“The Jews are called human beings, but the non-Jews are not humans. They are beasts.”
Heard that before? According to numerous websites, including this Australian Islamic website, it’s from the Jewish holy book. It forms part of a collection of quotes, reportedly sourced from Jewish religious texts, that are supposed to show a Jewish contempt for non-Jewish life. Needless to say, these quotes have been given a good airing in recent weeks on mailing lists and other forums as some sought to explain the Israeli attack on Lebanon by referencing Jewish sacred texts and associated exegesis.
The problem, of course, is that whilst the quote makes a compelling caption for some anti-Israeli posters, it doesn’t exist in the text to which it is referenced. As British blogger Kashif discovers:
I started off with this quote, according to the article, found in Baba Mezia 114b. “The Jews are called human beings, but the non-Jews are not humans. They are beasts.”
Hmm… i thought, i can’t find that anywhere here.
Nevermind, could be a simple mistake; onto the next one: “Sexual intercourse between Gentiles is like intercourse between animals” in Sanhedrin 74b.
Again searching through the text, i found nothing that even remotely sounded like the above.
Kashif points to an interesting quote-by-quote discussion of the document which is worth reading. It seems that all of these supposed quotes are fabricated, mistranslated or taken grossly out of context.
The irony is that these are the very things that Muslims — quite rightly — complain about. Particularly in discussion of issues such as jihad, the marriage of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) to Aisha, the status of non-Muslims under Islamic law, or al-wala’ wa’l bara’, it is not uncommon for those with an axe to grind to take verses of the Qu’ran or hadith out of context or apply to them a meaning that does not exist in the classical texts. In discussing other religions, we should make sure that we apply the same standards that we would expect others to apply to our own faith.
As Kashif reminds us:
The embarrassment was compounded afterwards when i realised that you could find this article on Muslim sites. Where is the research from Muslims before sticking this stuff online? Verifying the authenticity of what we communicate to others is not only part of our religious heritage (the isnad/chain of narration) but it is also a command from Allah:
“O you who believe! if an evil-doer comes to you with a report, look carefully into it, lest you harm a people in ignorance, then be sorry for what you have done.” al-Qur’an 49:6
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For crying out loud! There’s plenty of objectionable stuff in Judaism without the need for fabrication. There is equally problematic stuff in Islam – less in Christianity because it is less prescriptive in general and because it experienced schism before the proliferation of doctrine could become entrenched. But we can safely say that if we dig around Catholicism long enough, we’ll find plenty that’s distasteful.
And so what?
Don’t get me wrong: I am a believer, and quite devout at that. But just because I worship, doesn’t mean that I believe that the divine is word-for-word behind the doctrine that I believe men produced.
I generally think that the big three religions, having been inspied by Allah, were all on the right track at their inception in orienting Humanity towards a general moral code that seems absent from preceding societies but is at the very essence of what we now understand to be good and evil.
But I think we confuse doctrine for the word of God, delude ourselves that the doctrines masqueradiing as the word of God have never changed, and therefore contort ourselves into justifying everything written in the name of our religion.
Jews most crtainly do have in their texts writings that we would consider unacceptably racist today… BUT that’s the point: they were written millennia ago. And whatever any Jew tells you, he does not and cannot live exactly according to those words. Even the most retrograde cannot escape certain elements of modernity and his worldview must be affected accordingly.
The same is true of Muslims. Why on earth can we not jsut admit that Mohammed married a child because that’s what happened back then. He did not commit an act that was considered vile by his society as such an act would be considered today. That’s how it goes: morality evolves as humanity’s understanding evolves. We now understand that the age at which a woman can give consent to sex is in her middle to late teen years. We now consider consent an issue at all! Consent was not an issue – and is still often not an issue – in less modern societies…
Basically, we can take from Mohammed the inspiration of the man who was in contact with Allah, who showed great moral conviction and strength, and who sought to reshape his world in the image of divine will. That’s fantastic. And quite enough for me. I have no need to conduct an anthropological, forensic investigation of each and every act committed by the prophet.
