. And I believe it predisposed me to embrace the interwoven religions of Senegal, as intricate and elaborate as the geometric patterns of West African textiles.

For those three years in the late 1980s, I was the only American journalist living in Senegal, covering everything from the conflict between Senegal and Mauritania, to a locust invasion, to cultural pieces for The New York Times. Few Senegalese I encountered had ever met a Jew: some had never heard of Judaism. I was proud to represent my people, explaining Jewish beliefs and culture to new friends, and to curious shopkeepers and taxi-drivers. I felt welcomed–as an American, as a Jew, as a person–in the Senegalese spirit of teranga (hospitality) wherever I went. But I had few opportunities to practice Judaism with any sort of community.

Instead, we were immersed in a vibrant interfaith world created through waves of conquest and colonialism, and the fusion of cultures. The President at the time, Abdou Diouf, was a Muslim married to a Catholic. In front of our apartment, around the corner from a mosque and across from a Protestant church, every Friday the street filled with faithful Muslims in prayer. We participated in the wedding of a white American friend from a Christian background to a Muslim Senegalese woman. And in the far south of the country, the Casamance, we attended traditional Jola ceremonies.

In Dakar, a bustling center of commerce, and a crossroads of black African, Arab and European cultures, I appreciated how the Muslim obligation to give to the poor created human connections in the midst of harsh urban realities. The streets of Dakar drew the poorest of the poor, many with bodies compromised by leprosy or polio. But because of the tradition of giving alms, the people who begged formed an integral and respected part of society, and we developed relationships with the regulars on the sidewalks of our neighborhood. In her tragicomic novel The Beggar’s Strike, Senegalese writer Aminata Sow Fall depicted the social disruption that occurs when the beggars refuse to accept alms. (The novel was turned into a 2000 film, Battu, by Malian filmmaker Cheikh Oumar Sissoko).

In Dakar, the rhythm of Muslim prayer also softened the frenetic urban hustle. When the muezzins called from minarets across the city, everything slowed to a moment out of time: a stillness to remind us that we were living on the edge of the Sahel and ultimately the Sahara–a region of Sufis stretching from Dakar to Timbuktu and beyond. And those of us from Christian and Jewish and traditional African religious backgrounds would pause as well, out of respect, but also relishing that stop-time reflection.

At Ramadan, this effect, of contemplation, of submitting to the heat and grandeur of Africa, was drawn out for an entire month. During the day, abstaining from food and water, many Senegalese returned to the customs of village life, putting work aside, sitting in the shade of mango trees together, waiting for the cool of sunset. And after the iftar meal to break the fast, nothing tasted better than attaya: tiny glasses of sweet and astringent green gunpowder tea, poured with ceremony from a daring height to achieve the right foam.

I miss living in a Ramadan culture. And I miss the simultaneously sweet and bitter taste of those shot glasses of hot tea on a hot African night. I miss it so much that once, years later, on a one-hour stopover in the Dakar airport on the way from Washington to a conference in Cameroon, I dashed into the airport and found a Senegalese customs official with a tea tray, and begged for a glass of attaya. And of course, in the spirit of teranga, he shared his tea with me.

I have had the good luck to live on three continents, building an identity from many strands of both heritage and experience. Even though my Dakar years were long ago now, I still feel the impulse to say “inshallah” when I speak of the future, “alhamdoulillah” when I speak of the past. And in the present, I celebrate projects such as #interfaithramadan, and The Big Iftar in the UK, as opportunities to realize all that can be positive about our complex religious world.

Susan Katz Miller is the author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, and The Interfaith Family Journal. She works as an interfaith families consultant, speaker, and coach. Follow her on twitter @SusanKatzMiller.

