Various media is reporting that a rabbi and leader of the Jewish Reform movement made the keynote address to the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) marking the first time a major Jewish leader has addressed ISNA in over forty years:
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of the Reform movement, spoke this afternoon to the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. The leadership of ISNA and the Union for Reform Judaism are planning a joint dialogue and education program for synagogues and mosques, Yoffie said. He asked the ISNA to help solve the Middle East crisis.
Rabbi Yoffe was reported to have characterized ISNA as a moderate organization saying that:
…each faith has ‘a tiny, extremist minority’ that misinterprets religious teachings to justify violence. To counter them, moderate majorities in Islam and Judaism must speak out, he said. ‘It is … our collective task to strengthen and inspire one another as we fight the fanatics and work to promote the values of justice and love that are common to both our faiths,’ Yoffie said, at the start of the Islamic Society of North America convention.
Documents released as part of the Holy Land Foundation Terrorism Financing trial clearly show that ISNA was created as part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. Although the documents also show that there was a period during which the Brotherhood was unhappy with ISNA, by the mid 1990’s, under the leadership of Muzammil Siddiqi, the organization was again operating within the US. Brotherhood network. ISNA has a long history of supporting and association with Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism. The seeming alliance with a major Jewish organization is the first of its kind and coup for ISNA coming at a time when the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood is taking blows from the release of the Holy Land Documents