by Nathan Lean
Aslan Media
Talk to Jacob Bender for five minutes and you’ll get a sense that if bridges can be built between Muslims and other faith groups, he’s certainly the guy for the job.
In October, the award-winning documentary filmmaker and interfaith activist was tapped to head the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). His appointment to the Muslim advocacy group, which protects civil liberties of Muslim Americans and aims to increase public understanding of Islam, might have passed under the radar had his own religious faith — Judaism — not become the focus of his new gig.
Bender is the first Jew to lead a local chapter of the organization — a reality that seems to be the everlasting focus of nearly all who covered his appointment. It’s historic — sure — and bodes well for an organization whose chapter directors have long been of one faith. But Bender doesn’t seem all that obsessed with his own religion; he certainly doesn’t tout it as credential that would make him a more capable leader.
“The fact that a local CAIR chapter hired a Jew is a continuation and reaffirmation of its commitment to outreach,” Bender says. “Over the course of its history, CAIR has had many non-Muslims in positions of leadership, just not as chapter directors.”
He cites the long relationship between CAIR’s Chicago Chapter and the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs as an example of the positive effects of interfaith work — particularly between two religious communities that have experienced systematic prejudice and discrimination over the course of their histories. Asaf Bar-Tura, the Jewish Council’s Director of Operations writes, “Over the years CAIR-Chicago and JCUA have stood together, along with other partners, to confront bigotry of all kinds. From an attack against an innocent Muslim on the train here in Chicago after the Boston bombings, to speaking out against Pamela Geller’s hateful bus ads, our collaborative work has echoed a strong message that we have all heard before: ‘An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’”
It’s that spirit of fighting injustice that drives Bender.
Following the attacks of 9/11, he felt the need to combat prevailing stereotypes of Muslims and Islam with increased dialogue. And so he set out to forge relationships with Muslim communities in the United States and around the world, meeting with imams and faith leaders, speaking in mosques and at various conferences, and writing op-eds in prominent news outlets that spoke to the values of pluralism and diversity in an increasingly interconnected world. His 2009 film, Out of Cordoba, explores the legacies of the two most important thinkers to emerge from medieval Muslim Spain: Averroes the Muslim, and his Jewish counterpart, Rabbi Moses Maimonides. It was widely praised upon its release and was selected to appear in the lineup of nine major international film festivals; at the 2010 International Festival of Cinema and Religion in Rome, Italy, the film won the “Dialogue and Peace Award.”
Bender has faced a small firestorm of fury from anti-Muslim and pro-Israel activists who see his appointment as either a capitulation to extremist Muslims or an abandonment of the hardcore Zionist line. They argue that because CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case of the Holy Land Foundation in 2007, their status today is little more than terrorist financiers. A 2012 circuit court judge who reviewed the case and ruling, ordered that classification removed, though that important fact matters little to the detractors who grasp onto the original ruling as precious proof of something sinister.
“These people are the usual suspects,” he says. “They are all associated in one way or another with the well-funded Islamophobia network — the people like Daniel Pipes, David Yerushalmi, Pamela Geller, and Michelle Bachmann. Their pushback is to be expected.”
It’s precisely because of those usual suspects, and the damaging work they’ve done over the past decade to sow discord between Muslims and non-Muslims that Bender’s mission is so necessary. He sees manifestations of Islamophobia — anti-Sharia legislation, opposition to mosque construction, and McCarthy-like scares over the Muslim Brotherhood — as the biggest threat facing the American Muslim community today.
“It’s actually similar to Brown vs. Board of Education,” he says. “This is a civil rights issue with troubling consequences. Back then we were dealing with the negative impact of discrimination on the advancement of black students going through segregated schools. What effects will Muslim students who are discriminated, who are profiled, or who are spied on face in the future?”
A 2012 poll showed that Americans are evenly split when it comes to opinions of their Muslim compatriots. Forty-one percent admit that they view Muslims unfavorably, while 40 percent say just the opposite. That’s down from 2010, when 55 percent of the population viewed Muslim unfavorably.
Progress has been made, but there’s still plenty of work to be done. Part of that work, Bender believes, involves educating the public. The other part involves nurturing relationships between people of different faiths.
“I’ve seen the impact that people receiving new information can have,” he says. “If you can show people that there have been hundreds and hundreds of Muslim statements against terrorism and violence, I think that has impact. If you can tell stories about places like Cairo where Muslims protected Christian churches from attacks on Christmas Eve, that also has an impact.”
Bender mentioned the Philadelphia Interfaith Walk, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this April, as a meaningful example of a local community unifying its disparate elements in service of promoting a common vision of humanity. Five hundred people, representing the city’s diverse faith groups, celebrated peace by walking side-by-side from mosque to temple to church to synagogue, stopping at each along the way, and remembering that the best antidote to violence and conflict is compassion, understanding and unity.
“There are so many positive efforts like this underway. And they really have an impact on people,” Bender says, enthusiastically.
That impact is what Bender is in search of — creating it, nurturing it, and making sure it lasts. And how appropriate that he’s championing liberty, religious freedom and equal rights in the very city that birthed those cherished American values.
