Amending the Ten Commandments: Thou Shall Not Criticize Israel

The title on Haaretz front-page online few days ago read: "Zionist group bans Goldstone from grandson's bar mitzvah"

Judge Richard Goldstone is a Jewish South African internationally respected jurist who made the grave mistake of accepting to write a report on the crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the bloody Gaza War over a year ago in which over 1500 Palestinians were killed, more than two thirds of them children and civilians.

The opinion of Goldstone has put blame on both Israel and Hamas for crimes they did. That did not fly well with either group, but Israel has a strong reach and loud mouth, supported by its loud mouth chorus allover the world that pledge loyalty to the clan more than to the truth.

so, naturally he has been vilified ever since his critical report by all pro-Israel groups. The latest and the most nauseating action against him is what triggered this posting.

He has been 'barred' by pro-Israel group from attending his grandson's bar mitzvah, a major religious event for Jewish boys indicating the coming of age. It is a very important event in the life of the boy and his family. Here are some excepts from the Haaretz article:

Judge Richard Goldstone, who authored a damning report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip, has reportedly been banned by pro-Israel activists from attending his grandson's bar mitzvah in his native South Africa.
".... the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) and the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol in Sandton reached an agreement with the Goldstone family under which the judge would not be permitted to attend the synagogue service in Johannesburg next month. "
The head of South Africa's Beth Din - or Jewish religious court - told the blog the court had not been officially involved in the matter, but that he supported the move as it spoke to the sentiments of many in the community .
... Kurstag said he believed Goldstone had done "a tremendous disservice not only to Israel but to the Jewish world. His name is used by hostile elements in the world against Israel and this can increase anti-Semitic waves."

One would imagine that someone with the title of "Head of Jewish Court" would act more like a judge with some commitment to truth and honesty, and not as a head of a self-centered and bigotted clan. But obviously that is too much to expect from him.

The behavior of that group, and many pro-Israel groups demonstrated intense ethnocentric fervor that in many case cannot be distinguished from racism. Why do I say that? Because a basic element of racism is a sense of uniqueness that entitles you and your group to be judged differently compared to other groups. You feel automatically that you deserve benefits, protection and special privileges just because you belong to the 'special group'.
Frequently what accompanies that sense of you being special is the sense that the others are out to get you just because you are special.

As a result, wrongdoings you or your group may be accused of should not even be mentioned by your own group members or others, because either:

1. You simply do not commit any wrongdoings. The others are only picking on you because you are special, hence the charge of anti-Semitism against non-Jews who are critical of Israel.
2. Wrongdoings you are charged with may be true, but you did it only because the others - with their 'hatred for you and your clan' - forced you to do it.
(Remember Golda Meir saying: I hate Arabs because they make us kill their kids”).
3. And even if your clan committed wrongdoings, and even if you could not find a way to use ‘the others made me do it’ argument, no one should talk about your wrongdoings, especially your own people, because it only re-enforces for the others that you and your clan make mistakes. That may open the door to holding you accountable - something you will not accept because you are special.

The label ‘Self-hating Jew’ that Judge Goldstone received before has, for long time been the standard charge against righteous Jews who dare to speak the truth about Israel (for example, Richard Silverstein, Normal Finkelstein, Anna Baltzer, and many others - see their website link below). Even Obama’s aids, Rehm Emmanuel and David Axelrod, received that honor for apparently taking their loyalty to the USA seriously and for advising the president in a way that did not seem whole-heartedly pro occupation, pro illegal settlements and pro Arab land grab.

The so-called head of Jewish Court, Kurstag, went on to say what I think his most sick and nauseating statement:

"I understand that he [Goldstone] is a judge, but he should have had the sense to understand that whatever he said wouldn't be good and he should have just recused himself. "

If the head of a Jewish ‘court' thinks like that, you can only imagine what kind of bigoted clan he is part of.

What is worse is that by the standard that the Jewish Court head prefers, Jews everywhere should recuse themselves before making decisions that may not be in Israel favor, even if they think it is the honest and right decision to make.

