Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are doing something
a little distinct today, a bit of mental time
travel. I want you to look at your phone, look
at your calendar, and just mentally adjust the
date. We are projecting ourselves forward to
February 2026. Which, depending on when you're
listening to this, is either right around the
corner or uncomfortably close. It's looming large
on the horizon. It really is. And the reason
we're setting the scene in early 2026 is because
the United States is staring down the barrel
of a massive once in a lifetime milestone. We
are just months away from July 4, 2026, the semi
-quincentennial. The big 250, 250 years, two
and a half centuries since the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. I mean, that is
a quarter of a millennium of the American experiment.
And usually, you know, when you think about a
birthday of that magnitude, the vibe is celebratory.
supposed to be a party. Absolutely. You picture
the tall ships sailing into Boston Harbor, the
inevitable fireworks over the National Mall,
the commemorative coins, all the speeches about
how far we've come. It's usually a moment for
a, you know, a victory lap. Right. But the research
we're unpacking today, specifically a really
provocative article called Children of Abraham
on Sacred Ground by a scholar named Iqbal Akhtar.
It suggests that if we're preparing for a party,
we are reading the room completely wrong. Yeah,
Akhtar frames this moment not as a celebration,
but as a stress test. And I think that is such
a useful, if a little sobering, metaphor. A stress
test? Yeah. I mean, think about it. When engineers
stress test a bridge. They don't do it on a sunny
day. They load it with immense weight. They subject
it to pressure to see if the beams hold or if
the steel snaps. Oktar is basically arguing that
this 250th anniversary is applying that kind
of pressure to the structural integrity of the
United States. And he's seeing fractures. He's
seeing cracks appear. And the source material,
it paints a very specific and frankly kind of
grim picture of the national mood in this 2026
scenario we're imagining. It talks about a decline
in institutional trust that has gone from a slide
to a complete freeze. Right. Trust in everything.
Government, media, even in each other. It also
describes an ambient polarization, which is a
great, terrifying phrase. It is a great phrase.
It suggests the tension isn't just, you know,
in Washington, D .C. It's in the grocery store.
It's at the school board meeting. It's at the
Thanksgiving dinner table. It's everywhere. And
specifically, there's a rising tide of hate incidents.
That ambient tension is the key. Because it means
the political has become deeply personal in a
way that feels unsafe for a lot of people. And
this is where the deep dive takes a turn that
might surprise you. Because usually when pundits
talk about the health of the nation, they look
at the S &P 500 or they look at election polling
data. The usual metrics. The usual metric, Oktar
says. Stop looking there. If you want to know
if America is going to survive its 250th birthday.
If you really want to know if the experiment
is actually working, you need to look at two
very specific, relatively small populations,
American Jews and American Muslims. It does feel
a little counterintuitive at first. I mean, these
aren't the largest demographic groups in the
country by a long shot. Not at all. But the argument
here is that they are the bellwethers. They are
the canaries in the coal mine for American democracy.
So if they're not OK, nobody's OK. That's the
idea. Because the central tension of the American
project isn't really, can we make money or can
we build a powerful army? The real fundamental
tension is, can we live together with deep, profound,
fundamental differences? That is the question
the country was founded to answer. And right
now, Jewish and Muslim communities are navigating
the most. intense, high stakes version of that
question. They're facing this landscape of rising
hostility and really competing narratives about
whether they even belong here in the first place.
So the thesis we're exploring today is pretty
heavy. It's that the fate of American religious
pluralism, the entire machinery that allows us
to function as a diverse society, it all hinges
on whether these two communities can figure out
a way to move from what the author calls fair
weather dialogue to a rugged, shared commitment
to one another's safety. Rugged commitment. I
love that phrase. And I want us to keep coming
back to that. It implies the relationship has
to be durable. You know, it has to be strong
enough to survive bad weather. It's not just
about having tea and hummus when things are calm.
Right. It's not a garden party. Not at all. It's
about what you do. When the storm hits, what
do you do when the hurricane is bearing down
on you? So we've got a serious roadmap for this
deep dive. We're going to start by aggressively
debunking the standard history book narrative
because it turns out our timeline of who arrived
when regarding these communities is just factually
empirically wrong. It's a major historical correction
that we need to make. Then we're going to get
really granular and parse the difference between
diversity and pluralism, a distinction that a
Harvard scholar Diana Eck makes, which is just
absolutely crucial for understanding our current
moment. And after that, we have to go through
the fire. We're going to have a difficult, honest
conversation about the collapse of the interfaith
movement after October 7, 2023, and really try
to understand why the old models failed so spectacularly.
