Muslim Heretics Conference

Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?
by Raymond Ibrahim
Middle East Quarterly
http://www.meforum.org/2159/are-judaism-and-christianity-as-violent-as-islam
Summer 2009, pp. 3-12
“There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur’an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam.”[1] So announces former nun and self-professed “freelance monotheist,” Karen Armstrong.
This quote sums up the single most influential argument currently serving to deflect the accusation that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant: All monotheistic religions, proponents of such an argument say, and not just Islam, have their fair share of violent and intolerant scriptures, as well as bloody histories. Thus, whenever Islam’s sacred scriptures-the Qur’an first, followed by the reports on the words and deeds of Muhammad (the Hadith)-are highlighted as demonstrative of the religion’s innate bellicosity, the immediate rejoinder is that other scriptures, specifically those of Judeo-Christianity, are as riddled with violent passages.
Medieval times: The Crusades were violent and led to atrocities by the modern world’s standards under the banner of the cross and in the name of Christianity. But the Crusades were a counterattack on Islam. Muslim invasions and atrocities against Christians were on the rise in the decades before the launch of the Crusades in 1096. More often than not, this argument puts an end to any discussion regarding whether violence and intolerance are unique to Islam. Instead, the default answer becomes that it is not Islam per se but rather Muslim grievance and frustration-ever exacerbated by economic, political, and social factors-that lead to violence. That this view comports perfectly with the secular West’s “materialistic” epistemology makes it all the more unquestioned.
Therefore, before condemning the Qur’an and the historical words and deeds of Islam’s prophet Muhammad for inciting violence and intolerance, Jews are counseled to consider the historical atrocities committed by their Hebrew forefathers as recorded in their own scriptures; Christians are advised to consider the brutal cycle of violence their forbears have committed in the name of their faith against both non-Christians and fellow Christians. In other words, Jews and Christians are reminded that those who live in glass houses should not be hurling stones.
But is that really the case? Is the analogy with other scriptures legitimate? Does Hebrew violence in the ancient era, and Christian violence in the medieval era, compare to or explain away the tenacity of Muslim violence in the modern era? Violence in Jewish and Christian History
Along with Armstrong, any number of prominent writers, historians, and theologians have championed this “relativist” view. For instance, John Esposito, director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, wonders,
How come we keep on asking the same question, [about violence in Islam,] and don’t ask the same question about Christianity and Judaism? Jews and Christians have engaged in acts of violence. All of us have the transcendent and the dark side. … We have our own theology of hate. In mainstream Christianity and Judaism, we tend to be intolerant; we adhere to an exclusivist theology, of us versus them.[2]
An article by Pennsylvania State University humanities professor Philip Jenkins, “Dark Passages,” delineates this position most fully. It aspires to show that the Bible is more violent than the Qur’an:
[I]n terms of ordering violence and bloodshed, any simplistic claim about the superiority of the Bible to the Koran would be wildly wrong. In fact, the Bible overflows with “texts of terror,” to borrow a phrase coined by the American theologian Phyllis Trible. The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery. … If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery.[3]
Several anecdotes from the Bible as well as from Judeo-Christian history illustrate Jenkins’ point, but two in particular-one supposedly representative of Judaism, the other of Christianity-are regularly mentioned and therefore deserve closer examination.
The military conquest of the land of Canaan by the Hebrews in about 1200 B.C.E. is often characterized as “genocide” and has all but become emblematic of biblical violence and intolerance. God told Moses:
But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them-the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite-just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.[4]
So Joshua [Moses' successor] conquered all the land: the mountain country and the South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord, God of Israel had commanded.[5]
As for Christianity, since it is impossible to find New Testament verses inciting violence, those who espouse the view that Christianity is as violent as Islam rely on historical events such as the Crusader wars waged by European Christians between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The Crusades were in fact violent and led to atrocities by the modern world’s standards under the banner of the cross and in the name of Christianity. After breaching the walls of Jerusalem in 1099, for example, the Crusaders reportedly slaughtered almost every inhabitant of the Holy City. According to the medieval chronicle, the Gesta Danorum, “the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles.”[6]
In light of the above, as Armstrong, Esposito, Jenkins, and others argue, why should Jews and Christians point to the Qur’an as evidence of Islam’s violence while ignoring their own scriptures and history? Bible versus Qur’an