If one applies that standard to our government in the US , and considering how many Jews are in our congress, cabinet, military, National Security Council, White House high position, wouldn't that tantamount accepting that Jews will always have doubtful loyalty to their homelands, with Israel receiving their primary - if not the only - loyalty they have?

Would not that be called flagrant antisemitism? Only, in this case, it has the seal of approval of a head of a Jewish Court.

Khaled

Links:
'Paranoid' Netanyahu Calls Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel 'Self-hating Jews'- Hiffington Post
Report: Zionist group bans Goldstone from grandson's bar mitzvah - Haaretz - Israel News

Web sites of Righteous Jews that regularly receive the honor of being labeled self-hating Jews for being honest:
Tikun Olam (Richard silverstein)
Jews for Justice for Palestinians
Anna in the Middle East (Anna Baltzer)
Jews Against the Occupation
Norman G. Finkelstein

Repealing 800 Year-Old Fatwa? Why Even Bother?

During the last week of March 2010, a group of senior Muslim clerics gathered in a small town in Turkey to discuss an interesting issue: modernization of some old religious rulings (Fatwas) that do not seem to make sense in modern times.

The major Fatwa in focus this time was an 800 year-old Fatwa, issued by Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328 AD). That Fatwa is understood by modern-day militants as justifying fighting not only against oppressors and occupiers of Muslim land, but also against other Muslims perceived not to be in line with the militants’ point of view.

The media blurb about the conference was that it called for ‘repealing the fatwa’. In actuality, the call was a lot milder than that. It just called to try to understand the fatwa in their historic context – 800 years ago, when the Muslims world was at a war with the Mongol Empire army (1206-1368). The edict is apparently used by some fundamental militants to justify religiously sanctioned war against others: Muslims and non-Muslims.

While the idea behind the conference is not inherently bad, I think such efforts are useless and are a total waste of time and here are my reasons.

Any idiot that thinks a 13th -century fatwa regulating conduct of war is valid today - in a very different context - will not listen to a conference press release from some modern-day clergies. Ibn Taymiyya is a semi-divine figure for the Wahhabi and Salafi militants, and is also treated as infallible by many traditionalists.

The idea of repealing one of his Fatwas, or even contextualizing it, is almost blasphemous to them. Traditionalists can see God only through the ancient thinkers eyes. Any attempt to change that mounts to creating a novel and erroneous religion for them. This is a result of intellectual cowardice that many modern clergy have, failing to express any tendency to critically appraise old religious conclusions, regardless of how silly they may be. Their logic frequently is: if it survived the test of times, it must be correct.

An example of such intellectual cowardice shows in one of the conference participating ‘scholars’ who was already on the defense stating that the original Fatwa (i.e., Ibn Taymiyya’s opinion) was not wrong, and that the militant interpretation of it was rather a result typographical error that lead to the misunderstanding; and that the conference was not reviewing the fatwa in the light of a differing or opposing opinion to Ibn Taymiyya [God forbids!!], but rather authenticating the initial intent of the fatwa using Ibn Taymiyya’s own work.

The fault is obviously not with Ibn Taymiyya, who was a brilliant jurist and a scholar that factored in the realities of his own world when he made his Fatwas. I do not think he could have imagined that, eight centuries later, someone would consider him so infallible that he is above criticism or review.

The problems we face as Muslims today are not only because of Ibn Taymiya’s edicts. It is because of the stupid glorification and sainthood we cast on anything in our Islamic history and intellectual products once it is old enough.

Early scholars are not great because they are now historic. They excelled because they considered their own realities as much as they considered the context of their predecessors’ work. Until we have the intelligence and intellectual courage to openly critique, oppose and even reverse some of the earlier edicts and conclusions when needed, we will continue to be intellectually subservient to the rest of the world.

Even worse, we frequently are the laughing stock for anyone with some intelligence that looks deep enough in some of our books. Take for example some Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) books that still list counting chest wall ribs as a possible way (albeit a minority opinion) in deciding if a hermaphrodite is a male or female, for inheritance purposes.

Something is wrong with a culture that does not throw in the trash ancient statements like that. We cannot even make the bold decision to stop listing stupid opinions as minority opinion out of respect for earlier scholars? Having been reading about earlier scholars, I am certain they would have been the first to throw away their ridiculous conclusions once they came across facts that proved them wrong. That is why they are scholars. And that is why I admire them despite realizing some of their wrong conclusions.

