[wvns] Eric Walberg: Muslims and Jews

Muslims and Jews
Eric Walberg
Al Ahram
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/857/focus.htm

Critiques of Israel as the cause of the Middle East crisis and of the
Jewish lobby propping it up and censoring debate are now a dime a
dozen. In "The closing of the Jewish mind" (Al-Ahram Weekly 1/8/7),
for example, Egyptian-US intellectual Issa Khalaf points to the
"profound indifference of the American Zionists, the Dershowitz-like
triumphalism, Jewish political tribalism whose roots extend deep into
the past", but can only suggest that Zionist Jews and Israelis should
"refrain from killing". As the Arabic saying goes, the dogs bark but
the caravan moves on. Extremist Zionist rabbis continue to "visit"
Al-Aqsa Mosque, hoping to provoke war and the destruction of one of
Islam's most sacred sites, preaching hatred of Muslims and the
non-Jewish world; and all we can say is "Please refrain from killing"?!

It has long been fashionable in popular discourse to criticise Islam
as reactionary and the supposed source of terrorism through its
doctrine of Jihad. What's left of Christianity -- gay ministers or
Rapture-ready millenniarists -- is mostly the object of disdain and
the butt of off-colour jokes. Yes, Islam has been unique in holding to
its traditions, established 15 centuries ago and still vibrant,
despite the incessant pressures of modern society. It rejected the
transformation in thinking that led to the Western explosion of
technology that led, in turn, to capitalism and imperialism, and is
roundly dismissed as having "missed the boat" as a result. Now the
countries to which the Muslim world has given way are subjecting it to
incessant lectures from all sides to hurry up and become "liberal
democratic states" and "join the West"...

The third pillar
Muslims' monotheistic siblings, Christians and Jews, embraced the
great adventure of liberal secularism, in the process creating a dunya
-- the lower, worldly realm, in contrast to the higher hereafter, of
incredible material wealth and secularising life in what is now called
the "Judeo-Christian tradition". Most odd, considering the millennia
of animosity between the two faiths. Pope John Paul II merely acceded
to the obvious when he recognised Israel, despite the clear
contradiction this entails with Christian theology; he went so far as
to call Christianity merely "a new branch from the common root".

Indeed, today, Christmas carols and Hannukah candles live in harmony
as quaint rituals, giving some colour to the West's secular wasteland.
But while Islam and Christianity are frequently subjected to scathing
criticism, what is "beyond the pale" is to dare to criticise this
other pillar of the monotheistic trilogy, Judaism. Criticise the
implicit racism behind the notion of the "Chosen People", the overt
imperialism behind its embodiment in the Zionist project (a land
without a people for a people without a land), and you're hoisted on
the petard of anti-Semitism. Go further, and argue that the invasion
of Iraq and the plans for such in Iran have the fingerprints of
Greater Israel on them ("from the Nile to the Euphrates" and "divide
and conquer"), and you're dismissed as a neo-Nazi. But with 90 per
cent of these ornery, conservative Muslims around the world believing
just that, along with increasing numbers of otherwise sane Westerners,
little Hans's finger in the dyke is just not doing the trick anymore.
And with extremist rabbis plotting to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque and
declare all-out war against the goyim, it's high time for a critique
of Judaism and its embodiments in the world today.

Let me suggest a few vital elements of such a critique, starting with
the notion of anti-Semitism, the big gun in the Jewish arsenal, and
Zionism, the political movement inspired by Judaism. It is fashionable
to refer to "the long history of European anti-Semitism" in any
discourse about the Jews. Semitism, according to the 1977 Shorter
Oxford English Dictionary, was first coined in 1885 to mean "Jewish
ideas or influence in politics or society", which was growing by leaps
and bounds by the mid-19th century as restrictions on Jews fell away.
Anti-Semitism referred to an aversion to this development, which was
soon embodied by Herzl's vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine,
called Zionism.