The answer lies in the fact that such observations confuse history and theology by conflating the temporal actions of men with what are understood to be the immutable words of God. The fundamental error is that Judeo-Christian history-which is violent-is being conflated with Islamic theology-which commands violence. Of course, the three major monotheistic religions have all had their share of violence and intolerance towards the “other.” Whether this violence is ordained by God or whether warlike men merely wished it thus is the key question.
Old Testament violence is an interesting case in point. God clearly ordered the Hebrews to annihilate the Canaanites and surrounding peoples. Such violence is therefore an expression of God’s will, for good or ill. Regardless, all the historic violence committed by the Hebrews and recorded in the Old Testament is just that-history. It happened; God commanded it. But it revolved around a specific time and place and was directed against a specific people. At no time did such violence go on to become standardized or codified into Jewish law. In short, biblical accounts of violence are descriptive, not prescriptive.
This is where Islamic violence is unique. Though similar to the violence of the Old Testament-commanded by God and manifested in history-certain aspects of Islamic violence and intolerance have become standardized in Islamic law and apply at all times. Thus, while the violence found in the Qur’an has a historical context, its ultimate significance is theological. Consider the following Qur’anic verses, better known as the “sword-verses”:
Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way.[7]
Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day, and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden - such men as practise not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book - until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.[8]
As with Old Testament verses where God commanded the Hebrews to attack and slay their neighbors, the sword-verses also have a historical context. God first issued these commandments after the Muslims under Muhammad’s leadership had grown sufficiently strong to invade their Christian and pagan neighbors. But unlike the bellicose verses and anecdotes of the Old Testament, the sword-verses became fundamental to Islam’s subsequent relationship to both the “people of the book” (i.e., Jews and Christians) and the “idolators” (i.e., Hindus, Buddhists, animists, etc.) and, in fact, set off the Islamic conquests, which changed the face of the world forever. Based on Qur’an 9:5, for instance, Islamic law mandates that idolators and polytheists must either convert to Islam or be killed; simultaneously, Qur’an 9:29 is the primary source of Islam’s well-known discriminatory practices against conquered Christians and Jews living under Islamic suzerainty.
In fact, based on the sword-verses as well as countless other Qur’anic verses and oral traditions attributed to Muhammad, Islam’s learned officials, sheikhs, muftis, and imams throughout the ages have all reached consensus-binding on the entire Muslim community-that Islam is to be at perpetual war with the non-Muslim world until the former subsumes the latter. Indeed, it is widely held by Muslim scholars that since the sword-verses are among the final revelations on the topic of Islam’s relationship to non-Muslims, that they alone have abrogated some 200 of the Qur’an’s earlier and more tolerant verses, such as “no compulsion is there in religion.”[9] Famous Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) admired in the West for his “progressive” insights, also puts to rest the notion that jihad is defensive warfare:
In the Muslim community, the holy war [jihad] is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force … The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense … They are merely required to establish their religion among their own people. That is why the Israelites after Moses and Joshua remained unconcerned with royal authority [e.g., a caliphate]. Their only concern was to establish their religion [not spread it to the nations] … But Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.[10]
Modern authorities agree. The Encyclopaedia of Islam’s entry for “jihad” by Emile Tyan states that the “spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general … Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam … Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated.” Iraqi jurist Majid Khaduri (1909-2007), after defining jihad as warfare, writes that “jihad … is regarded by all jurists, with almost no exception, as a collective obligation of the whole Muslim community.”[11] And, of course, Muslim legal manuals written in Arabic are even more explicit.[12] Qur’anic Language
When the Qur’an’s violent verses are juxtaposed with their Old Testament counterparts, they are especially distinct for using language that transcends time and space, inciting believers to attack and slay nonbelievers today no less than yesterday. God commanded the Hebrews to kill Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites-all specific peoples rooted to a specific time and place. At no time did God give an open-ended command for the Hebrews, and by extension their Jewish descendants, to fight and kill gentiles. On the other hand, though Islam’s original enemies were, like Judaism’s, historical (e.g., Christian Byzantines and Zoroastrian Persians), the Qur’an rarely singles them out by their proper names. Instead, Muslims were (and are) commanded to fight the people of the book-”until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled”[13] and to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them.”[14]
