With a glance. With a wince. With a scowl. With a shake of the head.
We may not understand why we’re here in the world, but we learn to understand what each other is feeling. To compare experiences, communication is everything. And then, whether the lifetime is short or long, it’s over.
But if we write our thoughts down, truths and lies or admixtures of both, they continue on without us. Words on the page are seeds waiting to split, take root and climb up into the sunlight of the mind of whoever reads them.
Most jarring are the words of those longest dead. Plain or sophisticated, cynic or optimist, facing the universal condition of existence they demonstrate that nothing changes. Still the push-and-pull, sex and death and the power grab. The joke standing side by side with the tragedy standing side by side with the attempt to understand.
Anyone with the urge can pick up a pen and put it all down for the record. It’s an egalitarian enterprise. Which brings us to your divinely inspired prophets. On their backs, the world’s largest religions were founded. Yet they neglected to put their own words down. The words in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Vedas, in the Tripitaka, in the Tanakh — somebody else wrote every word. Many somebody else’s. And yet what got put down on the page is taken as divinely inspired fact. If the goal is friendly intercourse with the faithful, it’s wise not to suggest otherwise.
The sensitivity and humorlessness with which faith communities respond to incredulous criticism has been remarked upon and the sheer number of believers estimated to be on the planet recommends against it. 2.38 billion Christians. 1.8 billion Muslims. 1.2 billion Hindus. 500 million Buddhists. 15.2 million Jews. When one group or another gets riled up, with those numbers, much can go wrong.
In the name of their religion, adherents to every one of these belief systems have been implicated at one time or another in the commission of atrocities against their fellow human beings. Entire nations have leaned on one religion or another to justify slaughter wholesale. But this should be counterintuitive. All these books concern themselves, at least in part, with teaching us of the innate dignity of our fellow human beings.
At the intersection where government and religion meet, so as to prevent the return of the worst excesses of unenlightened cruelty, to foster communication and understanding, J.T. Pinna recommends Babka diplomacy.
“My entire career, if you see me, there’s photos of me at the White House with Obama, photos with Bush, it’s always with Babka,” Pinna says. “I would bring it through security, the [Secret Service] would probe it. I’m Muslim. So, they’re like, ‘It’s not in his shoes, it’s in the loaf.’”
Retired from the military, a seasoned campaigner in various government adjacent enterprises over the years, now a business-owner living in downtown Kingston – he and his wife, Kaira Grundig, run a bakery and coffee shop called the Half Moon Café – Pinna felt inspired to found Muslims for Muslims, a non-governmental organization with a global purview.
Primarily dedicated to cultivating intra-faith understanding among Muslims, his mission also expands to include other faiths as well. He produces a podcast, now in its ninth season, which he says has clocked almost 3 million viewers worldwide. Topics generally move among three categories: Faith journeys, religion and politics or topical subjects.
“Crossing Faiths is sort of our flagship civic engagement element. I just interviewed a Yemeni Jew two weeks ago and then I’m going to talk with a Rabbi later on today about possibly having him on in June.”
Then he’ll be going to Dharamshala to interview the Dalai Lama.
“And I’m talking with the Vatican,” Pinna adds, “about getting the Pope on.”
While leveraging the connections and contacts made during his military career, Pinna, who came up in Poughkeepsie, also maintains a local focus. He ticks a few names off with his fingers.
“I’m talking to Rabbi Jack Sheratt of the Congregation Emmanuel, to Father Frank Alagna at the Holy Cross and Santa Cruz Episcopal Church. I’m talking to Pastor Timothy Bupp, at the Trinity Lutheran Church, and he’s part of the Multi-Faith Council. Same thing with David Dremer, who’s the executive director of the Ulster County Coalition Jewish Coalition.”
The tradition of co-operation between faiths has been a feature of Kingston’s religious communities going back for some time. It should be only natural. The messages they preach – compassion for those suffering, protection of the weak, alms for the poor, gratitude for existence – they have a universally recognized attractiveness.
Some years ago, when Pinna belonged to America’s Islamic Congress, he recalls that they translated the Montgomery story – the retelling of the doings of Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama – from English into Arabic and Persian, for distribution in the middle east.
“And we went overseas,” Pina says. “The Egyptian writer Dalia Ziada, who’s one of the people who helped organize Tahrir Square, worked for me during that time. And it was Russell Campbell who came as well, who worked with Martin Luther King. And we talked about how the Montgomery story was so impactful during the Arab Spring.”
The Arab Spring comprises a series of protests, uprisings and revolutions which were carried out against a handful of repressive authoritarian governments in Arab Countries along the Mediterranean in 2010. Like terry-cloth soaked in linseed oil and left forgotten in a pile, the movement appeared to spontaneously ignite. As the fire grew, social media platforms proved to be a force multiplier. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was deposed. Lebanon’s Muammar Gadafi was killed. The civil war began in Syria.
