A Delicate, Daring Bid to Deepen Interfaith Harmony

Mahmoud Abdel-Baset was scared.

As director of religious affairs for the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles, he and his interfaith partners had condemned the Taliban's destruction of precious Buddhist statues in Afghanistan.

He had participated in prayer vigils after the Los Angeles riots and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He had helped lead countless discussions about the intersection of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

But last year, when his partners at the Wilshire Center Interfaith Council proposed a joint pilgrimage to Israel, Abdel-Baset gulped. How, he wondered, could he sell this trip to the Muslim community at the height of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians? Could they separate raging political emotions from religious belief?

"With so much bloodshed and suicide bombings, it was the least opportune time to talk to my community about this," Abdel-Baset recalled. "I didn't know how to break it to my board."

But he did. And some members of his mosque agreed to take the trip. In the euphoria of that achievement, Abdel-Baset's early fears vanished.

On Thursday, after months of delicate preparation, he and 45 other Muslims, Christians and Jews left Los Angeles for an 11-day visit to Israel and Jordan in what they say is one of the first pilgrimages from Southern California to the Holy Land that includes all three Abrahamic faiths.

In promoting the trip, Abdel-Baset says, he challenged his community to "put your money where your mouth is" on issues of interfaith harmony and Islam's inclusive embrace of Judaism and Christianity.

"It's easy to talk," he said, "but this trip is putting us to the test. We're going to live together and visit each other's holy places. This probably can't happen anywhere else besides America."

In addition to Abdel-Baset, the group's leaders are Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Father Rick Byrum of St. James Episcopal Church and Deacon Eric Stoltz of St. Brendan Catholic Church.

Other pilgrims are drawn from diverse walks of life, including engineering, physical therapy, education, business and accounting. They are evenly divided between men and women, and among the three faiths, along with one Unitarian Universalist.

The leaders, who have deeply bonded during a year of planning, said an array of reasons motivated their decision to become pilgrims. Stein, who left a career as a musical conductor at age 40 to begin studying for the rabbinate in 1998, said the legacy of the late Rabbi Alfred Wolf influenced his decision.