JACOB BENDER PRESENTATION - CAIR Banquet
I share below a speech delivered recently by Mr. Bender at a CAIR banquet in Pittsburgh.
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JACOB BENDER PRESENTATION
CAIR-PITTSBURGH BANQUET
SEPTEMBER 23, 2017
I stand before you as a Jew, born to immigrants in this nation of immigrants. My parents and grandparents all came from Eastern Europe. When I was a child, I asked my grandmother why one of her eyes looked different, and she told me how when she was a baby, Russian mobs stormed into her village shouting, “kill the Jews!” A stray bullet sent a shard of glass into her right eye, leaving it sightless for the rest of her life.
Over two million Eastern European Jews immigrated to North America in the first two decades of the 20th Century. Believing that their new lives would be ones of comfort in this land of prosperity, they found themselves instead in the stinking tenement apartments of New York City’s Lower East Side, where they were forced to work 16-hour days in the sweatshop factories of the garment industry.
And it is here that the story of my own social activism begins, for my grandparents refused to accept the oppressive conditions of the sweatshops. Instead, drawing upon the well-springs of social justice flowing through Jewish tradition, they became union organizers struggling for an 8-hour day, and safe and sanitary conditions for factory workers.
This quest for social justice was passed down from my grandparents to my parents and then to my brother and me, as if it was part of our DNA. Looking back, I feel blessed to have grown-up in a family that were strong supporters of the civil rights movement and activists in the anti-Vietnam War peace marches of the 1960s and 70s.
My family taught me that to believe in peace and social justice is to believe that no one nation or religion is superior to another, and that it was each person’s obligation to break down the barriers and walls that separate us, even if that wall, either metaphorical or real, was built by the most powerful person in the nation. And thus we read in the Holy Quran: “.. O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another.”
By the time I started university, I had found my life’s calling in this Abrahamic triangle of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — with social justice at its center:
First as a university student studying the intertwined and shared histories of Jews, Christians, and Muslims;
Then as a peace activist, a part of that small but significant minority in the Jewish community opposing Israel’s racist occupation of Palestine;
Then as a documentary filmmaker, the director of the award-winning film “Out of Cordoba,” an exploration of the multi-faith culture of medieval Muslim Spain — known as Alandalus — and its inspiration for Muslims, Christians, and Jews struggling against religious extremism and violence in today’s world;
And finally, for the past four years, as the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. I am the first non-Muslim to direct one of CAIR’s 30 chapters around the country.
The journey that led me to this moment, speaking at the Annual Banquet of a chapter of America’s leading Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has been long and arduous. But truth be told, I cannot imagine another place I would rather be at this moment in American history than working for CAIR, and lending my voice and talents in the defense and empowerment of the American Muslim community, and in the open and unapologetic celebration of Islam and its multitude of wonders.
This moment is, of course, no ordinary time in the life of the nation, but a unique convergence of several phenomena:
The resentment of those left behind by globalization, as the victims of de-industrialization saw their factories close and move to Central America, or the Philippines, or China;
The unchaining of white supremacy (never far below the surface),
The proliferation of new media, such as Twitter and Facebook, allowing unfiltered and obvious lies to take on the appearance of reality and truth, and
A shifty snake-oil salesman to bring it all together, and whom we shall refer to as the “Dotard.”
It will hardly be news to this audience that the main victim of this perfect storm of ignorance, fear, and hatred was the Muslims of America, citizens and resident alike, who became the scapegoat of the Dotard and his inner circle, in a campaign of bigotry against an American minority not seen since the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to argue that the American Muslim community is now the proverbial canary-in-the-mine, and that the future of this community is a bell-weather, a prognosticator of the health and viability of American democracy. In short, what happens to the Muslim community will determine the future of the great American experiment of pluralism and freedom of religion, enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
This is where CAIR enters the story, for in essence, CAIR is the first and last line of defense for American Muslims, both the guarantor and the guardian of your community. Since its founding some 20 years ago, and the founding of CAIR-Pennsylvania in 2005, CAIR has helped tens of thousands of people in the US, providing free legal services to those who have faced discrimination in their workplace, or bullying on the school yard, or attempts at entrapment by government officials.
In Philadelphia, our legal work takes up roughly 50% of staff time. The other half is devoted to organizing “Know Your Rights” and anti-bullying workshops for both children and adults, and presenting a wide range of courses and seminars on Islam, the diversity of the American Muslim community, US Foreign policy, and interfaith relations, to high schools, colleges, universities, and religious institutions of all kinds.
