The Mideast; A Cesspool of Hate
Dec 30, 2003 16:39:21 GMT -5
Post by Disgruntled70sHab on Dec 30, 2003 16:39:21 GMT -5
Had to post this one guys. It's cut and paste from the Toronto Sun and written by a muslim journalist. This guy has guts and conviction.
December 30, 2003
The Mideast: A cesspool of hate
Tribal politics and a willingness by Arab-Muslims to blame others for their own problems are contributing factors to today's anti-Semitism
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
LONDON, Ont. -- Since 9/11, the roll call of cities across the world bombed by Muslim terrorists in league with Osama bin Laden, or recruits of his organization, al-Qaida, keeps growing.
One of the latest is Istanbul, Turkey, whose citizens were terrorized in a series of suicide bombings within the span of a week.
In those attacks, Jews, long and peaceful residents of Turkey - with whose history they share an ancient connection - were once again the victims of anti-Semitism. An anti-Semitism which is now turning the Arab-Muslim world into a version of what Europe became during the first half of the previous century - a cesspool of hate where Jews were, and today are, blamed for all things wrong in a culture hurtling toward self-destruction.
When U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl is murdered in Karachi, Pakistan, for being a Jew, and when Neve Shalom, Istanbul's main synagogue, is bombed for being what it is and for its place in Turkey's history, it represents a rising tide of anti-Semitism among Arab Muslims that can no longer be denied by their demagogic representatives.
Can it be explained? Should it be?
Writing as a Muslim, I believe it must. For what is involved here in the spreading slime of anti-Semitism among many Arabs and Muslims - as it once was in Europe - is the wreckage of Islam.
A wreckage in the making by those committing crimes against humanity in humanity's name, while others, professing the faith, acquiesce by remaining silent.
Old world
The Islamic civilization pre-dates the modern world, and the eclipse of that civilization began with the making and the triumph of the modern, secular, democratic and liberal world we now live in.
To understand the Islamic civilization of the past, it needs to be judged according to the prevalent standards of the time. In the pre-modern world, Islamic civilization, when compared to Europe, was relatively more advanced, wealthier, more liberal, more tolerant and more assimilative. For all those reasons, it was poised to become a far more innovative force in the modern world than it ever did.
Jewish relations with Arabs and Muslims are as old as Islam, and as intimate as were their relations with Christians in the foundational years of Christianity.
Jewish presence and contributions in the making of Islamic civilization were of no lesser significance than in the making of the modern world. Jews in pre-modern times were relatively more secure, as a people, within the domain of Islam than they were in Europe.
Bernard Lewis and S.D. Goitein, just two of many Jewish scholars, have explored this complex history with great care.
Lewis writes in The Jews of Islam, "For most of the Middle Ages the Jews of Islam comprised the greater and more active part of the Jewish people ... With few exceptions, whatever was creative and significant in Jewish life, happened in Islamic lands."
Similarly, Goitein, in Jews and Arabs, admirably catalogues the intensive contacts of the two Semitic peoples through the centuries in both good and bad times.
So what happened? How can the present situation be explained?
In the circumstances of 20th century history, a relationship of rivalry emerged between the two peoples, layered with past history in which the Arab self-perception was one of being superior to Jews, both politically and culturally.
That perception dramatically reversed over time.
Goitein writes, "The resurgence of the two peoples was effected after a prolonged period of suffering and humiliation, a period during which neither formed a nation in the ordinary sense of the word."
Longest exile
But then, following World War II, Jews returned to Palestine after their longest period of exile to found a state for themselves, and successfully defended it against tremendous odds.
By contrast, noted Ibn Khaldun, the remarkable Arab philosopher from the 14th century, Arabs were displaced in history from the position of prominence they once occupied.
As he wrote in 1377, "The realm of the Arabs has been wiped out completely; the power now rests in the hand of non-Arabs, such as the Turks in the East ... and the Franks (Europeans) in the North."
In the modern post-colonial resurgence - the creation of Israel and the emergence of independent Arab states - the success of the one contrasts with the failures of the others.
From the point of view of many Arabs, Jews are today an even more unbearable power than those who displaced them several centuries ago, as was pointed out at the time by Ibn Khaldun.
