Janice Harris Lord remembers Sept. 11, 2001, crystal clear.
She was sitting in her living room, packing up the abundance of books that would soon decorate the shelves of her new Arlington home. Humming from the TV filled the room as the Tarrant County resident prepared for her move.
Then a commentator’s voice, coming from the speakers, pierced the hiss of packing tape and rustling of boxes. When she looked up at the screen, Harris Lord saw the twin towers go down.
“This is going to change world history,” Harris Lord remembers the commentator saying.
In the days and weeks that followed, Harris Lord watched newscast after newscast document the aftermath. The 9/11 attacks inflicted a devastating emotional toll on Americans. Federal government officials investigated over 800 violent incidents against Arab Americans, Muslims, Sikhs, South Asian Americans and other individuals perceived as being from the Middle East or Asia since 9/11.
Harris Lord remembers feeling “something of a spiritual calling” to do something, but that “something” wasn’t exactly clear.
“I had no earthly idea what to do because, by then, I was realizing the enormity of it all. I am a social worker in a Texas town. What am I going to do?” she said.
In late 2001, it struck Harris Lord that there was something she could do: pull women of different faiths together.
By January 2002, Harris Lord formed Daughters of Abraham, a discussion group made up of local Muslim, Jewish and Christian women. The group serves as a venue for women to learn about and build friendships with women of different religions. In its 22-year history, the group has grown from 18 women to various regional groups in Fort Worth, Arlington, northeast Tarrant County and Dallas.
“We believe, and very strongly, that if a group of women from the three faiths could come to really love one another as sisters, then it could happen anywhere,” Harris Lord said.
Early meetings and group dynamics
Harris Lord remembers reaching out to her Disciples of Christ church, a local Arlington synagogue and Dr. Basheer Ahmed, founder and executive director of a Muslim-founded charity clinic in North Richland Hills.
Harris Lord persisted until, finally, six women from each faith were interested in her initiative.
However, the first meeting did not go according to plan. Eighteen women, including Harris Lord, eagerly gathered outside of a mosque in Fort Worth for the first meeting in January 2002 — only to find out that gates were locked and the group couldn’t get in.
“We’re trying to make a big impression here,” Harris Lord said. “So we just thought, ‘Well, let’s just go over to Central Market.’”
Inside the food hall of the grocery store, the women talked about guidelines for navigating discussions within the group. Attendees cannot proselytize or debate politics. Members are asked to honor the faith practices of the host faith community when visiting a house of worship different from their own.
“We were very clear early on that … we would not deny the differences of our faith, but our focus would be on finding the commonalities,” Harris Lord said.
From then on, the discussion group met monthly at a local church, synagogue and mosque in the Fort Worth and Arlington area on a rotating basis.
As the group began to grow in attendance, Harris Lord asked Adena Cytron-Walker, a Jewish woman, and Linda Steinsultz, a Christian woman, to lead a Daughters of Abraham group for women in northeast Tarrant County, including suburbs like Colleyville and the Hurst-Euless-Bedford area.
“I was honored that she thought of me,” Cytron-Walker said. “I was excited about this opportunity of bringing people together outside of a work environment.”
When Sheeza Mohsin moved to Tarrant County in 2010, she remembers looking for an interfaith group to join. When her friend told her about the Daughters of Abraham, she decided to give it a try.
While she was excited for her first meeting, Mohsin also remembers feeling anxious. She remembers anticipating being the minority in the group and wondered what kind of questions she would be asked.
But the new Tarrant County resident put faith in her friend’s recommendation to attend. She remembers feeling washed over with ease after meeting Cytron-Walker and seeing the guidelines the group had in place.
“Everyone seemed so loving and understanding and being a person who comes from the Muslim community living in Texas, that may not be the experience all the time,” Mohsin said. “Those guidelines eased my anxiety a lot.”
Navigating tragic events locally and abroad
Over the past year, the group has had to rely on its core guidelines more than ever to navigate tragic events. In the months following the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, the Daughters of Abraham group had to determine the best approach to its October 2023 meeting.
“Even though we talk about avoiding politics, it doesn’t mean it’s so taboo you can’t even say the word,” said Vicky Dobbs, who is part of the steering committee for the northeast Tarrant group. “It’s just that we’re not debating or trying to defend one position or another. Because, of course, it comes up.”
During that meeting last fall, women from Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths gathered to have conversations surrounding the thoughts and emotions from a humanitarian standpoint, Dobbs said.
“I said right up front, we don’t do politics,” Harris Lord said, referring to the October 2023 meeting. “But we do stand with all those who are suffering, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian … and everyone was in agreement with that.”
For the northeast Tarrant group, Mohsin remembers bringing Israeli and Palestinian women together to talk about the local impact. The relationships already built between women in the group helped the meeting become a space for listening to everyone’s thoughts, she said.
“It initially felt very difficult, and both of us were just praying that it would go well and not escalate,” Mohsin said, referring to the October 2023 meeting for the northeast Tarrant group. “It ended so beautifully because we had clear intentions. We wanted people to understand and notice the people behind all of those labels that we put on, people belonging to certain faiths and communities, that you find goodness in people.”
Beyond conversations about international events, Daughters of Abraham has also navigated events that happened in their communities.
On Jan. 15, 2022, Adena Cytron-Walker’s husband, and rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, was held hostage with others during a worship service at the Colleyville synagogue. The 11-hour standoff ended with all the hostages managing to escape.
“It was a very overwhelming time for me and many, many other people,” Cytron-Walker said. “I didn’t know if I could even show up to places, and I didn’t know if I would.”
Following the hostage crisis, the synagogue hosted a virtual meeting for people to collectively grieve and process what happened within their community. Mohsin, a licensed therapist, remembers the call she got from Cytron-Walker asking her to facilitate the group.
“So there I was facilitating, you know, a trauma and loss group with so many Jewish women attending, and they know I’m a Muslim person,” Mohsin said. “It was just such a beautiful and emotional experience for me, because I could see the kindness in that community.”
Finding solace in faith
Some women have integrated customs of other faiths into their lives as a result of the lessons they learned through Daughters of Abraham.
In the group’s two-decade history, the most poignant thing Harris Lord learned was the tradition that Jewish and Muslim families undergo when preparing a deceased loved one for burial.
Muslim and Jewish families participate in a tradition called ghusl in Arabic or tahara in Hebrew, which involves washing and purifying a body before burial. It is considered one of the greatest good deeds someone can do for another in the faiths.
When Harris Lord’s husband tragically died a dozen days after being diagnosed with West Nile virus, she knew she wanted to honor him in that way.
“(The hospice nurse) gave me some soap and water, and we shaved him, and I washed his hair and got it combed right, like he wanted it,” Harris Lord said. “It was beautiful. I think it helped me more with my grieving than anything, because I knew I had done the very last thing I could do for him.”
Learning lessons, looking to the future
As part of the northeast Tarrant steering committee, Mohsin hopes that Daughters of Abraham can grow to bring younger populations to the group so that the initiative can continue.
“We are short-changing our growth and learning when we close ourselves to learning about or trying to grow a friendship or relationship with someone who’s different from us,” she said.
Although Cytron-Walker no longer lives in Tarrant County, she keeps in touch with the women in the group. She hopes that members feel that they can take what they learn from Daughters of Abraham into other conversations they encounter in their day-to-day lives.
“I feel it’s really important that everybody has a community where they feel like they belong,” Cytron-Walker said. “And so for daughters, there are many people who feel like that’s their community.”
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org or @marissaygreene. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.