Heidi Hall8:31 p.m. CST November 5, 2014
NASHVILLE – Middle Tennessee is on a nearly seven-year streak of distinguishing itself on the national stage for its treatment of Muslims.
The reports began with the February 2008 arson of a Columbia mosque, continued with ongoing opposition to a new Islamic Center of Murfreesboro and, this year, included a bill in the state legislature whose supporters objected to positive depictions of Islam in textbooks.
And that's not a comprehensive list.
A new Nashville nonprofit started by a Palestinian who moved to the United States in 1985 is seeking to move interfaith relations forward.
The Faith & Culture Center's first major conference kicks off today at Martin Methodist College in Pulaski — a three-day event drawing 25 Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith leaders that also includes sessions at the Islamic Center of Nashville, The Temple Congregation Ohabai Sholom and St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Franklin.
Daoud Abudiab, a resident of Thompson's Station and administrator for a medical group, started working on the center more than two years ago, but now he has support from local partners Family of Abraham and the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.
National partners are working with the center to pilot the Our Muslim Neighbor Initiative, which creates educational opportunities and seeks to involve Muslims in the larger community.
The center sponsored an iftar — the evening meal where Muslims break day-long fasts during their holy month of Ramadan — in July in conjunction with the Metro Human Relations Commission and, in October, launched a series of interfaith dinner parties called A Seat at the Table.
The point is to appeal to the Christian ideal of welcoming the stranger, Abudiab said, and address the fears that drive Islamophobia.
"Alienating Muslims around the world is a national security issue," he said. "We're not helping ourselves."
He said it can be tough to start interfaith conversations. His wife, an American-born convert to Islam, wears a headscarf, and it has taken some work colleagues more than five years to ask her about it.
Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the state's population, 2010 data show. Yet it's unlikely Middle Tennesseans with the most concerns about their presence here will be moved by the center's efforts.
A local member of ACT! for America, a group that opposes "radical" Islam, characterized Christians and Jews involved with this weekend's conference as gullible people who aren't willing to believe the truth that Muslims want to take over America.
"Family of Abraham conferences are only held in countries like America, where Islam is a small minority," J. Lee Douglas wrote in an email. "In every majority Muslim country such as Iraq, Syria or Iran, these conferences never exist. Nobody would attend because the unbelievers who aren't killed are driven out."
Anti-Islam activities motivated some religious Middle Tennesseans to get involved in Faith & Culture Center activities. Mary Shelton, a member of Congregation Sherith Israel in Nashville, said she was appalled to see some of the Christian protesters against the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro waiving Israeli flags at anti-mosque rallies. She was afraid people would think those protesters represented Jews.
Shelton said she seeks to understand others through interfaith events, not to find their similarities or speak through one voice.
"These events give me the ability to figure out how we all fit together without dropping back to the simplicity of 'we're all the same,'" she said. "We have unity, not uniformity."
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