Book review: Eng Lit and depiction of Muslims —by Khaled Ahmed

Book review: Eng Lit and depiction of Muslims —by Khaled Ahmed

Islam and the Victorians: Nineteenth Century Perceptions of Muslim Practices and Beliefs;

By Shahin Kuli Khan Khattak;
Tauris Academic Studies 2008;
Pp205; Price £47.50;
Available in bookstores in Pakistan

If you ever wondered what was contained in the less read poems, plays and novels about Muslims by the writers of the Victorian Age, this book will walk you through the entire lot with pages marked for errors. Author Khattak begins sensibly by making Edward Said’s very tough Orientalism and Covering Islam her criterion and adds, for moderation, Albert Hourani’s Islam in European Thought. She begins by noting that Islam was the religious “other” for European Christian theologians in medieval times, but the attitude lingered in works of fiction too.

If George Sale (1697-1736) was blatant in his exegesis of the Quran, there were others who were fair but were disapproved of, like Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) whose monumental The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was questioning about Christianity and Islam both but much fairer to the latter compared to the past verdicts. William Muir (1819-1905) was bitten by the colonialist bug but Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was more in the Enlightenment tradition of fair inquiry or ‘autonomous knowledge’ and produced an objective portrait of the Prophet (pbuh).

People who travelled in the East brought back Muslim portraits that seemed to demean Islam. James Fraser (1783-1856) — not Sir James Frazer of The Golden Bough — is one of those who contributed to the body of works that misrepresented Muslim societies. But one must observe here that popular impressions are created more by fiction than by theological expositions and it is at the level of such minds as absorb information only through works of fiction that most of the damage is done. But at the same you will blame fiction writers less for misrepresentation as they begin by laying no claim to the accuracy of their depictions.

Edward Bulwer Lytton (1903-1873) was inspired by the Crusades and therefore had to be rather skewed against the Muslims in his The Last Crusader but his friend and prime minister-novelist Benjamin Disraeli was carried away by the romantic involvement of Lord Byron with Greece and its struggle against Turkish rule. Resultant biases in fiction were to emerge. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was more balanced perhaps because he had served away from home in Turkey and knew facts as they were on the ground. Like Lytton he too thought Muslims will not be conquered by the sword but, in his case, by technology.

William Wilson Hunter (1840-1900) ended up writing his famous The Indian Musalmans: Are they Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen? in 1887, when serving as Director General of the Statistical Department of India. Hunter thought Muslims to be the more belligerent section of the Indian population. His opinion affected Matthew Arnold (1795-1852) when he wrote his Preaching of Islam. Yet one cannot ignore that Hunter had recommended educating the Muslims according to their own madrassa system. This view coincided with the one expressed by Wilfred Scawen Blunt (1840-1922) who wrote The Future of Islam.

An aside here is perhaps in order. Blunt was a British rebel of Irish origin and a friend of Jamaluddin Afghani. In his India under Ripon he describes a group of fanatical Muslims who climbed into his carriage and asked him, as a friend of Islam, to oppose Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Syed Ameer Ali as they were not really Muslims. He was greatly put off by this because his desire was that the Muslims should stand united. Author Khattak notes that Blunt wrote a sympathetic account of Indian Muslims in his Ideas about India in 1909. Blunt wanted Muslims of India to go the moderate way of Al Azhar in Egypt to force the British to treat them better. He helped establish a counterpart of Al Azhar in Hyderabad which indeed served the Muslims well.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) criticised the Hunter book for its wrong conclusions and particularly attacked his assumption of Wahhabism as the dominant creed in India after studying only the Muslims of Bengal. He stated that the creed of Wahhab was rejected by the Ottoman Empire as well as by most Muslims of India owing to the allegiance they owed to the Hanafism brought in from Central Asia. In India the followers of Wahhabism were called Ahle Hadith and were allowed to flourish only by the British who encouraged the followers of Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed to attack the Sikhs ruling in the northwest of the Frontier region. Here too the Wahhabis were resisted by the local Pashtun Muslims.

One must explain here the basic stance of the author. She says: ‘[While it is not surprising] to find the Muslims vilified for events that occurred centuries earlier...this factor does not endow Muslims with a mantle of saintliness because they were as capable of perpetrating cruelty as any other civilisation’. What the book finds is that Muslims are attacked together with Islam, which is wrong. But to defend Islam one must indict Muslims after the end of the Khilafat-e-Rashida or the first four pious caliphs of Islam. Without indicting the Muslims you can’t defend Islam as a pure faith.

There is nothing more misleading than the travelogue. In Pakistan, safarnama is the most falsified genre of literature and it is not surprising that Khattak too finds most fault with the travel accounts of the British, except the accounts left behind by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey. One negative example is Francois Bernier (1654-1688) who left behind his most detailed accounts of India and was leaned on by John Dryden (1631-1700) for his play Aurang-Zebe on which Dr Johnson commented that the Indian Muslims would never know how false the depiction of the Mughal king was “because of distance”.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was inspired by Byron’s lines on Greece to write his skewed poem The Revolt of Islam. During travels Fraser found a manuscript written by an associate of Nadir Shah that made him write his The Kuzzilbash, the early hard Turkic Shia community of Persia. Nadir Shah was of the Afshar branch of the Qizilbash. It is however amazing that Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was not resented as much by the Muslims because of his winning ways with local colour in his work although in his Jungle Book he equated the natives with Bandar Log (monkeys), incapable of order or civilisation.

One thought Sir Walter Scott’s novel Talisman did not err too much in the depiction of Saladin although he had based his knowledge of the Arab world and the great Arab hero on James Morier whose fiction about the Muslim world dominated Scott’s times. British stage demanded more pleasant sensation out of Imam Shamyl of Caucasia and Abdul Kader of Algeria because both were warriors fighting against England’s enemies in Europe. Ironically, today the Muslims of the world know about Imam Shamyl the Avar only through British sources.

Anyone travelling through Pakistan these days will agree with the author that Muslims are the last people through whom to exemplify Islam. Talibanisation, when described by the future Western writers as Islam, might put our coming generations of Muslims off, but it will have been true! Most Pakistanis today at least believe it is Islam! *

Misunderstanding Islamic Antisemitism

View from the booth: This detailed examination of ancient Koranic bases for Jew-hate is very disturbing as it utterly shatters everything I have ever read -- which is to say the commonly held beliefs that Islamic Jew-hate is a relatively modern phenomenon aided by Nazi racial ideology which was spread like mustard on rye over the Arab world in the 1930s and 40s. Now we know why the "illiterate masses" of Arabs hate us so much, not to mention the literate ones who have added on to what is already extant in chapter and verse of the Koran and its accepted commentaries. It's an ancient, and accepted phenomenon of their religious system. Oy. RS

May 11, 2008
Misunderstanding Islamic Antisemitism

By Andrew G. Bostom

Last year, nearing completion of the final manuscript version of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, I took a brief hiatus and posed the following two questions, based upon my research, to a cadre of academics, independent scholars, theologians, journalists, and activists who opine, in writing and speech, about Antisemitism, generally, and/or within the Muslim world, specifically. I asked (via e-mail correspondence), "In your opinion, would this quote (below) exemplify racial, or at least ethnic Antisemitism? Moreover would you please hazard a guess as to where and when it was written, based upon the contents?" Here is the quote:

Our people [the Muslims] observing thus the occupations of the Jews and the Christians concluded that the religion of the Jews must compare unfavorably as do their professions, and that their unbelief must be the foulest of all, since they are the filthiest of all nations. Why the Christians, ugly as they are, are physically less repulsive than the Jews may be explained by the fact that the Jews, by not intermarrying, have intensified the offensiveness of their features. Exotic elements have not mingled with them; neither have males of alien races had intercourse with their women, nor have their men cohabited with females of a foreign stock. The Jewish race therefore has been denied high mental qualities, sound physique, and superior lactation. The same results obtain when horses, camels, donkeys, and pigeons are inbred.