And finally, and this is where it gets hopeful,
we're going to look at the secret weapons that
are hidden inside Jewish and Muslim theology,
the source code, if you will, that might actually
offer a solution to this crisis, a way forward.
It's a lot to unpack, but I think it's really
the only way to truly understand what's at stake
for the country in 2026 and beyond. OK, let's
start with that historical correction, because
I think if I went out on the street right now
with a microphone and asked the average person
to just, you know, sketch out the timeline of
religion in America, I'd get a very specific
story. Oh, for sure. You and I both know what
they'd say. It would start with the pilgrims
and the Puritans, Protestant Christians. Then
you get the founding fathers, mostly deists or
liberal Protestants. And then much, much later,
maybe around Ellis Island or the mid -20th century,
the others arrive. The Jews, the Muslims, the
Hindus, the Buddhists, they show up late and
kind of have to ask for permission to join the
club. That is the default setting in our cultural
memories, baked in. And it frames American history
as a kind of dinner party where Protestant Christianity
is the host. They own the house and everyone
else is a guest. And guests have to be polite.
Guests have to be polite. Guests can't make too
much noise. And guests ultimately can be asked
to leave if they become inconvenient. But the
source material we're looking at today argues
that this is historically incomplete. In fact,
it's just wrong. Jews and Muslims aren't guests
who arrive late to the party. They are what Akhtar
calls constitutive threads of the fabric. Constitutive
threads, meaning if you pull them out, the fabric
itself unravels. It's not the same piece of cloth
anymore. Exactly. They were here before the United
States was the United States. They aren't just
in America. They helped make America. The structure
is built with their contributions. Okay, let's
dig into that. Let's look at the Jewish roots
first. The source points us to a really specific
location, Newport, Rhode Island, and Congregation
Sherith Israel. This is such a pivotal piece
of American history that just it often gets glossed
over in the textbooks. This congregation was
officially organized in the 1650s. The 1650s.
I just want to pause on that date for a second.
We're talking more than a century, like 120 years
before the Declaration of Independence. A long
time. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
weren't even born yet. Not even close. This is
the era of Oliver Cromwell in England for context.
And the origin story of this community is just
fascinating. These were Sephardic Jews, Jews
of Spanish and Portuguese descent, who were actually
fleeing persecution in Brazil. From Brazil? I
didn't know that. Yeah, they'd gone to Brazil
when the Dutch controlled a portion of it, because
the Dutch were relatively tolerant. But when
the Portuguese retook that territory, the Inquisition
followed, and they had to run for their lives.
So they got on boats and sailed north to the
British colonies, seeking safety. They ended
up in places like New Amsterdam, which became
New York and Newport. So by the time George Washington
is inaugurated as the first president of the
United States, there has been an organized, functioning,
multi -generational Jewish community in Rhode
Island for, what, 140 years? For four or five
generations, at least, yes. That just completely
blows the immigrant guest narrative out of the
water. They had been here longer than many of
the so -called founding fathers' own families
had been. Absolutely. They weren't newcomers
asking for a favor. They were established residents.
And this deep presence forces the new— government
to reckon with them. It's not a theoretical question
of what if Jews lived here. They do live here.
And this leads to that famous letter, right?
The Washington letter. The letter to the Hebrew
congregation at Newport, 1790. It is, in my opinion,
one of the top five most important documents
in American history. It's right up there with
the Declaration and the Constitution. Washington
visited Newport on a tour, and the warden of
the synagogue, a man named Moses Sykes, wrote
him a letter welcoming him. Washington replied
with this incredible text. And the famous line
is that the government of the United States gives
to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.
Chills every time I read it. To bigotry no sanction.
But I want to understand the political mechanics
there. Was he just being nice? Was this just
a polite, you know, thank you for the warm welcome
note? Right. Was this just 18th century PR? Exactly.
And the answer is no. This was a radical philosophical
break from 3 ,000 years of European history.