Knowledge is the beginning, the first step along the Quranic road to knowing The Other. I have seen first-hand how non-Muslims abandon their negative view of Islam when learning of the innumerable contributions of Muslim physicians and philosophers, poets and grammarians, astronomers and mathematicians in the creation of Western Civilization, for we must abandon the simplistic view point which posits Islam and the West as polar opposites, but rather see the West as a collaboration of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers, each fertilizing the minds of the other two.
And I have seen how an audience can change when learning that a chapter of an activist Muslim organization is now directed by a nice-Jewish-boy from New York, for there are hate-filled people who just two years ago bought ad space on Septa buses and trains where they placed posters insinuating that anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews, was intrinsic to Islam and the Quran. On the contrary, I have argued in countless speeches to churches, mosques, and synagogues, that Islam was the womb that nurtured Judaism during the Middle Ages, and that for centuries, Arabic was also the daily language of the Jewish people.
CAIR’s message of pluralism and peace, justice and mercy, is spread through the thousands of media appearances of CAIR staff at our offices around the country. In our interviews and published writings, CAIR spokespeople counter the distortions and outright falsehoods of the Islamophobic network, such as the non-existent “shariaization of America” or the Muslim plot to re-establish the Caliphate in the United States. (Although given the current occupant of The Oval Office, any of the Rāshidūn, The Four Rightly-Guided Caliphs, would seem a far superior choice.)
Building on our media relations, CAIR is constantly reaching out to Christian and Jewish leaders and their communities, as well as to other faiths, to build bridges of understanding, and form coalitions on a range of issues, from protecting the planet from the dangers of a global warming to the epidemic of homelessness in our inner cities, from defending the rights of immigrants to denouncing the shooting of un-armed African American youth by police officers.
And on October 24 of this year, CAIR-Pennsylvania and eMgage will head to Harrisburg for our Third Annual Muslim Capitol Day, bringing over 100 Muslim leaders and interfaith allies to meet with State Senators and Representatives, as well as high-level government officials, conveying to them the concerns of the Muslim community of Pennsylvania in these uncertain days.
This abundance of activity is only possible, however, because of the donations of people like yourselves all across the country. So please become involved and help CAIR-Pittsburg grow. You will not only be fulfilling the obligation to protect the UMMAH, the Muslim community, but helping to insure that your children will grow up as proud Muslims in an America committed to the notion that all human beings are equal in the eyes of their Creator, endowed with the rights of liberty and religious freedom, and secure in the belief that the United States of America is their country too.
=========
JACOB BENDER PRESENTATION
CAIR-PITTSBURGH BANQUET
SEPTEMBER 23, 2017
I stand before you as a Jew, born to immigrants in this nation of immigrants. My parents and grandparents all came from Eastern Europe. When I was a child, I asked my grandmother why one of her eyes looked different, and she told me how when she was a baby, Russian mobs stormed into her village shouting, “kill the Jews!” A stray bullet sent a shard of glass into her right eye, leaving it sightless for the rest of her life.
Over two million Eastern European Jews immigrated to North America in the first two decades of the 20th Century. Believing that their new lives would be ones of comfort in this land of prosperity, they found themselves instead in the stinking tenement apartments of New York City’s Lower East Side, where they were forced to work 16-hour days in the sweatshop factories of the garment industry.
And it is here that the story of my own social activism begins, for my grandparents refused to accept the oppressive conditions of the sweatshops. Instead, drawing upon the well-springs of social justice flowing through Jewish tradition, they became union organizers struggling for an 8-hour day, and safe and sanitary conditions for factory workers.
This quest for social justice was passed down from my grandparents to my parents and then to my brother and me, as if it was part of our DNA. Looking back, I feel blessed to have grown-up in a family that were strong supporters of the civil rights movement and activists in the anti-Vietnam War peace marches of the 1960s and 70s.
My family taught me that to believe in peace and social justice is to believe that no one nation or religion is superior to another, and that it was each person’s obligation to break down the barriers and walls that separate us, even if that wall, either metaphorical or real, was built by the most powerful person in the nation. And thus we read in the Holy Quran: “.. O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another.”
By the time I started university, I had found my life’s calling in this Abrahamic triangle of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — with social justice at its center:
First as a university student studying the intertwined and shared histories of Jews, Christians, and Muslims;
Then as a peace activist, a part of that small but significant minority in the Jewish community opposing Israel’s racist occupation of Palestine;
Then as a documentary filmmaker, the director of the award-winning film “Out of Cordoba,” an exploration of the multi-faith culture of medieval Muslim Spain — known as Alandalus — and its inspiration for Muslims, Christians, and Jews struggling against religious extremism and violence in today’s world;
And finally, for the past four years, as the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. I am the first non-Muslim to direct one of CAIR’s 30 chapters around the country.
