This week, Muslims across the world will be encouraged to fast for at least one day.
The fast, known as Ashura, involves abstaining from food and water during daylight hours, and begins at sunrise and ends at sunset. This tradition, little known outside Muslim circles, has interesting origins. According to Muslim tradition, Mohammed noticed the Jewish community fasting on a particular day. Upon further investigation, he discovered that they were fasting to commemorate the liberation of the Israelites from pharaonic Egypt. The fast commemorated the biblical figure of Moses, and his freeing of his people from oppression.
As it happens, Moses is a central and much-loved figure in Muslim tradition, so Mohammed invited his followers to also fast that day, and to fast the day before or the day after as well. We do not know how the Jewish community at the time of Mohammed reacted; they may have been puzzled, or perhaps flattered that their Arab neighbors were showing love for Moses, a figure central to Jewish tradition.
The person of Moses is an intriguing figure both in the Torah and in the Quran. Think here of Christian Bale and his vivid portrayal of Moses in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: God and Kings. Both holy books have God speaking with Moses, who is commanded to speak truth to power – to confront Pharaoh who had enslaved his people, the Jewish people.
Moses is thrust, slightly unwillingly, onto center stage. God within Jewish and Muslim tradition is with the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcast, the stranger. There is so much that is common and shared between Muslim and Jewish tradition, even though Jewish-Muslim relations today are, to put it mildly, deeply strained.
Despite this strained relationship, Jews and Muslims face very similar challenges. According to a recent survey, the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency found that 96% of Jewish respondents across 13 European countries encountered antisemitism in their daily lives. This survey was carried out prior to the October 7 Hamas attacks, and the FRA said there had been a spike in antisemitic attacks since the Gaza war began.
Similarly, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, reported that it had received 2,171 complaints of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias since October 7, a 172% increase from the previous year. While hate crimes against Muslims in the UK are also spiking, according to the British police.
It is important to act to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia. Jews and Muslims don’t want to be vilified or discriminated against. We can’t afford to ignore the issues, and the evidence is clear: Jews and Muslims are being impacted – as are our children.
Building a better space for Abraham's children
Asking countries with Jewish and Muslim minorities to appoint envoys to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia can serve as an important first step. We can do better, we must do better, since it is our children’s future that is at stake. We must stand with the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcast, and the stranger.
There is also a deeper issue: How do Jews and Muslims relate to each other given the current geopolitical conflagrations?
We could follow in the footsteps of the Jewish and Muslim community in Bosnia, who have recently signed the Srebrenica Muslim-Jewish Peace and Remembrance Initiative. This initiative calls for collaboration in times of crisis, to maintain consistent and compassionate channels of communication, to remember and commemorate the victims of past genocides, and to repudiate all forms of bigotry.
The writer teaches about Islam at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.