Another interesting example of the contact hypothesis in action (previous examples here and here)
... Ms. Badler is Jewish; Ms. Yakubu-Owolewa is Muslim. They and eight other women — five Muslims and five Jews — meet on Tuesday evenings at a Boston-area high school for lessons and activities around healthy eating and self-esteem. The group is the United States introduction of Slim Peace, a nonprofit organization that brings Israeli and Palestinian women together around the universal theme of weight-loss support.
When Ms. [Yael] Luttwak, who made a documentary film about the first Slim Peace group, visited American Jewish communities to talk about her work, they told her they had problems in their own communities with anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-Israel sentiment, and it occurred to her that the Slim Peace model could be brought here. ....
Mrs. Bailit told the group: “I had never spent any time with any Muslim people before this group. I feel like my whole life is Jewish.” She went on: “I’m really invested in my synagogue. I send my kids to a Jewish school. I hunger for diversity.”Ms. Wekstein told of a Christian friend who asked if she was afraid attending these sessions. She replied that she was not. The friend, Ms. Wekstein recounted, went on, “But you would be more afraid if it was meeting with their husbands.”“Yet another stereotype of Muslim men being violent,” said Anne Myers, 23, a Harvard divinity student who converted to Islam. “I hear it so many times, but it does not hurt any less.”They discussed the popular assumption that Muslims and Jews are incapable of getting along.“It’s insulting,” Ms. Myers said. “It’s not correct. I wish people didn’t think that way.”