Not surprisingly, the replies of my correspondents reflected the conventional academic (and journalistic) wisdom which continues to assert Muslim Jew hatred is only a recent phenomenon that began in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, and is a mere by-product of the advent of the Zionist movement, and the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict over the lands comprising the original 1922 Mandate for historical Palestine (i.e., modern Israel, Jordan, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza). Such thinking also contends that this strain of Jew hatred is a loose amalgam of re-cycled medieval Christian Judeophobic motifs, calumnies from the Czarist Russia "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and standard European racist, or Fascist/Nazi propaganda. A prototypical assessment of this ilk was written by the journalist Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower, his widely acclaimed investigative account of the events leading to the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism on September 11, 2001.

Until the end of World War II...Jews lived safely -- although submissively --under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio, coupled with slanders by Christian missionaries in the region, infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice [antisemitism]. After the war, Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier.

Wright's statement was not accompanied by documentation-this was the accepted wisdom after all.

The contemporary pervasiveness of Wright's flawed understanding was again manifested in the responses of my interlocutors. A representative sample of their comments demonstrates this phenomenon:

"Of course it's Antisemitism of the most vile racist stripe-which leads me to think it likely dates from the 19th century, at the earliest. It also sounds like the sort of thing one would read in the Antisemitic popular literature of the Edwardian period. So, my guess would be somewhere between 1830 and the 1920s."

"I imagine this was written under the influence of modern
theories of racial inferiority."

"If I had to hazard a guess, I would say this is from a sermon in a Gaza mosque this past Friday.."

"Could be any mosque in the Muslim world, or Nazi Germany if it weren't for the first line. Definitely racial..."

"How about current Wahhabi establishment?"

"I have no idea who said it but I'll hazard a guess just for
sport: the Mufti of Jerusalem, circa 1940?"

"Probably last week from one of the mullahs in the UK."

"Yes, racist to the point of being Nazi-like. I would say, the Mufti of Jerusalem or some other Islamofascist, or maybe contemporary
Wahhabi."

"...it's the usual (modern) boiler plate from the Middle East."

The quote in fact derives from a remarkable essay by the polymath Arabic writer al-Jahiz (d. 869), illustrating the anti-Jewish attitudes prevalent within an important early Islamic society, and composed over a millennium earlier than suspected by these interlocutors. It is also worth noting that al-Jahiz (described as a "skeptic," who harbored "indifferent views toward religion in general") included sociological observations-the quote cited above-which reveal the interface between indigenous ethnic/racial discriminatory, and Islamic religious (i.e., the essay's major emphasis, described below) attitudes towards Jews, expressed a thousand years before any secular Western European Antisemitic ideologies would be exported to the Muslim Near East.

Al-Jahiz's full essay was actually an anti-Christian polemic believed to have been commissioned by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil (d. 861), who inaugurated a literary campaign against the Christians. The author examines why the Muslim masses prefer the Christians to the Jews. This empirical preference (although decried by the author) is acknowledged by al-Jahiz from the outset:

I shall begin to enumerate the causes which made the Christians more liked by the masses than the Magians [Zoroastrians], and made men consider them more sincere than the Jews, more endeared, less treacherous, less unbelieving, and less deserving of punishment. For all this there are manifold and evident causes.

Al-Jahiz offers two primary explanations for this abiding hostility of the Muslim rank and file towards the Jews. First was the "rancorous" relationship between the early Muslim community, exiles from Mecca, relocated among Jewish neighbors in Medina.

When the [Muslim] Emigrants [from Mecca] became the neighbors of the Jews [in Medina]...the Jews began to envy the Muslims the blessings of their new faith, and the union which resulted after dissension. They proceeded to undermine the belief of our [i.e., the Muslim] masses, and to lead them astray. They aided our enemies and those envious of us. From mere misleading speech and stinging words they plunged into an open declaration of enmity, so that the Muslims mobilized their forces, exerting themselves morally and materially to banish the Jews and destroy them. Their strife became long-drawn and widespread, so that it worked itself up into a rage, and created yet greater animosity and more intensified rancor. The Christians, however, because of their remoteness from Mecca and Medina, did not have to put up with religious controversies, and did not have occasion to stir up trouble, and be involved in war. That was the first cause of our dislike of the Jews, and our partiality toward the Christians.

However, al-Jahiz then identifies as "the most potent cause" of this particular animus towards the Jews, Koran 5:82 ["Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews and the idolaters; and thou wilt surely find the nearest of them in love to the believers are those who say ‘We are Christians'; that, because some of them are priests and monks, and they wax not proud."], and its interpretation by the contemporary (i.e., mid-9th century) Muslim masses. It is important to note also that the gloss on Koran 5:82 in the classical Koranic commentaries by al-Tabari (d. 923), Zamakashari (d. 1143), Baydawi (d. ~ 1316), and Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), demonstrate a uniformity of opinion about the confirmed animus of the Jews towards the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the central Antisemitic motif in the Koran (verses 2:61/ 3:112) -- their eternal curse for transgressing the will of Allah, slaying Biblical prophets, and resultant condemnation to permanent humiliation. Tabari, for example, states:

In my [Tabari's] opinion, [the Christians] are not like the Jews who always scheme in order to murder the emissaries and the prophets, and who oppose God in his positive and negative commandments, and who corrupt His scripture which He revealed in His books.

Moreover, the basic contention in Al-Jahiz's essay that the Muslims harbored greater enmity towards the Jews than the Christians is supported by the independent observations of another Arab author active during the beginning of the 9th century in Iraq, the Sufi theologian al-Harith al-Muhasibi (d. 857). He maintained that because the Jews stubbornly denied Muhammad's truth, they were "...in the eyes of the Muslims worse than the Christians."

The impact upon Jews of such distinctly Antisemitic attitudes by Muslims in the specific context of the Arab Muslim world during the high Middle Ages (circa 950-1250 C.E.) is evident in S.D. Goitein' s seminal analyses of the primary source Geniza documentary record. Goitein's research caused him to employ the term Antisemitism,

...in order to differentiate animosity against Jews from the discrimination practiced by Islam against non-Muslims in general. Our scrutiny of the Geniza material has proved the existence of ‘antisemitism' in the time and the area considered here...

Goitein cites as one important concrete proof of his assertion that a unique strain of Islamic Jew hatred was extant at this time (i.e., up to a millennium ago) -- exploding the common assumption of its absence -- the fact that letters from the Cairo Geniza material,
...have a special word for it and, most significantly, one not found in the Bible or in Talmudic literature (nor registered in any Hebrew dictionary), but one much used and obviously coined in the Geniza period. It is sin'ūth, "hatred", a Jew-baiter being called sōn�", "a hater".
Incidents of such Muslim Jew hatred documented by Goitein in the Geniza come from northern Syria (Salamiyya and al-Mar‘arra), Morocco (Fez), and Egypt (Alexandria), with references to the latter being particularly frequent.

One thousand years later, various eyewitness accounts written throughout the 19th century illustrated the prolonged historical continuity of this theological Islamic Antisemitism. Edward William Lane, the renowned Arabic lexicographer, recorded his observations of Egyptian society in 1835. Lane's testimony on the difference between the attitude of Egyptian Muslims toward the Jews and the Christians again highlights the influence of Koran 5:82:

They [the Jews] are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general, and they are said to bear a more inveterate hatred than any other people to the Muslims and the Muslim religion. It is said, in the Koran [quoting 5:82] "Thou shalt surely find the most violent all men to those who have believed to be the Jews..."

Lane further notes,

It is a common saying among the Muslims in this country, "Such one hates me with the hate of the Jews." We cannot wonder, then, that the Jews are detested far more than are the Christians.

Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten for merely passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed: but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against the Koran or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

Subsequent 19th century accounts validate and expand upon Lane's narrative. For example, the French surgeon A.B. Clot who resided in Egypt from 1825 to1848, and served Muhammad Ali as a medical adviser, earning the honorific title, "Bey," made these confirmatory observations written in 1840, five years after Lane's travelogue first appeared in 1835:

The Israelite race is the one that the Muslims hate the most. They think that the Jews hate Islam more than any other nation...Speaking of a fierce enemy, the Muslims say: "He hates me the way the Jews hate us." During the past century, the Israelites were often put to death because they were accused rightly or wrongly to have something disrespectful about the Koran.

A mid-19th century eyewitness account from Jerusalem by the missionary Gregory Wortabet, (published in 1856) captures these routine sentiments, which Wortabet attributes to Koranic verses referring to the Jews as apes and pigs (Koran 2:65, 5:60, and 7:166), as well as the canonical hadith about Muhammad's reputed poisoning by an ancient Khaybar Jewess:

The Jew is still an object of scorn, and nowhere is the name of "Yahoodi (Jew)"more looked down upon than here in the city of his fathers. One day, as I was passing the Damascus gate, I saw an Arab hurrying on his donkey amid imprecations such as the following:"Emshi ya Ibn-el-Yahoodi (Walk, thou son of a Jew)! Yulaan abuk ya Ibn-el-Yahoodi (Cursed be thy father, thou son of a Jew)!"

I need not give any more illustrations of the manner in which the man went on. The reader will observe, that the man did not curse the donkey, but the Jew, the father of the donkey. Walking up to him, I said, "Why do you curse the Jew? What harm has he done you?"

"El Yahoodi khanzeer (the Jew is a hog)!", answered the man.

"How do you make that out?", I said. "Is not the Jew as good as you or I?"

"Ogh!", ejaculated the man, his eyes twinkling with fierce rage, and his brow knitting.

By this time he was getting out of my hearing. I was pursuing my walk, when he turned round, and said, "El Yahoodi khanzeer! Khanzeer el Yahoodi! (The Jew is a hog! A hog is a Jew!)"

Now I must tell the reader, that, in the Mahomedan vocabulary, there is no word lower than a hog, that animal being in their estimation the most defiled of animals; and good Mahomedans are prohibited by the Koran from eating it. The Jew, in their estimation, is the vilest of the human family, and is the object of their pious hatred, perhaps from the recollection that a Jewess of Khaibar first undermined the health of the prophet by infusing poison into his food. Hence a hog and a Jew are esteemed alike in the eye of a Moslem, both being the lowest of their kind; and now the reader will better understand the meaning of the man's words, "El Yahoodi khanzeer!"

Such hateful attitudes directed at the Jews specifically, persisted among Egyptian Muslims, as recorded in 1873 by Moritz Lüttke:

The Muslim hates no other religion as he hates that of the Jews...even now that all forms of political oppression have ceased, at a time when such great tolerance is shown to the Christian population, the Arabs still bear the same contemptuous hatred of the Jews. It is a commonplace occurrence, for example, for two Arabs reviling each other to call each other Ibn Yahūdī (or "son of a Jew") as the supreme insult...it should be mentioned that in these cases, they pronounce the word Yahūdī in a violent and contemptuous tone that would be hard to reproduce.
Jacob Landau's modern analysis of Egyptian Jewry in the 19th century elucidates the predictable outcome of these bigoted archetypes "constantly repeated in various forms"-the escalation from rhetorical to physical violence against Jews:

...it is interesting to note that even the fallāhīn, the Egyptian peasantry (almost all of them Muslim) certainly did not know many Jews at close quarters, but nevertheless would revile them. The enmity some Muslims felt for the Jews incited them to violence, persecution, and physical assault, as in 1882...Hostility was not necessarily the result of envy, for many Jews were poverty-stricken and even destitute and were sometimes forced to apply for financial assistance to their co-religionists abroad.

Thirty-fours years ago (1974) Bat Ye'or published a remarkably foresighted analysis of the Islamic antisemitism and resurgent jihadism in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout the Muslim world. The primary, core Antisemitic and jihadist motifs were Islamic, derived from Islam's foundational texts, on to which European, especially Nazi elements were grafted.

The pejorative characteristics of Jews as they are described in Muslim religious texts are applied to modern Jews. Anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism are equivalent -- due to the inferior status of Jews in Islam, and because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery, the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad. Here the Pan-Arab and anti-Western theses that consider Israel as an advanced instrument of the West in the Islamic world, come to reinforce religious anti-Judaism.

The religious and political fuse in a purely Islamic context onto which are grafted foreign elements. If, on the doctrinal level, Nazi influence is secondary to the Islamic base, the technique with which the Antisemitic material has been reworked, and the political purposes being pursued, present striking similarites with Hitler's Germany.That anti-Jewish opinions have been widely spread in Arab nationalist circles since the 1930s is not in doubt. But their confirmation at [Al] Azhar [University] by the most important authorities of Islam enabled them to be definitively imposed, with the cachet of infallible authenticity, upon illiterate masses that were strongly attached to religious traditions.

The uncomfortable examination of Islamic doctrines and history is required in order to understand the enduring phenomenon of Muslim Jew hatred, which dates back to the origins of Islam. Even if all non-Muslim Judeophobic themes were to disappear miraculously overnight from the Islamic world, the living legacy of anti-Jewish hatred, and violence rooted in Islam's sacred texts - -Koran, hadith, and sira -- would remain intact. The assessment and understanding of Islamic antisemitism must begin with an unapologetic analysis of the anti-Jewish motifs contained in these foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer view Muslim Jew hatred -- including annihilationist strains of this apocalyptic hatred -- as a "borrowed phenomenon," seen primarily, let alone exclusively, through the prism of Nazism and the Holocaust, the tragic legacy of Judeophobic Christian traditions, or "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" from Czarist Russia.

And the jihad against the Jews is but one aspect-albeit primal-of the jihad to establish global Islamic hegemony.

Julien Benda, in his classic 1928 La Trahison de Clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals), decried with prophetic accuracy how the abandonment of objective truth abetted totalitarian ideologies, which led to the cataclysmic destruction of World War II.. La Trahison de Clercs of our time remains the nearly complete failure of Western intellectuals to study, understand, and acknowledge the heinous consequences of the living institution of jihad war, and the intimately related doctrine of Islamic antisemitism.

Andrew G. Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus, 2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (to be published later this month).

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/misunderstanding_islamic_antis.html at May 21, 2008 - 02:06:28 AM EDT
_uacct = "UA-31527-12";
urchinTracker();

Muslim Martin Luthers: The Theologians Working Towards a Euro-Islam

04/22/2008 05:33 MUSLIM MARTIN LUTHERS
The Theologians Working Towards a Euro-Islam
By Dieter Bednarz and Daniel Steinvorth

Leading Muslim scholars are laying the theological foundations for a "Euro-Islam" which would reconcile their religion with the challenges of modernity. But just how compatible is Islam with secular Western values?

The air in the conference room is stale, and the dour mood among those present is not much better. The room smells of sweat, cigarette smoke, cold coffee -- and plenty of problems. That comes with the territory at a meeting of some 100 social workers who work in flashpoints like the London boroughs of Hounslow, Eastleigh and Ealing.

In their districts they often have to deal with angry youth gangs, unemployment and failed integration policies. Today, on this particular Thursday, they have gathered here in the large hall of the Holborn Bars conference center to learn that multiculturalism also has positive aspects and, most importantly, that no one needs to be afraid of Muslims.

Up on the stage, Lucy de Groot, the organizer of the one-day seminar "Cultural Diversity and Social Cohesion," presents “with great pleasure” a speaker whose appearance alone is enough to add a touch of brilliance to this gloomy conference room. Smiling here and nodding there, the “esteemed guest” strides up to the podium with the confidence of an entertainer who has grown accustomed to success. Tariq Ramadan knows how to win people over.

