Jews and Muslims in Post-Israel Middle East
Hamas thinker
Azzam Tamimi on his best behavior
Who is Tamimi?
Azzam Tamimi is the "Western Intellectual" interface of the Hamas. His article,
Jews and Muslims in Post-Israel Middle East explains the fundamentals
of liberal Hamasthought. This is Hamas in its Sunday (or
Friday) suit, putting on its best and most sophisticated manners and etiquette. Here, Tamimi presents his vision for the Middle East
after elimination of Israel, which is taken for granted, and his projection of the wonderful relations of Jews and
Muslims in that Israel-Free Middle East. In this wonderful world, Tamimi looks forward to re-establishing what he
presents as the true Muslim relation to Jews. This is the new Middle East of the liberal Hamas.
Hamas versus Tamimi
Tamimi's attempts to liberalize Hamas Islamist thought and make it palatable to the Western mind borders
on the fantastic, and his rendition of history can charitably be described as wishful thinking. The foundation document
of the Hamas is its charter. This charter is riddled with classical racist anti-Semitism. The basic doctrine of the
Hamas, as declared in their charter, is annihilation of the Jewish people:
Moreover, if the links have
been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters
obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's
promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
"The Day of Judgment will
not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The
stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree,
(evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari
and Moslem).
Allah, as the much quoted Hadith says, promised to kill the Jews, and Hamas will implement the promise.
The charter explains why:
For a long time, the enemies
have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into
consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth
which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news
agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in
various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind
the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there.
With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts
of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to
control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their
resources and spread corruption there.
...
After Palestine, the Zionists
aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire
to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present
conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."
from the Hamas Charter
It is therefore most interesting that Tamimi himself writes:
It
also necessitates exposing fabricated documents such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and discrediting conspiracy
theory explanations of past and present events
How regrettable it is then, that neither Tamimi, nor any other Hamas intellectual, has renounced the
Hamas Charter, which refers to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion!
The Muslim Tolerance Story
Tamimi perpetuates the popular myth of tolerance for Jews in Muslim society. This tolerance existed only
relative to the ferocious persecutions of the Christian world. Tamimi writes:
Until the beginning of the 19th century the Islamic
empire, whose terrain extended over three continents, provided an atmosphere of tolerance that, in contrast to the
history of Europe and the Western world in general, prevented the progression of ideological and religious differences
into physical conflict. Islam, whose values and principles governed the public and private conduct of individuals and
groups, recognised the citizenship rights of Christians and Jews within the Islamic State. In accordance with these rights,
their blood, honour, wealth, faith and shrines were sanctified. This recognition enabled the followers of these creeds
to realise their potential capabilities and thus innovate and participate on equal footing with the Muslims in building
the Arab-Islamic civilisation. Muslims never used the term 'minorities' to describe fellow-citizens who followed other
religions. The Islamic State provided a safe haven to those oppressed in their own countries. Jews in particular
suffered persecution and banishment at the hands of European Christians who blamed them for every single crisis or
catastrophe incurred. It was only in Muslim lands that the Jews found peace, security and freedom.
Did the Muslims give Jews a safe haven? Certainly, they did, usually. Were Muslim countries
relatively more tolerant of the Jews? Certainly. Was it only in Muslim lands that the Jews found peace, security and
freedom? Sometimes, except when they found death and forced conversion, as in the case of Maimonides who fled Spain
because a fanatic Muslim dynasty was forcing Jews to convert, or in the case of many others.
While the Muslims did not call Christians and Jews "Minorities," they did
call them "Dhimmi" and placed restrictions upon them that prevented the "followers of these creeds" from participating
"on equal footing with the Muslims in building the Arab-Islamic civilisation." Even if they had allowed Muslims and
Christians to really participate on an equal footing, to hold all offices, to fight in the army and to share in spoils,
they would still be building Arab-Islamic civilization and not their own. Imagine for example, that George Bush were to
invite all Muslims to "participate on an equal footing" in "building American-Christian civilization." This
analogy puts Dr. Tamimi's "liberal" thought in perspective.
Tamimi has also whitewashed the traditional Qur'anic views of the Jews,
which were, at best, mixed. If the Muslims were so respectful of Jewish rights, how did the Hadith about slaughtering
the Jews find its way into Muslim belief? How does Tamimi fit the Hamas charter into his fictionalized Islamic
society? Why do so many Muslims have a very different interpretation of the Quran? For example:
'Today we and our subjects are deeply troubled over
this Palestine question, and the cause of our disquiet and anxiety is the strange attitude of your British Government,
and the still more strange hypnotic influence which the Jews, a race accursed by God according to His Holy Book, and
destined to final destruction and eternal damnation hereafter, appear to wield over them and the English people
generally.
'God's Holy Book (the Qur'an) contains God's own word
and divine ordinance, and we commend to His Majesty's government to read and carefully peruse that portion which deals
with the Jews and especially what is to be their fate in the end. For God's words are unalterable and must be.
...
'Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation
of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus Christ), and their
subsequent rejection later of His chosen Prophet.
H.R.H King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, to George Rendel, head of the
Eastern Department of the Foreign Office. British Foreign Office file 371/20822
E7201/22/31 Oct 28, 1937
Whose fault is it according to the Hamas?
Who is at fault for Islamist racism according to Tamimi ?
Why - the Jews of course:
Undoubtedly, the Zionist project bears full
responsibility for this shift in the Arab and Muslim perception of Jews and Judaism. After all it was this Zionist
project that embroiled Judaism in its intrigues so as to bestow religious legitimacy on itself and to gain the support
of the world's Jewry.
Perhaps Tamimi forgot the quaint Muslim custom of stoning
Jews. Perhaps he forgot the Hadith about the murder of the Jews on Judgement Day, quoted above, that is part of the
charter of his very own Hamas organization.
Tamimi is also a self-appointed authority on the Jewish
religion. He writes:
The myths of a 'Jewish nation', the 'Land of Promise'
and the 'Chosen People of God' were revived in order to convince the Jews, most of whom had initially been opposed to
Zionism, to adopt the Zionist solution to the Jewish problem in the West. The ultimate objective had been to persuade
the Jews to sponsor the State of Israel, which had been given a theological dimension that transformed it in the Zionised Jewish conscience into 'the end of time Messiah'. The ideology was in the beginning condemned by Jewish
religious leaders as an adulteration of Jewish faith that had been predominant until the beginning of the 20th century
and which forbade Jewish migration into Palestine with the purpose of settling there permanently. Such an action was
viewed by Jewish Orthodoxy as a violation that entailed the forcing of the will of God and that amounted to the sin of
apostasy.
Prepare for the New Middle East of the Liberal Hamas
In case anyone has any doubts about the views
of the most liberal Hamas ideologist, after prettification for the benefit of Western eyes, Tamimi tells us:
Preparation for the post-Israel era should now
begin.
Those who wonder what direction Palestinian
society will take following the recent electoral victory of the Hamas, should note that Tamimi represents the most
liberal wing of Hamas thought. Something to think about.
Ami Isseroff
Updated January 29, 2006
Above commentary copyright 2005 and 2006 by Ami
Isseroff. Please forward this article to friends by email, with this URL -
http://www.zionism.netfirms.com/Tamimi.html
May not be reproduced in any other form without permission. Write to
zio-web-owner@yahoogroups.com
Jews and Muslims in Post-Israel Middle East
Azzam Tamimi
It has been fifteen centuries since the Muslims established themselves as a state in which followers of all three
monotheistic religions coexisted peacefully and equitably. Until the beginning of the 19th century the Islamic empire,
whose terrain extended over three continents, provided an atmosphere of tolerance that, in contrast to the history of
Europe and the Western world in general, prevented the progression of ideological and religious differences into
physical conflict. Islam, whose values and principles governed the public and private conduct of individuals and groups,
recognised the citizenship rights of Christians and Jews within the Islamic State. In accordance with these rights,
their blood, honour, wealth, faith and shrines were sanctified. This recognition enabled the followers of these creeds
to realise their potential capabilities and thus innovate and participate on equal footing with the Muslims in building
the Arab-Islamic civilisation. Muslims never used the term 'minorities' to describe fellow-citizens who followed other
religions. The Islamic State provided a safe haven to those oppressed in their own countries. Jews in particular
suffered persecution and banishment at the hands of European Christians who blamed them for every single crisis or
catastrophe incurred. It was only in Muslim lands that the Jews found peace, security and freedom.
The Muslims' perception of the Jews remained unchanged during the first 13 centuries of Islam. They saw them as People
of the Book who, together with the Christians, shared with the Muslims common values of faith and conduct that entitled
them to citizen rights in the Islamic state. Such perception began to change after the Zionist movement managed to
embroil Jews in its colonial project with the aim of establishing a national home for the 'Jewish People' in Palestine.
In the wake of the Second World War, and as a result of the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany, the scene was set
for the accomplishment of the Zionist dream. The determination of the world order to enable the Zionists to establish a
Jewish state in Palestine turned Jews into enemy number of both Arabs and Muslims. The Muslim hatred for the Jews was
augmented by the fall of Arab Jews in the trap of Zionism. Historic homes of Jewish communities, such as the Arab
Maghreb, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen, witnessed massive exodus of Jews who migrated to the recently established Zionist entity
in Palestine. It turned out later that it was the Zionist movement's acts of terror that intimidated the Arab Jews into
emigrating. It was then that the Arabs no longer discriminated between the Zionist invaders who came all the way from
Poland, Russia, America, Western Europe or South Africa and the Jews who had been living with Arab Muslims and
Christians, and who, for many centuries, shared the same history and civilisation with them.
In spite of the undisguised secularist - even atheist - root of the Zionist project, some Arab and Muslim thinkers
deemed it necessary, perhaps useful, to focus on a purely religious explanation for the Zionist phenomenon.
