Lisa Killinger, left, and Gail Karp pose for a photo in 2023.
By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger
Pax Christi USA and the Campaign for Nonviolence are sponsoring a talk Aug. 19 at 6:30 p.m. at St. Anthony Parish in Davenport featuring longtime community activists Lisa Killinger, who is Muslim, and Cantor Gail Karp, who is Jewish. They will give a presentation on behalf of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a Jewish/Muslim interfaith fellowship.
The two Quad-Citians, who are also longtime friends, co-founded the Sisterhood’s local chapter in 2017. They took their inspiration from Atiya Aftab and Sheryl Olitzky, who founded the national Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom and received the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award in 2023 from the Pacem in Terris Coalition. The coalition also honored Killinger and Karp with the “One Among Us Justice Award,” which the Diocese of Davenport oversees, for their effort to foster relationships and peace locally.
“Lisa and I already had a relationship, and the trust and the access to the community,” Karp told The Catholic Messenger in a story announcing their award in 2023. The Quad City chapter of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom focuses on building friendships, baking bread, feeding the hungry and celebrating each other’s faith.
Killinger is a longtime community activist and a recently retired professor at Palmer College in Davenport where she worked for 30 years. During her tenure at the college, she received numerous awards for her research and teaching.
In the early 2000s, she was the first woman and non-immigrant to serve as a president of the local Muslim Community, where she was re-elected three times for a total of six years. She also served for the past 20 years in the leadership council at her local mosque. Over the past four decades, she has made hundreds of presentations on Islam. She is the mother of four and grandmother of two.
Karp, emerita of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, is a volunteer and conference speaker. She has also performed solo concerts in more than a dozen states. A mother of three and the spouse of a rabbi, Karp’s personal mission is, “If I am not for me, who will be? But if I am only for me, what am I? And if not now, then when?”
She has led sisterhood interfaith programs with the Muslim community as well as the Catholic and Protestant communities to promote multicultural understanding and educate others about the dangers of human trafficking.