Many of the veteran social workers have an almost enraptured expression on their faces as they look up at the tall, thin man. With his striking features and dark well-trimmed beard, his sand-colored suit with its elegant casualness, the unbuttoned collar of his bright yellow shirt and his slightly dark complexion, Ramadan resembles a Latino singer. “It’s wonderful to be in London,” he says warmly into the microphone. “Thank you very much for inviting me.” Ramadan places the fingertips of his well-manicured hands together and gazes confidently at the audience. His fan club is guaranteed to be even bigger after this afternoon.

Officially, Ramadan, 45, is a professor of Islamic studies in Geneva. But now he has just come from Oxford, where he teaches at St. Antony’s College as a visiting fellow. In effect, Ramadan is something of a modern-day itinerant preacher. His mission is to boost the self-confidence of Europe’s Muslims and to explain his vision of a “European Islam” to Europe’s Christian elite. The new brand of faith which, according to Ramadan, “is currently taking shape among European Muslims with Islamic-European culture” aims to reconcile Western values with the teachings of Islam. This “Euro-Islam” has allowed Ramadan to win friends among immigrant children and proponents of interreligious dialogue -- and make enemies among right-wing nationalists and hardline Islamists.

Ramadan has given thousands of presentations over the past few years, speaking to a wide range of audiences, including Muslims and Christians, atheists and Jews, church representatives and politicians, industrialists, students and anti-globalization activists. Over the weekend, he made four appearances in France where he spoke to over 2,500 people, mostly young Muslims. Tonight he will speak in Birmingham at a police convention, tomorrow morning his schedule takes him to Blackpool; he can't remember off the top of his head who he's talking to there.

The highly popular speaker can devote little more than half an hour to Lucy de Groot’s seminar. But that’s enough time for a brilliant presenter like Ramadan to talk about his religion, Muslim minorities, integration and exclusion -- and to alleviate the fears of his audience of an impending “clash of civilizations,” as prophesized by Harvard University political scientist Samuel Huntington.

“We start to run into problems when we construct new dividing lines, when we cease to see society as a whole,” says Ramadan to the worn-out-looking men and women sitting at large round tables. “Instead of perceiving Muslims as ‘the other’ or foreigners, try to see them as fellow Englishmen and women.”

All the listeners can do is nod in approval. After all, this man is one of the most prominent Muslims in Europe -- even if he is also one of the most controversial.

A scholar and a blusterer, a reformer and an Islamist, a rationalist and a demagogue -- surely no other Muslim has been given such varied labels as Ramadan.

Some, like the British government, see him as a Muslim visionary who provides a modern interpretation of the Koran and breaks with outmoded traditions. “We need trust and dialogue and a more flexible faith,” says Ramadan. This kind of language prompted former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to appoint him to what was essentially a Muslim task force to combat extremism. On the other side of the Atlantic, Time magazine placed him on its list of the 100 people who comprise "tomorrow's most influential individuals."

Others see him as an Islamist in disguise, a “wolf in sheep's clothing,” a master of deception. And, as a matter of fact, Ramadan has made a number of statements that don’t sound remotely liberal or tolerant.


An Islamic Superstar


For instance, when he appeared on a French talk show, Ramadan justified the sharia, the Islamic body of social and religious law, which, when strictly interpreted, calls for draconian punishments that constitute a violation of human rights. And he refused to issue a blanket condemnation of the particularly cruel practice of stoning to death. Instead he proposed a moratorium on this form of capital punishment. His opponents warn that when he appears before young Muslims and no cameras are present, it's possible that Ramadan strikes a very different tone.

US authorities have even officially classified him as a terrorist sympathizer. After Ramadan donated money to dubious Palestinian groups, the Americans decided to revoke his visa.

Ramadan’s family does indeed have a reputation for radicalism. His Egyptian grandfather was Hassan al-Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential Islamic fundamentalist organization that is active throughout the Middle East and even in Europe. His father Said, also a religious zealot, fled to Europe to escape his persecutors in the Egyptian regime. Tariq was born in Geneva.

Radical offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood produced the men who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Farag Foda, a reformist intellectual who said “We need a Martin Luther” -- and was shot down in the streets of Cairo in 1992.

Although many people view Ramadan with suspicion, there are in fact a number of parallels between him and the German reformer. Like Luther, who challenged the Catholic clergy, Ramadan campaigns against the “traditionalists who advocate a literal interpretation of the Koran.” Like the monk from Wittenberg, the professor from Switzerland seeks to break up the monopoly held by religious scholars on interpreting the holy book.

Instead of slavishly adhering to ancient revelations, Ramadan says it is necessary to examine the “historical context” in which God’s revelations were received by the Prophet Muhammad. “Islam,” says Ramadan, “cannot place itself outside of history.”

What he means by that is reflected in the ongoing debate between radicals and reformers over the issue of apostasy -- the renunciation or abandonment of one’s religious faith. Sura 16:106 says: “He who, after accepting faith in Allah, freely opens his heart to unbelief, shall feel the wrath of Allah and shall receive a dreadful punishment.” Over the centuries, conservatives have interpreted this to mean that heretics should receive the death penalty.

Ramadan, however, does not see apostasy as a crime. He points out that circumstances have “totally changed.” At the time of the Prophet, he says, the Muslims were at war with neighboring tribes. Changing faith was tantamount to treason or desertion -- and was punishable by death. That was then. Today, according to Ramadan, faith “is a personal matter for each individual.”

“Renew your understanding of the text, even though the text itself does not change. Read it in a new way,” says Ramadan, as he calls on his Muslim brothers to reinterpret the Koran.

This places him in good company with other authorities on the Koran like the Egyptian Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid and the Iranian Abdolkarim Sorush, who have written a number of books on the topic and are highly regarded among theologians. They are also proponents of using hermeneutics -- the science of interpreting texts -- to understand the Koran.

However, it is Ramadan’s grass-roots popularity that allows him to reach a much wider audience.

“Yesterday, we relied on the solutions that came from our countries of origin, because we only knew one way to remain a Muslim: to remain the Muslims that we were,” he preaches. “But then children were born, new generations, and they are German and British and French. This is our community now; we cannot rely on solutions that come from our countries of origin. We need local solutions.”

His solution is a form of faith in which Western norms and Islam are not mutually exclusive. Democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and religious freedom -- these are all things that the faithful can embrace as long as they respect the “inalienable core” of Islam: profession of faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting. “Practically everything else,” says Ramadan, “can be interpreted and adjusted in space and time.”

Nevertheless, Ramadan's vision of Euro-Islam does not entail the secularism, in the sense of a separation of religion and state, that many Westerners would like him to advocate. Ramadan’s faith makes no distinction between political and private realms, between religious and worldly matters. He does not question the holistic nature of Islam. Thus this widely celebrated visionary -- who always carries a small copy of the Koran, drinks no alcohol, and advocates separating the sexes in swimming pools -- is not a genuine reformer, say his critics.

However, with his interpretation of Islam, Ramadan builds bridges that allow apprehensive Muslims to open up to their new homelands. He doesn’t alarm them with heretical slogans, yet tries to pull them out of the so-called "ghetto Islam" of the fundamentalists. A strategy paper written by the British government therefore clearly sees him as the spearhead of an “Islamic Reformation” on the old continent.

Among second and third-generation Muslims in particular, Ramadan enjoys the “aura of an Islamic superstar,” as the New York Times Magazine recently wrote. The young faithful see him as the ultimate über-Muslim: a professor in Oxford and the offspring of a family that is renowned for its religious fervor -- extremely devout, yet socially acceptable. Piousness and urbanity, Islam and the modern age -- Ramadan is a living example for his supporters that all these things are compatible.

Ramadan gives young Muslims what they yearn for: pride and dignity -- and the reassuring feeling that they can hit the discos at night and still remain faithful servants of God. A Euro-Islam like this, says Freiburg-based Islamic scholar Ludwig Ammann, “reaches out to the majority of Muslims right where they are” -- in the conservative camp with its blind faith in authority.

