The recent Israeli misadventure in Lebanon has exposed to the world the depth of feeling in the Muslim world against the state of Israel. That should surprise no one, but what should concern Muslims is how our faith seems to be hijacked by current political conflicts and perceived cultural contests. I have seen so-called “secular Muslims” retain the least admirable qualities amongst some Arabs (blind anti-Jewish hatred). In essence they have lost the most beautiful gift the Arab world has been given, but retained the ugliest.
Legitimate critiques of Zionism and of the wars of Israel have given way to polemics about Judaism, the Jews, their perfidy and their omnipotent power in the world. The last statement is one of pure kufr (unbelief in God) which, taken to its extreme, may even put one outside the fold of Islam. What Muslims appear to have forgotten is that the Jewish state was allowed victory over the Arabs by the permission of God alone. Long before it was created, Muslims had lost their religion, they were mere serfs in their own lands administered by the British and French, and they were sinking slowly into atheism. If we believe that victory comes from Allah , then so also must defeat.
In the Western world we routinely see criticism of the actions of a distant nation-state, boil over into uglier rants about a particular people. We have also seen opportunists gloat over the murder of 6 million Jews and simultaneously deny it happened. To a Jew the pain that this must cause is difficult to imagine, but we have a glimpse of that when we see Western commentators deny or dismiss the suffering or the deaths of Muslims in Western wars of aggression. Muslims are rightly outraged by the manifestly insincere apologies proffered after a strike on a civilian target in Kabul or Qana. How then do we expect Jews to behave when they are tormented by an almost gleeful denial of their suffering? What is more appalling is that this denial is motivated purely by the desire to cause pain. If he believes that the holocaust did not happen, then why do people like Ahmadinejad refer to Jews as Nazis in order to collectively vilify them?
If we rightly take deep offence at the depiction of our Prophet (saw) as a monster then why do we not loudly condemn a grotesque cartoon competition about the mass slaughter (like animals) of a people who we are linked to by the mystic cords of ancestry? We insist that elements within the Western world see through our eyes for a change, but we retain our Semitic scotoma.
Over recent years we have seen a genuine attempt by Jews from around the world to understand and speak forcefully in the defence of Palestinians, often at great personal cost to themselves. They have done so because they retain a desire to speak the truth even if it be against their own tribal loyalties. If that sounds familiar, it is because that is what we also are commanded by our faith to do. Those people who witnessed it, remember an extraordinary sight of an elderly Jewish man (a survivor of the German death camps), lecturing Bill Clinton at a holocaust memorial ceremony. He said to Clinton, that the president should be expending all his efforts, and the full reach of his office, to prevent another European genocide of Semites (Muslims on this occasion), rather than attending a Holocaust memorial. It is sobering indeed, to see a Jew begging an American to save the lives of Muslims.
We should be measured in our public comments, we must take active steps to ensure that rabble rousers, and European anti-Semites do not whisper into our ears and we must make genuine connections with religious Jews, away from the spotlight, and work together on the many issues of common concern in a world that is increasingly hostile to both Semitic traditions. Vitriolic anti-Jewish rhetoric is not a triumph of our interests but rather marks a defeat of them. Our fates in the modern world are inextricably linked to the Jews and we must work sincerely with those who have similar qualities within their community.
Muslims do not realise what battles Jews fought for pluralism in the Western democracies that were previously very hostile to them. Without Jewish activism there would be no Islamic schools, no Halal meat and no male circumcision and perhaps not even any mosques (remember that the first Ottoman diplomats had to be baptised before they were allowed on British soil at Portsmouth (during the reign of Victoria).
Muslims owe the Jewish community what we owe the rest of mankind, to treat them with with justice and compassion, even if it is not returned by all elements within that community. We also need to speak the truth, even if it is against our own kith and kin, and even if it appears to be against our own interests.
In the fading light of the Hijaz in the 6th century, the soul of our faith was cast when Muhammad (saw) the final messenger of God was offered a choice by an angel. He had been in Taif all day inviting the people to Islam, they had not only rejected him but had sent the village thugs to assault him and chase him out of town like a common criminal. For an aristocrat from the pre-eminent city of the Arabs, to be treated this way by street thugs of a village must have been especially painful and humiliating. Jibrel (as) offered him the destruction of Taif between two adjoining mountains, an offer that was immediately rejected.