The journey that led me to this moment, speaking at the Annual Banquet of a chapter of America’s leading Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has been long and arduous. But truth be told, I cannot imagine another place I would rather be at this moment in American history than working for CAIR, and lending my voice and talents in the defense and empowerment of the American Muslim community, and in the open and unapologetic celebration of Islam and its multitude of wonders.
This moment is, of course, no ordinary time in the life of the nation, but a unique convergence of several phenomena:
The resentment of those left behind by globalization, as the victims of de-industrialization saw their factories close and move to Central America, or the Philippines, or China;
The unchaining of white supremacy (never far below the surface),
The proliferation of new media, such as Twitter and Facebook, allowing unfiltered and obvious lies to take on the appearance of reality and truth, and
A shifty snake-oil salesman to bring it all together, and whom we shall refer to as the “Dotard.”
It will hardly be news to this audience that the main victim of this perfect storm of ignorance, fear, and hatred was the Muslims of America, citizens and resident alike, who became the scapegoat of the Dotard and his inner circle, in a campaign of bigotry against an American minority not seen since the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to argue that the American Muslim community is now the proverbial canary-in-the-mine, and that the future of this community is a bell-weather, a prognosticator of the health and viability of American democracy. In short, what happens to the Muslim community will determine the future of the great American experiment of pluralism and freedom of religion, enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
This is where CAIR enters the story, for in essence, CAIR is the first and last line of defense for American Muslims, both the guarantor and the guardian of your community. Since its founding some 20 years ago, and the founding of CAIR-Pennsylvania in 2005, CAIR has helped tens of thousands of people in the US, providing free legal services to those who have faced discrimination in their workplace, or bullying on the school yard, or attempts at entrapment by government officials.
In Philadelphia, our legal work takes up roughly 50% of staff time. The other half is devoted to organizing “Know Your Rights” and anti-bullying workshops for both children and adults, and presenting a wide range of courses and seminars on Islam, the diversity of the American Muslim community, US Foreign policy, and interfaith relations, to high schools, colleges, universities, and religious institutions of all kinds.
Knowledge is the beginning, the first step along the Quranic road to knowing The Other. I have seen first-hand how non-Muslims abandon their negative view of Islam when learning of the innumerable contributions of Muslim physicians and philosophers, poets and grammarians, astronomers and mathematicians in the creation of Western Civilization, for we must abandon the simplistic view point which posits Islam and the West as polar opposites, but rather see the West as a collaboration of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers, each fertilizing the minds of the other two.
And I have seen how an audience can change when learning that a chapter of an activist Muslim organization is now directed by a nice-Jewish-boy from New York, for there are hate-filled people who just two years ago bought ad space on Septa buses and trains where they placed posters insinuating that anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews, was intrinsic to Islam and the Quran. On the contrary, I have argued in countless speeches to churches, mosques, and synagogues, that Islam was the womb that nurtured Judaism during the Middle Ages, and that for centuries, Arabic was also the daily language of the Jewish people.
CAIR’s message of pluralism and peace, justice and mercy, is spread through the thousands of media appearances of CAIR staff at our offices around the country. In our interviews and published writings, CAIR spokespeople counter the distortions and outright falsehoods of the Islamophobic network, such as the non-existent “shariaization of America” or the Muslim plot to re-establish the Caliphate in the United States. (Although given the current occupant of The Oval Office, any of the Rāshidūn, The Four Rightly-Guided Caliphs, would seem a far superior choice.)
Building on our media relations, CAIR is constantly reaching out to Christian and Jewish leaders and their communities, as well as to other faiths, to build bridges of understanding, and form coalitions on a range of issues, from protecting the planet from the dangers of a global warming to the epidemic of homelessness in our inner cities, from defending the rights of immigrants to denouncing the shooting of un-armed African American youth by police officers.
And on October 24 of this year, CAIR-Pennsylvania and eMgage will head to Harrisburg for our Third Annual Muslim Capitol Day, bringing over 100 Muslim leaders and interfaith allies to meet with State Senators and Representatives, as well as high-level government officials, conveying to them the concerns of the Muslim community of Pennsylvania in these uncertain days.
This abundance of activity is only possible, however, because of the donations of people like yourselves all across the country. So please become involved and help CAIR-Pittsburg grow. You will not only be fulfilling the obligation to protect the UMMAH, the Muslim community, but helping to insure that your children will grow up as proud Muslims in an America committed to the notion that all human beings are equal in the eyes of their Creator, endowed with the rights of liberty and religious freedom, and secure in the belief that the United States of America is their country too.
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