Breakthrough! Interfaith Families, Interfaith Engagement

For years now, I have been advocating for interfaith families to be included in interfaith activism and conversation. Since 9/11, an inspiring interfaith movement has been growing, including interfaith activism on campuses. And just in the past couple of years, atheists and agnostics and secular humanists have been welcomed by many of these interfaith organizations, in recognition of the growth of these communities, and the idea that you do not have to have a faith to want to join the interfaith movement. All of this is good—very, very good.

But for those of us from interfaith families, the new focus on interfaith activism has raised two tricky (and intertwined) issues. The first challenge is linguistic. Interfaith families have always used the word “interfaith” to describe who we are. The pioneering intermarriage of my parents occurred in 1960. And since at least the 1980s, some of us have been raising interfaith children with both religions, and some of those children use “interfaith” as an identity label. So the word “interfaith” is being used both at a macro level to describe engagement between people of different faiths, and on a micro level to describe, well, engagement and marriage and identity in interfaith families. I don’t know if we should have or could have had different terminology to distinguish these two phenomena, but we don’t.

The second issue is that official interfaith conversations between representatives of different religious institutions have not always welcomed interfaith families and those with interfaith or dual-faith or multifaith identity. We represent a blurring of boundaries, and that ambiguity can sometimes make people uncomfortable.  And yet, people from interfaith families have skills to contribute to interfaith conversations and programs. We practice the art of communicating across religious divides, day and night, throughout our marriages, or throughout our lifetimes if we are born into interfaith families.

This week, I felt like I witnessed a breakthrough. I was invited by interfaith activist Sana Saeed to co-sponsor a twitter chat, alongside a group of interfaith organizers, leading up to a DC Young Adult Faith Leaders Summit tomorrow, organized by Faith in Action DC.  (Note: You can follow the Summit on twitter at #DCFaith). I started to buzz with excitement when I saw that the Summit will include people who “belong to traditional religious institutions, have multiple affiliations, no affiliations, or are somewhere in-between.” In other words, the summit is inclusive, on a whole new level.

In the twitter chat, I dove in and asked two questions: What can people from interfaith families, or who claim more than one religion, bring to interfaith activism and conversation? And, what are the challenges of including people with dual-faith or multiple-faith identities in interfaith conversation?

It was thrilling to read the responses from people who work full-time on interfaith engagement. Usra Ghazi of the Interfaith Youth Core tweeted that “interfaith families are like religiously diverse communities: great places for interfaith literacy.” Bud Heckman of Religions for Peace USA agreed that people from interfaith families bring their “lived daily experience” to the conversation, “But also assumptions/positions that are threatening to ‘single faith’ others. Benefit & barrier.”

And so, on to those challenges. Ghazi tweeted that interfaith conversations “tend to put people in a box. You can’t do that with ‘seekers’ and multi-faith identities.” InterfaithYouthCore responded that people with dual-faith or multifaith identities challenge “the norm that certain faiths are exclusive of others.” Faith in Action DC confided that, while organizing tomorrow’s Summit, they had the “challenge of placing multifaith participants. Which group are they in? So we created “Multi” category! #simple!” I am not sure everyone will find it that simple. But this chat felt like the beginning of a beautiful, and radically inclusive, conversation.

(Note: Some twitter abbreviations have been expanded in this post, to ensure greater comprehension by those over 30)

Life of Pi: Hindu, Christian and Muslim

At a recent preview screening of the new film Life of Pi by director Ang Lee, based on the novel by Yann Martel, I was relieved to discover that the film preserves  a key theme of the book: multiple religious belonging. The filmmakers have transformed a rather dense and philosophical read into a rollicking 3D adventure tale, focused on the survival of a young man and a tiger in a lifeboat on the high seas. But the film very clearly depicts the protagonist Piscine (“Pi”) Patel as claiming not one, not two, but three religions: Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.