You have to understand, in Europe at that time,
the absolute best a minority religion could hope
for was toleration. And toleration sounds nice
to our modern ears. It sounds nice, but it's
actually a hierarchy. It means I am the dominant
group, I hold all the power, and I, in my magnanimity,
will tolerate you. I will allow you to exist.
But because it's an allowance, a permission I
grant, I can also revoke it if you get too loud
or too annoying or if it becomes politically
convenient for me to persecute you again. Right.
It's like letting your younger brother play video
games with you. You're letting him play, but
it's your console, it's your house, and you can
unplug his controller whenever you want. That
is a perfect analogy. Washington's letter completely
flipped the table on that dynamic. He wasn't
offering toleration. In fact, he explicitly says
in the letter, it is now no more that toleration
is spoken of. He was rejecting that old model.
He was acknowledging a natural right. A natural
right. So it's inherent. It's inherent. He was
saying that their religious liberty didn't come
from him or from the Congress or from the Protestant
majority. It was endowed by their creator as
part of their humanity. So he wasn't inviting
them into the country. He was acknowledging that
they were already home. They were co -owners
of the house. That is a massive distinction.
It shifts the entire power dynamic. Okay, so
if the Jewish history in early America is surprising
to some, the Muslim history that the source outlines
is. It's genuinely shocking to most people. I
think most of us date the Muslim presence in
America to... I don't know, immigration waves
in the 1960s or 70s. Which is a complete erasure
of the actual demographic reality of the founding
era. It's a historical blind spot the size of
a continent. The source is very, very clear on
this. The timeline of Islam in America begins
with the slave trade. Right. And the numbers
are just staggering. Mainstream academic scholarship
now estimates that somewhere between 15 and 30
percent of the enslaved Africans brought to this
continent were from Muslim regions of West Africa.
Wait, I want to make sure I heard that and that
you at home heard that. Not one. To 3%, 15 %
to 30%. 15 % to 30%, yes. A massive demographic
slice. That means that in some areas of the colonial
south, Islam was likely the second most dominant
religion after various forms of Christianity.
Without a doubt. And we need to break down the
stereotype of who these people were. The source
really emphasizes that these weren't just laborers
or people without culture, kind of blank slate.
Many of them were Quranic scholars. They were
hafiz, which means they had memorized the entire
Quran, all 6 ,000 plus verses, by heart. Incredible.
They were literate in Arabic. They were highly
educated intellectuals, theologians, jurists
who were captured in wars or kidnapped, stripped
of their freedom, and brought to a land where
they had to try and maintain their faith under
conditions of the most extreme repression imaginable.
The source mentions a few specific figures that
I feel like should be household names in America.
Omar ibn Said. Omar Ibn Said is a monumental
figure in American religious history. He was
a Fula Islamic scholar from a region that's now
part of modern -day Senegal. He was enslaved
in his late 30s, already a deeply educated man,
and brought to North Carolina. But here's the
incredible part. In his old age, he left behind
an autobiography written in his own hand in beautiful,
classical Arabic. An autobiography in Arabic
from an enslaved man in the 1830s. Think about
the significance of that artifact. We have a
primary source document written in the language
of his longest scholarship by an enslaved man
in the antebellum South articulating his life,
his theology, his sorrow. It's one of the most
important documents we have. That completely
destroys the racist paternalistic idea that African
slaves were blank slates just waiting to be civilized
by their masters. It shatters it. And he wasn't
just writing his autobiography. The story goes
that when he was first captured and sold, he
ran away and was found in a jail cell. And he
had been writing verses of the Quran on the walls
of his cell in charcoal. His existence proves
that Islam is not foreign to American soil. It
is in the soil. It was here, in the minds and
hearts of the people who literally built the
economy of the early United States with their
forced labor. And there was another one mentioned,
even earlier, Estevanico. Right, Mustafa Zamori,
who is known to the Spanish as Estevanico. He
was a Moroccan Muslim. He was enslaved by Spanish
conquistadors in the early 1500s. But he became
one of the first Africans, one of the first non
-Indigenous people, period, to explore the North
American continent. In the 1500s. In the 1520s
and 1530s. He was traversing the American Southwest,
what is now New Mexico and Arizona, decades before
the English settlement at Jamestown was even
a thought. So a Muslim man was exploring the
American frontier before the pilgrims even landed
at Plymouth Rock. Correct. He is a constitutive
threat. And this presence continues right into
the Revolutionary War. If you go through the
muster rolls, the official military lists of
the Continental Army, you find names like Bambit
Mohammed and Yusuf bin Ali. So men with Muslim
names fighting for American independence. Fighting
and dying. for the cause of American independence.