“Well, why was it impactful? Because people that believed and people that didn’t believe were walking hand-in-hand to do something for the civil rights movement. The problem is, there’s nobody doing that now. We kind of had to take a step back and figure out, ‘Where do we start?’ And we start with dignity.”
A quick and incomplete primer on some religious basics:
As Catholics and Protestants are the two main branches of Christianity, Sunni and Shia are the two main branches of Islam. But as in Christianity, as in Judaism, as in Buddhism and Hinduism, Islam contains within it multitudes, additional sects of belief waxing in importance, or waning.
Wahhabism for instance, an ultra-conservative sect of Islam, very popular in Saudi Arabia. In Brooklyn, it’s the fashion-conscious Hasids who are the representatives of ultra-orthodox Judaism. Both Wahhabis and Hasids only appeared on the scene in the 18th century.
Though the writing of all the Abrahamic holy books began much earlier the final touches were put on more recently. The Bible was finished up around 100 C.E., the Tanakh was finished around 200 C.E., and the writing of the Koran was finished up around 632 C.E. The Koran is the latest addition, because that’s when Muhammad lived.
The Islamic analogue to a Catholic priest or a Jewish Rabbi, or a Hindu Pujari, or a Buddhist Bhikkhu is an Imam or an Ayatollah, depending on the branch of Islam. Sheikhs and muftis are scholars of religious law. Religious law is everything.
The hat game among religions is strong. The Pope wears a miter, resembling two large endive leaves. An Imam wears a taqiyah, which is a skullcap. A rabbi wears a yarmulke, which is a too-small skull cap worn over the top of the head where a bald spot would be. An Ayatollah wears a turban. Different colored turbans indicate further affiliation. The runner-up for most inspired hat of any religion is the Shtreimel, an oversized fur hat worn by Hasids on festive occasions. Tibetan monks, however, win the top prize in the hat game. Their styles of hat are numerous and they are bright. Look the Yellow Hats up.
Because Judaism, Islam and Christianity all claim to be descended from the same patriarch, Abraham, they are referred to as Abrahamic religions. A complex family situation has resulted. In the Koran, Muhammad is the pre-eminent prophet of the religion, not Jesus. Moses and Jesus are also revered as prophets, and Mary, the mother of Jesus – not the prostitute – is the only woman mentioned by name in the Koran. She is highly revered. Jewish tradition accords no significance to either Muhammad nor Jesus and Christian tradition makes no mention of Muhammad.
In the Koran, Adam and Eve share responsibility for eating the apple. God forgives them but sends them to earth anyway. In the Old Testament and the Torah as well, Eve takes the blame for the apple business and God does not forgive them. He kicks both of them out of paradise forever. Hindus don’t have an Adam and Eve story. Neither do the Buddhists. Buddhists don’t even acknowledge that existence has a beginning or an end. It’s just an eternal wash cycle of souls coming and going.
In Catholicism, the Pope can issue a formal document of religious law positing a religious distinction, known as a papal bull. His Bishops can all issue decrees. In Judaism and Islam, they have no pope. Qualified Imams known as Muftis as well as Ayatollahs can issue fatwas while Rabbis issue tshuves and halakhahs. Religious or secular, it’s jurisprudence by any other name. While they may not be aware of it, Christians currently have two popes. One, Pope Francis, in Rome, and another less talked about, the Coptic Pope, Pope Tawadros II, in Egypt.
In Christianity, a holy war is called a holy war. Amen. In Islam it’s called a Jihad. God is great. But not all Jihads need to be prosecuted at the scale matching the Christian holy wars of the past. In fact, one can proclaim a Jihad against anything at all. Public transit for instance. Or bad literature. And once Jihad is declared, one need not even burn the books or the buses. One can simply stop reading or riding them. So much for all that.
With thousands of years of tradition to contend with, and innumerable distinctions and off-shoots to decipher and account for, Pinna has done so well absorbing the histories of others and talking it out that he’s interfaced with every presidential régime since Clinton, sometimes taking part in drafting national security policy.
But if his primary focus is intrafaith, the most significant and hopeful sea change he has witnessed in the worldwide Islamic community, known as the Ummah, came with the release of the Amman message in 2004. This was the result of a religious symposium paid for and held by the King of Jordan. It was called to settle the internecine differences in the family of Islam.
“So all the scholars came together,” Pinna says. “The most prominent representatives of the religion. They assembled all these Ayatollahs on the Shia Islamic side, and then all these schools of jurisprudence on the Sunni side. So you get everybody in the same room, Greek jury style, which is the old tradition in Islam, and everybody calls out what’s going on and basically for the first time in Muslim history – centuries and centuries – they said, you know, how do we chew on these issues?”
