Når det gjeld tilhøvet mellom islamistane, jødedomen og Israel, trur eg
dette utdraget av ein
artikkelen av Isma`il Raji al Faruqi kan gje ein peikepinn. Om Faruqi og
Rami er samde veit eg ikkje - men eg vil tru dei er litt "i same gate".
Påstanden om at Faruqi har vorte avretta av Israel har eg ingen føresetnader
for å vurdera.
Hans O
exerpt from "Islam and the Problem of Israel"
by Ismai'l Raji al Faruqi (assassinated in the US by Israel)
THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM AND THE JEWS
The same precepts governed the relations of the Jews of the conquered
territories as soon as their Islamic administrations were set up. Until the
last two or three centuries, the majority of world Juewry was still living
within the Muslim World and was still prospering under those selfsame
precepts. Nowhere has Judaism ever found a haven as sympathetic and
protective. Even in its days of Davidic and Solomonic glory in Palestine, a
period which lasted less than two generations (c. 1000-922 BC), Judaism or
whatever version of it existed, could be practiced only in the territory of
its own state. Outside that territory, in the wide world, it was an
abomination from the days of Jacob (following the racist Jewish attack
against Schechem by Jacob and his sons and clan, according to Genesis 34).
Even the Davidic state itself was the object of hatred and resentment within
as well as without its boundaries, which awaited the day of its dissolution
on 922 BC. Internally as well as externally, the issue was the religion
itself, the temple, its priesthood and the rituals of worship. For the first
time in Jewish history, Judaism was practiced under the aegis of Islam
without political, military, or subversive threat from any quarter. If it
was threatened in any sense, it was so by reason of a rationalistic humanism
and universalism. But this is no threat at all. It is only an invitation to
religious health, to religious growth, to religious clarity and felicity.
Throughout Muslim history, Judaism prospered more than it ever did before or
outside that history. At no time was the Hebrew language spoken more widely
or more correctly. The fact that the dominant language of Islam was another
Semitic language - Arabic - and the fact that it was known to the majority
of Jews living within the Muslim world, helped the Hebrew spaking Jews to
pull their language from the certain doom of pollution and corruption back
to its classical roots in the Torah and Talmud. The classicism of Arabic
moved the Jews to a similar classicism in Hebrew. Hence, no "Yiddish,"
"Ladino," or other vulgarisations of Hebrew took place under Arabic
influence; and Hebrew poetry, prose and letters attained heights never
attained before except perhaps by the Biblical redactor. On the contrary.
The Jews' knowledge of Arabic prompted their scholars to develop a Hebrew
grammar, and to do so in a manner comparable to the grammar of Arabic, the
language which properly served as prototype of all Semitic languages. This
was accomplished by Abu Zakariyya Yahya ibn Dawud in Cordoba in the last
decade of the Fourth Century AH/Tenth Century AC.
Besides the flowering in the sciences of language and the arts of the pen,
Judaism scored under Islam the highest development of its culture, on the
level of ideas. For the first time, it achieved a systematisation of itself.
Having been brought up in the most sophisticated milieu of the world, that
of Cordoba, Musa Abu Imran ibn Maymun (1135-1177) produced his Dalalah al
Ha'irin (Guide of the Perplexed) in Arabic, after mastering all the
religious thought of the Hebrew, Christian and Islamic religious traditions.
He gave Judaism its first and greatest conceptualisation, relating its law,
theology and ethics together, and basing their ideational structure on
rational logic and metaphysics. His systematisation remains the definitive
statement of Judaism, and his formulation of the creed the dominant
statement of th Jewish faith to this day.
