Program aims to break cycle of Jewish-Muslim conflict

By Lisa Fleisher

Tribune staff reporter

November 30, 2005

Rachel Havrelock was heartbroken when the sound of National Guard helicopters, beating the air over violent student protests after the second intifada, broke her concentration during her 2002 doctoral exams at the University of California at Berkeley.

She thought she had left the Israeli-Palestinian conflict behind after studying in Tel Aviv and Ramallah. But the thumping of helicopters made clear the conflict had become an explosive issue on American campuses, too.

Now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Havrelock hopes to inspire her students to talk, instead of shout, about the Middle East through a new program on Jewish-Muslim studies.

The program, offered jointly by UIC and the Chicago-Kent College of Law, is touted as unique because it features a dedicated visiting professorship, an annual course and community outreach aimed at fostering communication between the two groups.

The program kicked off this week with two lectures from a renowned Muslim scholar. Next year, the schools plan more community involvement and the production of Havrelock's play, "From Tel Aviv to Ramallah," which explores the daily life of Palestinian and Israeli youths.

"In the classroom, you have a cooler setting for conversation, a place where people can set some of their personal passions aside and explore issues for their intellectual value," said Samuel Fleischacker, a UIC professor who proposed the program last year as acting director of the school's Jewish Studies Program.

By asking Jewish and Muslim scholars to teach aspects of each other's subjects, Fleischacker hopes to both produce a different perspective on the material and also force the scholars to learn more themselves.

One student planning on taking this year's course is Sam Yassine, 21, a Lebanese-American and UIC junior.

"We need to end the hate that Muslim kids and Jewish kids are being raised on," said Yassine, a Muslim. "This is the only way. This shouldn't be only on the UIC campus; this should be on all the campuses around the United States."

Fleischacker modeled the program after a Christian-Jewish program at Williams College, where he once taught, in which a professorship rotated annually between Christian and Jewish scholars. Here, he hopes to find funding to continue the program indefinitely.

"I don't think there are very many [similar programs] in the United States, frankly," said Mark Cohen, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. "I only know of a handful of people that are specialists in this subject."

Scholars in this project say at UIC, where women wearing hijabs--Muslim head coverings--are a frequent sight, there's a yearning for dialogue and understanding.

"There's real student interest and real curiosity and a real desire for the campus to be a refuge and a place where students can be exposed to multiple ideas," Havrelock said.

Next semester, Havrelock and Azim Nanji, director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, will teach "Judaism and Islam: Interactions and Intersections."

Future courses will explore the long, intertwined history of the two religions, such as shared prophets and traditions and their deep rooting in religious law. Topics could range from music and art to philosophy and politics.

Visiting scholars to the campus would be encouraged to produce programming with Chicagoland groups such as the Interfaith Youth Corps and the Jewish Council of Urban Affairs, Fleischacker said.

The talks Monday and Tuesday featured Akbar Ahmed, a former Pakistani ambassador and Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic Studies at American University who has spoken around the world about the importance of Jews and Muslims talking to each other.

"Dialogue leading to understanding leading to friendship," Ahmed said, "can change the world."

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