This week on International Horizons, John Torpey, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, speaks with sociologists Mucahit Bilici and Samuel Heilman about their book, Following Similar Paths: What Jews and Muslims Can Learn From One Another (University of California Press, 2024). Bilici and Heilman explore how Judaism and Islam, as minority religions in the U.S., share common challenges and cultural adaptations. The discussion dives into topics like religious identity, multiculturalism, and the American experience, while also reflecting on the historical relationship between Jews and Muslims. Tune in to hear how these two groups navigate their religious lives in America and what lessons can be drawn for interfaith understanding today.

Please find a slightly edited version of the transcript below:

John Torpey 

Despite the appearance that Islam and Judaism have been at odds with one another from time immemorial, the two religions actually share much from their common Abrahamic lineage, and are often treated in similar ways in the United States, where they are decidedly minority faiths, the perception of permanent Muslim Jewish antagonism was certainly exacerbated by the resurgence of inter religious conflict on October 7, 2023, but are the adherents of these two ancient and intertwined faiths fated to conflict? Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is John Torpey, and I’m director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. We’re fortunate to have with us today Mucahit Bilici and Samuel Heilman, co authors of a recent book on the Jewish and Muslim experiences in the United States titled Following Similar Paths: What Jews and Muslims Can Learn From One Another, which has been published by University of California Press. Mucahit is Associate Professor of Sociology at John Jay College, and here at the Graduate Center. He’s the author of a book called Finding Mecca in America: How Islam Is Becoming an American religion, which was published by University of Chicago Press in 2012 and he speaks to us today from Chicago. He writes on Kurds, Islam and Muslims in America. And his co author, Samuel Heilman is emeritus distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College and emeritus Harold Proshansky Chair in Jewish Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. He’s the author of numerous articles and reviews, as well as of 12 books, including The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and most recently, Who Will Lead Us: The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America. And he speaks to us today from Jerusalem. Thank you both for joining us today, Mucahit Bilici and Sam Heilman.

Mucahit Bilici 

Thank you for having us.

John Torpey 

Great to have you. So, tell me about this book. Your new book addresses the experiences and observances that Jews and Muslims share in the United States, where they are both equally sort of minority religions. And I wonder if you could explain the significance of that minority status and the sort of history that you recount about the ways in which these two groups share so much, particularly as outsider minority religions in the United States?

Samuel Heilman 

Well, I’ll start, and I’ll leave it to Mucahit to respond as well. What makes this book of interest is that in the United States in particular, and we’re talking primarily about observant Muslims, religiously observant Muslims and religiously observant Jews. Both groups really stand out. They stand out not only because they worship on a different day of the week. It’s not Sunday. For one, it’s Saturday. For one, it’s Friday. They often use different symbols to mark their religious attachments. They eat separate diet, kosher for Jews, halal for Muslims. But all of these differences in there, are a lot of them in identity and clergy and ways that they study. All of these differences have a remarkable similarity about them, and their way of adapting and testing the multiculturalism of the United States, is to say, is there room for people who are not just unmeltable ethnics, but people who are unmeltable in their religious life, in their religious culture. And what we answer is yes, there is room, and that both these Muslims and these Jews have created a kind of hybrid culture, which allows them to stand with one foot in a Jewish religious world and one foot in secular general society. And it’s remarkable how they do that.

Mucahit Bilici 

Yeah, when you look at the perception of Muslim-Jewish relations, or Muslim-Jewish encounter interaction, it looks like it has been defined by a conflict and negativity. But historically, the current, whatever perceived conflict that we see, a real or perceived conflictual relationship as only, you know, is only a century or so old before that Muslim and Jewish relations are mostly positive. Obviously, it bears the marks of all pre modern inequalities and injuries of all kinds. Nevertheless, compared to Jewish-Christian relations, Muslim-Jewish relations were much more positive now in contemporary era because of the situation in Palestine Israel, perception of Muslim-Jewish relations have been distorted and colored by the conflict. Yet, American context offers a distinct opportunity, a third space, a new ground for an encounter between Western religiosity and Jewish religiosity. We are really interested in the religious identity of these two groups, because there is ethnic dimension, there must be broader political ventures, but as two religious observant groups having similar experiences in the American context, in a neutral space, gives us a specific window to look at them and understand them. And we did that. Our book was completed before the current conflict. Therefore, it was more in a peaceful environment of American religion, in the context of American encounter of these two minority groups with respect to the broader mainstream with which they might have certain anxieties of assimilation and so on, and similarities, overlaps and differences, we tried to pick certain aspects of of these religious groups that are shared by them, that is to say, ways they relate to the larger public. And we compared them. One of them was their diet, the other was the way observer Jews and Muslims dress and how they it reveals about their identity and so on. So from there, we went on.