Nationalism was in vogue in Europe at this time; however, unlike
Norwegian or Czech nationalism, the Jewish form of nationalism --
Zionism is, like its infamous German counterpart, not just a
celebration of folk customs and history, but a doctrine of race; and
it is no surprise that as Europe became more secular and opened itself
to the Jews, this racist strain in Jewish thought provoked a negative
reaction. After the creation of Israel, anti-Semitism came more and
more to be defined as "opposition to Zionism; sympathy with opponents
of state of Israel" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary).
Israeli historian Israel Shahak argues that modern anti-Semitism is
based on the "modern myth of the Jewish 'race' -- of outwardly hidden
but supposedly dominant characteristics of 'the Jews', independent of
history, of social role, of anything". But so were Zionism and Nazism!

The plot thickens: according to Shahak, "historically, Zionism is both
a reaction to anti-Semitism and a conservative alliance with it". This
pact with the devil -- Zionism using anti-Semitism to justify and
assist the creation of a Jewish state -- eventually led to Zionists
actually abetting Hitler in his desire to expel all Jews from Europe,
since the Zionists very much wanted all Jews to move to Palestine. The
term becomes a farce when applied to Arabs, who are the real Semites
and are the very real victims of racism today. It is well known that
Muslims and Jews lived in harmony for their entire history until the
rise of Zionism. We may hear disparaging remarks about Jews by
violently oppressed Palestinians, just as disparaging remarks can be
heard about the Americans in Iraq. In neither case do these remarks
constitute racism. In Black Spark, White Fire, Richard Poe identifies
racism as a discourse of power: "Racial prejudice is a natural
by-product of military dominance. It is one of the ways conquerors
express their contempt for the conquered."

So the real situation is the opposite of what is touted by Israel and
its friends. Frustrated, powerless anti-Zionists let off steam by
spray-painting swastikas on synagogues or blowing themselves up, not a
pretty thing. But the real racism is by the militarily dominant Jews
of Israel and America -- the Zionists, the causus racismi. The
Zionists manage to have their cake and eat it -- use "anti-Semitism"
to attack their enemies and promote the continual expansion of a
religious, imperialist state. And so far, the world has let them get
away with it.

Then there's the devastating socio-economic critique of Judaism by
Marx, who saw by the 1840s that the Jewish god was really money. The
Jews were the traditional usurers and this had become the touchstone
of Judaism over the past 2,000 years. Marx's Das Kapital begins with
"making money out of money", with usury as the zenith of obfuscation
-- a gold coin just sitting there magically reproducing itself. Beats
the hell out of the Golden Calf. "Money is the essence of man's life
and work which have become alienated from him: this alien monster
rules him and he worships it." Who can deny that we all worship money
today? A Jew himself, Marx renounced this negative heritage and called
for assimilation (and revolution, to be sure).

Add to this economic role the power-behind-the-throne aspect of Jews,
who have throughout history surrounded princes and even sheikhs as
advisers or -- surprise -- moneylenders, trading with both sides
during the many European wars and marrying into royal families. It
should therefore come as no surprise if a Jewish agenda creeps into
the plans of Christian or secular imperialists, more so today after
the spectacular success of Jews in the past two centuries. Just look
at the roster of Clinton's and Bush's advisers. Who says politics and
religion no longer mix?

Does pointing all this out make me an anti-Semite? I grew up with and
cherish my many Jewish mentors, continue to enjoy the best of
Jewish-inspired Western culture (Hollywood in the earlier days) and
have Jewish friends, albeit anti-Zionist ones. I am often taken for a
Jew, suggesting that either Western culture is indeed Jewish in its
essence or that unbeknownst to me, my ancestors were Jewish and just
decided to assimilate. I really don't care. My only answer to the
shrill yapping of name-callers is "sticks and stones..." The world is
in permanent crisis and we have the duty in the media to explore why.
After all, in Western terms, nothing is sacred anymore, (oh yes, I
forgot about money).

Yet we still haven't addressed the possibility that there is a problem
inherent in the religion itself, contrary to the soothing words of
JPII. The True Torah Jews or Neturei Karta reject Zionism and call for
dismantling the state of Israel. They even sent a delegation to the
recent notorious anti-Zionist conference in Tehran. But they are a
tiny sect which is disowned by mainstream Jews. Their version of
Judaism is probably closest to the original Judaism and seems quite
harmless. But take a glance at Old Testament texts such as Joshua or
Numbers for blood, gore and racism. Yahweh regularly helps the Jews
massacre their enemies, including women and children, though
occasionally turning his considerable wrath against the Jews
themselves for straying.