It really reframes the whole picture. It isn't
just European Christians fighting the British.
It is this much more complex, much more diverse
coalition of people from the very, very beginning.
And this brings us to Thomas Jefferson, a complicated
figure to say the least, but one who was thinking
about these issues. We know he owned a Koran.
He did. He bought a copy as a young law student
in Williamsburg. And it wasn't a souvenir or
a curiosity. Jefferson was a student of the Enlightenment.
He was interested in comparative law, comparative
religion. He bought it to understand Islamic
law or Sharia because he wanted to understand
how other societies structured themselves. And
that study, it influenced his politics. Deeply.
When the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
was being debated, which is really the precursor
to the First Amendment's religion clauses, Jefferson
argued explicitly that its protection should
extend to everyone. He listed them out in his
autobiography when he was describing the fight
to get it passed. He said the law was meant to
comprehend within the mantle of its protection
the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan,
the Hindu and infidel of every denomination.
Mohammedan being the 18th century term for Muslim.
So he's naming them. He's saying Muslims belong
under this protection. He's saying everyone belongs.
But here's the catch. And this is a really important
and sobering nuance the source brings up. That
specific, incredibly inclusive listing of religions,
it was removed from the final text of the statute.
So they cut it. They took out the specific protections.
They kept the broad principle of religious freedom.
But they cut the specific list because it was
too controversial for the Virginia legislature
at the time. There were people, like Patrick
Henry, who wanted to maintain a kind of soft
establishment of Christianity. And that is the
key takeaway here for our deep dive. The source
argues this proves that American pluralism was
always aspirational. Aspirational, not actual.
Exactly. The intent was there at the founding.
Jefferson wanted it. Madison wanted it. But the
fact that that language was amended shows it
was never. Settled. It was never a done deal.
We have been fighting about who belongs, about
the scope of that protection since day one. So
what here? The big conclusion for this section
is that the 250th anniversary in 2026 isn't about
inviting Jews and Muslims to the American table
for the first time. It's about finally fully
recognizing that they helped build the table.
You cannot tell the story of America accurately
without them. They're not an asterisk. They're
a chapter. OK, so that's the history. We were
always here. But just being here, you know, just
having different groups living on the same plot
of land, that doesn't automatically mean everything
is working. Which brings us to section two of
our outline, the architecture of pluralism versus
diversity. This is such a crucial intellectual
distinction. And the source here relies heavily
on the work of Diana Eck, a scholar from Harvard
who founded the Pluralism Project. She makes
a very simple but profound point. Diversity is
a fact. Pluralism is an achievement. That sounds
like a great bumper sticker, but let's break
it down. What is the actual practical difference
between those two words? Okay, so diversity is
just demographics. It's the census data. It means
you have different kinds of people living in
close proximity to each other. Baghdad in the
9th century, at the height of the Abbasid Caliphate,
was incredibly diverse. The Ottoman Empire was
diverse. The Antebellum South, tragically, was
diverse. But none of those were pluralist in
the modern democratic sense. Because there was
a clear hierarchy. There was a dominant group
and then everyone else. Exactly. Diversity can
exist with rigid segregation. Diversity can exist
with oppression. Diversity can exist with violence.
Pluralism is what happens when you take that
fact of diversity and you build something with
it. You build a society where people from different
backgrounds actually engage with one another
constructively. where they are committed to each
other's dignity and participate in a shared society
as equals. So diversity is the raw material and
pluralism is the finished product. That's a great
way to put it. And as another scholar in this
field, Ibu Patel often says, pluralism is not
a birthright. It doesn't just happen because
you have different neighbors. It is a responsibility.
You have to build it and you have to maintain
it. It's like a garden. If you don't tend to
it, the weeds of prejudice and hatred will take
over. So if pluralism is a construction project,
how is America's building looking after 250 years?
It's a mixed bag. Structurally, it's a bit of
a mess, honestly. On the good side, the blueprint
is brilliant. You have the First Amendment, free
exercise, and the non -establishment clause.
