Muslims
and Jews in the West
The Shift in Perception
The
shifting Muslim position towards the Jews was augmented by the
fact that many Arab Jews embraced Zionism. Historic homes of Jewish
communities, such as the North Africa, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen,
witnessed massive exodus of Jews who chose to migrate to the
forcefully established Zionist entity in Palestine 1948, the year of
what the Israelis claim to be their year of independence, which was
actually the year the occupation of vast Palestinian territories
started . It turned out later after many Isreali intelligence
documents were disclosed that it was the Zionist movement’s acts of
terror and plotted crimes against individual Jewish citizens of Arab
countries that intimidated the Arab Jews and drove them to emigration,
under the assumption they are under threat and hence better move to
Israel. This Jewish shift in identity and loyalty drove many Arabs to
find it difficult to distinguish between the Zionist invaders and
settler who came all the way from Poland, Russia, America, Western
Europe or South Africa and the Jews who had been living with Arab
Muslims and Christians, and who, for many centuries, shared the same
history and civilisation with them.
In
spite of the undisguised secularist – even atheist - root of the
Zionist project, some Arab and Muslim thinkers deemed it necessary,
perhaps useful, to focus on a purely religious explanation for the
Zionist phenomenon. Through a re-reading of history aided by a
re-interpretation of the sacred text, these thinkers sought to prove
that Jews, by virtue of some inherited characteristics , have always
been corrupt, mischievous and ill intentioned, a portray that is new
to the Muslim mind of a fellow religious community they always found
good reasons to respect and co-exist with.
In
fact, the real input into this new Muslim attitude of dismay
toward the Jews and Judaism came from Christian anti-Jewish writings.
The most influential document in this regard has been the one entitled
“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which concludes that Jews
have hatched a global conspiracy aimed at imposing their control over
the world and at subjugating all else to their influence so as to
serve their own interests. The occupation of Palestine and the
establishment of a Jewish state have been said by the believers in
this theory to be a crucial part of this Jewish conspiracy. Some
Muslim writers have gone as far as interpreting the Qur’anic
narrative vis-à-vis the Israelites and the Jews in light of what the
Protocols had claimed. Hostility to the Zionist project may have
blurred the eyes of many Muslims from seeing the difference between
the Qur’anic chastisement of bad conduct and ill-manners, which some
Israelites and some Jews practised – and which Muslims and
Christians have been warned from copying, and the Qur’anic
injunction concerning the right of Jews, as well as Christians, to
Covenant rights the violation of which by any Muslim is a sin in the
eyes of Allah.
Undoubtedly,
the Zionist project, with its emerging ultra-orthodox advocates- bears
major responsibility for this shift in the Arab and Muslim perception
of Jews and Judaism. After all it was this Zionist project that
embroiled Judaism in its intrigues so as to bestow religious
legitimacy on it and to gain the support of the world’s Jewry. The
myths of a ‘Jewish nation’, the ‘Promised Land’ and the
‘Chosen People of Jehovah’ were revived in order to convince the
Jews, most of whom had initially been opposed to Zionism, to adopt the
Zionist solution to the Jewish problem in the West. The ultimate
objective had been to persuade the Jews to sponsor the State of
Israel, which had been given a theological dimension that transformed
it in the Zionised Jewish conscience into ‘the end of time
Messiah’. The ideology was in the beginning condemned by
Jewish religious leaders as an adulteration of Jewish faith that had
been predominant until the beginning of the 20th century and which
forbade Jewish migration to Palestine with the purpose of settling
there permanently. Many Jewish Orthodox schools of thought viewed such
migration as a violation of Judaism and an act against the will of God
and that this amounted to the sin of apostasy.
Many
Arabs and Muslims still do not realise that anti-Zionist Jews, who do
not recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel, do still exist.
In spite of the gradual decline in their numbers during the first
seven decades of the 20th century, anti-Zionist Jews are now believed
to be emerging again and gaining ground. There are indications that
the trend of Jewish anti-Zionism is growing. This may, at least
partly, be due to the increasing public consciousness of the inhumane,
racist and fascist policies of the State of Israel whose policy and
actions contravene the sublime values which people of religion from
all faiths respect and seek to protect.
In
essence, the Zionist project is a Western colonial enterprise whose
success depends on two main factors. The first factor is the
determination of a powerful West to see this enterprise continue as an
extension of the Western capitalist realm. The second factor is the
disempowerment of the Arabs and the Muslims to guarantee an Israeli
upper hand in the whole region. The fact that Iraq was attacked for an
alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction while Israel enjoys
happily its nuclear arsenal is but and example for the double
standards of American foreign policies and the pressure it exercises
over the International community and the UN..