John Torpey 

Right. A lot of your argument that seems to me, depends on the significance of the fact that we’re talking about the in the United States, right? Where, as I said in my introduction, both religions are sort of equally minority religions, and that makes a big difference. It seems to me to your argument, and I guess the question then is, you know, how extrapolate able is, you know, the situation in the United States to other contexts in the world?

Samuel Heilman 

Well, one of the things that the United States really is, at least in theory, very much committed to, is the separation of religion and state, which means that you can be fully religious within a even within the public space, because you’re not making claims that your religious way and your religious laws should be the law of the land. But when we look at other places where that isn’t the case, states that have a kind of state religion, or states where one group or another is making a claim for sovereignty that’s based on either ethnicity or religion, we have many such states, whether it’s Saudi Arabia, for example, where if you’re not a Muslim, it’s very difficult to be a citizen there. Or certainly in the case of Jews, Israel is really the only space where any claims are being made for sovereignty on the part of Jews. There the challenges of separating religion from state are much more difficult. So, the to extrapolate the American experience would require, first of all, that the state be democratic, secondly, that the state not impose a particular religion on anyone, and that no particular religion could make a claim for sovereignty. Now, in practice, we know that, and I think the coming American election really will speak to that there is a large segment of the Religious Right. In America that is making a claim for religious sovereignty, that is making a claim for America being a white Christian state, and that certainly was the underlying theme of the American melting pot, ideal for many, many generations, including when I came to this country, to the United States, and to a large extent, probably even when Mucahit came at a later point in history. But America is also now, at least again, in theory, open to multiculturalism. And what these two groups, these minorities are saying is we believe we can be a fully engaged and legitimate part of the United States and of the body politic without having to sacrifice, Christianize, in a sense, secularize, although most Jews are secular, we’re talking about that segment of the Jews who are religiously observant. And there is, I think the ratio may not quite be the same among Muslims, but again, there is a difference between those who are explicitly, visually, actively observing their faith in America, and those who have managed to assimilate, we’re talking about, I called them unmeltable before, but I mean those who did not go into the melting pot, but who said we’re testing the truth of multiculturalism here.

Mucahit Bilici 

Yeah, I you know, America is an interesting place in terms of converting religious identities. Well, we can’t even speak about it all, modern social science also commits the same crime of converting religion into an identity. In the American case, it becomes an ethnicity. Now, this might have been the case for Judaism for a very long time, but for Islam, muslimness as an ethnic identity is something that it becomes visible in minority contexts and in a kind of liberal democratic environment like the US, it becomes more so. So, muslimness as an ethnicity doesn’t tell us enough about the challenges faced by religious practice, religion per se, religion as it is understood as something that is serious, important, and so on. So, we are looking at the segments of our respective communities that take religion seriously and try to translate into their everyday lives in terms of ritual practice and so on. And so the challenge is, how do they balance their spiritual religious life and their American public experience, or their American everyday lives? In that sense, we are looking at a narrower circle of people. And what makes this interesting for us is that there are a lot of similarities between these two groups, even though they might not be aware of that. So, we are, in a sense, speaking to multiple audiences. So, Jews reading this book, they will learn about Muslims, and it will expand their understanding of American religion, American experience. Muslims reading this book are going to appreciate Jewish experience, Jewish religiosity, and they will also have a better sense of American experience and knowing that, you know, this path has been walked before or still being walked by others. And so that’s it, and it’s not only the two groups. So the third category of people, neither Jewish nor Muslim Americans reading this book can see what it means to be, well, Abrahamic, but not Christian in American context. You know, the minority experience of these two religious traditions. So, it is hopefully speaking to multiple audiences and bringing together audiences that would have fewer reasons to be in the same room to listen to the you know, such a story.

