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Book Islam And The Problem Of IsraelBook Islam And The Problem Of Israel
It's easy to find anti-Israel books in Malaysia, and I figured this book would give me a chuckle. While the book did start out with some really wild assertions
about the far reaching nefarious plans of colonialists such as Great Britain and America did most things solely to stunt Muslim progress and unity, the book did
conclude with some interesting comments on Jewishness, Zionism, and the Islamic solution based on rationalism and protection of those who are not at war with Islam.
The book started with the claim that Israel was planted in it's location solely to divide the Muslims in Africa from the Muslims in Arabia. Then it continued with the claim that the colonialists have planted many Israel like situations throughout the world just to frustrate Muslim progress and unity. For example, did you know that Singapore was planted solely to hold back the Muslims in Malaysia? The book totally misses the idea that many of the people in places like Singapore may have went there out of a desire to pursue a better life for themselves, not just as puppets of anti-Muslim colonial powers bent on inconveniencing Islam.
The book presents an interesting history of Western Christendom's relationship with Judaism. It relates the freeze and thaws that happened. It speaks of fundamental Christian doctrines in disparaging terms. It claims these doctrines, like original sin where the sin of someone in the past is passed down and creates responsibility in the present, are the fundamental reason why the Christian mind can hold present day Jews responsible for something that Jews did in the distant past, that is, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The book then talks about the conflict between Biblical revelation and scientific reason, and how scientific reason has generally won out. The effect of scientific reason is to force Biblical texts that used to be accepted literally to be allegorized. Islamic scholars also lead the way to disputing the divine origins of the Bible with textual criticism.
The book talks about what parts of the Old Testament are accepted by Islam, as the Jewish people are refered to as "people of the book", or "people of the scripture". It portrays the Old Testament as having two themes: An Islamicly acceptable theme of a universalist God of all people, and an ethnocentric God who is tied to a people, and even a particular plot of land. The Islamic view is that tying God to a people, or to a plot of land, is shirk, a term used to characterize polytheism, because it elevates things such as the people or the place to a coequal status with God.
The book details the intense persecution that Jews endured in Western Christian countries, and how they succeeded in the endeavors they were allowed to pursue. Their success set them up for extra hatred by the Western Christians. Also the book describes how soveriegns often dealt with the Jews collectively for issues like taxation through their rabbis, rather than individually, thus giving immense power to the rabbis.
The enlightment, with it's focus on reason, is supposed to be very acceptable to Islam. Jews dealt with the conflict between their historical literal interpretation of the Torah as the the writings of Moses, and the assault by reason and biblical textual criticism and allegorization of the text. Overall, the European Jews prefered reason, and began to "reform" their faith.
Also described is how the Jewish people faced the pressures of persecution and the demands to Christianize and assimilate in the European countries. As they assimilated, they lost their Jewishness. The "advancement" of reform Judaism was however unknown among the Russian Jews.
Eventually, the Jewish people had little difference from the Christians around them. But they were still hated by the Europeans, and other countries, because of their heritage.
Zionism came along to capitalize on the Jewish dilema of traditional faith and practices, vs. assimilation. It took advantage of nationalist tendencies to begin promoting Jewishness as a kind of ethnicity, and as an ethnic group, promoting a nationalism that needed a specific place to call home. Several alternatives were looked at, but eventually zionism decided to center on the area of Palestine as the only area that Jews could return to. In fact, eventually, it was declared one could not be a Jew unless they returned to Israel.
Zionism as a political force began manipulating the colonialists through the Balfour Declaration, and the British Mandate on Palestine. This book relates how Zionists bought land from absentee landlords, which is one of the claims that pro-Israel apologists (Zionists) make about why the Israeli occupation of it's current land is justified. But this book relates the ways these absentee landlords came to acquire title to the land: Either through deals with corrupt sultanates, or deals with taxing authorities who were manipulated by Zionists to raise taxes to a level that the Palestinian residents couldn't pay in lean years. These properties were then sold to absentee landlords, who allowed the Palestinians to remain on their lands. To the Palestinian inhabitant of the land, the name shown on a distant tax roll was of no effect. The Palestinian could operate the land, rent it out to others, even "sell" the occupation of the land. Whether he paid money annually to a tax collector, or to an absentee landlord, it was no real difference.
Later when the Zionists were only able to buy up 3-4% of the land, they then took advantage of the colonialists to obtain more land. The Palestinian residents were extremely limited in their civil rights. When only a very small number of Jews migrated to the newly opened lands, the Zionists manipulated the home countries of the Jews to persecute them in various ways to that more Jews would be willing to uproot and escape to Israel. When they arrived in Israel, the Palestinian occupants of the land were then forced off the land at gunpoint, often not even allowed to get their belongings. After the residents were forcefully removed, the Jews moved in and took over their housing and posessions. The zionists continued to use terror techniques to empty Palestine and transfer abandoned Palestinian homes and properties to incoming Jews.
The book then goes on to claim that the best time that the Jews ever had were as residents of Islamic countries. According to the book, Muhamed decreed that anyone living peacefully within Islamic lands should receive the protection of the Islamic state. Supposedly, Jews enjoyed greater protection, and less persecution, under Islamic rule than under and Western Christian rule. However, as the book points out, some Jews treacherously broke their covenant to live at peace, and then had to be pushed out of Islamic lands.
But the book goes on to relate the ways that Zionism has been a failure in providing security, a failure in stopping assimilation, and a failure in enabling Judaism to "blossom". Jews should enjoy the right to immigrate to the Muslim world and enjoy peace, and self-determination according to the Torah and their own religious courts. As long as they don't threaten the defense of the Islamic state in any way, they will be welcomed.
The book also relates how the Muslim world views Zionism as anathema no matter where it is located, even if on the other side of the moon, Muslims would still be on call to eradicate it. But once the Zionist threat were removed, Islam would demand that Muslims live peacefully with the Jews who are not threatening Islam.
It's a surprising twist. This book claiming that Islam could be the great savior of the Jews.
Part of the solution would involve Islamic states changing from "caricatures of Wstern national states" into "a single, united Islamic state". It's a joke in Malaysia how the Muslim countries can't agree on a common currency, or on many other aspects required to unify. Some commentators have said the only thing that Muslims seem to unite on is the issue of cartoons.
Again, the actual implementation of Islamic countries seems to fall far short of this ideal.
It's also hard to imagine how comfortable Jews could really feel in an Islamic country, even a moderate one. It's easy to find paranoid anti-Jewish statements from normally enlightened leaders in Malaysia, such as [Prime Minister Mahathirs assertion that Jews rule the world]. They are quite willing to blaim Jews and Zionists for conspiracies to tear about the Islamic way of life, or depress the economy. Malaysians are generally prohibitted from visiting Israel, however, non-Muslims in Malaysia can sometimes with great difficulty get special permission to travel to Israel for Christian religious pilgrimages.
Totally missing from the book was any acknowledgement that the stalling of Muslim progress may be caused by all the fighting that Muslims do with fellow Muslims. Despite the claimed rationalism of the Qur'an and Islam, there is no end of "You're not as muslim as I am" type controversy in the Islamic world. One commentator, Michael Savage claims that of 13 wars in the world right now, about 11 of them are being caused by Muslims unable to get along with their neighbors.
Overall, this book presents a solution to Jewish problems that is amazingly moderate. If only Islamic implementation could live up to these Islamic ideals.
Perhaps because of the moderateness of solutions like the one presented in this book, Dr. al-Faruqi and his wife, were murdered by assassins in their Philadelphia home on May 27, 1986.
 | Because They Hate |
 | Islam and the Problem of Israel |
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