A new student group is looking to facilitate dialogue between Muslim and Jewish students to create understanding of cultural issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Peace of Mind met for the first time last week and will hold its first discussion 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Feb. 25 at the Fiedler Hillel Center. Interested students are encouraged to come eat and discuss their goals for the club and get to know one another.
“We’re hoping to foster good Muslim-Jewish dialogues on campus to get to know about each other’s religions, to get to know each other personally,” said co-founder Ramah Kudaimi, a Medill freshman. “Hopefully through that we can start to focus on the bigger issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Kudaimi and Weinberg sophomore Fatima Alloo collaborated with Medill freshman Adva Saldinger, who was looking to restart a Muslim-Jewish dialogue at NU. The group Shut Up and Listen formed in Spring 2002 and had previously dealt with rising tensions on campus — holding four programs that drew about 75 students each. But the next fall, its leaders decided to change the focus of the group.
“The leaders felt we had dealt with the issues, and there was still things to talk about, but they didn’t feel that there would be as many students interested,” said Michael Mishkin, rabbi and executive director at Hillel. “A lot of wonderful relations between Jews and Muslims had been formed with the program, and we figured we’d stay in touch. And when the time was appropriate and we had a program that we needed to do, we’d come together and do it.”
Peace of Mind will meet every other week for discussions. They also hope to bring in two or three speakers or performers each quarter to deal with Muslim and Jewish or Israeli-Palestinian issues. The group plans to eventually apply to be an Associated Student Government-recognized student group and run programming open to the public.
“We don’t have to deal exclusively with this conflict,” said Kudaimi. “We’re open to all kinds of ideas and it’s still in the working process exactly what we want to do.”
At the club’s first meeting last Wednesday, 10 prospective members were asked to fill out applications regarding their experience in similar dialogues to ensure people can maturely handle debating emotional and sensitive topics.
“We don’t want people coming in and thinking they’re just going to spread their agenda,” Kudaimi said. “This is a peaceful discussion group, and we want to ask people, ‘Are you going to be able to handle that well?'”
Discussions will be moderated by the three founders in a guided questioning format.
“We’re here to listen and understand each other’s positions and we’re going to put in safeguards to make sure it doesn’t escalate,” Saldinger said. “We’re hoping that everyone will be respectful and we think everyone will be. I think in a group like this we’re not necessarily going to agree, but as long as you respect what the other people are saying that’s our goal.”