This is hardly the New Testament or Quran's God of compassion. Then
there's the Babylonian Talmud, which boasts of murdering Jesus, who is
roundly insulted in the worst possible language and where goyim,
especially Christians, are dismissed as less than human. And Jewish
holidays, apart from the wonderful Day of Atonement, all seem to focus
on massacres of Jewish enemies -- Purim, Hannukah, even Passover.
Could this have to do with the frightful remorselessness which
Israelis show in their daily murdering of Palestinians?

Islam came into being as a corrective to the followers of Abraham,
Moses and Jesus, whose words -- if you are a believer, the word of God
-- were distorted by their followers, resulting in the racist,
genocidal bits of the OT, and the exalting of Jesus as the son of God
in the NT. This is made crystal clear in such verses of the Quran as
2:79: Then woe to those who write the Book with their own hands and
then say, 'this is from Allah', to purchase with it a little price!"

Whether or not you are Muslim (though it is much easier for a Muslim
to understand this vital point), the usurous system of capitalism is
anathema to strict monotheism, be it the original Judaism,
Christianity or Islam, and the refusal by the Muslim world to join in
is really the defining moment in this comparison of the three pillars.
That is why the Muslim world is being pressured -- at gunpoint --
today to throw in the towel, dump its spiritual core and wallow in the
riches that capitalism is so adept at providing.

That is why it is suffering so terribly, ruled by corrupted
governments who have thrown or would very much like to throw in the
towel, and colonised by first the British, French and now the
Israelis. This critique has a religious perspective, though the plight
of the Muslims and their "Judeo-Christian" persecutors can be
convincingly explained from a more secular standpoint.

It barely scratches the surface but from a political standpoint, it
should be clear by now that such a critique, whether religious or
secular, is an essential part of the explanation of what is happening
in the Middle East and even the world today. Arguably far more
important than the critique of, say, US Zionist Christians, who may
look threatening but are really just an effect of Jewish cultural
hegemony, or a supposedly anachronistic Islam, which despite the
currently fashionable propaganda, hasn't been spread by force of arms
for 500 years and has really been inward-looking for close to a thousand.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? We can address the issue of
the compatibility of capitalism and monotheism elsewhere. But, yes. It
is when Jews accept that they are no better than the rest of humanity,
just as the tragedy of the 20th century forced their many enemies to
accept them as equals. And what that means for the Middle East is a
one-state solution, the land of Canaan or Palestine (sorry, "Israel"
has too much baggage), where the indigenous people have full rights,
and the millions of immigrants -- secular or religious -- must adjust
their lives to make peace with the natives.

Pluralistic creed
Is Judaism why Palestinians are oppressed and the West so insensitive
to Muslims? Is it a world or a European problem? One may distinguish
between Islam on the one hand and Christianity and Judaism on the
other by referring to the Muslims' early rejection of the line of
development that led to secular liberalism. Let it be clear at the
outset that this writer is no admirer of the latter brand of thought,
which being wholly materialistic has profoundly reduced human
prospects. Obsession with matter as opposed to mind, and indeed
Descartes's seminal distinction between the two as metaphysical
substances, not only breaks with the deeper meaning of monotheism --
which is that all is One -- but results in both the dog-eat-dog world
in which we live today (and in said world, by the same token, it is
the Muslim dog that is more frequently being eaten by the Western,
Judaeo-Christian or secular one) and the erosion of any collective or
constructive sense of meaning or purpose. This, in favour of
categories like "health", "living standards", "human rights", indeed
"environmental awareness" -- all of which do little more in practice
than perpetuate the materialistic status quo, suggesting to humanity
at large that it has been and is all we really have.

