Posted on 09/27/2001 9:04:30 AM PDT by Illbay
Sept. 26, 2001, 8:47PM
DAMASCUS, Syria -- A morgue assistant pulls out drawers holding the mutilated corpses of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israelis. Doctors pummel the chest of a dead Palestinian in a desperate attempt to revive him. The body of an infant, swathed in bloodied blankets, is held by a grieving parent.
These raw images -- aired almost daily on Arab television since the Palestinian-Israeli clashes erupted a year ago -- haven't lost the power to touch the hearts of Arab viewers.
Indeed, they have fed a buildup of Arab anger -- not only against Israel but also against the United States, its chief ally, already resented for imposing 11 years of sanctions and carrying out repeated airstrikes on Iraq.
That anger provides a potential base of support for the militants, who can use it to keep governments from cracking down on them. The outrage has also left many Arabs grappling with conflicting emotions over the Sept. 11 suicide attacks in the United States.
Some governments -- while decrying the deaths at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania -- have echoed murmurs in the streets that the United States brought violence on itself by angering Arabs. Others have made it clear they want to be sure U.S. retaliation doesn't target nations like Iraq or groups like Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, who are heroes to some Arabs because of their anti-Israel stance.
"We feel outraged by what happened in the United States, but we want the world to feel the same about the daily Israeli killings of Palestinians, the demolishing of houses and the humiliation of the people," said Wafa Mohammed, a shop owner in Jordan.
"If the United States had sympathized with the Arabs, the destruction that took place in the United States wouldn't have happened," said Mohammed Tohami, 22, an Egyptian frame maker.
"There's a feeling among Arabs that the United States is totally responsible for what's happening in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," said Imad Shueibi, a Syrian political analyst.
The Palestinian-Israeli clashes began one year ago Friday. The spark, the Palestinians say -- or the pretext, according to Israel -- was a visit by then-opposition Israeli leader Ariel Sharon to the holiest and most disputed site in Jerusalem, which Jews call the Temple Mount and Palestinians Haram as-Sharif.
Since then, 642 Palestinians and 177 Israelis have been killed. Many of the Israeli casualties were civilians who died in Palestinian suicide attacks against discos, restaurants, markets and train stations or shootings with machine guns and mortars.
The resulting resentment cannot be ignored as President Bush -- who has threatened to punish Afghanistan's Islamic rulers harboring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden -- assembles U.S. forces for a retaliatory strike. Bin Laden has portrayed himself as the champion of Muslims and Palestinians.
Adding to the pressure on the mostly secular Arab governments are fatwas, or religious edicts issued by Muslim clergymen warning the governments against joining the anti-terrorism coalition.
Some corrections. The Taliban are not Arabs, but of the same ethnic stock as other Afganistanis. They are fundamentalist Sunnis muslims. Afganistan was muslim before the Taliban took over, but the previous rulers were more moderate, much like Mubarak in Egypt and the Hasshemite monarchy in Jordan.
Iran is not Arab either, but it is fundamentalist Shiite Muslim, and it does support terrorits, but different terrorists than those supported by the Taliban. The terrorists supported by Iran don't get along with those supported by the Taliban since Sunnis and Shiites don't get along.
Examples of Arab governments that do not harbor terrorists include Jordan, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt (I know that some ordinary Egyptians celebrated after the tragedy, but Mubarak does not support or harbor terrorists), and Saudi Arabia. Arabs are an ethnic group, and not all Arab countries have fundamentalist Islamic regimes.
Nor is a fundamentalist Islamic regime a sufficient condition for the harboring of terrorist. Saudi Arabia has a very fundamentalist regime, but is a US ally. On the other hand, Iraq is staunchly secularist.
So you see, people, things are a bit more complicated than you might imagine.
Then stop behaving like a bunch of murderous idiots, Ms Abu-Naser.
LOL
Most people think the A-rabs hate us because of our support of Israel. Former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says they would hate us even if Israel did not exist. I am sure he is right.
If you don't like the truth, don't blame me.
Yes, you have a point but it is also true that the majority (not all) of Palistinian population over there lives by the motto: "I'm a victim therefore whatever I do I'm not responsible." It's more like the Hatfields and McCoys over there.