The venerable Interfaith Alliance sponsored the screening, which gives me hope that advocates for interfaith dialogue are beginning to feel more comfortable engaging with the idea that people can and do claim more than one religion. Some of us who who feel connected to more than one faith come from interfaith families. I envision a day when interfaith activists will actively include the perspectives of interfaith families in the interfaith conversation. And with Life of Pi in theaters, I look forward to a lively conversation about how claiming more than one religion fits into the push for respectful religious pluralism.

In the book, the clergy of all three religions challenge Pi’s right to multiple religious belonging:

The pandit spoke first. “Mr. Patel, Piscine’s piety is admirable. In these troubled times it’s good to see a boy so keen on God. We all agree on that.” The imam and the priest nodded. “But he can’t be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim. It’s impossible. He must choose.”

In the film version, it is Pi’s father who insists that his son must choose one religion, while his mother points out that he is still young, and has time to choose a path. And yet, at the end of his adventures, despite wisdom and experience, a middle-aged Pi still defines himself as Hindu, Catholic and Muslim.

The example of Pi challenges the assertion that dual-faith or multiple-faith adherence is simply immature, or a temporary state. For those of us in interfaith families celebrating both family religions, this debate is all too familiar. Often, we are told that interfaith children “must” choose one religion eventually. And yet, some interfaith children insist in adulthood on maintaining connections to both religions, having grown accustomed to the benefits of claiming both.

While many religious institutions find the blurring of boundaries threatening, academic theologians have been discussing both the challenges and opportunities of multiple religious belonging for some time. They acknowledge that religious double-belonging has been the norm through much of history in many parts of the world, whether in Asia, Africa or Latin America. In Europe and America–areas dominated by the more exclusivist Abrahamic religions–claiming more than one religion has been less common. But as religious flux and fluidity (and intermarriage) rise with globalization, dual-faith adherence inevitably rises as well.

In the introduction to the book Many Mansions?: Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity theologian Catherine Cornille writes, “…widespread consciousness of religious pluralism has presently left the religious person with the choice not only of which religion, but of how many religions she or he might belong to.”

But interfaith families claiming two religions are not simply inspired by a consciousness of religious pluralism: they are living this pluralism on an intimate daily basis. Rather than choosing religions as in a cafeteria, interfaith children raised with both religions are are growing up celebrating the dual faiths already present around the family dinner table.

Some interfaith children raised with two religions choose a single faith identity in adulthood. And some, like Pi Patel, will insist on claiming dual or multiple religions, even in maturity. I am glad that the movie version of Life of Pi is bringing this theological discussion to the big screen. I hope that it will bring together interfaith activists doing the important work of trying to calm the seas of religious misunderstanding, with those of us who insist on riding the waves of more than one religion.

 

Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family by Susan Katz Miller, available now in hardcover and eBook from Beacon Press.

Saint Francis: Interfaith Peacemaker

Though the East Coast is still reeling from Hurricane Sandy, I could not let the season of All Saints and All Souls go by without note. And I wanted to describe how our community of interfaith families celebrated the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, who had his feast day recently.

Neither our rabbi nor our minister (who was raised as a Baptist) grew up celebrating the lives of the saints, and yet they co-officiated at this recent Gathering. About half of the Christians in our interfaith families community were raised Catholic, and we embrace Saint Francis as an interfaith peacemaker .

On the morning of our celebration, a simple wooden statue of the saint, with a bird balanced in his palm, stood at the front of the room. So, before a word was even uttered, some of us were working through interfaith issues. Such “graven images” present a challenge for some Jews (and Muslims) who grew up with only abstract religious art, based on Biblical and Qur’anic injunctions against idolatry. But for me, contemplating an image of a saint, while learning about his or her life and spiritual practice, is not the same thing as praying “to” or worshipping a saint.

As patron saint of animals and the environment, and as a man born wealthy who gave up all his worldly goods, Saint Francis holds tremendous appeal across the religious divides. Both Catholics and Anglicans (and thus Episcopalians) celebrate his feast day with a blessing of the animals, when parishioners actually bring animals to church. I find this idea tremendously appealing, perhaps because it breaches the usual human/animal divide, inviting nature into the sanctuary.

