Bridging a faith divide

HAMILTON, Ontario

Ali Cheaib, a Lebanese Canadian who spent his summer vacation taking refuge from Israeli warplanes in a Lebanese bomb shelter, calls Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl, the reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was beheaded by radical Muslims, a hero and a mentor.

Mr. Pearl is a Jew and Mr. Cheaib is a Muslim. Both teach computer science — Mr. Cheaib (pronounced “Shibe”) at Hamilton’s Mohawk College, Mr. Pearl at Stanford University in California, where he is renowned as a specialist on artificial intelligence.

They disagree on almost every point of Middle East politics, and both have suffered bitter losses at the hands of their enemies but are nevertheless trying to get beyond personal tragedy to build bridges with people of the other faith.

Asks Mr. Cheaib, in an interview: “Judea Pearl is a phenomenal example, like a phoenix, of coming out of the ashes of loss and tragedy and saying, ‘We are going to turn this into something worthwhile.’ He has done this. Why can’t I?

“What I was living [in Lebanon during the war] was the alternative to dialogue. Dialogue must continue.”

He said this minutes before Mr. Pearl took the platform at the Hamilton Place community center in Ontario for an unusual public airing of the differences between the Islamic world and the West.

Mr. Pearl and Muslim scholar Akbar Ahmed of American University in Washington have been traveling around North America talking to one another before audiences like this about Daniel Pearl’s death in Pakistan four years ago, and about Palestinian-Israeli relations and other issues.

Nearly 1,000 Jews, Muslims and Christians crowded into Hamilton Place last month to listen to the two men talk, much like old friends, about some of the world’s most provocative issues. On stage, they parry and thrust as if continuing a long-running conversation in someone’s living room.

Does Israel have the right to exist? Was it created out of the Holocaust? Why shouldn’t Iran have nuclear weapons? Are terrorists authentic Muslims? If the United States champions democracy, why won’t it recognize Hamas? Why do Muslims think they are under siege by the West? Why won’t Muslim nations recognize Israel’s right to exist? What, if anything, can be done about the state of the world today?

“Our mission is not to embrace each other with understanding, but mainly to listen to each other, to hear two narratives side by side,” Mr. Pearl says in an interview before his presentation. “To acknowledge each other’s narrative. I am a soldier fighting hatred, fighting ignorance.

“I have not forgiven [what they did to my son]. I am not going to forgive. I am dialoguing as a soldier. Dialogue is my weapon. … I am fighting the hatred that took Danny’s life. We don’t have armies, but we have the good will of millions, the coalition of the decent.”

Community journey

The narratives related by the two men hold that Jews and Muslims both follow in the tradition of Abraham, and that both have suffered from the Holocaust, the Crusades, dictatorial governments, insults and religious discrimination. That suffering, they say, must be acknowledged and appreciated by both sides.

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