Still, in approaching the distinction between Islam and the Western
world two points should be made prior to any argument. First, while
the theological basis of Islam really was established a little over 15
centuries ago, its traditions -- up to and including the manner in
which scripture was interpreted, the law applied and the very nature
of what it means to be Muslim -- has very definitely altered over
time. To say that, in opposing secular liberalism today, Islam is
holding to its traditions is in effect to reduce a glorious,
multi-faceted and, most importantly, pluralistic civilisation to the
abstract Five Pillars (often interpreted in a literalist or
reductionist way). In this context it is important to underline the
fact that, even prior to the emergence of the first dynasty, Bani
Umaya, disputes over power were rampant within the Muslim world, and
they encompassed not only questions of governance and economy but
also, and significantly for this argument, questions of legality, all
of which were theologically rooted. Wildly disparate political systems
and ways of life -- the Ismaili Fatimids and the Wahhabi Saudis, for
example -- were periodically accommodated within Muslim theology, and
they all upheld some version of the Five Pillars. Such is the
flexibility of Islam that it is compatible with a whole range of world
views, up to and including present-day secularism.

From its emergence in the seventh century until the 16th, Islam was --
far more than an airtight theological system or creed -- a
multi-ethnic civilisation and a mode of uniting rather than dividing
human endeavour.

Until the European Renaissance, followed briefly by the Enlightenment
-- from which secular liberalism is directly derived -- Islam embodied
an empire or a series of empires which enjoyed both a technological
and intellectual edge over its political rivals in the world at large
and as such was able to spread its language and world view. This in
turn contributed to both the Renaissance and Enlightenment, giving
present-day Muslims every right to claim these two roots of
present-day "Western" civilisation as their own; historically, they
belong as much to Muslims -- Berbers, Turks, Persians, Frankish
converts of every stripe, tax- paying People of the Book as well as
Arabs -- as to Europeans. What Islam did not do was incorporate
Thomism or Baconian rationalism -- though it did boast a rationalist
tradition of its own, embodied most famously in Ibn Rushd, without
whose contribution Descartes's work would arguably have been
impossible. Had it maintained its edge after doing so, perhaps the
world would have ended up a significantly better place. As it is --
and following the complete collapse of communism -- what we have is
secular liberalism, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. And the Muslims'
contemporary tensions with that are categorically not the result of
intellectual or theological difference but rather, among other things,
of Muslim failure to engage with the flowering of civilisation in
Europe, however inferior that civilisation is compared to the
potential contained within Islam itself -- something no doubt aided
and abetted by the Franks who ousted them from Spain and proceeded to
subjugate and colonise them, resulting in isolationism, dependence on
derivation rather than innovation and a dogged refusal on the part of
the Muslim world to change with the times.

In its capacity as a civilisation, Islam no doubt had advantages over
Catholicism -- witness the Inquisition; Zionism, which is racist in
essence; and capitalism-consumerism -- the ugly face of secularism.
All three may be readily if rather ahistorically identified with
Judaism or rather the Judeo-Christian tradition. But this is not to
say that (a) Islam remained the same, easily definable over the
centuries or that (b) it can, in the present-day world, be so clearly
distinguished from the Judaeo- Christian-secular civilisation under
which everyone, Muslims and non- Muslims, lives. This is of course a
contentious point, and one that would require volumes of argument to
prove or disprove. A core awareness of fate, ghayb (the unknown) and
akherah (the opposite of dunya ) may continue to characterise the
Muslim as opposed to the Western mind, but in many, indeed most cases,
such awareness readily reduces to empty rituals, quasi-fascist
superstitions comparable to the aforementioned categories of "health"
and "rights" or else, more recently, identity politics.

Ask a born-and-bread Arab Muslim: our people -- and the interpretation
of the faith they have consistently espoused since the 16th century,
firmly excluding even the mildest attempt at reform or renovation of
thought -- are often no less materialistic, and just as spiritually
hollow than their Western counterparts. Indeed there are millions of
Muslims who, literally upholding the Five Pillars on the surface, feel
perfectly within their rights to amass fortunes within the
usury-oriented global banking system, to practise preferential
treatment whether to non-Muslims or Muslims of a different class,
language or nationality, to wage war on their enemies and rivals or to
revel in the genocide of their enemies -- often identified as infidels
to justify it. And, gathering hasanat (good deeds which are counted in
points, with bonuses, in ways disturbingly reminiscent of university
credits or indeed bank accounts), they are convinced that they will go
straight to heaven: a lugubriously material heaven, incidentally, as
described in the Quran and Hadith, down to rivers of (prohibited) wine
and beautiful virgin maidens or indeed boys -- a very far cry from the
paradise of the Sufis, for example, which embodies nothing more than
union with the One. Muslims with access to it have embraced
world-destroying technology just as readily than said technology's
Western inventors; through the ages they have fought just as
ferociously, notably even among themselves.