Samuel Heilman 

I would add something. I think what Mucahit said about ethnicity is very important to remember. Just to give you an example in America, when I’m asked so, what is your ethnic group, I probably would answer Jewish. But in Israel, when I’ve asked to identify who I am, I’m immediately called an Anglo Saxon. Now this is the only place in the world where me, where I would be called an Anglo Saxon. The truth is that Jewish is no longer an ethnicity. When you come to to Israel and and the irony is, I know there’s been some controversy about a recent interview that Ta-Nehisi Coates had on CBS where he talked about the ethno, ethnostate of Israel. But actually, Israel is very diverse ethnically, but it’s not all that diverse religiously. So that is part of the difference between the United States experience and an experience in other countries. I would like to give you just one short example. You know, one of the one is sort of the reasons that this book was written was a story that actually put me on to thinking about this in a different way, and that I shared with Mucahit. And it’s something that he knows about from his own experience and from the person who was involved in it, just very briefly, the story serves as a kind of epigraph to our book. It’s freshman week at a respected university in North Carolina, and two chaplains, the Hillel Rabbi and the campus Imam, are chatting at the end of the week, comparing notes. One of them says, I had some parents come to me and ask if I would keep an eye on their son, encourage him to attend prayers on Friday, make sure he eats only the permitted food and dates only girls who share his faith. They tell me that they agreed to their son coming to this school because of its high academic reputation, but they’re worried about whether they’ll be able to manage to be a student here without dropping the religious commitments with which he was raised. And the other chaplain, hearing this says Abdullah, I had exactly the same encounter. And obviously the other chaplain is the Hillel rabbi,

John Torpey 

Right, interesting. So, I actually wanted to go back to this term unmeltable, and to ask about unmeltability. I mean, of course, for those who may not be familiar with this, this is a reference to a significant book in its time about ethnicity in the United States called The Rise in the Unmeltable Ethics. And it was seen as a time that was, you know, somehow, beyond the melting pot, the melting pot wasn’t working anymore. People were insisting on being kind of who they thought they were ethnically. And I guess my question, you know, in regard to your book, is, how much is that? I mean, you say that you focus on people who are visibly observant and therefore, in a certain sense, stand out from the you know, the broader background is there more of that in the Jewish and Muslim populations in the United States today. And has that, whether it’s more or less, I mean, is it facilitating integration into the into the American population.

Samuel Heilman 

I could, I could show you a picture which would be worth 1000 words, but we’re in a podcast. But imagine two, two students at CUNY, one is wearing a hijab and dungarees, and the other one is wearing a kippah, yarmulke and dungarees. That, in a sense, shows how these people have found a way to remain with their identity. Clearly, the one with the yarmulke on is Jewish, but an American wearing dungarees jeans, and the one wearing a hijab is clearly Muslim, and both of them are religiously committed enough to wear this in public, but also wearing jeans. So I think what we’re talking about is, I think the word unmeltable is a challenge to the idea of the American melting pot, the melting pot didn’t work, but something else might work, and and Muslims and Jews, particularly the observant, visibly different among them, are the real test for America about its commitment and its ability to be pluralist and multicultural.

Mucahit Bilici 

I would say there is structural assimilation. So people become America, whether they really explicitly admit it or not, structurally, there is a certain inevitability of Americanization. Nevertheless, in terms of belief in the idea that I can maintain my identity, my distinctiveness, sense of ability to assert one’s identity, one’s differences, that is in you know, that remains an option. It’s an available option for Muslims and Jews who take religiosity seriously. And so America, in that sense, is a very interesting place, if you look at the institutions of these groups. Yes, for example, if I give the example of mosque, and in the book, we cover both mosque and synagogue, you look at the American mosque. American mosque is significantly different from a mosque in Egypt or Turkey or elsewhere, because American mosque also has to become a community center. It’s a minority set setting. You have to create a space for community, because women, for example, could go to Friday service, Friday prayer, Juma or not. It’s an optional thing, even discouraged, because it is mostly a, you know, men, congregational prayer, but in American context, families, religious needs make it a necessity for women to go to Juma, attend Juma service and and then transformation of that space, you know, gender equality and all that have internal workings as well happening. A basketball court appears in the back of the mosque, not only because it is there in a church or a synagogue, but because you need to have new generations who would remain attached to your religious identity and so on. So you have to invest, you have to take that into account. So all those things make Islam. In the case of Islam, American Islam, it makes it look more like Judaism, and both of them look more like, you know, American house of worships in terms of assimilation, that’s what I mean by structurally, there is enough pool that makes them American, but at the same time, proudly, you maintain your religious identity. Even, even in the case of Islamophobia, you know, during Trump era, there was a more to say, violent form of Islamophobia, from Muslim ban to Christian nationalist groups, armed groups actually circling around mosques, threatening people, while immigrant will be scared and they will just hide, you know, trying to, you know, be quiet and avoid, let the kind of threat pass new generations. Some of them would walk out and say, you have a gun. I have a gun. And, you know, claim Second Amendment rights in defending themselves as Muslim against the threat. And so it’s a it’s a very American type of behavior, in a sense that that imposes itself. Sometimes it’s it being a minority means you have to respond. You have to legitimize yourself. You have to justify all those factors make it hard not to be American. But in the Muslim case, I can say that there is a lot of willingness for acceptance, obviously, but people don’t want to abandon their faith and so on. Religion in America provides a better form of integration. A lot of people might think that, you know what, if people become secular, would they would be better Americans, but research shows that people who choose religiosity as a path as their main identity in American context, they end up becoming more identifying with with American, Americanness, compared to those who choose ethnicity.