We have to stop and acknowledge how radical that
is. No other nation in human history has attempted
to have this much diversity with this much religious
freedom. for this long. It is structurally a
miracle that it has worked as well as it has.
But then there's the bad, the long history of
failures in the architecture. Right. The source
points to what it calls the contested architecture.
We have a blueprint for a beautiful building,
but we have a history of failing at pluralism
repeatedly, often violently. You look at the
nativist riots of the 1840s in Philadelphia,
mobs of Protestant citizens burning down Catholic
churches and convents because they believed Catholics
couldn't be real Americans, that they were loyal
to a foreign power, the Pope. And that same logic
gets used again and again. Again and again. We
have the history of institutional anti -Semitism.
In the 1920s and 30s, elite universities like
Harvard and Yale actually had official quotas
on how many Jews could attend. There were housing
covenants in neighborhoods all across America
saying you couldn't sell a house to a Jewish
family. This was structural. This was policy.
And then most recently in our memory, post 9
-11. Right. After September 11, 2001, we saw
that architecture of exclusion turned against
Muslims. You had surveillance programs with the
NYPD that specifically targeted Muslim neighborhoods,
mosques, student groups. exclusion, the constant
media portrayal of every Muslim as a potential
suspect, the feeling that you had to constantly
prove your loyalty. And the source argues we
are in another one of those dark moments right
now. It cites some really terrifying numbers
from the period following October 7, 2023. The
numbers are staggering. And they show the system
is flashing red. The ADL, the Anti -Defamation
League, they do an annual audit of anti -Semitic
incidents. Their 2024 audit recorded 9 ,354 separate
anti -Semitic incidents in the U .S. 9 ,354.
That is an all -time high since they began tracking
in the 1970s. And notably, that includes an 84
% increase on college campuses. 84 %? I mean...
That means if you were a Jewish student, your
environment, your sense of safety fundamentally
changed almost overnight. It did. The entire
atmosphere shifted. And at the same time, KRR,
the Council on American Islamic Relations, reported
a parallel and equally terrifying escalation
in anti -Muslim incidents. Reports of discrimination,
bullying of children in schools, hate crimes
like the stabbing of a six -year -old Palestinian
American boy in Illinois. It's just horrifying.
It is. And the expert insight from the source
material here is absolutely vital for everyone
to understand. These are not two separate problems.
That's hard because they feel like separate problems
when you watch the news. It feels like side A
versus side B. It's framed as a conflict. That
is the trap. And it's a dangerous one. The source
argues that these are two faces of the same single
failure. When the immune system of pluralism
breaks down. When we stop seeing our neighbors
as individuals holding natural rights and start
seeing them as symbols of a political conflict
or as threats, Jews and Muslims are both the
first to get sick. The canaries in the coal mine.
They are the first targets. They're often the
minority groups that carry the most distinct
markers of difference, whether it's Yarmulke
or hijab. So a rise in hate against one is almost
always a predictor of a rise in hate against
the other. They are structurally linked. Which
brings us to what is probably the most difficult
part of this conversation. Section three, the
crucible. October 7th and the failure of dialogue.
This is where the rubber meets the road. This
is the stress test in action. The source describes
the aftermath of the October 7th attacks and
the devastating war in Gaza that followed as
a shattering. And specifically, it shattered
the assumptions of the American interfaith movement.
Yes. For about 20 years prior. really since 9
-11. There had been a growing and, you know,
many ways, very positive interfaith movement
in the U .S. A lot of good people doing what
they thought was good work. But the source critiques
it as having been a fair weather friendship.
That is a harsh assessment. What did that fair
weather friendship look like in practice? It
was polite. It was civil. It was often centered
on the least controversial things, food and festivals.
I'll come to your Iftar dinner during Ramadan.
You come to my Seder dinner during Passover.
I'll eat your samosas. You eat my latkes. And
we'll talk about how we all want peace and we
all love our children. Which is nice. I mean,
it's not bad. It's not bad. It's better than
nothing. But the source argues it was brittle.
It relied on actively avoiding the hard stuff.
It built a relationship by carefully avoiding
the one thing that everyone knew was the source
of potential conflict. The political situation
in the Middle East. It was the elephant in the
room that everyone pretended not to see. So when
the war started, when that elephant went on a
rampage, that avoidance wasn't possible anymore.