Among other topics, the scholars grappled with women’s rights, freedom of religion, legitimate jihad, good citizenship of Muslims in non-Muslim countries, and just and democratic governments – all facets of the same rock really. They talked human rights.
At the end of the religious symposium, when they had found consensus in as many subjects as they could address, they all sent out the same uniform fatwas, a decision Pinna calls extraordinary. Just words. On paper. A sort of form letter with consequences for the human dignity of billions of lives.
“So now if I turn around and I go to Usmani’s guys in Pakistan, or I go to Sistani’s guys in Iraq, and Usmani’s a Sunni, and Sistani’s a Shia, or I go into Iran, and I go to the Shirazi guys, Shirazi is a Persian Ayatollah, I can walk in with his fatwa, and he’s agreed to it.”
As far as terrorism goes, Pinna says that Muslims have very explicit rules on how to conduct war. According to Islam you can’t kill women and children.
“And they basically just said, okay, what do we do about somebody who claims to be Muslim and is claiming to act in the name of Islam, but is really transacting terrorism? If they’re claiming Jihad but they’re conducting terrorism, do they cease to be Muslim? So the scholars chewed on that question. They decided they didn’t cease to be Muslim but that their actions put them ‘on the other side’ of Islam.”
Decided by the most revered religious authorities, committing terrorism, it is the position of Islam that murdering innocents makes one an outlaw.
Since it was never sanctioned by the official declarations of either holy texts or credible religious scholars, how did religiously affiliated terrorism, sponsored by individuals – or the state– ever enter into the picture?
“I think it’s also important to distinguish the difference between Muslim tradition and political cultural tradition,” says Maureen Hogan, 26-year-old director of government relations and special projects for Muslims for Muslims. “Where the religious and the political intersect is a huge topic.”
Both secular and religious rulers in every country, in every time, have had great success exaggerating and emphasizing the differences which exist between religions. Championing one over the other in order to divide and weaken political opposition or to redirect their constituent’s dissatisfaction with poor living conditions, nothing is more useful than a common enemy who speaks a different language and so calls on god by a different name. And standing over tear-gassed protestors, politicians pose for the cameras, holding bibles up over their heads.
“Part of the separation of church and state is to prevent undue proselytizing and having religion in places that it shouldn’t be,” Hogan notes. “Generally speaking, faith communities want to take care of the people who they interact with and interface with every day – to their congregants and beyond. Whether it’s a food bank, whether it’s free clothes. And if these different faiths are in conflict with one another, not only does it harm folks external from their congregations, but it hurts the congregation in turn. And community care gets reduced.”
Healthcare for all? Food guaranteed for all? Housing for all? Watch out! There’s a terrorist who wants to blow up your freedom! Watch out! There’s a transgender person drinking your beer!
To cut through the noise and disarm the hate and fear bombs that the bad-faith political, corporate and religious leaders are constantly building to gain or maintain power, you’ve got to speak the language of cultural tradition or no one will hear you.
Because a lot of people like to hide behind the slogans, Pinna says, you have to know the theology in order to combat the false narrative, “So what we do is we start attacking the religious justifications.”
Pinna offers the example of the Assyrian people who he says the Muslims have been murdering for centuries in spite of a treaty which people have forgotten existed.
“So when Islam first started, there weren’t Muslims. Muhammad had to engage all these different populations and then try to figure out how to not get killed. There was no Shia or Sunni back then, and so the treaties between Muhammad and the tribes then are enforceable treaties now. There’s a copy of this one that’s in the Church of the East in northern Iraq in Kurdistan. There’s a copy in the Ottoman archives which is in Ankara, and we’re pulling that out and people are like, wait a minute. We can use this? And if we don’t, if we go against it, we’re going against the prophet?”
But the effectiveness of old treaties in the United States belongs to an abysmal tradition. For Pinna, the expectation is that divinely inspired treaties will be taken more seriously. Attributed to the negotiations of Muhammad, the words on a piece of paper miraculously elevate the dignity of some three to five million human beings called Assyrians. It’s something to consider. Then Pinna says the “I” word.
“Israel, for example. If you’re going to say that there’s a biblical justification for the Jewish community to be there, you have to know that Abraham gave Israel, the land in Israel, to the descendants of Abraham. What a lot of people don’t realize is that there’s like seven descendants. And one of them is Jacob. And one of them is Ishmael. Jacob is where you get the Jewish community from. Ishmael is where you get the Muslim community from. The children of Abraham are multifaith. So now you have something where everybody, including the Jewish community can rally together and say, well, you want to know what? This doesn’t hold water.”
Members of the same family – the descendants will have to share.
Anyone who wants to can listen in on Pinna’s multi-faith pursuit of human dignity and religious literacy on his podcast Crossing Faiths (crossingfaiths.com). Or for a taste of his Babka Diplomacy, his bakery and café is located down on Broadway mere blocks from the Rondout Creek.
Join the family! 
