Season of Twinning: Muslims, Jews Team Up Against Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism

October 30, 2019

7D News
October 30, 2019

Muslim World League Secretary General Dr. Mohammed Al Issa and FFEU President Rabbi Marc Schneier at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding. (Credit: David Gordon Photography)

Thousands of Muslims and Jews are preparing to hold another Season of Twinning programme, headed by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, an organisation specialising in Muslim-Jewish relations, in coordination with Saudi Arabia’s Mecca-based Muslim World League.

Both organisations have announced a historic partnership for another version of the annual event, which is set be held between November this year and January 2020. It coincides with the anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that occurred on October 27th, 2018, killing eleven people.

This year’s Season of Twinning will include 50 events in 35 countries and will feature pulpit exchanges among Jewish rabbis and Muslim imams, as well as events that involve Muslim and Jewish student groups, families and children.

The FFEU’s Season of Twinning comes in partnership with both bodies’ aims of cooperation in the fight against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

Muslim World League Secretary General Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa referred to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the deadliest attack in the US against Jews, saying that all attacks against Jews, as well as those against Muslims and Christians, showed “our houses of worship targeted, the sanctity of our communities violated, and the basis of peaceful and collaborative coexistence threatened.”

The secretary general affirmed the necessity of dialogue between people of different religions, saying that this is the way to “defeat hate.”

For his part, FFEU President Rabbi Marc Schneier said that both Jews and Muslims share a “common faith and a common fate,” urging people of the two religions to collaborate against the growing waves of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, especially in the US.

“We must take this tragedy and create something positive out of it and so, together with Dr Mohammad Al-Issa and the Muslim World League, we’re partnering with 50 organisations around the world to create programmes to further fortify this close bond between Muslims and Jews,” added Schneier.

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