West Asia people more liberal than politicians

Working in two groups, they pored the Jewish and Islamic tomes.

"The fact that such a meeting is taking place is unbelievable," one of the participants was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post.

The Muslim participants included Israeli Arabs as well as Palestinians, the Jerusalem Post said.

Lina Elmalek, one of the participants said originally Islam “was much more liberal on the subject of women than people think … Mohammed’s first wife asked him for his hand in marriage. His second wife was a political leader. These are interesting things that people must know,” she said.

Dvora Ross, an activist in the Israel Interfaith Association, said “what was good and new about this evening was the opportunity to study together and it was good to hear Muslim women speaking whom we don’t generally get to hear”.

The founder of Yakar, Rabbi Dr Mickey Rosen, said he specifically wanted to bring Jews and Arabs together to discuss something other than politics. “We found, women have much more in common with each other than they do with men, and this is also true across religious and ethnic lines,” the paper quoted him as saying.

The Yakar programme is underwritten by the Abraham Fund, which supports coexistence projects and plans throughout Israel

A Yakar member said that there was no problem in getting Jewish women to participate but the problem was to find religious Muslim women who spoke Hebrew or English and were willing to go over to West Jerusalem.

“Religious Muslim women are part of a culture in which husbands don’t want them to go out by themselves, certainly not at night and certainly not to West Jerusalem,” one of the Yakar members said.