Who speaks for Islam today? The learned Arabian Muslim or the secular Boathist Party functionary of Syria? Or perhaps the proselyte Muslim from Bangladesh or the believer from northern Nigeria.
Howbeit, to Israel and Jewry nowadays, Islam appears as a monolithic hostile bloc set to debase and destroy them. And to those who pay lip service to Islam, even if they hardly possess a fleeting knowledge of their holy writings, Jewry is an enemy against whom some “holy” jihad must be waged.
Yet Islam remains silent about millions of Muslims under Marxist rule. Such destructive nations reflect the words of the ignorant and the ranting of fools, and ill become Islam’s great teachers of peace and brotherhood. They are seemingly spun “according to the designs and purposes of the troublemakers who feign Islam,” as an Islamic declaration stated in Baghdad a generation ago.
THE KORAN MENTIONS THE TORAH
Those who feign Islam may be reminded that the Koran mentions the Torah by name speaks of Abraham 70 times, and mentions Moses in 34 sofas. The Hebrew Kings and Prophets occur frequently in the Koran, and Gabriel plays a significant role in the birth of Islam in Arabia, the land of Ishmael.
The feigners of Islam overlook the fact that the Torah records the names of Omar, Abdel, Salah and Hassan, among several other “Islamic” personalities. As readily overlooked by Islam’s fanatics are the great and abiding similarities between Judaism and Islam, closer than either is to the third sister, Christianity.
Not only do both pray to the same all-merciful God, neither recognizes any mediator between the individual and his creator. Indeed, both Islam and Judaism still share a similar set of customs, languages, and history.
The best of Jewish scholarship points out the mutual closeness by way of, say, the Biblical and Talmudic expression “Ribon ha-Olamin” (Lord of the World) and the Koran’s “rab al-Alamin.” The similarities range from divine election to pro-Israelite, anti-Pharaonic themes. Guess to whom Deuteronomy 18:18 refers: “I shall raise up for them a prophet among their own brothers.”
Prof. Norman Bentwich used to remind his readers that the Prophet Muhammed himself made a covenant with the Jews of Eilat, the same historic port nowadays coveted by those who loudly proclaim loyalty to his teachings. As quickly skimmed over is the fact that the Davidic exilarch Bostanai (Bustani) was the brother-in-law of the Ishmaelite Caliph Omar. This was long before Spain’s golden age.
“Islam,” remarked Prof. S.D. Goitein, “is from the very flesh and bone of Judaism,” a theme supported by the Koran itself: “We believe in what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes. ” The Koran appears also to contain a special message for Israelites, Ishmaelites, Syrians, Lebanese, and Sheban Ethiopians: “Allah ordains that blood relations are closer to one another than to other believers (proselytes).”
MISINTERPRETATIONS OF ISLAM
So whence the animosity towards Jewry? If the Koran itself contains the fruits of Biblical and Talmudic Judaism, the animosity can only arise from blatant misinterpretations of Islam itself, a blindness worse than endemic trachoma. Though Araby itself is not inhospitable to fanatics in our times, possibly the most far-fetched misinterpretations of Islam arise among those whose ancestors were converted by Ishmael’s scimitar. Thus a North African Islamicist, one Taha of Cairo, wrote these lines.
“Why should I simply repeat what the ancients said? The Hebrew Torah may speak to us about Abraham and Ishmael, and the Arab Koran may tell us about them too. But the mention of these names in the Torah and the Koran is not sufficient to establish their historical existence, let alone the story which tells us about the emigration of Ishmael, the son of Abraham, to Mecca and the birth of the Arabicized Arabs (sic!) there. We are compelled to see in this story a kind of fiction intended to establish the relations of Jews and Arabs on the one hand, and Islam and Judaism and the Koran and the Torah on the other.”
It is less surprising to learn that this Islamic questioner of the Koran, Taha, was a contemporary of Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose Egypt often upset the purist Saudis on religious grounds, to the point of ruptured diplomatic links.
FROM ZEAL TO ALIENATION
Proselytes are said to veer from fanatic zeal to intellectual reluctance and even alienation. If so, Muslims are no exception. The Shias of Iran seem to represent the former, the Neo Destour of Tunisia appear to reflect the latter. Examples of both can no doubt be found from the Malayalam countries and Pakistan to the Muslim areas of tropical Africa.
Sometimes the Arabians themselves suffer ignominy at the hand of those their ancestors forcibly converted–from the Fatimid heresy to Shia excesses Did not those whom Paul converted to at least the Ten Commandments provide his people with an inquisition?
Whatever the dangerous analogies, it remains true that today’s anti-Israel stances come most stridently from those whose holy book contains all that is necessary to understand Jewry’s love for Zion–Zionism. So, the question remains: who will yet speak for the true Islam?
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