The two Arabic conjunctions “until” (hata) and “wherever” (haythu) demonstrate the perpetual and ubiquitous nature of these commandments: There are still “people of the book” who have yet to be “utterly humbled” (especially in the Americas, Europe, and Israel) and “idolators” to be slain “wherever” one looks (especially Asia and sub-Saharan Africa). In fact, the salient feature of almost all of the violent commandments in Islamic scriptures is their open-ended and generic nature: “Fight them [non-Muslims] until there is no persecution and the religion is God’s entirely. [Emphasis added.]“[15] Also, in a well-attested tradition that appears in the hadith collections, Muhammad proclaims:
I have been commanded to wage war against mankind until they testify that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God; and that they establish prostration prayer, and pay the alms-tax [i.e., convert to Islam]. If they do so, their blood and property are protected. [Emphasis added.][16]
This linguistic aspect is crucial to understanding scriptural exegeses regarding violence. Again, it bears repeating that neither Jewish nor Christian scriptures-the Old and New Testaments, respectively-employ such perpetual, open-ended commandments. Despite all this, Jenkins laments that
Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions … all are in the Bible, and occur with a far greater frequency than in the Qur’an. At every stage, we can argue what the passages in question mean, and certainly whether they should have any relevance for later ages. But the fact remains that the words are there, and their inclusion in the scripture means that they are, literally, canonized, no less than in the Muslim scripture.[17]
One wonders what Jenkins has in mind by the word “canonized.” If by canonized he means that such verses are considered part of the canon of Judeo-Christian scripture, he is absolutely correct; conversely, if by canonized he means or is trying to connote that these verses have been implemented in the Judeo-Christian Weltanschauung, he is absolutely wrong.
Yet one need not rely on purely exegetical and philological arguments; both history and current events give the lie to Jenkins’s relativism. Whereas first-century Christianity spread via the blood of martyrs, first-century Islam spread through violent conquest and bloodshed. Indeed, from day one to the present-whenever it could-Islam spread through conquest, as evinced by the fact that the majority of what is now known as the Islamic world, or dar al-Islam, was conquered by the sword of Islam. This is a historic fact, attested to by the most authoritative Islamic historians. Even the Arabian peninsula, the “home” of Islam, was subdued by great force and bloodshed, as evidenced by the Ridda wars following Muhammad’s death when tens of thousands of Arabs were put to the sword by the first caliph Abu Bakr for abandoning Islam. Muhammad’s Role
Moreover, concerning the current default position which purports to explain away Islamic violence-that the latter is a product of Muslim frustration vis-à-vis political or economic oppression-one must ask: What about all the oppressed Christians and Jews, not to mention Hindus and Buddhists, of the world today? Where is their religiously-garbed violence? The fact remains: Even though the Islamic world has the lion’s share of dramatic headlines-of violence, terrorism, suicide-attacks, decapitations-it is certainly not the only region in the world suffering under both internal and external pressures.
For instance, even though practically all of sub-Saharan Africa is currently riddled with political corruption, oppression and poverty, when it comes to violence, terrorism, and sheer chaos, Somalia-which also happens to be the only sub-Saharan country that is entirely Muslim-leads the pack. Moreover, those most responsible for Somali violence and the enforcement of intolerant, draconian, legal measures-the members of the jihadi group Al-Shabab (the youth)-articulate and justify all their actions through an Islamist paradigm.
In Sudan, too, a jihadi-genocide against the Christian and polytheistic peoples is currently being waged by Khartoum’s Islamist government and has left nearly a million “infidels” and “apostates” dead. That the Organization of Islamic Conference has come to the defense of Sudanese president Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, is further telling of the Islamic body’s approval of violence toward both non-Muslims and those deemed not Muslim enough.
Latin American and non-Muslim Asian countries also have their fair share of oppressive, authoritarian regimes, poverty, and all the rest that the Muslim world suffers. Yet, unlike the near daily headlines emanating from the Islamic world, there are no records of practicing Christians, Buddhists, or Hindus crashing explosives-laden vehicles into the buildings of oppressive (e.g., Cuban or Chinese communist) regimes, all the while waving their scriptures in hand and screaming, “Jesus [or Buddha or Vishnu] is great.” Why?
There is one final aspect that is often overlooked-either from ignorance or disingenuousness-by those who insist that violence and intolerance is equivalent across the board for all religions. Aside from the divine words of the Qur’an, Muhammad’s pattern of behavior-his sunna or “example”-is an extremely important source of legislation in Islam. Muslims are exhorted to emulate Muhammad in all walks of life: “You have had a good example in God’s Messenger.”[18] And Muhammad’s pattern of conduct toward non-Muslims is quite explicit.
Sarcastically arguing against the concept of moderate Islam, for example, terrorist Osama bin Laden, who enjoys half the Arab-Islamic world’s support per an Al-Jazeera poll,[19] portrays the Prophet’s sunna thusly:
“Moderation” is demonstrated by our prophet who did not remain more than three months in Medina without raiding or sending a raiding party into the lands of the infidels to beat down their strongholds and seize their possessions, their lives, and their women.[20]
