On March 5, when the Calgary Interfaith Council (CIC) released a joint statement on the ongoing conflict following the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, it was no small feat.

Calgarians, like many people around the world, have become polarized in the wake of those attacks and the subsequent military actions in Gaza which have led to the deaths of thousands.

Protests for and against Israel and Palestine have become regular occurrences in Calgary, as they have in other major cities across Canada—often with regular media coverage of those protests highlighting the conflict between Jewish and Muslim protesters.

But what hasn’t always been clear is the work that is being done behind the scenes to have dialog between Jewish and Muslim communities—work that was reflected in the joint statement that was signed by faith leaders across Calgary’s religious communities and denominations.

“After there was a horrible shooting in Pittsburgh several years ago, there was a vigil at Beth Tzedec… there were Muslim leaders who stood in solidarity with the Jewish community there. There was that incident and several years ago — the most horrible incident when a Muslim family in London, Ontario was killed. There was a rally right outside City Hall here, and I stood with people there,” said Calgary Interfaith Council board member Rabbi Mark Glickman.

“October 8, rejiggered that whole thing.”

That separation between communities has made the work done by CIC even more important, he said.

“On October 6, interfaith work was easy. We get together and talk about how we love each other, talk about how we respect each other, that’s great. And October 8, it got really hard, and that’s also when it got really important,” Glickman said.

Among the work undertaken from the start of the conflict, up until March 5, were interfaith meetings, a prayer service, and personal connections made during the United Nation’s Interfaith Harmony Week.

Sarah Arthurs, Executive Director for the Calgary Interfaith Council, used the butterfly metaphor to describe that work over the months leading up to March.

“You can’t know what impact you have. We did the Prepare service… [CIC board chair] Dr. Singh had a number of her patients coming in saying, ‘oh, I heard that.’ So there was some sense that it was starting to ripple a tiny little bit out into the community,” Arthurs said.

“CIC will continue to go on doing what we do, and try to make that continue to be a space to bring people together.”

On the importance of the statement itself, Rabbi Glickman said that it is a tiny thing—but a start.

“It’s just this small little statement and my hope is that people have similar orientation, people who want to build these bridges, who want to stand together with our neighbour, neighbours who want to who are troubled by what’s going on over there but don’t want to let that violence, build where we’re going that they will join us in this ongoing work of bridge building.”

Anwar Mohiuddin, a board member with the Muslim Council of Calgary, who joined the CIC board this year, summed it up as urging community members to become educated, and in turn, become advocates for peace and justice.

“It is a document talking about both sides. It is talking about anti-semitism, it talks about the Islamophobia,” Mohiuddin said.

“This is the recipe for future peace… there are many ways to do this, including organizing collaborative multi-faith gatherings like CIC does. CIC is a tiny spot on the wall, but I want this to be contagious in every city.”

it was a statement made not to gloss over disagreements, but instead to find common ground.

“The Jewish community and the Muslim community, Anwar and I, we disagree about a lot of what’s going on there. But we agree about what’s in the statement. We agree that our disagreements don’t need to make us enemies,” said Rabbi Glickman.

‘Our Shared Voice During This Time of Conflict‘

The challenge for both making the shared statement and on the interfaith work being done throughout the leadup was the fact that the CIC is not a political organization, and does not take political stances, Arthurs said.

It is a collection of faith leaders, representatives of the Sikh, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Bahai faiths, all of whom signed the shared statement.

A difficult task, given the intersect between politics and faith in both Israel and in Palestine, and the staunch political positions taken—or not taken—by politicians and citizens alike in Canada after Oct. 7.

The sentiment shared by both Arthurs and Rabbi Glickman on that initial period of politicization was that there was no room to maneuver in space of public opinion.

“Having a friendship and professional relationship with the Rabbi as a member of CIC, it’s like ‘whoa, whoa, this is gonna be a big deal for him.’ Then slowly, things can proceed to kind of take the path that they took,” she said.

As a result, the conversations in the following days were hard between communities, with positions taken being described as sometimes outrageous.

“In the days to follow, as the extent of the carnage and the brutality of that day came to bear, it was horribly traumatic for Jews with long history of anti-Semitism now seeing it rears its ugly head again. I reached out to, of course, my own community and trying to provide comfort to my own community, but I also reached out to several people in the interfaith community,” he said.

“It was very interesting because there were some people who were showing great kindness, and support, and tenderness, and others who were ghosting me. Since then, it’s rejiggered a lot of real relationships.”

For Mohiuddin, it also served as a reminder of the long-term systemic issues that the Palestinian people have been facing and the pain that community was facing globally.

“I know what my people have been suffering, what they have been going through 75 years of atrocities,” Mohiuddin said.

Yet there was a recognized need to do something to address the need to recover a “shared space for peace,” said Arthurs.