Exactly. When October 7th happened, when real
visceral grief and political anger and historical
trauma just exploded into the open, those polite
relationships couldn't hold the weight. They
hadn't built the muscle for disagreement. The
source mentions that so many of these interfaith
partner, people who had been meeting for years,
just stopped talking to each other. There was
silence. Because they didn't have the tools,
they didn't have the language to handle the raw
emotion. There's a line in the article that just
floored me. It says, if a relationship can't
survive honest disagreement, it was never a relationship.
It was just proximity. That is the core truth
of this entire deep dive. Proximity isn't enough.
Standing next to someone in line at Starbucks
doesn't mean you have a relationship that can
survive a war or even a heated political argument.
It just means you both want coffee. So the source
argues we need a pivot, a totally new model of
engagement. We have to move away from prioritizing
politeness and toward holding space for disagreement.
And this is where it gets really interesting
because they suggest we can find the models for
this within the traditions themselves. They use
some specific terminology, right? From Islam
and Judaism. Yes. From the Islamic tradition,
they use the term Majlis. A Majlis literally
means a sitting, a gathering. But culturally,
it implies a serious discussion, a place where
weighty matters are hashed out by the community.
It's not a casual chat. It's a space for deep,
sometimes difficult, conversation. And from the
Jewish tradition, the concept is, Did I say that
right? It did. It translates literally to argument
for the sake of heaven. That sounds like a contradiction.
How is arguing for heaven? That sounds like the
opposite. It's a foundational concept from the
Mishnah and the Talmud, the core texts of rabbinic
Judaism. The rabbis disagree on almost everything,
vehemently. They argue, they shout, they dissect
every word of the law. But they don't stop being
part of the same community. The argument itself
is considered a form of worship, a form of collectively
grappling to find God's will. So the goal isn't
to win. The goal isn't to destroy your opponent
or prove you're smarter. The goal is to grapple
together in good faith to find the truth or at
least a better path forward for the community.
If you and I argue just to prove who's right,
that's an argument for the sake of ego. If we
argue because we both care deeply about an issue
and want to find the best solution. That's an
argument for the sake of heaven. And the author
gives a real -world example of this pivot in
action. Iqbal Akhtar himself, the author of the
piece, and a local rabbi named Jamie Akhlepi,
they founded an organization called Miami Interfaith
immediately after the attacks. Right in the heat
of it. In October 2023, when everyone else was
retreating to their corners, putting up walls,
they made the conscious choice to step toward
each other. And they didn't do it to issue a
joint statement saying, we agree on everything.
Right. They weren't trying to solve the Middle
East from Miami. Not at all. They did it to sit
together in the mess, to create a space where
Jews could mourn their dead and Muslims could
mourn theirs, to hold the grief of the other
side without having to validate the politics
of the other side. That's a very difficult, very
adult thing to do. And this leads to a really
hard truth for the listener. And I want everyone
to really hear this because it completely changes
the goalposts of what we're trying to achieve
here. The source says the goal is not to agree
on Middle East politics. We may never agree on
that. And that have to be OK. The narratives
are so divergent. The pain is so deep. The history
is so contested. If the prerequisite for being
good neighbors in America is that we first have
to agree on the borders and history of the Middle
East, we are finished. The American experiment
will fail. We will never make it. So if that's
not the goal, what is? The goal is solidarity
in the American public square. It is committing
to each other's dignity and safety here, regardless
of what happens there. It is the ability to say,
I might completely disagree with your view on
the war. I might find your political stance abhorrent,
but I will fight to the death for your right
to be safe in this country, to pray in your synagogue
or mosque without fear, to send your kids to
school without them being bullied. That is a
much higher bar than just being nice over some
hummus. It is. It is a rugged pluralism. It requires
a very thick skin and a surprisingly soft heart
at the same time. So where do we find the strength
to do that? Because honestly, that sounds exhausting.
Usually people blame religion for this conflict.
They say, if we just got rid of the God stuff,
we'd all get along just fine. But section four
of our outline argues the exact opposite. It
says the solutions are actually hidden deep in
the theology of both faiths. This is the secret
weapon part of the deep dive. And it's the most
counterintuitive part. We tend to think of religion
as the source of the division, my God versus
your God. But Akhtar argues that if you actually
read the foundational texts, the Quran and the
Jewish scriptures, they provide the roadmap,
the actual software, for building this interconnected
future. Let's start with the Muslim perspective.