There’s plenty for everyone of every religion to be ashamed of if we are obsessively trying to immitate the exact social mores of millennia ago. But not if we are able to distinguish social mores from basic princpals.
aaarrrgh: bthe last word shoulde be, “principles” – excuse fatigue induced stuff up.
“There’s plenty for everyone of every religion to be ashamed of”
There are many things that I wish to say on the previous post by Lala, but I will restrict myself to only a few observations.
There is a frequent statement made that “all religions have somethings to be ashamed about”, is patently a false assertion since religions do not have the faculty of consciousness and therefore cannot comprehend shame or other emotion etc..
I realize that what Lala meant to say was that all religious traditions have some part of their collective history where evil has occurred in the name of that religion by a group from within it. This is an unsurprising realization, but we should not be held collectively guilty for that? So what, people also murder in the name of secular, nationalistic and ethnic imperatives,
I do not need to feel guilt for all of that, indeed it was a pre-modern Quran that tells me that each individual carries their own sins to the grave, individually and NOT collectively. In fact contemporary left wing guilt culture teaches the more primitive axiom that we are all somehow responsible for all things even before our own birth. If we take communal responsibility to its logical conclusion then the brotherhood of mankind would each be individually responsible for every other human from the dawn of time.
The second point is not confuse modernity with progress in human social development. This is also unsupported by evidence. The mass murder of the jews by european christians reached its zenith in the modern age. So did Stalin’s gulags in which 12 million Russians died. Japan’s extermination of 13 million manchurians also occurred in modernity. WW2 will 65 million deaths was also a modern war, the calculated mass murder of civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima was as a result of modern scientific discovery, The mass slaughter of the mau mau in Kenya and the congolese were by “modern civilized” europeans (English and Belgians)
So to assert that humanity has evolved and is more civilized now than in antiquity is wrong. It would be more correct to say that humanity goes through phases of time and place where it is more or less civilized. The raw numbers suggest that we are less civilized now than in anytime in human history.
Hi Baybers. You’ve said some interesting things, but at the same time, I think you’ve mistaken some of my points.
“There is a frequent statement made that “all religions have somethings to be ashamed about”, is patently a false assertion since religions do not have the faculty of consciousness and therefore cannot comprehend shame or other emotion etc..”
Actually, I did not claim that religions have the capacity for shame. There was no anthropomorphising at all. I wrote, perhaps clunkily, about elements in religions that induce shame in aherents – particularly those elements that become anachronistic for the believer.
“I realize that what Lala meant to say was that all religious traditions have some part of their collective history where evil has occurred in the name of that religion by a group from within it.”
No. That is not what I meant. While it is indeed true that each religion has been used to justify bestial acts, I was writing of elements within the doctrines themselves which are problematic.
“This is an unsurprising realization, but we should not be held collectively guilty for that?”
That’s just it, Baybers. I was saying exactly the opposite. That collective guilt about problematic doctrine is fruitless and pointless if we believe that doctrine is of man, and therefore imperfect, and boundd by the mores of the time and place in which it was written.
“So what, people also murder in the name of secular, nationalistic and ethnic imperatives,”
Baybers, this is straw man stuff. I am no fan of atheism, nor am I one of those ill-educated fools who argues that all cruelty in the world is inspired by religion. You are not arguing against anything I wrote in the previous post.
“I do not need to feel guilt for all of that, indeed it was a pre-modern Quran that tells me that each individual carries their own sins to the grave, individually and NOT collectively.”
But, Baybers!!! That is exactly what I was saying! You needn’t feel guilt! But I was writing on not feeling guilt for anachronistic doctrine, not about feeling guilt for bestial acts committed in the name of religion. I have little time for collective historical guilt anyway. It is based in feeble logic, I’m sure you’d agree. Again you attribute to me an argument I never made.
