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challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
When I picked this up on a whim I was intrigued but not sure what to expect; I was pleasantly surprised to find it a small collection of essays by the three different authors, with each author taking approximately 1/3 of the pages.
The essays by Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian Muslim, are personal and affecting. They begin in his childhood with the torture and death of Sarah’s brother at the hands of Israeli military, leading Sarah down a path of endorsing retributive justice in his teens, through to his first friendships with Israelis and Jews and resulting change to an ethos of non-violence and peace. Sarah discusses many controversial topics with a refreshing directness and empathetic hand, from Isis to suicide bombers to sharia law. Throughout them, Sarah breaks apart Islamophobic stereotypes and continually references the Quran’s writings on peace to build a compassionate future without washing over the past.
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer takes a delightfully theological approach to her essays, although they are still with a personal touch. A few of Kreimers theologically denser essays reference feminist religious scholarship that orients interpretations of the Torah which argue against an authoritarian, monolithic male God. Kreimers interfaith work is discussed and I got a lot of value from seeing the different cultural and religious interpretations of the same historic texts between Islam and Judaism.
The last selection of essays was through the lens of Protestant Christian Kelly James Clark, and these essays I did feel weren’t as strong as the rest. Perhaps I am a harsher critic here as a Christian myself, but Christianity has much to acknowledge on this subject and it felt like Christianity’s role in violence was mostly considered as people having racial bias and being judgemental rather than an institutional force. The closest was one essay of a few pages which acknowledged Christianity and the US’s role in the Iraq war, so I was left disappointed that the deep roots of anti semitism in Christianity wasn’t touched on. Clarks collection of essays was what a lot of writing on peace and compassion fall into: empty words of ‘let’s all be nicer’ without any historical context, depth or self awareness.
The essays by Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian Muslim, are personal and affecting. They begin in his childhood with the torture and death of Sarah’s brother at the hands of Israeli military, leading Sarah down a path of endorsing retributive justice in his teens, through to his first friendships with Israelis and Jews and resulting change to an ethos of non-violence and peace. Sarah discusses many controversial topics with a refreshing directness and empathetic hand, from Isis to suicide bombers to sharia law. Throughout them, Sarah breaks apart Islamophobic stereotypes and continually references the Quran’s writings on peace to build a compassionate future without washing over the past.
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer takes a delightfully theological approach to her essays, although they are still with a personal touch. A few of Kreimers theologically denser essays reference feminist religious scholarship that orients interpretations of the Torah which argue against an authoritarian, monolithic male God. Kreimers interfaith work is discussed and I got a lot of value from seeing the different cultural and religious interpretations of the same historic texts between Islam and Judaism.
The last selection of essays was through the lens of Protestant Christian Kelly James Clark, and these essays I did feel weren’t as strong as the rest. Perhaps I am a harsher critic here as a Christian myself, but Christianity has much to acknowledge on this subject and it felt like Christianity’s role in violence was mostly considered as people having racial bias and being judgemental rather than an institutional force. The closest was one essay of a few pages which acknowledged Christianity and the US’s role in the Iraq war, so I was left disappointed that the deep roots of anti semitism in Christianity wasn’t touched on. Clarks collection of essays was what a lot of writing on peace and compassion fall into: empty words of ‘let’s all be nicer’ without any historical context, depth or self awareness.