Mercy as the victor is easy, but it is in showing mercy as a victim that is at the heart of our Prophetic tradition.
13 comments ↓
The clergy is at fault. Countless Muslim scholars have ill mouthed the Jewish race and blame them for everything: they killed the prophets, they created shiism, they stole palestine, they made bahaism, they control the worlds finance, they kill muslims, they do this and theyve done that. They further brag about how theyre all going to get killed when Jesus comes back etc…And if you dont hate jews your not a (good) muslim. Its a theology of hate instilled in the Muslim populace. And i do think its the fault of the sheikhs who emphasise on Quranic and Hadith passages which support their ill message against jews. Only if these sheikhs were more humane.
Thank you for your contribution, That would be true if Islam had a clergy, but it does not and never has.
There are some Islamic intellectuals and scholars who have the attitude that you suggest, but there are many “secular” Muslims who have never set foot in a Masjid who also hold such views.
The study of this phenomenon suggest that it is a recently imported contagion, from a modern Europe largely in the service of Arab nationalist aims, by people such as Nasser (this is the assessment of Bernard Lewis). The influence of religious rhetoric is so recent, it has been only in the last 20 years and therefore warrants commentary.
If there had been an authentic religious basis for Muslim anti-semitism then it would have been more pronounced the longer one delves into antiquity, but this is not the case, rather it is the reverse.
The history of Muslim and Jewish cultural co-operation is so deep that it cannot be recounted here except to mention a few points.
1. it was the Jewish community that aided and supported the Muslim conquest of Spain, which they saw as liberation from European oppression. They were made to pay a fearsome price 2500 years later in the inquisition.
2. There are large Jewish communities in North Africa and Turkey, who have lived in piece with conservative religious Muslims for a thousand years.
3. During the Bosnian war, the rabbi of Sarajevo said that the only time his community had felt safe was under Ottoman rule.
So there are some Islamic personalities that hold odious views but this tradition is a staunchly secular one.
sorry, it should be “500 years later” , otherwise they would be yet to pay it.
I think there is a religous basis. The Quran and Hadith aren’t too Jewish friendly. Correct that they are the people of the bookm and at times they are mentioned with respect blah blah but the number of verses / hadiths not in favour of the Jews outnumber those that are. Like the Hadith which goes on about the second coming of Jesus and how Jews will be defeated and when they hide the stones and trees will speak to the Muslims and say ‘O muslim, theres a jew hiding behind me, come cut his head off’. And the verses of the Quran which talk about their guilt in killing prophets and denying Jesus’ messiahship, maybe people will like to view this as a platform to hate them?
Good stuff, Austrolabe. This page has been linked at Catallaxy – see here.
[...] – Baybers wrote about the Muslims reforming the way they think about the Jews: Over recent years we have seen a genuine attempt by Jews from around the world to understand and speak forcefully in the defence of Palestinians, often at great personal cost to themselves. They have done so because they retain a desire to speak the truth even if it be against their own tribal loyalties. If that sounds familiar, it is because that is what we also are commanded by our faith to do. Those people who witnessed it, remember an extraordinary sight of an elderly Jewish man (a survivor of the German death camps), lecturing Bill Clinton at a holocaust memorial ceremony. He said to Clinton, that the president should be expending all his efforts, and the full reach of his office, to prevent another European genocide of Semites (Muslims on this occasion), rather than attending a Holocaust memorial. It is sobering indeed, to see a Jew begging an American to save the lives of Muslims [More…] [...]
Law Student: All of those things you mention refer to specific incidents or specific groups. They don’t establish rules for the treatment of non-Muslims that extend across the ages. If that was the case, then Jews would never have held positions of authority and power in Islamic governments nor been provided sanctury when fleeing persecution in Europe after the Inquisition.
Thank you for your considered thoughts.