Secondly, to argue against secular democracy in this way sounds
disturbingly like promoting Islamic theocracy, a discussion of which
may well be beneficial but is somewhat off point here. The fact that
the world moved away from theocracy towards one modification or
another of the political system applied in Greek city states is
something to which Islam has very little to say now. Had the Umayids
of Spain or the Ottomans in Central Asia and the Middle East sustained
a position of economic-material or intellectual-scientific prominence
in the face of their European rivals, whether or not such prominence
resulted in the same problems as those of Western technology, for
example, the course of history may indeed have changed, and perhaps
some of the qualities that had made Islam appealing in the first place
would have survived in a more effective way, resulting in a picture
different from and very possibly better than the one we are left with
today. But this is not to say that the Muslim equivalent of
evangelising or the literal application of Muslim law so many
centuries later could make up a viable alternative to secular
democracy. Indeed the possibility of a Muslim renaissance rests on the
willingness of Muslims to claim, accept and eventually alter the
highest that has been achieved in human civilisation at any given
time, however much one or more Muslim individuals may be disgusted
with the content or implications of that civilisation, not on their
apparently eccentric insistence on aspects of their own difference,
many of which are recent political inventions rather than reflections
of their distinction from others.

Perhaps the monotheistic peoples are more alike than present-day
tensions suggest, but one striking difference between the Muslim
period of empire and the imperialism of the post-Reformation
Judeo-Christian world is that the latter incorporated a notion of
racial difference, presupposing the superiority of the colonising race
over the natives. This facilitated, indeed legitimised genocide,
whether of the natives in America, the Jews in Germany or the
Palestinians -- the former was entirely free of any form of racism;
even preferential treatment was never on the cards except in matters
relating to the divine message, which was embracing enough to make
room for everyone, unlike Catholicism or the notion of a chosen
people. Whether we attribute this to something specific about Islam or
not, this is a vital difference when we look at the Western imperial
project as embodied in Israel.

In this context it is well to remember that Enlightenment was as much
about undoing the damage of racism as separating religion from
politics. Enlightenment was also about imperialism, alas. But in being
an anachronism of the imperialist project, Israel also betrays that
side of the Enlightenment to which Islam contributed most positively:
the inclusive, Nature-bound, non-racist world view later subverted by
the imperialists. (Recall Ben Gurion: "I'm an atheist but God gave us
this land!") Irrespective of the aforementioned difference between
Muslim empire and Judaeo-Christian-secular imperialism, however, the
answer to the Middle East conflict cannot be sought in a space
corrupted with racism. Certainly, the answer to the Palestinian
problem is not in yet another nationalist Arab autocracy- theocracy
operating "independently" from within Israel. The one-state solution,
however farfetched in practical terms at the moment, is inevitable in
the long term, irrespective of the balance of power within that state
and even despite the best efforts of the Zionists opposed to it. Plans
for a Greater Israel notwithstanding, it is simply not true that
Muslims command no power in the world today; and for Muslims (the
Arabs, the Turks, though increasingly not the Persians), the tendency
to sit back and say "Please refrain from killing!" is no longer viable.

It is well to remember that under the Umayids in Spain, for example,
Jews were highly assimilated into society in the best sense of the
word: as philosophers, mathematicians, translators and physicians;
until the mid-20th century, indeed, Jews had continued to be an
active, integrated part of Muslim societies and indeed the West; it
was imperialism -- the Zionist project -- that pushed them out, not
the Old Testament or secularism.

Perhaps focussing on the political-economic dynamics that have given
rise to the present situation will be more effective in countering
American foreign policy -- the most horrific extension of Europe's
abortive imperial project of the 19th century, both Christian and
Jewish -- than reviewing the history of religion as such. In either
case it is time for Muslims to re- engage with the pluralism on which
Islam thrives and speak out against racism.

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