9/11 became a catalyst for interfaith relations and cooperation

On Sept. 11, 2001, Imam Naeem Baig was the general secretary of the Islamic Circle of North America, having started working in its Queens, New York, office the year before.

“People were asking, ‘Should we close the office?'” he said. Ultimately, Baig chose not to despite concerns about the possible dangers of staying put in the wake of the terrorist attack. Instead, he was there to field calls from worried and nervous Muslims and kept the office’s prayer area open even as police cars parked outside to provide security.

“And then I received a call from the local Catholic archdiocese,” he said, remembering with emotion 20 years later what that call meant to him.

“He said, 'If you need anything, we are here for you,'” Baig recalled of the priest on the line. “It was a great gesture.”

Though anti-Muslim sentiments grew in the wake of 9/11 — and continue — that concerned phone call from a friend across faith lines exemplifies another legacy of that historic day: the evolution and advancement of interfaith cooperation in the United States.

In the decades before, interfaith circles in the U.S. often focused on the “three faiths,” referring to Protestants, Catholics and Jews, with rare instances of partnerships beyond those religions. After 9/11, there was increased intentionality in widening interfaith relations to include a broader number of faith groups and discussions. Twenty years later, it is not unusual to see interreligious conferences, joint advocacy efforts and disaster relief teamwork involving faith groups ranging from Adventists to Zoroastrians.

Consider one of the more unusual interfaith gatherings in the mid-20th century: the arrival of tens of thousands in Aaronsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1949 for the 150th anniversary of Salem Lutheran Church. A Jewish man named Aaron Levy had founded the town in the 1700s and deeded lots to German Protestants for use for houses of worship and a cemetery. Prominent Christians, Jews and at least one Muslim leader — the vice president of the U.N. General Assembly — overfilled the town for the sesquicentennial event headlined as a call for the “End of Prejudice.” The Rev. Curt Wingert, pastor of the church for the last two years, said the congregation — which also held a community prayer service on 9/11 — still has a pewter Communion set given to it by Levy.

Or another interfaith first, in 1938, when a newly elected Methodist Episcopal Church bishop was blessed by a rabbi before the opened Ark, the special cabinet holding the Torah scrolls, in a St. Louis synagogue, as Religion News Service reported at the time.

Rabbi A. James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser for the American Jewish Committee, who met that St. Louis rabbi, said 9/11 made the earlier “three faiths” sense of interfaith relations obsolete amid campaigns aimed at improving civic life.

“Today in the United States, you cannot have serious interreligious relations, without including Islamic communities,” said Rudin, who also has been an RNS columnist. “You cannot do that without a broad base, a whole panoply of people of all religions represented in America.”

The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell engaged in interfaith relations both as general secretary of the National Council of Churches before 9/11 and as the director of the Chautauqua Institution’s religion department after the tragedy. She said fostering more inclusive religious gatherings meant pushing back against the naysayers who thought it was too much trouble and instead recognizing the value of deeper connections among people from different traditions.

“It was never easy,” she said. “You had to work it through and love it through, but it was always important.”

But Campbell said, in the end, “this is what's going to make us, if we can come and find a way to be working together.”

Although much of U.S. interfaith relations has centered on various nonprofit groups and their leaders choosing to meet and work together, the White House has officially sought to foster partnerships with religious groups since President George W. Bush created the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives in January 2001. He included Muslims among the faiths represented at its public announcement.

Six days after 9/11, he appeared at a mosque to urge respect for Muslims, a principle continued by his second faith-based office director, Jim Towey, who started in February 2002.

“The president made it very clear to me to reach out to all groups and to be very sensitive to how Muslim organizations were feeling because they were very keenly aware of American sentiment at the time,” Towey recalled of that administration’s concern about possible “nascent religious hatred” after 9/11.

“Because he didn't want to see people taking out their frustrations on the Muslim community of the United States, so he made an effort early on to tamp that down, and to make clear through the faith-based office that groups of all religious traditions were welcome, including Muslims.”

Fast forward two decades, and experts see both the progress and the challenges of interfaith relations in the country.