In a world where rational, clear thinking is often rare in matters such as these, and sensationalism (wherever it comes from) is highlighted, your words help me believe there is hope for conciliation.
I hope you are, or will become, a leader of your community.
Your Jewish Brother
Thank you for your supportive comments Simon,
There is always hope of conciliation and we are optimistic that Muslims and Jews will resume a harmonious relationship that has previously lasted a millennium.
SF
Baybers
Baybers,
I stumbled on this site for the first time today. I would like to ask your opinion; perhaps you will be so kind as to answer.
I will begin by telling you about myself, to establish at least some context. I am an American, and an atheist. I know much about Christianity, and little about Islam other than what I see and read in the news.
There are many Christian sects, and they have a very wide range of beliefs. I imagine that the same is likely true of Islam, but what I see on television and read in the news is always the same. Violent men who will stop at nothing. Men who kill women and children in the name of God, and tell me that I must submit to Islam or die.
I will never submit.
I don’t believe that these men represent all Muslims, or most. But they speak with the loudest voices, and their actions cannot be ignored. And I have not forgotten the mobs I saw celebrating in the streets after the Towers fell. The men who kill for God may be a minority, but they appear to have much support. They loom so large that to me they have in fact become Islam. The quiet Muslims, the ones who believe that in matters of religion there is no compulsion, they are absent from the stage of world events. Their silence is deafening.
I fear that the men who kill for God will eventually commit some act so heinous that it will at last awaken the wrath of the west. On that day, one I hope can be avoided, there will be a slaughter the likes of which the world has never seen. I fear we will annihilate much of the Muslim world. I want to learn how to avoid this, if it is possible.
You seem to me the almost mythical (from my experience) moderate Muslim. Do you have any words for me? I ask with all sincerity.
Thank you for taking the time to post such a detailed comment.
I suppose that I should begin with a clarification. I am not a “religious moderate”, indeed around this place, that term is one of abuse.
I am not a moderate Muslim, in the same way that you would not be of moderate intellect or moderate truthfulness. All the authors here would consider themselves religious fundamentalists.
The religious moderates can be found here: (clutching their teddy bears)
http://austrolabe.com/2006/06/.....acre-wood/
SO this is the really interesting part of the discussion, How can I hold such views and be a religious medievalist/fundementalist ? The response is of course that these views are mainstream views held be my fundamentalist religious teachers, which I (ipso facto) endorse.
I suppose that if someone told me to convert at sword point, I also would refuse (so we are in agreement) Such a conversion would not be religiously valid anyway.
As for the bleak future that you imagine, many Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan would say that it has already come to pass.
Sunni Islam is not bedevilled with multiple religious sects, in the same way Christianity is. But there are a wide variation of political views. An example of this is the religious belief of a Bin Laden is not to dissimilar to most Muslims on every important religious question, but where we differ profoundly, is his willingness to ignore vast chunks of established religious law, in order to achieve a short term political end. In that respect he is the religious innovator and the “moderate” Muslim and not I.
Do I fear an apocalypse for the Muslim world at the hands of an Imperial America ? No I don’t fear anything except God.
If I have any worries, then it is in the opposite direction, that Americans will cross some invisible line of mechanised barbarity and your beautiful civilisation will be destroyed by God.
The Muslim Ummah is much more complex (and often contradictory), then many non-muslims appreciate. If you peruse the posts here it may surprise you to know that some of us draw our religious instruction (at least in part) from the most conservative school of religious thought in Saudi Arabia
So my defence of the Jews is not in a flight from by faith, but is in fact instructed by it.
Baybers,
Please accept my apology. My words reflect only my lack of understanding; I intended no abuse.
Thank you for your answer. It was illuminating.
don’t worry! I was just pointing out that “Moderate” when applied to a praxis such as religious observance is not the ideal.
Please also don’t feel the need to apologise, Muslims who feign outrage (as we are witnessing at the moment around the world) really get up our nose too.
Non-Muslims often feel that we are porcupines that curl up into a little ball, whenever someone challenges us.
I just wanted to say that religious Muslims (such as us) do hold reasonable views (in addition to being wild eyed, bearded, pyjama wearing fundamentalists)
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