Here is another example. Some Salafi and Wahabi ‘scholars’ are still writing books denying that planet Earth moves, and contemplating the labeling for a Muslim who says it does: are they kafir or murtad, and what punishment they deserve for believing that planet Earth rotates!!! One of those ‘scholars’ was the Chairman of the Saudi Religious Edict Council Abdel-Aziz Bin Baz (died 1999), another semi-divine figure to many Salafis. A book of interest is still in print labeled ‘Textual and sensory evidence that the Sun moves and the Earth does not’. In case you want to research it further, the title in Arabic is:

“الأدلة النقلية و الحسية على جريان الشمس و سكون الأرض”

How stupid should one be to realize that ‘ancient textual’ and ‘subjective sensory' evidence have no place in science, medicine or astronomy? For those who can understand Arabic, check the web page to laugh at the good luck that makes that man a religious authority for some Muslims.

People like Bin Baz could be knowledgeable in other areas, but they are so detached from the World that their conclusions are not trustworthy in any case where interaction with the real world seems needed.

They feel that their ‘textual knowledge’ of ancient Islamic work should be enough to enable them to make judgment about any and everything ranging from medicine, biology and all the way to physics and astronomy. And seeing how stupid their opinions are on objective physical sciences, one can only imagine the intellectual swamps we get in when they talk about less objective arenas such as politics or social issues.

Do we even realize how many brilliant young Muslim minds we alienate, and eventually lose, by keeping this sort of mental trash as part of the 'religious' culture?

The real goal should not be repealing a Fatwa, but rather collective effort to change the mindset of current Muslim culture.

It will take more courage to face the real issues head on. In a generation or two, we may be able to enlighten some of the ignorant idiots, neutralize some of the militants, but more importantly, we would be able to evolve into people of intellect, the kind of people God is addressing in the Quran all the time.

"Verily, in the creation of the heavens and of the earth, and the succession of night and day: and in the ships that speed through the sea with what is useful to man: and in the waters which God sends down from the sky, giving life thereby to the earth after it had been lifeless, and causing all manner of living creatures to multiply thereon: and in the change of the winds, and the clouds that run their appointed courses between sky and earth: [in all this] there are messages indeed for people who use their reason." (2:164)

Khaled

Links of relevance (some are in Arabic):
"لا يجوز لجماعة مسلمة إعلان الحرب من تلقاء نفسها"
Mardin anti-terror conference sparks debate over fatwas
International Conference on Ibn Taymiyah's "Mardin Fatwa" held in the Turkish City of Mardin | IslamToday - English
ابن باز وكروية الأرض
قضية دوران الارض ما بين التفسير الديني و التفسير العلمي .... نقاش مفتوح - الصفحة 3 - ملتقى المهندسين العرب - أول ملتقى هندسي عربي
تحريم القول بدوران الكرة الارضية

Our Forgotten Allies - Part 1: Is The Palestinian Problem An Islamic Cause?

For a large number of people, merely raising the question, whether the Israeli Palestinian conflict is a Islamic ‘religious’ issue or not, may raise eye brows. Many take it for granted that the conflict is a religious one.

Well. That has not been always been the case. And for several decades, Palestine liberation from Israeli occupation and oppression was an Arab national cause, not an Islamic cause. Actually, until recently, non-Arab Muslim countries were not at all seriously concerned about the Middle East conflict, except for a supportive vote in the UN every now and then.

Of course Islam, both as a religion and as a dominant Arab cultural backdrop, was influencing the formulation of the ‘lingo’ of the conflict. But that was in the context of Islam being the major element of Arabic cultural foundation, even for many Arab Christians.

The frequent use of Islamic terminology was therefore not out of the perception that the conflict was a religious one. And for over 40 years after the Palestinian Nakba (Arabic term for the Palestinian disaster in 1948), both Muslims and Christians were intensely involved as Arabs in all the military conflicts, resistance, negotiations, etc. Some of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) figures were Christians, and one of the most militant Palestinian groups was founded by George Habash, a Palestinian Christian.