One night I was waiting in a car with my husbands Uncle (who BTW was born in S. America imigrated to the Middle East and took a Jordanian passport then began his grown up life in Iraq then imigrated to, get this New Jersey) and he was trying to tell me how terrible the Jews are. I replied that has never been my personal experience. He became more and more indignant as the conversation progressed at which point his American born son started to spout more of the same sh!t........Finally, I said look, "I'm not disputing wheither what you say is true or not...I wasn't there, however, neither was your son...there are always two sides to every story but your son here simply repeats your own personal hatred....So I ask you this, When will there be peace in the middle east if you teach your son to hate the Jews just because you do...then your son teaches his son to do the same?.....All your doing is purpetuating the situation. Where does the bitterness and fighting end and the peace begin?"
His reply: Silence-------So much for being Catholic and Arab.
So my point to you is this...in my own personal experience most of these middle eastern people don't know what the word FORGIVENESS (even If they are Christian like my husbands Uncle) is. They waste most of the energy on REVENGE and justifing what they do under the title "I'm a victim", so don't blame me.
What planet did you just arrive from? As a Christian, I think that is garbage. If you mean, we should not murder, I agree. If you mean we should not hunt down killers and eliminate them, you are dead wrong.
So, we need to line up quietly; the Kapo needs to take the roster.
Could it be because our foreign policy is driven by the wealthiest of wealthy Jews in this country who own and/or sit on the boards of the largest global corporations in America and throughout the world. Or could it be because God intervenes in the affairs of men to bring about His perfect will, including the use of America as the lone defender/protector of the state of Israel? (Not meaning to sound ignorant or sarcastic here, but just conveying some thoughts I've been wondering about.)
You call youself christian and say we should not murder but then you go to say we should hunt down killers amd ELIMINATE them. Sound like double speak to me.
NO AUTHENTIC THEOLOGICAL REASON WHY Muslims SHOULD NOT RECOGNIZE THE STATE OF ISRAEL - AM YISROEL CHAI!
by Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi
JERUSALEM, July 2, 1998, Root & Branch:
From an Islamic point of view, is there any fundamental reason which prohibits Muslims from recognizing Israel as a friendly State?
I realize that a negative answer to the above question is taken for granted by popular opinion. My approach, however, is not based on popular opinion or the current political situation, but on a theological analysis of authentic Islamic sources.
Viewing the Jewish return to Israel as a Western invasion and Zionists as recent colonizers is new. It has no basis in authentic Islamic faith. According to the Qur'an, no person, people or religious community can claim a permanent right of possession over any territory. The Earth belongs exclusively to G-d, and He is free to entrust sovereignty over land to whomever He likes for whatever time period that He chooses.
"Say: 'O God, King of the kingdom (1), Thou givest the kingdom to whom Thou pleasest, and Thou strippest off the kingdom from whom Thou pleasest; Thou endowest with honour whom Thou pleasest, and Thou bringest low whom Thou pleasest: all the best is in Thy hand. Verily, Thou hast power over all things.'"(2) (Qur'an 3:26)
From the above Qur'anic verse we deduce a basic principle of the Monotheistic philosophy of history: G-d chooses as He likes in the relationship between peoples and countries. Sometimes He gives a land to a people, and sometimes He takes His possession back and gives it to another people. In general, we can say that He gives as a reward for faithfulness and takes back as a punishment for wickedness, but this rule does not permit us to say that God's ways are always plain and clear to our eyes, since His secrets are inaccessible to the human intellect.
Using Islam as a basis for preventing Arabs from recognizing any sovereign right of Jews over the Land of Israel is new. Such beliefs are not found in classical Islamic sources. Concluding that anti-Zionism is the logical outgrowth of Islamic faith is wrong. This conclusion represents the false transformation of Islam from a religion into a secularized ideology.
Such a false transformation of Islam was in fact made by the late Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. He is the one person most responsible, both morally and materially, for the repeated Arab defeats in their conflict with the Jews in Israel. Husseni not only incited Arabs against Jews. He also encouraged the torture and murder of all Arabs who correctly understood that Arab cooperation with Jews was a precious opportunity for the development of the Land of Israel. Husseini ended his woeful life by putting his perverted religious teachings at the service of the evil and pagan Nazis.
After Husseini came Jamal al-Din 'Abd al-Nasser. Nasser based his policy on Pan-Arabism, hatred and contempt for Jews, and an alliance with the atheistic Soviet Union. Nasser's terrible choices were critical factors in maintaining Arab backwardness. Fortunately, most of Nasser's mistakes were afterward corrected by the martyr Anwar Sadat. (3)
After the defeat of Nasserianism, Islamic fundamentalist movements made anti-Zionism the primary feature of their propaganda. They presented the negation of any Jewish rights to the Land of Israel as rooted in authentic Islam and derived from authentic Islamic religious principles.