Two things came out of that conversation, Arthurs said. First, the need for a community prayer event. Second, was the need for a listening circle.

That interfaith prayer event was held on Dec. 11, with the message of holding that space for peace. it was a difficult ask, Arthurs said, for members of both the Palestinian and Israeli communities that had been directly affected by the attacks in Israel and then ongoing conflict in Gaza.

“We were submerged in what we were experiencing, and it was really hard for us to be able to have empathy for other people’s reality, given what we were experiencing as Jews, as Jews in Israel, as Palestinians, as Muslims” she said.

That prayer event was also attended by Mayor Jyoti Gondek, who, at the time, was being criticized for choosing not to attend the annual Menorah lighting ceremony at Calgary City Hall due to the inclusion of politics into the ceremony.

A video presentation from the Israeli Defence Force’s Chief Cantor, Shai Abramson, was cut from the evening’s program despite being originally planned, although invited Calgary Conservative Party MPs Michelle Rempel Garner and Shuvaloy Majumdar both took opportunities during the evening to deliver political speeches supporting Israel and their party’s stances on the conflict.

Prior to the ceremony, the mayor was working quietly behind the scenes to help build those connections between the Jewish and Muslim communities.

She told LWC in December that her decision was based on a need for the Mayor of Calgary to remain politically neutral and the community impartially.

Rabbi Glickman said that members of Calgary’s Jewish community were both disappointed and critical of the Mayor’s decision to not attend the lightning. However, he said, he was personally sympathetic for her situation (a full explanation of Rabbi Glickman’s position is available at albertajewishnews.com/rabbi-mark-glickman-a-plea-for-connection).

“It was a difficult situation for her, and I wish she had handled it otherwise. At the same time, we need to give Mayor Gondek credit. She had called together groups throughout our community, who had been in conflict with one another, and she helped, in a very quiet and understated way—some of the seeds that led to [the joint statement].”

Interfaith Harmony Week leads the way towards peace

Arthurs said that there was a sense within the CIC community following the prayer event that there needed to be a greater involvement from the other faith communities that weren’t as directly tied to the conflict to become involved in the work of peace.

There were also other shakeups in terms of board membership at CIC. The delegate from the Muslim Council of Calgary for the CIC board left, leaving a gap, but also an opportunity to address the dissatisfaction amongst faiths regarding the crisis.

That role was filled by Mohiuddin, who had been significantly engaged in community building and had begun to develop the start of a friendship with Rabbi Glickman.

That invitation came, fittingly, during the United Nations Interfaith Harmony Week.

“After October 7, in mid-November, I went to Israel. I saw the destruction firsthand. I saw smoke rising over Gaza City in the background, and I knew there was so much suffering over there. I reached out to members of the Muslim community. Some gave me tepid responses, some not at all, but I did have some meetings with some Muslim leaders—who I think took great courage actually come to synagogue—we meet and then nothing was happening,” said Rabbi Glickman.

“Just over here at Interfaith Harmony Week, I pulled[Mohiuddin] aside and said, ‘Anwar, isn’t there anything we can do? You and me?’ And he said, and I will never forget it and I get emotional just thinking about it, he said, ‘we need to issue a statement.’

“I think I gave him a hug right then.”

The outcome was an agreement to try and prevent the conflict in Israel and Palestine, from becoming a conflict here in Calgary. it was work of bridge building that Rabbi Glickman called sacred work.

“We agree that we need to do the difficult work of building bridges, and I’m always willing to stand up and do that. I am so grateful to him and also to the leadership the CIC for doing this,” Glickman said.

“Because what you need to know is in this community, there’s a lot of hostility. There’s open hostility bordering on violence. There are a lot of angry words. There’s a lot of shouting. There’s people holding up nasty signs and demonstrations. In all, they’re coming from a very real place. But what we’re doing here is building bridges. The statement we came up with is pretty tepid, but it’s something—and I’m so grateful to Anwar’s partnership in order to do that.”

For his part, Mohiuddin offered that there were many ways of measuring the depths of both relationships and friendships being built—they have to be substantial.

“The least we can do, to pray by heart for the end of this conflict as soon as possible. We will keep praying until the final resolution of the conflict, and wish it ends as soon as possible with a two state solution, allowing all parties to live in peace side by side,” he said.

“As a representative of the Muslim Council of Calgary, I thank each faith on the board with CIC, all of whom have approved the release of this media note unconditionally and unlimited. This is one of the most significant examples of reflecting compassion towards fellow citizens and recognizing that.”

The next step was to continue to engage with community members and create programming to nurture the bridge building, said Arthurs.

“That’s something we’re we’re continuing to discern, as a board, and as our broader community of active volunteers,” she said.

“One thing as an example, is to really work on doing some open houses. Some kind of event in the fall where we travel to different sites, and there’s opportunities for people to explore and learn more about different faiths.”