The life of Saint Francis has inspired many popular works of music and art.  Franco Zefferelli’s 1972 film Brother Sun, Sister Moon depicted Francis as a sort of flower child, with a soundtrack of sweet songs by Donovan. My favorite Saint Francis film is the less sentimental and rather surreal and even inscrutable Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Uccellacci e uccellini (or The Hawks and the Sparrows) a mystical political fable with a talking crow.

While many people associate Saint Francis with nature, not as many know the story of his voyage to the Muslim world as a peacemaker. At our gathering, an interfaith father raised Catholic told the story of the journey of Saint Francis in 1219, during the Fifth Crusade, to seek out the sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil. Two books devoted to this story came out in the wake of 9/11: The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace by journalist Peter Moses, and Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter by religious historian John Tolan.

Apparently, Francis and the Sultan developed deep respect for each other during days of intense dialogue in the midst of war. The Sultan treated Francis as a guest rather than an enemy. And Francis arrived home urging Christians to take inspiration from Muslims, and live peacefully beside them.

At our celebration, we sang the Catholic hymn “Make Me an Instrument of Peace,” based on the Prayer of Saint Francis. The prayer (whether or not Francis had anything to do with writing it) has inspired many composers and has many tunes. I love this version by a rabbi and a Franciscan monk who harmonize. As our group sang (a different tune), I noticed that our house interfaith band that week included a Jewish keyboard player from England, a Jewish doumbek player from Morocco, and two Jewish singers. It’s not that we’re converting to Catholicism. All of us feel inspired by Francis, and enriched as members of interfaith families, and as individuals who yearn for peace, by spending a morning devoted to learning about his life.

 

Susan Katz Miller is the author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, from Beacon Press. She works as an interfaith families consultant, speaker, and coach. Follow her on twitter @beingboth.

 

Since 9/11: Interfaith Families, Interfaith Unity

Every year at the start of September, the memory of the trauma of 9/11 impels us to seek out community. And every year, I write about 9/11 from my perspective as an interfaith child and an interfaith parent obsessed with building bridges and making peace. During the first year of this blog in September, I wrote about the healing power of singing together, and the Jewish and Christian lullabies I sang to my children. Last year in September, I wrote about my relationship with Islam, and the convergence of Muslim and Jewish holy days.

This year, I wrote for Huffington Post about raising interfaith children in the decade since 9/11, and the two communities that have sustained my family in our search for harmony and understanding

I am encouraged to see a flood of essays and posts on the importance of “interfaith relationships,” inspired by the 9/11 anniversary. At the same time, it remains frustrating that virtually none of these essays acknowledges or mentions the reality of the growing number of interfaith families who have chosen radically inclusive love over tribalism and sectarianism, in spite of pressure from society and religious institutions. For us, thinking about preserving diversity while achieving unity, about celebrating both our differences and our common ground, is a way of life, not something we do once or twice a year in an interfaith worship service on 9/11 or Thanksgiving. The “interfaith movement” and the even more controversial “interfaith families movement” share goals, but often it feels like we are on parallel tracks.

A new study from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research found that interfaith worship has doubled in the decade since 9/11, from less than 7 percent of congregations, to almost 14 percent. The study tracked churches and synagogues and mosques that occasionally meet to worship together. Of course, I celebrate this trend. More knowledge, more outreach, more unity, it’s all good. But I continue to maintain that the growing “interfaith activism” movement might benefit from including, rather than avoiding, those of us who walk and talk interfaith relations from the moment we are born into, or choose, our interfaith families.

This Sunday, hundreds of members of our interfaith families community will remember 9/11 together with songs of peace, and the Kaddish. I invite clergy and the ambitious and energetic new interfaith activists to join us, to witness how a community that lives and breathes interfaith throughout the year comes together to sing and reflect in profound communion.