Of course that does not mean that the early (and short-lasting) involvement of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood group in the 1948 war did not have religious reasons, but for most Arabs, that is not how the conflict was viewed.

It was an issue of millions of fellow Arabs suffering from oppression and grave injustice, their culture was being destroyed, and their own existence as people was being denied. It was about Arab land robbed without any legitimacy – just because the other side could achieve land theft and population transfer by force – never effectively opposed.

I wish the conflict remained as secular as it was in the early decades. But, for different reasons, it was more practical for both Arabs on one hand and Israelis and their supporters on the other, to turn it into a religious conflict.

That was a grave mistake and to the detriment of Arab and Palestinian position in my opinion. And, consequently, it was to the great benefit of the pro-Israel crowd.

On the Arab/Muslim side, the transformation of the Palestinian cause from secular to religious started in the early 1980’s. Secular Arab governments have proven to be total failure in solving Arab world problems and, moreover, many of them started taking initiatives to surrender emotionally and materially to the US and Israeli demands.

And while that was happening, Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan were being hailed by the West as defenders of the World against the Soviet Union evil empire. The American and Arab propaganda machinery raised the stature of the ‘Mujahideen’ and their ideology to mythical heights casting them as saints. That was, incidentally, financed by Saudis and Americans, pumping the zealous religious emotions of Arabs and Muslims all over the world.

At a different level, Arab people were impressed by the success of another religion-based national liberation movement in Iran. The Iranian people succeeded in kicking out Reza Bahlavi’s regime, a bloody and very oppressive regime. And their ability to resist the pressure of military and economic war by Iraq and the West during the protracted Iraq-Iran war did not pass unnoticed in Arab Street.

It was not difficult to put the two together: success was based on how profound the religious feelings are, and how great the will to sacrifice was.

For Israel and its creators and supporters, religion has never been out of the picture from day one. After all, it was early secular Zionists that used the myth of God’s promise to his chosen people to promote their desire for a homeland. A promise that is laughable as backward unless you base it on religious ideology. But the surroundings were ripe for the plausibility of that silly claim of the Jewish people to a Jewish state the land of Palestine.

Secular Jews got the land that they felt would protect them for more destruction by Europeans. And religious Jews got what they thought was a fulfillment of God’s promise.

For Western Christian supporters (many with a long history of anti-Jewish sentiments) some saw it as a way to resolve the ‘Jewish problem’ but for others waiting for the second coming of the messiah to establish the kingdom of heaven, it was a step closer to making the end of times happen.

More recently, the pro-Israel voices, both Jewish and Christian Zionist, have taken a more explicit and advantageous religious direction with the ‘Islamization’ of the Palestinian /Israeli conflict by Arabs and Muslims. And over the last 10-15 years, the conflict has been framed by pro-Israel voices as a clash of religions. Fighting ‘Radical Islam’ real and imagined became the new hub of the pro-Israel policies.

At present, it is almost certain that enthusiastic pro-Israel voices would be fervently and irrationally anti-Muslim and explicitly Islamophobic.

Zionist Christians and fundamental Zionists have managed to create a powerful media network that regularly defends the blind support of Israel while foaming at the mouth about the dangers of Islam and Muslims in general.

For Muslims living in the West, most of the hatred and insults they face (in person, and in media pits like Fox News Network and Wall Street Journal, as well as a variety of Islamophobic online outlets) comes from the pro-Israel crowd while they are promoting Israeli points of view.

Framing the Israeli Palestinian conflict as a conflict between Islam and a ‘Judeo-Christian’ culture (whatever that means) has been very convenient for Israel and its advocate, and in my opinion has been extremely detrimental to Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians. But Muslims themselves take a lot of the blame for not resisting redefining the conflict in religious terms.

For Muslims, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be ‘re-redefined’. It is about seeking justice for Palestinians, a legitimate Islamic cause. It is not a conflict about defending Islam, because it is not.

Making it a war to defend Islam made us lose a very important and critical ally, but that will be the topic of another posting. In the mean while, your thoughts and opinions about this topic are appreciated.

Khaled