There's a verse from the Quran that the source
highlights. So to 49, verse 13. It's a very famous
verse. All mankind, indeed, we have created you
from male and female and made you peoples and
tribes that you may know one another. Know one
another. That sounds simple enough. But the Arabic
verb that's used here is litā 'ārafu. And as
with so many things in Arabic, the root implies
so much more than the simple English translation.
It isn't just shaking hands or recognizing a
face. It implies a deep, mutual recognition,
a knowing that transforms you. The theology here
is profound. The Quran is saying that God created
diversity on purpose. It wasn't a mistake. God
could have made everyone the same. Right. And
another verse, Surah 5, verse 48, explicitly
says that. Had God willed, he could have made
you one single community. But he didn't. He made
us different to test you in what he has given
you. So diversity is a test, a divine pop quiz.
It is a test. It's a divine setup. And what is
the correct answer to the test? The verse continues.
So compete with one another in good works. I
love that framing. A race to righteousness. Not
a race to conquer or convert, but a race to see
who can do the most good in the world. Exactly.
It completely reframes the other. My religious
neighbor is not my enemy. They are my competitor
in goodness. If my Jewish neighbor is building
a homeless shelter, my response as a Muslim shouldn't
be to stop him. It should be to try and build
a better, bigger homeless shelter right next
to his. That's the competition God wants. That's
a powerful idea. And what about the Jewish perspective?
What are the theological tools there? Well, it
starts with the most fundamental concept in the
entire Torah, Beslem Elohim. Every single human
being is created in the image of God, not just
Jews, everyone. If you truly deeply believe that,
you cannot dehumanize your neighbor, no matter
how much you disagree with them. To harm a human
being is to deface the very image of God in the
world. And then there's that famous line from
the Mishnah about saving a life. Right, from
Tractate Sanhedrin. Whoever destroys a single
life, it is as if he's destroyed an entire world.
And whoever saves a single life, it is as if
he has saved an entire world. It emphasizes the
infinite cosmic value of the individual. But
I think the most powerful theological tool for
this specific challenge comes from the late great
Rabbi Jonathan Sachs. He wrote a seminal book
called The Dignity of Difference. Great title.
Very direct. And his argument was revolutionary.
He said that in the Abrahamic tradition, God
makes a particular covenant with a specific people.
the Jews. But that particular covenant does not
negate God's universal care for all other peoples.
God is the God of all humanity, but he relates
to us in our particularity. So, I can be fully
and unapologetically Jewish, and you can be fully
and unapologetically Muslim, and we can both
be loved by God and part of God's plan. My truth
doesn't require your falsity. That is the dignity
of difference. It completely solves the zero
-sum game of my religion is right, so yours must
be wrong. Yes. And this all leads to the practical
concept of interconnected futures. This isn't
just abstract theology. It becomes a political
and social strategy. And the source quotes Jonathan
Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL, to illustrate
this. This was back in 2016. Right. This was
during the presidential campaign. And there was
a lot of political rhetoric at the time about
creating a Muslim registry. forcing Muslim citizens
to register with the government. And Greenblatt,
the head of the largest and oldest organization
fighting anti -Semitism in America, stood up
and said, and I'm quoting, Wow. That's a powerful
statement of solidarity. It's the ultimate statement.
Now, obviously, the political landscape has become
much more complicated and fraught since 2016.
And there are very real tensions between these
groups and organizations now. But the principle
of that statement holds. It is the realization
that a threat to one is a threat to the other.
If you allow the government to target one religious
minority, you have destroyed the constitutional
protection for all of them. It's that idea again.
Our fates are structurally linked. You can't
actually be safe if your neighbor isn't safe.
Precisely. Your safety is dependent on mine and
mine on yours, whether we like it or not. OK,
so we have the corrected history. We have the
diagnosis of the crisis and we have the theological
resources. Now we need the action plan. We're
hitting July 2026. What do we actually do? The
source gives us a very practical to -do list
for America at 250. And it is a practical list.
It's not just wishful thinking. It's about moving
from nostalgia to actual work. Commitment number
one, from dialogue to shared practice. This is
a big one. Stop just talking. do things together.
The source specifically suggests joint study
of sacred texts. Like actually sitting in a room
and reading the Torah and the Quran side by side.