Through a re-reading of history aided by a re-interpretation of the sacred text, these thinkers sought to prove that
Jews, by virtue of some inherited characters, have always been corrupt and ill intentioned. But the real help came from
Christian anti-Jewish writings. The most influential document in this regard has been the one entitled 'The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion", which concludes that Jews have hatched a global conspiracy aimed at imposing their control over the
world and at subjugating all else to their influence so as to serve their own interests. The occupation of Palestine and
the establishment of a Jewish state in it have been said by the believers in this theory to be a crucial part of this
Jewish conspiracy.
Some Muslim writers have gone as far as interpreting the Qur'anic narrative vis-à-vis the Israelites and the Jews in
light of what the Protocols had claimed. Hostility to the Zionist project may have blurred the eyes of many Muslims from
seeing the difference between the Qur'anic chastisement of bad conduct and ill-manners, which some Israelites and some
Jews practised - and which Muslims and Christians have been warned from copying, and the Qur'anic injunction concerning
the right of Jews, as well as Christians, to Covenant rights the violation of which by Muslims is a sin in the eyes of
God.
Undoubtedly, the Zionist project bears full responsibility for this shift in the Arab and Muslim perception of Jews and
Judaism. After all it was this Zionist project that embroiled Judaism in its intrigues so as to bestow religious
legitimacy on itself and to gain the support of the world's Jewry. The myths of a 'Jewish nation', the 'Land of Promise'
and the 'Chosen People of God' were revived in order to convince the Jews, most of whom had initially been opposed to
Zionism, to adopt the Zionist solution to the Jewish problem in the West. The ultimate objective had been to persuade
the Jews to sponsor the State of Israel, which had been given a theological dimension that transformed it in the
Zionised Jewish conscience into 'the end of time Messiah'. The ideology was in the beginning condemned by Jewish
religious leaders as an adulteration of Jewish faith that had been predominant until the beginning of the 20th century
and which forbade Jewish migration into Palestine with the purpose of settling there permanently. Such an action was
viewed by Jewish Orthodoxy as a violation that entailed the forcing of the will of God and that amounted to the sin of
apostasy.
Many Arabs and Muslims still do not realise that anti-Zionist Jews, who do not recognise the legitimacy of the state of
Israel, do still exist. In spite of the gradual decline in their numbers during the first seven decades of the 20th
century, anti-Zionist Jews are now believed to be on the increase. There are indications that the trend of Jewish
anti-Zionism is growing. This may, at least partly, be due to the increasing public consciousness of the racist and
fascist nature of the State of Israel whose policy and actions contravene the sublime values which people of religion
from all faiths respect and seek to protect.
In essence, the Zionist project is a Western colonial enterprise whose success depends on two main factors. The first
factor is the determination of a powerful West to see this enterprise continue. The second factor is the weakness of the
Arabs and the Muslims who have lost ability to self defend. As for the first factor, so long as the Zionist project
serves the purposes of the current World Order, and so log as the economic and military capabilities of this World Order
permit it to prolong the life of Israel, no effort will be spared in sustaining Israel. However, no sane person would
imagine that this situation would continue forever. The imperialist West is in retreat and its escalating domestic
problems will soon preoccupy it and divert its attention from many foreign affairs that have so far been considered
strategic interests. The Zionist entity lacks the ability to self-sustain and therefore cannot survive without the U.S.
umbilical cord that supplies it with funds and weapons. As for the second factor, the weakness of the Arabs and Muslims
is only temporary and will sometime in the future be reversed. Evidently, the Muslim world is witnessing a massive
awakening that may be destined to initiate the change from weakness to strength. When Arab and Muslim gain of strength
and confidence coincides with the retreat of the West due to the shrinkage in material and military resources and the
augmentation of domestic crises, the end of the Zionist project will come and the State of Israel will no longer be.
But, what about the Jews? How will they be perceived by the Arabs and the Muslims? How are they going to be treated? How
will the Qur'anic text referring to them be interpreted? Will they, after all, have a place in our region and in our
culture, or are we going to annul their right to the Covenant guaranteed to them by God and His Messenger?
Preparation for the post-Israel era should now begin. This would have to include a revision and elimination of false
concepts that make no distinction between Jew and Zionists. The first is a bearer of Jewish faith and if not involved in
aggression against the Muslims is entitled to the right of Covenant. The second is a bearer of a settler colonial
enterprise, an act of aggressor that should be resisted and deterred. This revision necessitates restoring respect to
the contextual interpretation of the Qur'anic text which clearly distinguishes in its narration of the history of the
Israelites and the Jews between those who do well and those who do not and between those who are righteous and those who
are mischievous. It also necessitates exposing fabricated documents such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and
discrediting conspiracy theory explanations of past and present events. While doing so respect should be reinstated to
the Qur'anic justice-based tadafu' (interaction of forces) theory which is a much more credible explanatory paradigm and
which, unlike the conspiracy theory, provides motivation and hope.
Source: http:// www.i i-pt.com/web/articles/post.htm
|