As
for the first factor, so long as the Zionist project serves the
purposes of the American New World Order, and so log as the economic
and military capabilities of this World Order permit it to prolong the
life of Israel, no real effort will be put in altering the Israeli
policies and their committing repeated brutal atrocities. However,
those who have learned the lessons of history find it plausible to
believe that this situation cannot continue forever. The Western
nations are becoming more aware of the situation, and the global civil
society is more active than ever, networking for peace and solidarity
withy the Palestinian. Israel, as an entity or an ultra modern
colonial territorial state, simply lacks the ability to pursue its
goal in an order based on law, and therefore would not survive without
the U.S. and Jewish Diaspora unconditioned support that supplies it
financially and militarily.
As
for the second factor, the disadvantaged situation of the Arabs and
Muslims will not last forever and will sometime in the future change
dramatically. Evidently, the Muslim world is witnessing an
intellectual and cultural awakening that is destined to initiate a
long-awaited Islamic authentic progressive reform that should
result in a transformation from weakness to strength. The
steadfastness of the Palestinian people, and the escalation of their
uprising to a level that has caused the Israelis to panic in confusion
and to question the viability of their own state, is one clear signal
that the “post-Zionist” era is imminent.
Muslims
may contribute effectively to bringing about a just resolution to the
conflict in Palestine by sparing no effort they can exert in order to
expose the inhumanity and racist nature of the Zionist entity in
Palestine. Some of this effort must be directed toward the Jewish
communities in the Diaspora to convince them through debate and
dialogue to end their support for Israel and to dissociate from the
Zionist project, and to launch a humanist universal endeavor by
contemporary Jewry . The Jews of the world need to hear from the
Muslims that we believe their support for the Zionist project will not
do good and that the conflict in the Middle East is not between the
Muslims and the Jews or between Islam and Judaism- for Islam does
indeed recognize Judaism as a revealed monotheistic religion and
accords its adherents with respect .
The
task of reaching out to the genuinely humanist and also authentically
orthodox Jews and debate and cooperate with them within the global
civil society lies first and foremost with the Muslims who live in the
West where they have open opportunities to deal with the Jews and
coexist with them as citizens of the democratic societies in which
they resided. The Muslims in the West just cannot avoid the Jews, who
have over the years established themselves well in the political and
economic circles and who have great influence over the media and
consequently over the formation of public opinion.
But
to embrace this constructive interactive vision, Muslims need first to
correct some of the erroneous conceptions that have spread among them,
especially in the West. This should involve a revision of false and
deceiving concepts that make no distinction between believing Jews and
Zionists. The first is a bearer of Jewish faith and if not involved in
aggression against the Muslims is entitled to equal rights of
Covenant. The second is a bearer of a settler colonial
enterprise, an act of aggression that should be resisted and deterred.
This revision necessitates restoring respect to the contextual
interpretation of the Qur’anic text which clearly distinguishes in
its narration of the history of the Israelites and the Jews between
those who do well and those who do mischief and between those who are
righteous and those who are deviant. Labelling and name-calling of
Jews, such as the widely used phrase in some Arabic rhetoric
describing Jews as descendents of pigs and apes, is racist, inhumane
and, therefore, un-Islamic. Muslims are advised to refrain from and
rise above explaining their problems in the light of a simple Jewish
conspiracy theory , or analyzing past and present history according to
it .The world of politics and international balances is a world of
complex notions of power and long term planning and careful coalition
building , and instead of demonising the believers of another religion
Muslims should work harder to uncover the nature of the Zionist entity
and reform their discourse on global justice, and frame the legitimate
rights of Palestinians within wider struggles for equality world wide
. The International conference against Racism in Durban August 2001
was an example of how advocates of freedom and justice can lobby
across boundaries and religious traditions .
Respect
should also be reinstated to the Qur’anic justice-based notion of
tadafu’ (constructive interaction or dialectical strife and
interplay) as a paradigm for international and human relations, which
is much more credible and more explanatory than the conspiracy theory.
While the Qur’anic paradigm provides motivation and hope, conspiracy
theory provides nothing but frustration, distrust and despair.
To
sum up, Muslims need to develop a rational and solid universal
discourse that encompasses a clear and sound conception of what the
Jews represent to us and what their position is in our faith and
history. This is particularly important in the West, and specifically
in the case of Muslims involved in community relations, interfaith
dialogues and in various state institutions, where questions are
constantly raised about how Arabs and Muslims view the Jews.
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