In fact, based on both the Qur’an and Muhammad’s sunna, pillaging and plundering infidels, enslaving their children, and placing their women in concubinage is well founded.[21] And the concept of sunna-which is what 90 percent of the billion-plus Muslims, the Sunnis, are named after-essentially asserts that anything performed or approved by Muhammad, humanity’s most perfect example, is applicable for Muslims today no less than yesterday. This, of course, does not mean that Muslims in mass live only to plunder and rape.
But it does mean that persons naturally inclined to such activities, and who also happen to be Muslim, can-and do-quite easily justify their actions by referring to the “Sunna of the Prophet”-the way Al-Qaeda, for example, justified its attacks on 9/11 where innocents including women and children were killed: Muhammad authorized his followers to use catapults during their siege of the town of Ta’if in 630 C.E.-townspeople had refused to submit-though he was aware that women and children were sheltered there. Also, when asked if it was permissible to launch night raids or set fire to the fortifications of the infidels if women and children were among them, the Prophet is said to have responded, “They [women and children] are from among them [infidels].”[22] Jewish and Christian Ways
Though law-centric and possibly legalistic, Judaism has no such equivalent to the Sunna; the words and deeds of the patriarchs, though described in the Old Testament, never went on to prescribe Jewish law. Neither Abraham’s “white-lies,” nor Jacob’s perfidy, nor Moses’ short-fuse, nor David’s adultery, nor Solomon’s philandering ever went on to instruct Jews or Christians. They were understood as historical acts perpetrated by fallible men who were more often than not punished by God for their less than ideal behavior.
As for Christianity, much of the Old Testament law was abrogated or fulfilled-depending on one’s perspective-by Jesus. “Eye for an eye” gave way to “turn the other cheek.” Totally loving God and one’s neighbor became supreme law.[23] Furthermore, Jesus’ sunna-as in “What would Jesus do?”-is characterized by passivity and altruism. The New Testament contains absolutely no exhortations to violence.
Still, there are those who attempt to portray Jesus as having a similarly militant ethos as Muhammad by quoting the verse where the former-who “spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a parable spoke not”[24]-said, “I come not to bring peace but a sword.”[25] But based on the context of this statement, it is clear that Jesus was not commanding violence against non-Christians but rather predicting that strife will exist between Christians and their environment-a prediction that was only too true as early Christians, far from taking up the sword, passively perished by the sword in martyrdom as too often they still do in the Muslim world. [26]
Others point to the violence predicted in the Book of Revelation while, again, failing to discern that the entire account is descriptive-not to mention clearly symbolic-and thus hardly prescriptive for Christians. At any rate, how can one conscionably compare this handful of New Testament verses that metaphorically mention the word “sword” to the literally hundreds of Qur’anic injunctions and statements by Muhammad that clearly command Muslims to take up a very real sword against non-Muslims?
Undeterred, Jenkins bemoans the fact that, in the New Testament, Jews “plan to stone Jesus, they plot to kill him; in turn, Jesus calls them liars, children of the Devil.”[27] It still remains to be seen if being called “children of the Devil” is more offensive than being referred to as the descendents of apes and pigs-the Qur’an’s appellation for Jews.[28] Name calling aside, however, what matters here is that, whereas the New Testament does not command Christians to treat Jews as “children of the Devil,” based on the Qur’an, primarily 9:29, Islamic law obligates Muslims to subjugate Jews, indeed, all non-Muslims.
Does this mean that no self-professed Christian can be anti-Semitic? Of course not. But it does mean that Christian anti-Semites are living oxymorons-for the simple reason that textually and theologically, Christianity, far from teaching hatred or animosity, unambiguously stresses love and forgiveness. Whether or not all Christians follow such mandates is hardly the point; just as whether or not all Muslims uphold the obligation of jihad is hardly the point. The only question is, what do the religions command?
John Esposito is therefore right to assert that “Jews and Christians have engaged in acts of violence.” He is wrong, however, to add, “We [Christians] have our own theology of hate.” Nothing in the New Testament teaches hate-certainly nothing to compare with Qur’anic injunctions such as: “We [Muslims] disbelieve in you [non-Muslims], and between us and you enmity has shown itself, and hatred for ever until you believe in God alone.”[29] Reassessing the Crusades
And it is from here that one can best appreciate the historic Crusades-events that have been thoroughly distorted by Islam’s many influential apologists. Karen Armstrong, for instance, has practically made a career for herself by misrepresenting the Crusades, writing, for example, that “the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam.”[30] That a former nun rabidly condemns the Crusades vis-à-vis anything Islam has done makes her critique all the more marketable. Statements such as this ignore the fact that from the beginnings of Islam, more than 400 years before the Crusades, Christians have noted that Islam was spread by the sword.[31] Indeed, authoritative Muslim historians writing centuries before the Crusades, such as Ahmad Ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri (d. 892) and Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari (838-923), make it clear that Islam was spread by the sword.