Samuel Heilman 

And to give another example, you know, the Rabbi and the Imam, each of them to get to be a Rabbi or to get to be an Imam, you have to really be steeped in very parochial religious matters. But in America, suddenly, the Rabbi or Imam discover that they are symbol. First of all, there are women who can do it as well. They are symbols of a community, and have to speak for that, and suddenly they’re both clergy. Now being clergy means that you know they have to be able to give a blessing that’s not uniquely Jewish or Muslim. They have to be able to stand in for their community. So here you have people who are really what, what Weber used to call halach religious virtue, virtuosi. But they’ve had to learn in the American context, and this, this might be helpful elsewhere, to be leaders that are not only parochial.

John Torpey 

Right. So I mean, notwithstanding the structural assimilation that you’ve described, I mean towards the end of the book, which is, I understand, it was completed largely, maybe not entirely, but largely, before October 7. You know, you do have some data on Islamophobia and antisemitism, and I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about, you know what that data looks like, what it tells us before October 7, after October 7, whenever you have data about.

Samuel Heilman 

Well, we examined, we did a small survey of American observant Jews and American observant Muslims, and we talked about the American situation, and it turned out that among the groups who had more sympathy for one another were American Jew, American observant Jews and American observant Muslims. Because many of them, when they thought about it, had understood that some of the problems we have are the same problems, not only in being the objects of prejudice, but how do we manage to eat our particular food and still find our way through the American scene? So the prejudices, of course, all of that was changed by October 7, but we don’t know whether, in the long run, these two minorities in America once particularly. We think our book opens a view that Mucahit talked about before, of Jews learning about Muslims in America and Muslims learning about Jews in America, saying, gee, you know, I can sympathize with that. I understand that situation. Again, if I take that story of a freshman in orientation, both of those parents were in the same boat, really worried about where their kids come out of this university setting, still with the commitments with which they went in. And I imagine not only that, the Imam and the Hillel Rabbi would have said, gee, we’re in the same we’re in the same space. But had those two parents been sitting down with each other having a sandwich, tuna fish, and they would have said the same thing.

Mucahit Bilici 

Yeah, I would say, you know, before October 7, things were calm. And, you know, there is always some degree of Islamophobia among Jewish Americans and some antisemitism among American Muslims, but there was significant progress, and people were more open, more willing to understand and engage, and we know that from various activities of Muslim organization such as Islamic Society of North America and so on. So there was a, I would say, a recognition that both groups are facing a common threat coming from mostly Christian nationalism, you know, right wing politics. And it was really even less religion. It was more politics that was a threat to both groups. And you know, the events during Trump era led people to appreciate this commonality, that the need for collaboration, even there were a couple of pieces by journalists, essay commentators, kind of pulling for closer cooperation in resisting is Islamophobia and antisemitism. Obviously, October 7 and aftermath of it destroyed all that positive the climate. And of course, right now it is very difficult for people to talk about this kind of stuff we are talking about now, sadly, I wish that wasn’t the case. You know now you can’t avoid things that you didn’t know. Now you you see what, what is happening, and it is, it is certainly placing a certain type of limitation on the potential, but we believe that in the long run, there is this potential for understanding and kind of engagement across the religious divide. So I want to say that, you know, it’s really politics. And you know, I don’t see the conflict in Israel Palestine as a religious conflict, either it’s a political at least. You know, thinking of it as a religious conflict does us this service, prevents us from understanding what is going on. Nevertheless, in the broader picture, I think once things settle down a little bit, and Muslims and Jews in America, when they consider their lives as Americans, not as some representatives, sometimes militants of some overseas causes, but as citizens of American environment, then this mutual understanding becomes a meaningful thing. Right now, there’s a lot of smoke and clouding it.

