Omar Suleiman: belief

Transcript context

…You have been longtime friends with and had amazing conversations with people of other faiths, Christian, Jewish. How has the events of October 7th and the days after affected this in the United States? Your ability to have interfaith conversations, connections, relationships, friendships. Complicated. Very complicated. And it’s not just Muslims and Jews, it’s also Christian Zionists. Christian Zionism is at the root of the problem, in my opinion, especially when we talk about what drives America’s unshakable, unconditional commitment to Israel. It’s devastating, I think, to Palestinian Christians in particular when Israel can bomb some of the oldest churches of Christianity in Gaza and kill Palestinian Christians, and Palestinian Christians are barred from going to the Holy Sepulcher or to their places of worship in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, and Christians here in the United States turn their back on them. I think that it is particularly outrageous. So it’s complicated. Look, I expect more from people in the face of a genocide. We don’t have to agree on all the particulars, but we can agree that what is happening is morally outrageous. And so I think that I’ve had a few people that have reached out and said, “I want to say something, but I can’t.” And I’ve had to respond with, that’s not good enough. So I think that we have a problem, and instead of focusing on that problem, I’d like to focus on the more morally consistent voices across faiths that have risen to the moment rather than those that have failed. So you wish more rabbis would be able to have a conversation like we’re having today and also not allow it to be seen as them turning their back on their religion?…

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