The fact remains: The Crusades were a counterattack on Islam-not an unprovoked assault as Armstrong and other revisionist historians portray. Eminent historian Bernard Lewis puts it well,
Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad, was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation. But unlike the jihad, it was concerned primarily with the defense or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory. It was, with few exceptions, limited to the successful wars for the recovery of southwest Europe, and the unsuccessful wars to recover the Holy Land and to halt the Ottoman advance in the Balkans. The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule. … The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law.[32]
Moreover, Muslim invasions and atrocities against Christians were on the rise in the decades before the launch of the Crusades in 1096. The Fatimid caliph Abu ‘Ali Mansur Tariqu’l-Hakim (r. 996-1021) desecrated and destroyed a number of important churches-such as the Church of St. Mark in Egypt and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem-and decreed even more oppressive than usual decrees against Christians and Jews. Then, in 1071, the Seljuk Turks crushed the Byzantines in the pivotal battle of Manzikert and, in effect, conquered a major chunk of Byzantine Anatolia presaging the way for the eventual capture of Constantinople centuries later.
It was against this backdrop that Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099) called for the Crusades:
From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks] … has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion.[33]
Even though Urban II’s description is historically accurate, the fact remains: However one interprets these wars-as offensive or defensive, just or unjust-it is evident that they were not based on the example of Jesus, who exhorted his followers to “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”[34] Indeed, it took centuries of theological debate, from Augustine to Aquinas, to rationalize defensive war-articulated as “just war.” Thus, it would seem that if anyone, it is the Crusaders-not the jihadists-who have been less than faithful to their scriptures (from a literal standpoint); or put conversely, it is the jihadists-not the Crusaders-who have faithfully fulfilled their scriptures (also from a literal stand point). Moreover, like the violent accounts of the Old Testament, the Crusades are historic in nature and not manifestations of any deeper scriptural truths.
In fact, far from suggesting anything intrinsic to Christianity, the Crusades ironically better help explain Islam. For what the Crusades demonstrated once and for all is that irrespective of religious teachings-indeed, in the case of these so-called Christian Crusades, despite them-man is often predisposed to violence. But this begs the question: If this is how Christians behaved-who are commanded to love, bless, and do good to their enemies who hate, curse, and persecute them-how much more can be expected of Muslims who, while sharing the same violent tendencies, are further commanded by the Deity to attack, kill, and plunder nonbelievers?
—-Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum and author of The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
[1] Andrea Bistrich, “Discovering the common grounds of world religions,” interview with Karen Armstrong, Share International, Sept. 2007, pp. 19-22.
[2] C-SPAN2, June 5, 2004.
[3] Philip Jenkins, “Dark Passages,” The Boston Globe, Mar. 8, 2009.
[4] Deut. 20:16-18.
[5] Josh. 10:40.
[6] “The Fall of Jerusalem,” Gesta Danorum, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.
[7] Qur. 9:5. All translations of Qur’anic verses are drawn from A.J. Arberry, ed. The Koran Interpreted: A Translation (New York: Touchstone, 1996).
[8] Qur. 9:29.
[9] Qur. 2:256.
[10] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqudimmah: An Introduction to History, Franz Rosenthal, trans. (New York: Pantheon, 1958,) vol. 1, p. 473.
[11] Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 60.
[12] See, for instance, Ahmed Mahmud Karima, Al-Jihad fi’l-Islam: Dirasa Fiqhiya Muqarina (Cairo: Al-Azhar University, 2003).
[13] Qur. 9:29.
[14] Qur. 9:5.
[15] Qur. 8:39.
[16] Ibn al-Hajjaj Muslim, Sahih Muslim, C9B1N31; Muhammad Ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (Lahore: Kazi, 1979), B2N24.
[17] Jenkins, “Dark_Passages.”
[18] Qur. 33:21.
[19] “Al-Jazeera-Poll: 49% of Muslims Support Osama bin Laden,” Sept. 7-10, 2006, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.
[20] ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Ali, Hilf al Irhab (Cairo: Markaz al-Mahrusa li ‘n-Nashr wa ‘l-Khidamat as-Sahafiya wa ‘l-Ma’lumat, 2004).
[21] For example, Qur. 4:24, 4:92, 8:69, 24:33, 33:50.
[22] Sahih Muslim, B19N4321; for English translation, see Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 140. [23] Matt. 22:38-40.
[24] Matt. 13:34.
[25] Matt. 10:34.
[26] See, for instance, “Christian Persecution Info,” Christian Persecution Magazine, accessed Apr. 2, 2009.
[27] Jenkins, “Dark_Passages.”
[28] Qur. 2:62-65, 5:59-60, 7:166.
[29] Qur. 60:4.
[30] Bistrich, “Discovering the common grounds of world religions,” pp. 19-22; For a critique of Karen Armstrong’s work, see “Karen Armstrong,” in Andrew Holt, ed. Crusades-Encyclopedia, Apr. 2005, accessed Apr. 6, 2009.
[31] See, for example, the writings of Sophrinius, Jerusalem’s patriarch during the Muslim conquest of the Holy City, just years after the death of Muhammad, or the chronicles of Theophane the Confessor.
[32] Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 233-4.
[33] “Speech of Urban-Robert of Rheims,” in Edward Peters, ed., The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), p. 27. [34] Matt. 5:44.