Jews, as a people, despite the terrible injustices inflicted on them which finally culminated in the Holocaust, survived and succeeded. Arabs, as a people, despite the resources gifted them by nature and the support received from others in modern times, on the whole displayed an incapacity to assimilate into the modern world.
The widening gap between success and failure of the two peoples in meeting their respective goals requires explaining.
One explanation would be that offered by Cassius to Brutus in another circumstance, that the fault "is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
The contrary explanation is to blame the stars, or others, while avoiding at all costs looking within "ourselves" and in "our" culture and history for the reasons for failing to meet desired goals.
Tribalism persists as a characteristic of Arab politics and culture. Tribal politics is a closed circle, and in such a system, insiders and outsiders are clearly marked.
Jews are the perennial outsiders, instinctively held responsible for the problems of the insiders. Within the closed circle of tribal politics, Jewish success grates upon Arab thinking, sometimes in venomous forms.
Breeding ground
To be sure, anti-Semitism is bound up with European history as well. But even purged from its European locale, the plague of anti-Semitism found a breeding ground in Arab resentment against Europe, and then America, for supporting Jewish nationalism - Zionism - in the creation of Israel.
Anti-Semitic bile became a crutch to explain Arab failure as a vast machination of Jewish conspiracy, abetted by the West, constant in its purpose to divide and control the Arab world since the time of the Crusades.
This view of history has become the ur-text, or the holy grail, of Arab nationalism, morphed into religious fundamentalism. It explains away any responsibility Arabs owe to themselves for their failures.
While Arabs are a minority in the wider Muslim world, they have claimed a position greater than others in interpreting Islam because of being native to the language and culture into which Mohammed, the prophet, was born, and the Koran was revealed.
In modern times, this has meant the experience of Arab politics in general, and of the Palestinians in particular, has been ground into the lens by which Islam as a faith and tradition is viewed within the wider Muslim world.
Consequently, while Arabs have sought to legitimize their politics with an appeal to Islam, non-Arab Muslims have generally accepted Arab views and interpretations as legitimately Islamic. That is the conduit through which Arab anti-Semitism has spread into the wider Muslim world.
The situation in which the Arab-Muslim world now finds itself can only be reversed with external assistance.
Here it is worth reminding ourselves that fascism and anti-Semitism in Europe, which precipitated a world war and Holocaust, were only purged by greater force intervening from the outside.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca.
December 30, 2003
The Mideast: A cesspool of hate
Tribal politics and a willingness by Arab-Muslims to blame others for their own problems are contributing factors to today's anti-Semitism
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
LONDON, Ont. -- Since 9/11, the roll call of cities across the world bombed by Muslim terrorists in league with Osama bin Laden, or recruits of his organization, al-Qaida, keeps growing.
One of the latest is Istanbul, Turkey, whose citizens were terrorized in a series of suicide bombings within the span of a week.
In those attacks, Jews, long and peaceful residents of Turkey - with whose history they share an ancient connection - were once again the victims of anti-Semitism. An anti-Semitism which is now turning the Arab-Muslim world into a version of what Europe became during the first half of the previous century - a cesspool of hate where Jews were, and today are, blamed for all things wrong in a culture hurtling toward self-destruction.
When U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl is murdered in Karachi, Pakistan, for being a Jew, and when Neve Shalom, Istanbul's main synagogue, is bombed for being what it is and for its place in Turkey's history, it represents a rising tide of anti-Semitism among Arab Muslims that can no longer be denied by their demagogic representatives.
Can it be explained? Should it be?
Writing as a Muslim, I believe it must. For what is involved here in the spreading slime of anti-Semitism among many Arabs and Muslims - as it once was in Europe - is the wreckage of Islam.
A wreckage in the making by those committing crimes against humanity in humanity's name, while others, professing the faith, acquiesce by remaining silent.
Old world
The Islamic civilization pre-dates the modern world, and the eclipse of that civilization began with the making and the triumph of the modern, secular, democratic and liberal world we now live in.
To understand the Islamic civilization of the past, it needs to be judged according to the prevalent standards of the time. In the pre-modern world, Islamic civilization, when compared to Europe, was relatively more advanced, wealthier, more liberal, more tolerant and more assimilative. For all those reasons, it was poised to become a far more innovative force in the modern world than it ever did.
Jewish relations with Arabs and Muslims are as old as Islam, and as intimate as were their relations with Christians in the foundational years of Christianity.