By contrast, Bassam Tibi, a leading German Islamic reformer who teaches at Göttingen University, sees Ramadan’s vision of Islam as “an attempt to give Islam a European face-lift instead of harmonizing the religion with Europe’s cultural, social and political identity.”


Secular Islam, Turkish Style


But is such a Europeanization even possible? Could it be that the notion of a pluralistic democracy based on a secular constitution and the all-embracing nature of Islam -- which makes no distinction between religious and secular matters -- are mutually exclusive? Are Islam and Europe -- sharia and human rights -- like fire and water?

“No,” says Tibi, who was born in Syria, and coined the term “Euro-Islam” in the early 1990s as a counterpoint to the “ghetto Islam” of many immigrants who cut themselves off from their European surroundings and seek their salvation in religious fervor. He says that the Koran can be interpreted in many different ways, giving it the “advantage of adaptability.” To back up his assertion, Tibi points to the forms of “Islam in West Africa and in Indonesia, which are very different from the Arab or Persian versions, although all Muslims believe in the one God and his Prophet Muhammad.”

The extent of the compatibility of Islam and secularism has in fact been demonstrated by Turkey, the largest and certainly most conclusive experiment conducted to date on the flexibility of the faith -- and one which is located directly on Europe’s doorstep. Over the years, this EU candidate and NATO member has served as one of the best examples in the world of the stark contrasts that exist between East and West -- the faith of the Prophet and the values of the West. No other Islamic country has forced Islam to accept as much secularity as the Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal, known as Atatürk (“father of the Turks”).

Building on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, this staunch European imposed a revolution from above that aimed to transform Anatolia into a modern, democratic nation-state, including forced secularization to free it from the shackles of religion. Atatürk abolished the Caliphate, in which the sultan had authority over the realm and its religious affairs. To symbolize the country’s new orientation toward the West, Atatürk prohibited men from wearing the fez, a red woolen hat with a tassel, and women were not allowed to wear headscarves. He ordered the abolition of the sharia courts and banished religion to the private sphere.

To keep the mosques free of regressive ideology, Atatürk established the Presidency of Religious Affairs (DIB). This state agency, which now has over 100,000 employees, supervises the training of imams and muezzins -- the criers who lead the call to prayer from a minaret of a mosque -- and it also decides what will be preached. The president of this organization is the highest ranking representative of Islam in Turkey -- an office currently held by Ali Bardakoglu, an avowed reform theologian. The head of the DIB calls on “the Islamic world to further develop objective thinking and reason.”

Bardakoglu was appointed five years ago by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist who many once feared would shake the foundations of the Kemalist establishment. Today, however, this deeply religious government leader is widely acclaimed as a modernizer who is whipping the country into shape for entry into the EU and whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) serves as an Islamic counterpart to Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Any fears that Turkey would reinstate the Caliphate and return to sharia have vanished, also thanks to Bardakoglu.

In contrast to his predecessors, who saw their position as a Kemalist bulwark, the current head of the DIB aims to promote religious discourse, push for reforms and give Islam a new look -- in a very literal sense. He demonstratively refused to wear the heavy black robe worn by his predecessors. It was too authoritarian for Bardakoglu’s taste. Now the country’s top Muslim wears spiritual white, like the pope.

The man from Ankara maintains a dialogue with the head of the Catholic Church, despite heated disputes over the pope's now infamous Regensburg speech. In the papal address held last September at the University of Regensburg in Germany, Benedict XVI quoted the little known Byzantine emperor Manuel II: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

An angry Bardakoglu described the pope's statement as reflecting a “crusader mentality.” He only assumed a more conciliatory tone following a personal meeting with Benedict XVI during his visit to Turkey. Now historians and theologians are working on a paper that will allow the DIB to refute the emperor’s statement.

In his reform campaigns, Bardakoglu has pushed primarily for a reinterpretation of Islamic scripture. “Every age,” he preaches to his imams, “must rely on its own spirit, its strengths, its intellectual experience to understand the Koran.” The ammunition for debates with the fundamentalists comes from a nearby institution in the capital -- the University of Ankara.

Founded in 1948, the university’s department of theology has a reputation as the nucleus of all religious reform initiatives in Turkey. Today, there are an additional 23 theological departments throughout the country, and their deans are almost all graduates of the original department in the capital.


'We Muslims Have Been Left Behind'


Yasar Nuri Öztürk, who lives in Istanbul, is the most well known and certainly the most influential representative of Turkish reformist theology. Whether he’s walking along the banks of the Bosporus or through the bazaar, many Turks immediately recognize this small, rather unassuming, nearly bald man from his numerous TV appearances, from his columns in the daily newspaper Hürriyet and from his over 30 books, which have sold more than a million copies in Turkey alone. Many of them have been translated into Arabic, Farsi, English and German. Given Öztürk's high profile, people tend to overlook the fact that he also happens to be the dean of the theological department of the University of Istanbul.


Öztürk’s thinking is mainly aimed at the fundamentalist elite in regimes of the Islamic world that oppress their people in the name of God. He says, however, that the Muslims only have themselves to blame for this state of affairs because they understand “almost nothing” about the “real Islam” as it stands in the Koran. Did not Allah himself declare that the system of monarchist rule was unacceptable? This, at least, is how Öztürk interprets verse 34 of the 27th Sura: “Surely the kings, when they enter a town or a country, lay it to waste and make the noblest of its people into the lowest. That is their way.”

And Öztürk, with reference to the holy book, clearly rejects the position of bigoted mullahs and zealots who still dream of reinstating the Caliphate. “The Koran proclaims that the prophethood is over,” he says. “And one of the fundamental demands that arises from that, is that the age is over when people are led by individuals claiming to derive their authority from God.”

While the Bible and the Torah promise the rule of God on Earth, Öztürk sees the Koran as “the only book that proclaims that theocracy should have no role in the lives of people.” This “key truth” of the Koran is, however, “kept secret and concealed in Islamic societies.”

Öztürk preaches this vision of Islam and politics with his own mixture of theological authority and populism. His understanding of a secular state, however, is not the traditional division of religion and worldly matters. Öztürk's version of secularism is based more on a kind of "democracy imperative" which is based on the Koran and which should force rulers to base their authority “not on God or divine right, but on the will of the people.”

The so-called Ankara School of reform-minded theologians has even spread beyond Turkey’s borders to Germany. Ömer Özsoy, 44, one of the reform movement’s most renowned scholars, has become the first Muslim professor of theology at a German university. At his inaugural lecture, held last November at Frankfurt University, he addressed “modern interpretations of the Koran.”

What this graceful man with fine features and a high forehead says tends to strike many Muslims -- who see the Koran as the eternal word of God -- as simply unbelievable. Özsoy asserts that the holy book of the Muslims is not a timeless message.

The professor of theology sees the Koran as a “speech by God” directed toward a specific group of people at a specific time and under specific circumstances. According to Özsoy, this is shown by the fact that the revelations to the Prophet occurred over a period of approximately 23 years, first in Mecca, then in Medina. Every statement by God relates to a special situation that Muhammad and his followers faced, as fighters, believers, refugees or conquerors. He says that we can only understand the message behind God’s word if we know the circumstances under which the Prophet received the revelation.

Özsoy is convinced that only a fraction of what the revelation intends to convey to mankind is actually contained in the Koran. The majority of the actual messages can only be elucidated by studying historical events as they transpired 1,400 years ago -- and then reinterpreting them for the present. Since this “transfer” -- this adapting of the Koran to the current situation -- was held in disdain for so long, Muslims now lack “the answers to the questions posed by modernity.” This has had disastrous consequences, he feels: “We Muslims have been left behind.”

In order to make the jump to the present, at least on a theoretical level, the Turkish religious agency is funding the professorial chair for Muslim theology in Frankfurt, which is part of the university's Department of Protestant Theology. In addition to the Germans who attend his lectures, Özsoy’s students reflect the entire multicultural spectrum of the city, from Muslim Macedonians and Christian Egyptians to Turkish-German women in traditional headscarves.