VirtueOnline - News - Theology, Research … - Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?

After listening to President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech — breathlessly anticipated by the sycophants who call themselves reporters — I believe the man needs to be educated about Islamofascism, terrorism, and religous radicalism. (And perhaps those mental giants in the news media could use an education as well.)
When the United States fought Nazi Germany during World War II, we were not fighting a war on blitzkriegs. When we declared war on Japan following their vicious sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, we were not fighting a war on militarism. Why do we continue to say we are at war against terrorism? When President George W. Bush rightly called terrorists “Islamofascists,” he was ridiculed, lambasted and vilified by the Democrats and their media lapdogs. So Bush never used the term again. In fact, he invited radical Islamic leaders to the White House in order to back away from his use of an accurate term.

To be sure, terrorism is an ambiguous term. I’ve heard some liberal-left newsman on a radio show say that Israel was engaged in “state terrorism” against the Lebanese people. All the Israelis wanted was for Hezbollah to stop lobbing rockets into Israel.
You have liberals within the US and Europe who call the United States a terrorist nation. How often have we heard this nugget of wisdom: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
However, when you say we are at war against Islamofascism or radical Islam or Muslim extremists, there is far less ambiguity and much more focus on whom the enemy is in this current war.
Yet, many political leaders — such as Sen. Chuck Schumer — who have no problem denigrating Christians on the floor of the US Senate, refuse to acknowledge the true enemy in this war.
Most of our political leaders are ignorant of Islam and the problems Muslims face when attempting to practice a cohesive religion. Islam is and always was an ambiguous religion. In order to understand how one group can argue that Islam is a religion of peace while another group commits atrocities in the name of Islam, one must return to the source of this religion which is diametrically opposed to liberal democracy.
The Koran is actually a very confusing book. It does not provide practitioners of Islam a clear and unambiguous roadmap to heaven. In fact, Arabic scholars have explained that the Koran is divided into two contradictory — opposing — viewpoints of how Muslims should interact with one another as well as non-believers. In fact, there are only two points on which all Muslims agree: one must accept Allah and Allah’s Trinity (Din, Dunya, Dwala); and Mohammad is the last and foremost prophet of God.
Scholars divide the Koran as written by Muhammad into the Mecca period from 610 to 622; and the Medina period from 622 to 632. Mecca is best described as a period of tolerance, even pluralism. It was a belief in “live and let live.” (”You shall have your religion and I shall have mine.”)
However, the Medina period can be characterized as a religion delving into politics, power and armed conflict in the name of Allah. (”And kill them wherever you find them.”)
So when we hear Islamic leaders discuss their beliefs, we come away as confused as the Muslims themselves. The fact is that some may be referring to Mecca, some may be referring to Medina, and some may be referring to both the Mecca and Medina. Besides the confusion caused by the Koran, add other components of Islam such as Sunna, Hadith and Rivya, and it’s no wonder that Koranic scholars are at odds with one another.
In short, Islam is at once a religion and an ideology. It’s totalitarian ideology is comparable to Nazism, Communism and Fascism. Islamic leaders in the United States tell politicians that Islam is a religion of peace and give them some verses from the Koran and they relay this to the American people. As with most politically correct jargon, people are encouraged to deny the evidence of their own senses.
Practitioners of Islam are today involved in conflagrations throughout the world. Here are a few violent conflicts occurring today:
* The continued battle in Iraq has morphed from the deposing of a dictator into civil unrest by opposing sects of Islam, as well as Al-Qaeda terrorists who believe in an Islamic mission of world domination.
* In Afghanistan, the remnants of the radical Islamic groups the Taliban and Al-Qaeda continue to wreak havoc in that fledgling democracy.
* In Somalia, Islamists have all but overthrown a newly formed government. These Islamists have been responsible for not only violence, but also the starvation of the Somali people. The unrest is growing, with neighboring Ethiopia becoming involved in the armed conflict.
* In India, a predominately Hindu nation, Islamists have conducted terrorist attacks and Kashmir remains a region of violent contention by Islamic and Hindu residents.
* Terrorist attacks have occurred in Spain and Europe. The armed conflict occurring in Russia is being perpetuated by Islamists. In one attack, these Muslim terrorist invaded a school and brutally murdered children.
Add the Islamic terrorist operations in the Philippines, Indonesia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc., and it is clear to most observers that there exists an asymmetric war being waged by those whose religion-ideology favors Medina over Mecca.
There is nothing new with large scale violence perpetrated by Muslims. At the end of the 19th Century, a man arose who claimed he was the Mahdi (The Guided One) — the one promised by Mohammad — who would unite the Islamic world either peacefully or through violence and then conquer the world for Allah’s paradise.
This Mahdi created a massive army of followers who decided on the way to worshiping in Damascus — and while there, occupying Syria — they would overthrow the governments of the Sudan, Egypt and other nations. When the Mahdi wiped out a modern army in the desert and then brutally invaded the Sudanese city of Khartoum, the British found it necessary to send a large force to stop him and his murderous Dervish.
In short, it’s safe to say that Islamism is a political religion or a religious ideology. So political correctness be damned. We at war with radical Islamists, or a better term would be a war on Islamofascism.
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org).  In addition, he’s the former blog editor for the House Conservatives Fund’s weblog.  Recently, the editors at Examiner.com appointed him as their Law Enforcement Examiner. Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty.
He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations.  He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country.   Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for NewswithViews.com and News Analyst for Borderfire Report.net.  He’s also a columnist for AmericanDailyReview.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com.   He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 300 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc.
We Invite You To Visit Jim Kouri’s Website

Islamic Terrorism: A brief history lesson for President Barack Obama | Jim Kouri

The most intriguing moment in President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world Thursday came about two-thirds of the way through, when he won a round of applause from his Cairo audience simply for uttering this line: “The fourth issue that I will address is democracy.”