Samuel Heilman 

I would say before October 7, both the Jews and the Muslims were most of the prejudice and the hatred came from the right were changed for Jews, at least since October 7, is that they’re getting hostility from both the left and the right. But in the long run, I agree completely with Mucahit. I think we will see that we both are children of Abraham and Isaac and Ishmael have a common a common history. They buried their father Abraham together, according to the biblical story, and they were both to be heads of great nations in the same place. So I think that’s still a possible outcome based on the biblical model anyway.

Mucahit Bilici 

So they don’t kill each other.  You know, they’re Abraham’s children, so they don’t do that things to each others.

Samuel Heilman 

Right.

John Torpey 

Right. Well, I mean, maybe this is a sort of an opening for a question about something Mucahit, I think, emphasized early on in our discussion, and that is that, you know, the Jewish Muslim antagonism that we think of as, or many people, I would say, think of as per perennial, you know, as a relatively recent phenomenon. And you know that had to do a lot with the fact that the Jews were concentrated in various parts of the Ottoman Empire. The way the Ottoman Empire was run allowed for a certain kind of, you know, religious flexibility, as long as you didn’t challenge the dominance of the of the Sultan. So I wonder if you could say a little bit about, you know, that historical background and how it may or may not, you know, relate to the situation that we’re in now.

Samuel Heilman 

Well, our whole first chapter, really, the introduction, gives those parallels, both in terms of practices and the fact that so much Jewish scholarship was within the within the Arab speaking world, and many Jews spoke Arabic. Some of the greatest Jewish philosophers and leaders like Maimonides, middle medieval philosopher and Rabbi, the greatest among the Jews, according to many, wrote much of his work in Arabic and was exposed to Arab, to Muslim ideas. And so that there is, there’s a long history, and that history has been twisted by events of the 20th century. But in the basic character of these two peoples, we are cousins. We are cousins in a very real way, both culturally and in the practices that we have, and we often have had common enemies and we’ve had common goals, and there’s no reason to think that that can’t happen again, because this conflict, even though the 100 Year War ended, this conflict will end. I hope in our lifetime, it will end, and in the end, we have much more in common than what divides us.

Mucahit Bilici 

I would say, you know, very much like nationalist thinking that you know nation existed from the time immemorial, projecting, you know, recent development into the past. I think that you know that’s not only thinking of the conflict as you know, perennial conflict, eternal fight, but also thinking, for example, that islamophobia or antisemitism are also phenomena from time immemorial. Certainly they are both modern developments. Scholars like Hannah Arendt have shown that, and my study of islamophobia in America reveals that it’s an effect of, you know, it’s a modern development before, of course, there is prejudice and inequality, but it is assumed and so on. It’s a it’s only in the context of expectation of equality that discrimination becomes a crime, let me put it that way. And so a lot of problems of antisemitism and islamophobia have modern origins, at least they are distinct from what preceded modern times. So you know, scholarship is useful when, when you can clarify things in this way, there’s a Jewish scholar, Reuven Firestone, whom we cite in our work. I really love the you know, his work is also one of the people who did, you know Muslim studies on Islam and Judaism. So he’s a interesting figure. It is a contextualization. Therefore helps us a lot, and we want to stick to our kind of American context, to tell our story, to keep it relatively autonomous from prejudices of history, if I may say so.

John Torpey 

I see. All right. Well, great. Thanks very much. We’re out of time. That’s it for today’s episode. I want to thank Mucahit Bilici and Samuel Heilman for sharing their insights about the experiences of Jews and Muslims in the United States and beyond. Look for International Horizons on the New Books Network, and remember to subscribe and rate International Horizons on Spotify and Apple podcasts. I want to thank Claire Centofanti for her technical assistance, as well as to acknowledge Duncan McKay for sharing his song International Horizons as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey saying thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you with us for the next episode of International Horizons.