‘First Responders In The Interfaith Community’

Beneath a rusting copper dome that dominates the intersection of 96th Street and Third Avenue, Jumu’ah prayers drew to a close last Friday at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. Congregants straightened their prostrate bodies and walked across the turquoise carpeting toward their piles of shoes.

But the men and women stopped in their tracks when their soft-spoken imam, Mohammed Shamsi Ali, introduced Rabbi Marc Schneier and Rev. Dr. Arthur Caliandro to the crowd of over 900 men downstairs. The three religious leaders had come together on the Upper East Side to deliver an interfaith memorial address for the victims of terror in Mumbai, and they stood side by side on the mosque’s mihrab, the central altar that faces the holy city of Mecca.

“They are here in solidarity with us,” Imam Ali announced.

“Our religion has been hijacked,” he had said earlier in his sermon. “Terrorism once again is godless — doesn’t have any God, doesn’t have any religion.”

Both Rabbi Schneier and Rev. Caliandro stressed the importance of religious moderation, which must quell the voice of the religious fanatic, rather than standing by in silence.

“I am among friends — I am among the good people who are doing something,” Rabbi Schneier said to the Muslim congregants, who responded with applause. The men reconvened the next day for a similar endeavor at The New York Synagogue, where Rabbi Schneier serves as spiritual leader.

In the wake of the Mumbai tragedy two weeks ago, this collaboration was but one among many interfaith memorial events that have sprung up all across the New York area… Continue reading…