Jewish presence and contributions in the making of Islamic civilization were of no lesser significance than in the making of the modern world. Jews in pre-modern times were relatively more secure, as a people, within the domain of Islam than they were in Europe.
Bernard Lewis and S.D. Goitein, just two of many Jewish scholars, have explored this complex history with great care.
Lewis writes in The Jews of Islam, "For most of the Middle Ages the Jews of Islam comprised the greater and more active part of the Jewish people ... With few exceptions, whatever was creative and significant in Jewish life, happened in Islamic lands."
Similarly, Goitein, in Jews and Arabs, admirably catalogues the intensive contacts of the two Semitic peoples through the centuries in both good and bad times.
So what happened? How can the present situation be explained?
In the circumstances of 20th century history, a relationship of rivalry emerged between the two peoples, layered with past history in which the Arab self-perception was one of being superior to Jews, both politically and culturally.
That perception dramatically reversed over time.
Goitein writes, "The resurgence of the two peoples was effected after a prolonged period of suffering and humiliation, a period during which neither formed a nation in the ordinary sense of the word."
Longest exile
But then, following World War II, Jews returned to Palestine after their longest period of exile to found a state for themselves, and successfully defended it against tremendous odds.
By contrast, noted Ibn Khaldun, the remarkable Arab philosopher from the 14th century, Arabs were displaced in history from the position of prominence they once occupied.
As he wrote in 1377, "The realm of the Arabs has been wiped out completely; the power now rests in the hand of non-Arabs, such as the Turks in the East ... and the Franks (Europeans) in the North."
In the modern post-colonial resurgence - the creation of Israel and the emergence of independent Arab states - the success of the one contrasts with the failures of the others.
From the point of view of many Arabs, Jews are today an even more unbearable power than those who displaced them several centuries ago, as was pointed out at the time by Ibn Khaldun.
Jews, as a people, despite the terrible injustices inflicted on them which finally culminated in the Holocaust, survived and succeeded. Arabs, as a people, despite the resources gifted them by nature and the support received from others in modern times, on the whole displayed an incapacity to assimilate into the modern world.
The widening gap between success and failure of the two peoples in meeting their respective goals requires explaining.
One explanation would be that offered by Cassius to Brutus in another circumstance, that the fault "is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
The contrary explanation is to blame the stars, or others, while avoiding at all costs looking within "ourselves" and in "our" culture and history for the reasons for failing to meet desired goals.
Tribalism persists as a characteristic of Arab politics and culture. Tribal politics is a closed circle, and in such a system, insiders and outsiders are clearly marked.
Jews are the perennial outsiders, instinctively held responsible for the problems of the insiders. Within the closed circle of tribal politics, Jewish success grates upon Arab thinking, sometimes in venomous forms.
Breeding ground
To be sure, anti-Semitism is bound up with European history as well. But even purged from its European locale, the plague of anti-Semitism found a breeding ground in Arab resentment against Europe, and then America, for supporting Jewish nationalism - Zionism - in the creation of Israel.
Anti-Semitic bile became a crutch to explain Arab failure as a vast machination of Jewish conspiracy, abetted by the West, constant in its purpose to divide and control the Arab world since the time of the Crusades.
This view of history has become the ur-text, or the holy grail, of Arab nationalism, morphed into religious fundamentalism. It explains away any responsibility Arabs owe to themselves for their failures.
While Arabs are a minority in the wider Muslim world, they have claimed a position greater than others in interpreting Islam because of being native to the language and culture into which Mohammed, the prophet, was born, and the Koran was revealed.
In modern times, this has meant the experience of Arab politics in general, and of the Palestinians in particular, has been ground into the lens by which Islam as a faith and tradition is viewed within the wider Muslim world.
Consequently, while Arabs have sought to legitimize their politics with an appeal to Islam, non-Arab Muslims have generally accepted Arab views and interpretations as legitimately Islamic. That is the conduit through which Arab anti-Semitism has spread into the wider Muslim world.
The situation in which the Arab-Muslim world now finds itself can only be reversed with external assistance.
Here it is worth reminding ourselves that fascism and anti-Semitism in Europe, which precipitated a world war and Holocaust, were only purged by greater force intervening from the outside.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca.
, to live in a country where religion doesnt control the goverment.