• Synagogue Hopes to Build Mosque’s Trust – By Sumit Galhotra, The Jewish Daily Forward

• From Commack to Tuba-Zangariya – By Stewart Ain, The Jewish Week NY

The last two items highlight the challenges Muslims in America continue to face. The first of these is a story about an allegedly Christian evangelical organization, The Florida Family Association, that says it has pressured numerous advertisers to drop a TLC reality show on Muslim families in Michigan.

• Reality TV catches up to reality with Muslim show – By Paul Farhi, The Washington Post

The second piece is an op-ed by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post that sheds serious light on the Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and his campaign against sharia. Gerson, whom we have heard speak, is a genuine evangelical Christian.”

• The Problem with Gingrich’s simplistic attack on sharia – By Michael Gerson, The Washington Post

• Focusing on the Jewish Story of the New Testament – By Mark Oppenheimer, The New York Time

• Pius XII’s Legacy Divides Catholics Too – By Adam Gregerman, The Jewish Daily Forward

• Jews, Muslims hold world’s largest dialogue – Ynetnews

• Muslims & Jews share stories at NewGround ‘Relationships’ Event – By Marium Mohiuddin, Muslim Public Affairs Council

• An interfaith event asks the question: Can Jews, Muslims and Christians all get along? – By Richard Lloyd, Nashville Scene

We begin with AFR stalwart Richard Cizik’s powerful op-ed on the place of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus in the economic and social ideology of the American Religious Right. Then we continue with the intra-evangelical Christian debate on the issue of Christian Zionism’s connection or lack thereof to Biblical authority. It appears that critics of the David Gushee-Glen Stassen latter position are tangled up in political and foreign policy considerations.

• The values debate we’re not having – By Richard Cizik, The Washington Post

• Reply to the many responses to David Gushee’s and Glen Stassen’s Open Letter to Christian Zionists

• An Open Letter to America’s Christian Zionists

• Exploring ties between Halacha and Shariah – By Ben Sales, The Jewish Daily Forward

• Son’s Muslim faith divides one black family – By Lonnae O’Neal Parker, The Washington Post

• Religious leaders lobby Congress on foreign aid – By Josef Kuhn, The Washington Post

?An informative report on the American debut of Pope Benedict XVI’s new envoy to the Jewish people and the challenges of dialogue. Sources cited in the story include Debbie Weissman, Israeli president of the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ), the American priest, Father John Pawlikowski, Weismann’s predecessor, and Rabbi Alan Brill. All are valued AFR friends.

• Top Cardinal Claims Jews Want Sainthood from for Nazi-Era Pope – By Paul Berger, The Jewish Daily Forward

A new book on the “Iranian Schindler,” a diplomat who at considerable personal risk and cost saved Jews in Vichy France. We love to pass on stories of “Righteous Gentiles.”

• In the Lion’s Shadow: The Iranian Schindler and his Homeland in the Second World – By Fariborz Mokhtari

• California University introduces First U.S. Multi-Faith School of Theology – PBS Newshour

A bit of good news on cooperation between a major American Muslim NGO and the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter-Terrorism Center on how to be smart and professional.

• DHS & Nat’l Counterterrorism Center Cite MPAC as Valuable Training Resource for Combating Extremism

After these two items is a report on the arrest of several Christian clergy and a sympathetic rabbi for demonstrating on behalf of the poor and voiceless in the Capitol Building in Washington, and a critical analysis of the abuse by extreme right political activists of the fear of Anti-Semitism to condemn the Occupy Wall Street movement.

• Resolution On Being Faithful Muslims and Loyal Americans - The Fiqh Council of  North America

• Arab Spring and Revival of Islamic State – By Alon Ben-Meir

• Protestors on behalf of the poor and voiceless agree to court settlement – Common Cause

• Exploiting Anti-Semitism to Destroy Occupy Wall Street – Foreign Policy Matters

But with the bombing and mass murders carried out by the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik last Friday we can’t ignore some of the revelations in his 1500 page manifesto posted just before he left to bomb downtown Oslo’s government center. He referenced several American Islamophobic websites and individuals who apparently inspired his thinking on the perceived Muslim threat to European Christian civilization. The New York Times reported on this. And the Muslim Public Affairs Council has published a content analysis of the manifesto with names and numbers. The immediate implication is that there are costs to relentless hate-mongering today so generously available to the world on the web.

But we conclude with two upbeat reports. One of an American Muslim-Jewish feminist partnership and one from the Middle East where Uri Savir, president of the Shimon Peres Center for Peace has set up a FaceBook page that allows Israeli Jews, Palestinians and other Arabs to communicate on-line with some enthusiasm across the physical barriers that separate them.

• Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S. – By Scott Shane, New York Times

• Content Analysis of the ‘2083 Manifesto’ – Muslim Public Affairs Council

• A Tale of Two Sisters – By Rachel Goldstein & Najeeba Syeed-Miller

• Virtual Bridge Allows Strangers in Mideast to Seem Less Strange – By Ethan Bronner, The New York Times

• Jerusalem Peacemakers Summer Update – By Eliyahu McLean

• Jews & Muslims in America: more in common than we think – By Joshua M.Z. Stanton, Common Ground News Service

• Local U.S. Islamic Leader struggles to put raids behind him – By Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post

This op-ed by Abe Foxman is too important to wait for our next biweekly.

As head of the Anti-Defamation League, Foxman is one of a the most important leaders of the American Jewish community.

In the wake of the tragedy in Norway, his warning about the insidious nature of Islamophobia and its spokespersons in Europe and the United States is an act of profound intellectual and moral leadership.

The Abrahamic Family Reunion applauds him.

Norwegian attacks stem from a new ideological hate - by Abraham H. Foxman, The Washington Post