Up until now, only a minority of Muslims in Germany have embraced such reformist approaches. The Islamic researcher Bassam Tibi estimates that perhaps two-thirds of the over 3 million Muslims in Germany would claim to profess a Euro-Islam version of their faith, but he thinks that no more than 10 percent of the Muslim population “genuinely follows” this liberal form of Islam. “Sipping a glass of wine does not necessarily constitute acceptance of European values,” says Tibi.

Tibi attributes little practical importance to the initiatives launched by Ankara, at least for the time being. He says that while the critical thinking of Özsoy and his colleagues is commendable, the vast majority of Turkish Muslims are not open to this line of thinking. In his opinion, “the organized religion is Islamist or orthodox.”

Although Tibi promotes Euro-Islam in his lectures and among his academic colleagues, he has his own doubts over whether the concepts embodied by Euro-Islam hold the key to the future of over a billion Muslims around the world or whether the traditionalists will maintain the upper hand.

However, Tibi is certain that there is no alternative to an Islam that recognizes the “cultural, social and political realities” of modernity. Based on that conviction, the professor from Göttingen will continue to fight for the vision of an Islam without sharia -- and not just in Europe.



URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,548970,00.html

Leader Of Egyptian Opposition Tagammu' Party Attacks Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood

More Moderate Islamic thought is presented by this individual. He and like thinkers are our friends who need to be noticed by the world and the media which loves black and white thinking and has deluded the Western world into thinking that Islam is a violent, intolerant monolith. It is not. The only pity is that this man and his party are in Egypt which is already at peace with Israel. I would like to read more about moderate voices and their strength in Syria and Iran, where student riots in the past weeks occurred where demonstrators were reported as shouting "Death to Ahmedinejad!". These elements in Iran and Syria must be courted vociferously.

Randy Shiner


The following are excerpts from an interview with Rif'at Al-Sa'id, leader of the Egyptian opposition party Tagammu'. The interview aired on Al-Mihwar TV on March 16, 2008:

To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1727.htm .



Rif'at Al-Sa'id: "Our party strives for a civil, progressive, democratic, and liberal future, in which the rights of the citizens will be respected, a future in which the livelihood and liberties will be guaranteed, as well as better education, better housing, and better healthcare, a future in which the rights of women and of Copts will be respected. How can I possibly accept a movement that rejects the future and looks back towards the past?"

Interviewer: "You mean the Muslim Brotherhood?"

Rif'at Al-Sa'id: "Yes. They voted against the citizenship law. This is the greatest political mistake that the Muslim Brotherhood ever committed, because it brought eternal disgrace upon the movement. They reject women's rights and say that women cannot be rulers."

Interviewer: "Do they mold Islam as they wish?"

Rif'at Al-Sa'id: "Let me tell you something: 80% of all Muslims live in Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, where women are allowed to rule. What, are they sinners? Are 80% of all Muslims wrong, and only Mahdi 'Akef and his movement right? They rejected the principle of rights for Copts. This is unacceptable. My battle is not in support of or against anyone. The battle I am waging is to protect Egypt – to protect its future, its art, its literature, its music, its poetry, its women, its Copts, its freedom, and its social justice. The Muslim Brotherhood are not interested in social justice. They are just like the government.

[...]

"If they come to power, they will, socially, economically, and in terms of civil liberties, act the same way as the government, if not worse. They came to power in Gaza. What did they do there? They spoke of democracy, but once they came to power, they took one of their opponents and threw him from the 18th floor. They stripped somebody else... What has this got to do with Islam?"

Interviewer: "You are referring to Hamas?"

Rif'at Al-Sa'id: "Yes. They stripped him, and dragged him on the ground. This is unacceptable. These crimes, which were perpetrated by Hamas, are a disgrace to their leaders in Egypt, because Hamas is merely a branch of..."

Interviewer: "Does Hamas have strong ties with the Muslims Brotherhood in Egypt?"

Rif'at Al-Sa'id: "Hamas is merely a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood is absolute – for better or for worse. Whoever violates this allegiance is "released" from the movement. Do you know what this means? They slaughter him. It's explicit in their writings."

Iraqi Author 'Aref 'Alwan: The Jews Have an Historic Right to Palestine

It is refreshing and gladdening to see this exists in the Muslim world. It is a reminder that Islam is not, like Judaism, monolithic in its thinking. There are moderate elements in the Muslim world, though all we hear or seemingly care about are the 1/10 of 1% who organize and carry out terrorism. These voices do not make the front page of MSM, though MEMRI, from whence this came via ZNN, is the place where everyone turns to for absolute clarity on what the Arab media and the rest of that world, so distrustful of Westerners and the West for so long, is doing. The West, after Bush leaves, must, must, must, take measures to coax these elements out from hiding. This is the single most important foriegn policy objective and challenge for our next President, aside from saving our own country from ruin.

Randy Shiner



Iraqi Author 'Aref 'Alwan: The Jews Have an Historic Right to Palestine

In an article posted December 7, 2007, on the leftist website www.ahewar.org, [1] 'Aref 'Alwan, an Iraqi author and playwright who resides in London and is the author of 12 novels, [2] states that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine because their presence there preceded the Arab conquest and has continued to this day.

In the article, titled "Do the Jews Have Any Less Right to Palestine than the Arabs?" 'Alwan called on the Arab world to acknowledge the Jews' right to Palestine, because justice demanded it and also because doing so would end the violence and the killing of Arabs, as well as intra-Arab strife. He added that such a move would also open up new avenues for the Arab world that would be more consistent with the values and needs of modern society.

'Alwan writes that the Arab League is to blame for the refusal to recognize the 1947 U.N. partition plan, for starting a war to prevent its implementation, and for the results of that war, which the Arabs call the Nakba (disaster). He points an accusing finger at the Arab regimes, the Arab League, and the educated circles in the Arab world, saying that they had all used the term "nakba" to direct popular consciousness toward a cultural tradition that neither accepts the other side nor recognizes its rights - thereby promoting bigotry, violence and extremism. He also claims that there have been attempts to rewrite Palestinian history, in order to deny any connection between it and the Jewish people.

'Alwan contends that the "Nakba mentality" among Arabs has boomeranged, giving rise to tyrannical rulers, extremist clerics, and religious zealots of every description. In his view, the Arab world will never shed the stigma of terrorism in the West unless it abandons this concept and all that it entails.

To boost his claim that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine, 'Alwan provides an overview of Jewish history in the land of Israel. He questions the validity of the Islamic traditions underpinning the Arab claim to Palestine, Jerusalem, and the TempleMount, and presents evidence that religions that preceded Islam had conducted rituals on the TempleMount.

As an example of the traditional Arab mentality that does not accept the other or recognize his rights, 'Alwan discusses the Arabs' abuse of the Kurds in Iraq and of the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon.

The following are excerpts from the article:

The Nakba: A Great Lie

"When the Salafi mob in Gaza tied the hands and feet of a senior Palestinian official and hurled him, alive, from the 14th floor, I asked myself: What political or religious precepts must have been inculcated into the minds of these young people to make them treat a human life with such shocking cruelty?

"Earlier, I had watched on TV as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were thrown from the second floor [of a building] in a Palestinian city. Whether or not it was the same Salafi mob behind that incident, [one asks oneself]: What language, [or rather,] what historic linguistic distortion could have erased from the human heart [all] moral sensibilities when dealing with a living and helpless human being?

"Arabs who are averse to such inhuman behavior must help me expose and eliminate the enormous lie that has for 60 years justified, extolled, and supported brutality. [Such behavior] is no longer limited to the expression of unconscious [impulses] by individuals, but constitutes a broad cultural phenomenon, which began in Lebanon, [spread to] Iraq and Palestine, and then [spread] - slowly but surely - to other Arab states as well.