While most of President Obama’s Cairo speech was directed at the average Muslim citizen, his message on democracy targeted Islam leaders. But are there prominent leaders who will ally themselves with the president? Capital Journal columnist Jerry Seib discusses.

That sentence, and the cheers it produced, said two important things. First, the words told skeptics that Mr. Obama intends to continue George W. Bush’s crusade for democracy and political reform as powerful tools in fighting Islamic extremism.

And second, the audience reaction told Islamic leaders, especially those in the Middle East, that they ignore those cheers for democracy at their peril.

Now, the question that arises is simply this: Are there any Islamic leaders with the courage to heed the call? Is there a Middle Eastern leader willing to test the proposition that freedom is ultimately a better weapon than repression in combating radicalism and terrorism?

Sadly, the answer probably is no, at least for now. If there is a Nelson Mandela among the Islamic world’s leaders, he hasn’t emerged. And that may be the biggest problem Mr. Obama faces in trying to turn his finely crafted address into the “new beginning” he called for.

European Pressphoto Agency

President Barack Obama visits the Great Pyramids of Egypt on Thursday.

In many ways, the Obama call for democracy and freedom was the most sensitive and important element of his 55-minute address, probably the most closely scrutinized set of remarks a president has ever delivered abroad. He covered a lot of other ground, of course. He was tough on Israel, calling bluntly for it to stop building settlements on the West Bank, and putting Palestinians’ aspirations for a state on a rhetorical par with those of Israelis. That will cause some tension next time he sees Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There also will be speculation about why he avoided using the words “terrorism” and “terrorists” in describing extremist violence. He probably did so because those terms have become loaded in the Middle East, where one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.

But most of all, the speech was meant to create a bond between an American president with a unique link to Islam, and the average listeners in the streets of Islamic lands.

“I’m a Christian, but my father came from generations of Muslims,” Mr. Obama said. I’ve heard the Islamic calls to prayer while living in Indonesia. I know something of the Islamic world, he said. If the audience were American, he would have used one of his favorite lines: “I get it.”

 

 

Associated Press

Mr. Obama and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak shake hands during their meeting at the Qubba Palace.

Having tried to establish that bond, he said, in effect: Surely we can agree to reject the killing of innocent civilians, the demonization of Jews, the subjugation of women, and the myth that Islam and modernity are incompatible.

But such words matter more if they change not just Islamic minds, but Islamic regimes. And on that point, the president’s words clearly were directed not to the Islamic street, but to Islamic palaces.

“You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion,” he told Islamic leaders. “You must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party.”

But is there any Islamic leader capable of rising up to embrace this vision? History shows big changes are easier when presidents have world-class foreign partners: Franklin Roosevelt had Winston Churchill, Jimmy Carter had Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan had Mikhail Gorbachev.

Is there such a partner now, one willing to bet on democracy and peaceful transfer of power? Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak should be, but he’s proved too afraid of real democracy. Saudi King Abdullah is surprisingly progressive, but works within a rigid monarchy. Jordan’s King Abdullah has admirable impulses, but his land is small and weak.

President Obama faces a question as well. Will he continue to call for democracy, or, as have so many of his predecessors, decide over time that it’s easier to work with the monarchs and dictators we know than the democrats we don’t? The tests ahead, it seems, are on both sides of the Western/Islamic divide.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com

Messages to the Street — and Rulers - WSJ.com

Chewing the Fat in Mecca, Medina, Damascus…

Books

RAGUI ASSAAD

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East
By Neil MacFarquhar
Public Affairs, 359 pages, $26.95.

Having seen more than enough violence during a decade-long stint as a reporter in the Middle East, Neil MacFarquhar branched out from his beat as Cairo Bureau Chief at The New York Times to write a book about the warmer, fuzzier, more moderate aspects of the Middle East.

Instead of following a mainstream media intent on focusing laser beams on the bloodshed and destruction permeating the region, he wanted to tell other, more hopeful stories: to inject them into public discourse. MacFarquhar felt the world needed to know that there are many “ordinary Arabs who are aware that their nations are out of step with the rest of the world, that they are fed up with both the incompetence of their rulers and the unpredictable quality of their lives. They crave normalcy but despair at ever having the wherewithal to attain it in the face of an oppression that brings at least jail terms and even death to anyone trying to organize dissenters.”

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A quick glance at MacFarquhar’s biography offers some clues as to what may have drawn him to this endeavor. Rugged, handsome and 6 foot 3, he never had a solid sense of any single place as home. He spent his childhood years living in a walled-off compound in Libya, where his father worked as an engineer for Esso. While still a teenager, he was sent away to the best boarding schools in the United States before eventually earning his degree in international political economy from Stanford University. His worldview seems to have developed like President Obama’s: exposure from a young age to people from different religions and cultures opened up his mind to different states of being and thinking. Becoming an international reporter for the Times allowed him to pursue his inquiries at the highest level.