Out of the religious atmosphere and cultural milieu Islam provided, came the
two main currents of thought which divided the Jewish spiritual stream since
then: the rationalist or legalist, and the mystical. The former was founded
by Ibn Maymun himself; the latter, by Sulayman ibn Gairol, 1021-1058, whose
Yanbu' al Hayat (Fons Vitae), also written in Arabic, introduced mysticism
into Judaism. Ibn Gabirol was the source of inspiration for all Jewish
mystical movements in the Middle Ages. His spiritualism helped the Jews of
Europe bear their terrible suffering at the hands of Christians, and his
writings were more popular among them than among their co-religionists in
the Muslim World who, in absence of the disease, stood in no need for the
cure. The Zohar, which dominated the spirituality of Europe's Jews, was a
direct offspring of this trend introduced by Ibn Gabirol; while Karo's
Shulhan Arukh was a European over-simplification of the systematised
arrangement of the Torah by Ibn Maymun. These two works, together with the
creed of Ibn Maymun characterised, oriented and dominated the religious and
spiritual life of European Jewry, while the works of Ibn Maymun alone did
the same to the Jews of the Muslim world.
It cannot be denied that in modern times, the Jews of Europe and America
have tremendous achievements to their credit in all fields of human endeavor
- except religion. They may well have rivalled their Muslim World ancestors
in the worldly sciences and the earthly glories. But it cannot be denied,
either, that all these Jewish achievements of modern times have been
realised at the cost of Judaism - the religion. For the spirit driving the
age and milieu in which they were achieved was irreligious. It was born out
of the struggle of the human mind to liberate itself from the naivete of a
dogmatic Church. The Western struggle against the Church, Biblical
archeology and criticism, the rise of the natural sciences, the growth of
European particularism and ethnocentrism - all those factors dictated an
orientation inimical to religiosity and transcendence, to the essence of the
Semitic soul. Hence, the reduction of Christianity's determining power of
social, political, cultural life of Western Christendom. More important and
basic is the corrosive influence of all these forces upon the religion of
Christianity.
The Jews' contributions to Westrn civilisation and culture may be truly
great, but they are not Jewish. In no case may any of them be claimed as
Jewish, i.e., conceived in loyalty to Judaism and meant as a positive
expression of its being. Laments sung in loyalty to Judaism there certainly
were; but these are neither great, nor may they be regarded as positive
expression of Judaism in the sense that the Biblical statements, the Talmud
and Midrashim, and the Maimonidean crystallisation were. Significant in this
regard is the public debate which took place four years ago when New York
City witnessed the opening of a "Jewish Museum" whose collections of works
of art by Western Jews were declared by the better minds of Western Jewry
non-Jewish despite their Jewish authors.
Islam, it must be said in conclusion, is "the best friend Judaism has ever
had." It recognised Judaism as a religion de jure, which no other religion
or political system ever did. It not only tolerated the observance of the
Torah but demanded it; and it placed its executive power at the disposal of
the rabbinic court. In this, Islam has gone farther than the Jews' fondest
diaspora dream. Per contra, in the United States of America, supposed by
most to be the ideal prototype of tolerance, any application of Jewish law
where it differs from positive, secular, law would immediately land the
parties concerned in court as violators of American law. Indeed, Islam was
more friendly to Judaism than the Davidic-Solomonic State itself. Unlike
that state which was born in conflict and perished seventy-eight years later
in conflict, the Pax Islamica or World Order of Islam, which lasted fourteen
centuries so far, covered half the world, and is still growing, provided
Judaism with a world-stage in which to contend for men's minds, and a
general respect for and loyalty to religion without which neither the
religion of the majority nor that of the minority could prosper.
It is remarkable that Christian tolerance of the Jews came only as
Christians lost their reliosity, whereas Islamic tolerance of them came as
Islam dominated the life of its adherents. The ascendancy of Islam promoted
respect for religion, any religion, anywhere; and thus provided a world
atmosphere in which the Jew's claim to Jewishness, his loyalty to the
religion of Judaism without which he is nothing, could be respected and
honored. It is surprising that the contemporary resurgence of Judaism is
taking place in the age of secularism, under the domination of the West
which stands today at the zenith of anti-religious sentiment. In hoc signo
is the evidence that the so-called resurgence of Judaism is no religious
resurgence at all; and that Judaism has fallen easy prey and becom a
football in the hands of a secularist West which tosses it around for its
own political ulterior motives.
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