"This enormous lie is what the Arabs called the Nakba - that is, the establishment of two states in Palestine: the state of Israel, which the Jews agreed to accept, and the state of Palestine, which the Arabs rejected.

"In our times, when science, with its accurate instruments, can predict climatic changes that will lead to drought or the movement of tectonic plates that causes earthquakes, it is inconceivable that a modern man can, without making a laughingstock of himself, attribute the destruction of cities ancient or modern to the wrath of Allah. Nevertheless, today, 80% of Arabs claim this to be the case. They are neither embarrassed nor afraid of being laughed at.

"This high percentage includes not only the illiterates who densely populate rural areas, villages, and small and large cities, but also students, teachers, lecturers, graduates of institutions of higher education, scientists, technology experts, physicians, graduates of religious universities such as Al-Azhar, historians, and politicians who have held or are currently holding public office.

"It is those numerous educated elites who have forced the Arab mentality into a narrow, restrictive, and deficient cultural mold, spewing violence, terrorism, and zealotry, and prohibiting innovative thought... All this was done to instill a false sense of oppression in the hearts of the Arabs, and to destroy them with the infectious disease of despair and confusion.

"[This attitude] is rooted in the 1947 Arab League resolution stating that Palestine is a 'stolen' land and that none but a Muslim Arab is entitled to benefit from it as an autonomous [political entity], even if another's historic roots there predate those of the Muslims or the Arabs."


The Nakba Boomerang

"[The upshot] of this confusion in [Arab] mentality is that the lie has boomeranged on the Arabs. [Thus] appeared [on the scene] Saddam Hussein, Hafez Al-Assad, Bashar Al-Assad, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, Hassan Nasrallah, Nabih Berri, Khaled Mash'al, Isma'il Haniya, and Mahmoud Al-Zahar, whose young [thugs] threw the senior Palestinian official from the 14th floor. Finally, from the foot of the eastern mountains bordering the Middle East came Ahmadinejad, who is committed to preparing the way for the anarchy and destruction that accompanies the advent of the long-awaited Mahdi, who will resolve the Palestinian problem.

"Today, owing to the ideological distortions that have afflicted the Arab popular consciousness since the so-called Nakba, and [also owing] to the lies that have accumulated around this notion, [the label of] 'terrorism' has become attached to Arabs, wherever they are.

"Despite the great political and cultural efforts by large and important Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some Gulf states to restore Arab ties with the rest of the world, and to curb the culture of terrorism in Arab societies, they have all failed. This is because these attempts to rectify [the situation], from both within and without [the Arab countries], both stemmed from and were a logical extension of the concept of the Nakba.

"This proves that the Arabs have no hope of extricating themselves from the cultural and political challenge of terrorism unless they come up with [new] and different [fundamental] premises, and with an outlook completely free of the fetters of the religious ritual that they have devised in modern times and called the Nakba.

"Although Palestinian senior officials, leaders, educated circles, and public figures, whose patriotism is beyond doubt, have come to terms with the existence of the State of Israel, the aforementioned 80% of Arabs... do not accept this view, and consider it religious apostasy. Leaders of the [Arab] states in the region, and party leaders, inflame sentiment, entrancing them with the drumbeat of extremism.

"With the strident chorus of its secretaries, the Arab League ensures that every car crash in Gaza or the West Bank is interpreted as an Israeli conspiracy against the Arab future. This is because the Arab League... was established as a pan-Arab entity whose main function was to write reports and studies rife with distortions of fact so as to quell the conscience of any Arab who dared think independently and expunge [the concept of] the Nakba from his consciousness. [It has done] this instead of devising creative strategies for cultural and economic development, so as to improve the deteriorating standard of living in the Arab societies."


The Nakba is Rooted in a Culture that Does Not Recognize the Right of the Other

"Why did the partition resolution, which gave a state in Palestine to the Jews and one to the Arabs next to it, become the Nakba - [the star] that rises and sets daily over the Arab lands without emitting even the tiniest ray of light to illuminate the path for their peoples?

"Did the Jews have any less right to Palestine than the Arabs? What historic criteria can be used to determine the precedence of one [nation's] right over that of the other?

"Refusing to recognize the right of the other so as to usurp his rights was a governing principle of the Islamic conquests from the time of 'Omar bin Al-Khattab; during that historical period it was the norm. [But] at the turn of the [20th] century, this principle was abandoned and prohibited, because it sparked wars and [violent] conflict. The international community passed laws restricting the principle of non-acceptance of the other, in the founding principles of the League of Nations in 1919. Subsequently, with the U.N.'s establishment, these laws were developed [further], with appendices and commentary, to adapt them to the current historical era and to express the commonly accepted values of national sovereignty and peoples' right to self-determination.

"But because of their sentimental yearning for the past and zealous adherence to [old] criteria, the Arabs purged their hearts of any inclination to adjust to the spirit of the age. They thus became captives of the principle of non-acceptance of the other and of denying the other [the right] to live, [among] other rights.

"As a result, damage was done to the rights and interests of non-Arab nations and ethnic groups in the Arab lands - among them the Kurds, the Copts, and the Jews. [Thus,] the Arabs still treat the numerous minorities that came under their dominion 1,400 years ago in accordance with the laws from the era of Arab conquest.

"Despite the consequences of denying the other the right to exist, not to mention other rights - that is, [despite] the oppression, conflicts, wars, and instability [resulting from this]... the Arabs have steadfastly clung to their clearly chauvinist position. All problems in the region arising from minorities' increasing awareness of their rights have been dealt with by the Arabs in accordance with [the principle of non-acceptance]... [even] after the emergence of international institutions giving these rights legal validity, in keeping with the mentality and rationale of our time."


Refusing to Accept the Other: The Kurds in Iraq; the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon

The Kurds

"The denial of the Kurds' national rights by the Iraqi government, and the Arab League's support for it, has brought on wars lasting 50 years - that is, three-quarters of the life span of the state that arose in Iraq...

"After fabricating arguments to justify the [1921] combining of the Basra region with the Baghdad region in order to establish a new state in Iraq, British colonialist interests demanded that a large area historically populated by Kurds be added to the new state. [This was done] to satisfy the aspirations of King Faisal bin Al-Hussein [bin Ali Al-Hashemi], who had been proposed as head of state in return for protecting British interests in the region.

"In his persistent refusal to grant the Kurds their rights, from 1988 through 1989 Saddam Hussein murdered approximately 180,000 Kurds, in an organized [genocidal] campaign he called 'Al-Anfal.' He then used mustard gas against one [Kurdish] city (Halabja), killing its residents (5,000 people). The Arab conscience silently acquiesced to this human slaughterhouse, while Arab League secretary-general (Shadhli Al-Qalibi) called the international press coverage of these events 'a colonialist conspiracy against the Arabs and the Iraqi regime.'

"Syrian Kurds are considered second-class citizens, and are banned from using their language or [practicing] their culture in public."


The Christians in Egypt and Lebanon

"The ethnic oppression of the Kurds [in Iraq] was echoed by sectarian extremism against the Copts [in Egypt]. In both cases, the Arabs used the principle of denying the existence of the other so as to strip him of his rights.

"The Copts, who [initially] assimilated Arabs into their society, but who have over time themselves assimilated into Arab society, discover time and again that this assimilated state is but a surface shell, which quickly cracks whenever they demand equality... As a result, Egypt, as a state, is gripped by constant social tensions that keep rising to the surface and threatening to undermine its stability...

"Sectarian extremism in Egypt took the form of an organized party with the 1928 emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the aim of splitting Egyptian society into two mutually hostile and conflicting parts. This was in line with the Arab religious and political principle of denying legitimacy to all non-Muslims or non-Arabs, [a principle practiced] since the Muslim armies reached Egypt in 639 [CE]...