THE LAND OF ISRAEL IN KORANIC EXEGESIS
The fundamentalist Muslim program to use Islam as an instrument for political warfare against Jews finds a major obstacle in the Qur'an itself. Both the Bible and the Qur'an state quite clearly that the right of the Israelites to the Land of Israel does not depend on conquest and colonization. This right flows from the will of almighty G-d Himself.
Both the Jewish and Islamic Scriptures teach that G-d, through His chosen servant Moses, decided to free the offspring of Jacob from slavery in Egypt and to constitute them as heirs of the Promised Land. Whoever claims that Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel is something new and rooted in human politics denies divine revelation and divine prophecy as explicitly expressed in our Holy Books (the Bible and Qur'an).
The Qur'an relates the words by which Moses ordered the Israelites to conquer the Land:
"And [remember] when Moses said to his people: 'O my people, call in remembrance the favour of G-d unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the peoples. O my people, enter the Holy Land which G-d has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.'" (4) (Qur'an 5:20-21)Moreover - and those who try to use Islam as a weapon against Israel always conveniently ignore this point - the Holy Qur'an explicitly refers to the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel before the Last Judgment - where it says:
"And thereafter We [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd.'" (5) (Qur'an 17:104)Therefore, from an Islamic point of view, there is NO fundamental reason which prohibits Muslims from recognizing Israel as a friendly State. Am Yisroel Chai!
Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi,
Rome, Italy
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NOTES:
1.The original Arabic word we translated as "kingdom" is mulk, from a Semitic root m-l-k, that is common to both Arabic and Hebrew. According to Islamic theological terminology, the three synonyms for "kingdom" are mulk, malakût and jabarût. They refer respectively to the physical, psychical and spiritual levels of existence. Of course, G-d can be called King of all of them; if here only mulk is quoted, it depends on the fact that this verse directly concerns the earthly domain. To denote a kingdom in the secular and political sense, Arabic commonly uses another derived form, that is mamlakah.
2.Qur'an 3:26. For typographical reasons, it is not possible to reproduce here the original Arabic text of the Qur'an, which must nevertheless be understood as quoted. As well here as in other Qur'anic quotations, the English translation of the meaning of Qur'anic words from Arabic is my own, but based on the most authoritative English commentaries, such as M. Marmaduke Pickthall's "The Meaning of The Glorious Qur'an" (Beirut 1973), 'A. Yûsuf 'Ali, "The Holy Qur'an - Text, Translation and Commentary" (Maryland 1983) and A. 'A. Maududi "The Holy Qur'an - Text, Translation and Brief Notes" (Lahore 1986).
3.In using the term "martyr" I do not simply refer to one who lost his life for a good cause. I give a precise translation of the Arabic word "shahid," which identifies a "martyr" in the strictly religious sense; that is to say, someone who spent his life serving the cause of G-d. Since making peace with former enemies is an explicit Qur'anic order (see Qur'an 8:61), and since, according to Islam, Peace is G-d Himself, any believer who is killed because of his search for Peace must be understood as a religious martyr. The same considerations clearly apply to Yitzhak Rabin.
4.Qur'an 5:20-21 (emphasis added).
5.Qur'an 17:104 (emphasis added).
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ABOUT SHAYKH PROF. ABDUL HADI PALAZZI:
Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi is a Member of the International Council of the Root & Branch Association. Prof. Palazzi is Secretary General of the Italian Muslim Association (AMI), an Imam of the Italian Islamic Community (ICCII) and Director of the Community's Cultural Institute. Prof. Palazzi holds a Ph.D in Islamic Sciences by decree of the Grand Mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Prof. Palazzi is also Muslim Co-Chairman of the Islam-Israel Fellowship.
I have just one question.
What part of the above is supposed to be NEWS?
If you believe in historic Christianity, as opposed to dispensationalism, then you cannot believe that our support of Israel is part of God's perfect will, because Israel was part of the Old Covenent, which was fulfilled and superceded by the New Covenent. The New Israel is the Mystical Body of Christ. Christians, and Jews who convert to Christianity, are now the heirs to Abraham and God's promise to them is salvation, not some plot of land. See Romans 11, and also the Letter to the Hebrews
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