Yes. And not in a debating society kind of way
where you're trying to prove your book is better.
Akhtar calls this creating intellectual intimacy.
When you sit down and you seriously study someone
else's holy text with them, not to convert or
be converted, but to understand how they see
the world, what their deepest values are. It
builds a bond that is much stronger than just
eating falafel together. You see their values.
You see their struggles. You see that they are
wrestling with God and with meaning just like
you are. That sounds incredibly challenging,
but also incredibly powerful. OK, commitment
number two, invest in the next generation. This
is absolutely critical. The college campuses
are where the heat is right now. They are the
epicenters of the conflict. But the source points
out that they are also where the hope is. The
Interfaith America Leadership Summit. In 2025,
it says, had its largest attendance ever. So
despite all the news stories we see about campus
chaos and division, students are actually showing
up for this work. They are. Young people are
hungry for a better way. The force says students
are proving that interfaith friendship is both
commonplace and extraordinary. But they need
support. They need funding. They need mentorship.
You can't just expect a bunch of 19 -year -olds
to figure this out on their own while the entire
world is shouting at them through their phones.
We have to invest in the programs that teach
them how to have these difficult arguments for
the sake of heaven. Commitment number three,
develop a shared narrative. This goes right back
to the history section we started with. We need
to stop telling the Jewish story of America and
the Muslim story of America as if they're two
separate books on the shelf. Because they're
not. They're chapters in the same book. It's
a braided narrative. The story is about the colonial
Jewish congregations and the enslaved West African
Muslims. It's about the civil rights coalitions
where rabbis and imams march together with Dr.
King. It's about the post -9 -11 solidarity where
Jewish communities protected mosques from vandalism.
We need to tell that story as one single stream.
Because when you tell the story together, you
create a sense of shared ownership of the country.
If I know that your ancestors helped build this
place alongside mine, I can't look at you as
an outsider or a foreigner. And finally, commitment
number four, build stormproof structures. This
is the ultimate lesson from October 7th. Don't
wait for the crisis to start building the relationship.
That's like trying to build a lifeboat in the
middle of a tsunami. You have to build the institutions
now that expect the crisis. You need to design
your community organizations, your interfaith
councils, your campus groups, so that they can
handle anger and disagreement and grief without
collapsing. It's like building a house in a hurricane
zone. You don't build it for the 300 sunny days
a year. You build it for the Category 5 storm
that you know is coming eventually. Exactly,
because the storms will come. That is the nature
of a diverse democracy. If you build a structure
that only works when everyone is happy and in
agreement, it's fundamentally useless. This brings
us to the end, and the source leaves us with
a really powerful full -circle image. It brings
us right back to George Washington's letter to
the congregation in Newport. He closes that letter
by quoting the prophet Micah from the Hebrew
Bible. He offers a vision of the America he hopes
to build. He writes that in this new nation,
everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine
and fig tree, and there shall be none to make
him afraid. None to make him afraid. And that's
the dream of America, isn't it? Freedom from
fear. It is. It's the ultimate promise. And the
source points out that this vision of safety
and peace of salam, which means wholeness in
Arabic, is just as central to the Quran. It is
the shared dream. of the children of Abraham.
So to summarize the entire argument of this deep
dive, Jews and Muslims are not guests in America.
They are co -inheritors of the Abrahamic tradition
and co -stakeholders in the American project.
Their futures here are structurally linked. If
one goes down, the other goes down. And if they
can figure out how to build a rugged commitment
to one another, the entire American experiment
has a chance to survive and even thrive. That
is the equation. That is the stress test of 2026.
So as we approach July 4, 2026, here's the final
provocative thought for you, the listener, to
take with you. The source makes it clear that
we are 250 years... into this experiment, and
that beautiful vision of the vine and fig tree
is still just a promise. It's not a reality for
a lot of people in this country. For far too
many people, it is definitely not a reality yet.
They are still afraid. So the question for you
is... Are you treating pluralism as a spectator
sport? Are you just watching the news, scrolling
through social media and shaking your head at
the division? Or are you actively building the
structure that keeps your neighbor safe? Because
if you're waiting for someone else to build that
vine and fig tree for you, it's not going to
get built. It is on us. It has always been on
us. Thanks for diving deep with us. We will see
you next time. Take care, everyone.