“In fact contemporary left wing guilt culture teaches the more primitive axiom that we are all somehow responsible for all things even before our own birth. If we take communal responsibility to its logical conclusion then the brotherhood of mankind would each be individually responsible for every other human from the dawn of time.”
Absolutely! Save me from the leftists (tho I would also like to be spared the ministrations of rightists and religo fundies as well – let’s just say, save me from all extremists)
“The second point is not confuse modernity with progress in human social development. This is also unsupported by evidence.”
This is interesting! I agree up to a point. It may seem that any linear progression of human rights’ development is negated by by terrible episodes of violence. For example, the French Revolution with its concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity also ushered in the ideology of state terror.
However, progress need not be uninterupted to exist. It can resume its path even after the most terrible occurrences. For example, Germany was far more developed in the arena of human rights than, say China, prior to WW2. Whereas Germany industrialised genocide, China did not. BUT After the aberration that was the holocaust, Germany resumed its progress and now boasts a human rights record seond to none. China still lags.
“The mass murder of the jews by european christians reached its zenith in the modern age. So did Stalin’s gulags in which 12 million Russians died. Japan’s extermination of 13 million manchurians also occurred in modernity.”
This is not an intellectually rigorous way to look at the issue. Just because killing became industrialised does not mean that the evil itself became greater. The means to kill do not correlate precisely with the motives and intent behind the killing. So, the behaviour of the Christians in the Crusades, when they tried to kill every Jewish man woman and child they could in their march across Europe to the Holy Land cannot be seen as less morally repugnant simply because they did not have the tools to wreak greater havoc and misery.
“WW2 will 65 million deaths was also a modern war, the calculated mass murder of civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima was as a result of modern scientific discovery, The mass slaughter of the mau mau in Kenya and the congolese were by “modern civilized” europeans (English and Belgians)”
Baybers, nowhere will you ever see me say that modernity has solved man’s ills and has produced utopia anywhere. You are not arguing a sophisticated point. The horrors of modernity are obvious. But such horrors are not the product of grotesque distortions of morality, but simply the product of improved means of causing harm – and the desire to do so has forever been an element of humanity. Such evil inclination transcends the temporal and divine realms.
“So to assert that humanity has evolved and is more civilized now than in antiquity is wrong.”
I am sorry, but it is demonstrable, in terms of concrete indicies of wellbeing, that we have progressed and that there has been an undeniable trend towards the protection of the rights of the individual.
“It would be more correct to say that humanity goes through phases of time and place where it is more or less civilized.”
This is an interesting contention. Would you care to elaborate?
“The raw numbers suggest that we are less civilized now than in anytime in human history.”
?
What on earth do you mean? we live longer, healthier, wealthier lives, most of us – even in the developing world – and our rights are far more likely to be protected by law. Women, in Particular should thank Allah for the legal innovations that offer them protection, because however imperfect, they are better than anything that has come before.
There is a book called Judaism’s strange Gods by Michael A. Hoffman where you can find many of the hateful scripture in Judaism. He includes footnotes and many of his quotes come from Jewish sources.
There is another book written by an Israeli Jew that discusses the negative aspects of Judaism. The book is called Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak. On page 24 of the book he writes
In 1962, a part of the Maimonidean Code …the so-called Book of Knowledge, which contains the most basic rules of Jewish faith and practice, was published in Jerusalem in a bilingual edition, with the English translation facing the Hebrew text. The latter has been restored to its original purity, and the command to exterminate Jewish infidels appears in it in full: ‘It is a duty to exterminate them with one’s own hands.’ IN the English translation this is somewhat softened to: ‘It is a duty to take active measures to destroy them.’ But then the Hebrew text goes on to specify the prime examples of ‘infidels’ who must be exterminated: ‘Such as Jesus of Nazareth and his pupils, and Tzadoq and Baitos and their pupils, may the name of the wicked rot.’ Not one word of this appears in the English text on the facing page.
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