A Muslim, a Christian, and a JewWalk into a Room…

Priscilla:
Ranya opened the door to her home for our first meeting, and I wasimmediately intrigued. There was so much to look at: beautiful artworkon the walls, sensual fabrics and furnishings. The space felt bothfamiliar and exotic to me at the same time. Ranya and I both ownlush, color photographs by the same photographer. The identicalchandelier illuminates the main room of both our homes. I felt thatwas an unusual omen.

I had never met a Palestinian woman before, but have always hadboth Jewish and Christian friends. So I focused on Ranya in particularat that first meeting. Suzanne was less mysterious to me, and Ranya was,well, Palestinian. I'm not sure how I expected a Palestinian woman tolook or act, but I was intrigued by Ranya as a person. She was beautiful,smart, sophisticated, and warm. She was confident, but refreshinglyself-deprecating, one of my favorite traits in any person. I felt an immediateconnection to her.

Ranya spoke eloquently about the unique position she was in as aMuslim mother in New York, particularly after the attacks on the WorldTrade Center. "My daughter's confused," Ranya explained. "She knowsshe's different from the Christian and Jewish children she's surroundedby, and I feel it's time to educate her and my son about what it means tobe a Muslim in America today."This was a difficult challenge for Ranyasince Islam now had violent and confusing connotations for mostAmericans.

I'd never interacted so intimately with a Muslim woman, I keptthinking as I listened to Ranya speak about her concerns. This wasgoing to be an interesting meeting. The air felt charged. Partly becauseI didn't know these women and we were getting into personal issues,partly because I didn't know, as a Jew, what political direction a conversationwith a Palestinian woman might take. But primarily the air wascharged because I was in a room with two substantial, intelligentwomen who felt an urgent need to connect and produce somethingmeaningful out of that connection.

I asked Ranya where her family was from, and she told me andSuzanne, in vivid detail, the story of her family's history in Palestine. Iwas riveted. Ranya talked with passion and sensitivity. I was hearing thestory of a displaced Palestinian family, told to me not by an angry personwith a political ax to grind, but by a loving mother with a familyand a story to tell. It was as simple as that.

In retrospect, I guess I had been expecting a woman straight out ofthe evening news shots of anguished Palestinian mothers in refugeecamps. A woman who would never sit down and talk to me, face to face,so calmly.

Ranya:
The morning of our first meeting, I lit a scented candle, fussed withthe cushions on my couch and waited for Priscilla and Suzanne to arrive.I was not nervous about meeting a Jewish woman. UnlikePriscilla, who was meeting her first Palestinian woman, I had metmany Jewish people representing an array of political opinions. Evenbefore I'd moved to New York City ten years earlier, I'd had manyJewish friends. Still, I knew it was possible that Priscilla and I couldclash. Palestinians and Israelis were at war. And while I may suffer lessthan those in refugee camps, my identity is tied up in my family's displacementfrom our ancestral home half a century ago.

As soon as I met Priscilla, her eagerness to connect was evident,and, I hoped, an indicator of the warmth and generosity of her spirit.Priscilla was a reform Jew, and in my mind she represented the greatJewish liberal tradition of debate and free thought. As she confirmedlater in our discussions, a large part of the Jewish theological tradition isbased on the commentaries, which represent centuries of ongoing debateand interpretation of the Jewish Holy Books. The fact that I wasable to talk so freely to Priscilla and Suzanne served as a sad reminder tome of the lack of debate in Islam today.

I had grown up hearing of a legendary time in history when thedoor was closed on Islamic theological debate (Ijthihad). So as Priscillaexplained the evolution of the reform, conservative, and orthodoxbranches of Judaism in America, it occurred to me that Islam needed aparallel experience.America is a country that was built on the principleof freedom of worship, and in America today Islam needs an Americanjourney.

When I shared my family story with Priscilla, although I felt selfconsciousof such instant intimacy and a little awkward about sharing myfamily's sense of loss and victimhood, I felt that I was in the presence ofsomeone open to meaningful dialogue.While Priscilla accepted my storyat face value, she told me later that some of her friends were skeptical.

Suzanne:
From the time I discovered Ranya was Muslim, I was intrigued. Iwanted to understand the basis of her faith and how she reconciledher modern, Westernized life with what was widely viewed as an unenlightenedreligion of the developing world. My knowledge of Islamwas meager. I knew Muslims followed the teaching of an Arab calledMuhammad, that they worshiped in mosques, that they had a holybook called the Quran, and that they were obliged to make a pilgrimageto Mecca once in their lifetime.

I had visited mosques in Istanbul, and I had heard the enchantingArabic calls to prayer of the muezzin throughout Turkey and Morocco.But I held an image of Islam as a violent religion controlled by men topromote the continued hegemony of men, a religion of mistreatedwomen, polygamy, and an "eye for an eye" justice system. All of theseimages fit with stereotypes popularized in books I'd read, like Jean Sasson'sPrincess, and were supported by reports in the American media atvarious times?stories about women being stoned, about the 9/11 attackersbeing inspired by the Quran, about the death sentence placed onauthor Salman Rushdie by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini.

During my own travels in Muslim countries, I had seen womentreated as second-class citizens. They covered their heads with scarvesor even their entire bodies in shapeless cloaks. In Istanbul, I was shooedout of the courtyard of a mosque while I could see men prostratingthemselves in prayer inside. One man quickly emerged and waved meout of the mosque's gates. I was not allowed to look.

I had left the Catholic church to become an Episcopalian, in partbecause Catholics don't allow women to become priests, so I was curiousto learn how Ranya could reconcile her modern life with Islam.After all, she did not wear a head scarf. She drank alcohol. And shewasn't fighting a jihad against the West, at least as far as I could tell.

In retrospect, Ranya was on a jihad?a word I later learned to meanan inner struggle. She was struggling to define her Muslim faith. Andshe was struggling to have this faith recognized in the West.