"In Lebanon, the presence of armed Palestinian militias - which was in accordance with the decision of the Arab states - encouraged the formation of Lebanese militias, both Sunni and Shi'ite. Chanting slogans proclaiming Palestinian liberation, they frightened Christians by appearing armed in streets swarming with Lebanese [citizens] and tourists.

"This eventually led to a confrontation with Christian militias, which had also armed themselves out of fear of the pan-Arab slogans and fear for the [preservation of] the rights of the Christian sects.

"Lebanon was engulfed by an ugly 15-year civil war, that ended only after Syria, which had played an ignominious role as instigator [of the hostilities], attained full protectorate status over Lebanese affairs and the Lebanese people - [and this] took on the nature of colonialist hegemony...

"After the Lebanese were liberated from this [Syrian] control, in 2005 the clouds of civil war - albeit of a different kind - reappeared on the Lebanese horizon. The Arab League is making no effort to prevent the eruption [of this civil war] for two main reasons. First, the Syrian regime still supports ethnic tension, in order to regain control of Lebanon; and second, the current majority government, which opposes the renewed Syrian influence, is predominantly Christian...

"We had hoped that the Arab national conscience would recover from the illness afflicting it since the time of the Nakba, and that it would adopt [views] which, if not ahead of their time, would at least be appropriate to our time. But a group of journalists, writers, and several Arab historians guided by the principle of non-acceptance of the other has twisted the facts and concocted a false and gloomy history of the region - thereby trampling these dreams to the ground."


Jews Have a Rich and Ancient History in Palestine

"The Arabs see the Palestinian problem as exceedingly complicated, while it actually appears so only to them - [that is], from the point of view of the Arabs' emotional attitudes and their national and religious philosophy. The Arabs have amassed false claims regarding their exclusive right to the Palestinian land, [and] these are based on phony arguments and on several axioms taken from written and oral sources - most of which they [themselves] created after the Islamic, and which they forbade anyone, Arab or foreigner, from questioning.

"When the Arabs agreed to U.N. arbitration... to resolve the Palestinian problem, it transpired that their axioms clearly contradicted reliable historical documents [that] this new international organization [had in its possession]. As a result, they wasted decades stubbornly defending the validity of their documents, which do not correspond to the officially accepted version of the region's history - which is based on concrete and solid evidence [such as] archaeological findings in the land of Palestine, the holy books of the three monotheistic religions, accounts by Roman, Greek, and Jewish historians... and modern historical research..."


Jewish and Christian Ritual Sites in Jerusalem Predate Muslim Sites

"[A look at] the story of Al-Aqsa is now in order - a site considered holy by Muslim Arabs, who call it 'Al-Haram al-Qudsi al-Sharif' [The Noble Sanctuary] and [believe that] it was set aside for them by Allah since the time of Adam.

"[This site] contains several places of worship, including the Dome of the Rock, built by the [Umayyad Caliph] 'Abd Al-Malik bin Marwan in the seventh century CE - that is, 72 years after the Muslim conquests. This religious public gathering place was erected over a prominent [foundation] stone at the peak of 'Mount Moriah.' [Mount Moriah] contains three ancient Jewish public worship sites, as well as [some] Christian sites... The octagonal structure of the Dome of the Rock Mosque was constructed on the site of an ancient Byzantine church, adjoining Solomon's Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

"Since the majority of Muslims claim that the Temple Mount is an Islamic site to which no one else is entitled, they do not acknowledge the presence of Jewish and Christian places of worship predating the Dome of the Rock within its walls...

"The Arabs take great pride in their tolerance of and benign treatment of the Jews and Christians who lived under the Muslim rule since the Muslim conquests. This account is part of the distortions underpinning the edifice of the Arabs' religious and national culture. [Arab] writers and historians keep eulogizing this epoch... while the truth is the opposite of what they claim. [Indeed,] the Pact of 'Omar [compelled] the Jews and the Christians to choose between either abandoning their religion and embracing Islam, or paying the [poll] tax in return for being permitted to reside... and receive protection of life and property in their homeland. [The Pact of 'Omar] allowed them to practice their religion, build new houses of worship, and repair the old ones [only] with the permission of a Muslim ruler, and subject to numerous conditions.

"In subsequent historical periods, the Muslims imposed [additional restrictions] on the members of [these] two religions: They forbade them to raise their voices during prayer; [they forced them] to conduct their prayers and religious ceremonies in closed areas so as not [to disturb] passersby; they forbade them to carry weapons, ride saddled horses, or build houses taller than those of the Muslims. [Christians and Jews] were required to show respect for the Muslims, e.g. by giving up their seat to a Muslim if he wanted it. They were banned from holding government posts or from working in 'sensitive' public places.

"The Koranic verses cursing the Jews and casting doubt on [the veracity of] their Holy Book [the Torah] promulgated a desire among Arabs to set themselves above the Jews who lived in their midst, humiliating and persecuting them even without pretext. In time, this treatment made large numbers of Jews abandon their cities and their land and emigrate... while those who stayed [in Palestine] until the 19th century remained marginalized, living among the Arabs like criminals in a foreign land...

"The Arabs claim that the 'Wailing Wall' has been their property since the Prophet Muhammad tied his horse Al-Buraq to one of its supports when Allah transported him by night from the Holy Mosque in Mecca to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem... Although this night-journey story seems dubious, Arab historiography after the advent of Islam contains such oddities as giving a horse the prerogative of making a wall weighing more than 2,000 tons into Muslim property. This is only one of thousands of examples of tales concocted by zealots, with which they swept away the Arab imagination.

"...When the U.N. resolution on the partition of Palestine was issued on November 29, 1947... the Arabs refused to recognize it. They thereby rejected the state set out by the resolution as the right of the Palestinians and the Arabs, with the aim of establishing legal and historical equity. The Arabs called this resolution the Nakba, while their new states, formed several years before the State of Israel, launched the first war against Israel, in which regular military operations were combined with local attacks by gangs comprising Palestinians and Arabs from Arab regions near and far. [That war] ended in [the Arabs'] defeat. Persisting in their error, the Arabs established refugee camps for the Palestinians who had fled during and after the war...

"Chairman Mahmoud 'Abbas... was the first Palestinian leader to acknowledge that the Christian church in Gaza plundered by Hamas gangs had stood there 'before [we] came to Gaza.' By this he meant 'we the Palestinians' - particularly the current Gaza residents, [the descendants of] Bedouins from the Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula and of others, of unknown origin. [These people were] attracted by the wealth of the new Islamic state that extended from Persia to Southern Ethiopia, and came after the Muslim conquests and set themselves up over the local population - Christians, Jews, Phoenicians, Byzantines, and the remnants of the Sumerians...


Arabs Must Recognize the Jews' Right to Palestine

"In order to prevent more bloodshed among the innocent [population]... and in order to keep the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza, and the West Bank from making [these regions into] a quagmire that will spread to engulf all Arab states and societies, the Arabs must reassess the question of the Nakba and come up with a new, courageous vision for the region and for the future of its residents.

"[This vision] must involve public recognition of the Jews' legitimate right to their state - which is based on historical fact - instead of [recognition] of the writings filled with anger and demagogy produced and formed into an ideology by the confused [Arab] consciousness - a consciousness built upon lies, myths, and distortions stemming from the principle of non-acceptance of the other.

"The most important factor in strengthening such a new vision is [the adoption of] a principle [requiring] official condemnation of all individuals, groups, companies, religious and political parties, and totalitarian regimes that built their glory and hollow leaderships upon the notion of the Nakba, and which are always ready to absorb other false claims and fabrications.

"This must be done, so that a modern Arab face is turned to the world - [a face reflecting] ethical values that will not allow any Arab, under any pretext, to oppress his son or his brother who differs from him in religion, ethnicity, or ideology."




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] www.ahewar.org (formerly www.rezgar.com ), December 7, 2007.

[2] 'Aref 'Alwan is the first Arab author to publish his novels on the Internet. His doing so was the subject of his January 20, 2005 interview in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.