Appearing throughout this unusually compelling book are lengthy interviews with a wide variety of clerics, high-ranking members of various royal families, intellectuals and average citizens looking for signs of progressive change, but the overwhelming picture he paints is toxic. He travels throughout Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, finding countries ruled by royal families flush with money but remain embedded in unholy unions with fundamentalist clerics who control the lives of millions. There is no freedom of the press or right to organize or equal rights for women, and education options are severely limited or nonexistent. Different Islamic factions espouse hatred and mistrust of one another as each lays claim to an exclusive stronghold on Islamic truth.

Perhaps most unsettling is the animosity toward Westerners that infiltrates all levels of society. The author records his own bewilderment when, at a dinner party in Saudi Arabia, a college professor of Islamic law turned to him unprovoked and said in exasperation, “Well, of course I hate you because you are a Christian, but that doesn’t mean I want to kill you.”

At another event he attended, a 2004 seminar in Cairo called “Islam and Reform,” led by a group of moderate Muslims, crowds began to gather and shout at the panelists: “You are just agents for America. What kind of Islam are you talking about? Are there any Islamic scholars here? Where are they? You are Jews! You are wrecking Islam and rotting the minds of the young.”

With the obstinacy of a psychotherapy patient denying what he himself has revealed, MacFarquhar keeps looking for moderate voices. He finds some solace in the unusually brazen written work of Saudi Prince Bandar, who has admitted that the problems in Saudi Arabia have “nothing to do with America or Israel or the Christians or the Jews…. So let us stop blaming others while the problem comes from us.”

Even Bill Maher of HBO’s “Real Time” seemed to hit a more genuine, although politically incorrect, note when he said recently to a Muslim guest on his television show: “Please don’t tell me that we’re all people and we’re all the same and we’re all equally bigoted. I mean, excuse me, in America, yes, we do have our problems, and you know the Catholics are as backwards as it gets. The debate on women is whether they should be priests. In the Muslim world, the debate is should we stone them to death because they talk to a man who’s not their husband. Okay, civilizations are not equal.”

Neil MacFarquhar is a gifted writer and a natural storyteller and has used his unprecedented access to illustrate for us a vivid rendering of the Middle East in all its complexity, congestion and paranoia. But he fails to integrate his own findings into his analysis, and this makes the reader wary.

Most of us accept that the media has sometimes been guilty of portraying all Muslims as violent and barbaric, and this most certainly is a gross distortion. Yet, the vitriolic threads permeating the societies that MacFarquhar describes are deeply disturbing. In particular, with regard to antisemitism, the author remains peculiarly and uncomfortably silent, never once mentioning throughout his entire narrative the corrosive effect this has had on the entire region and its people. This oversight seems unforgivable and makes the reader wonder whether MacFarquhar’s attachment to his own preset agenda may have distorted his otherwise compelling book.

Elaine Margolin is a freelance book reviewer and essayist for The Jerusalem Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.

Chewing the Fat in Mecca, Medina, Damascus… – Forward.com

Morocco’s New Guiding Force

Muslim Women Being Trained as Spiritual Leaders and Family Counselors

By Robin Shulman

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 30, 2009

Not long ago in the Moroccan city of Rabat, Nezha Nassi met an 18-year-old girl in prison on drug charges. The girl was afraid to leave prison because her parents said she was no longer welcome at home.

For months, Nassi counseled the girl, who seemed to bloom slowly and build an idea of the life she wanted. Nassi visited the girl’s mother to persuade her to take her back, saying the girl would be worse off in the streets and that she had worked to give up her addiction. Nassi told the mother she had the girl’s promise.

In Morocco, Nassi’s word means something. That’s because Nassi is a murshida, or guide, a female religious counselor recently trained by the country’s Ministry of Religious Affairs to teach Islam and offer counseling in mosques, prisons, schools and hospitals — even to make house calls to work through the most intimate family problems. Nassi is one of about 250 murshidas trained to occupy the same role as male imams, in every sense but leading prayer.

“This is spiritual, moral and physical counseling,” said Nassi, whose soft face makes her look a decade younger than her 42 years, but who projects authority.

She recently visited Washington and New York with two other murshidas to meet with State Department officials and female religious leaders of various faiths in a trip sponsored by the Moroccan American Cultural Center. The State Department, in its annual report to Congress on counterterrorism issued in April, hailed the murshida program as a “pioneering” effort in Morocco’s broad approach to spread tolerant practices of Islam.

The program began in 2006 in response to suicide bombers and other terrorist acts that wreaked havoc in the country. The thinking was that training murshidas would expand the number of government-trained emissaries to combat the appeal of violent interpretations of Islam.

At the same time, King Mohammed VI had pushed for reform in family law, giving women more rights in divorce and property, and the right to approve a husband’s request to take additional wives. Seeking to be progressive on women’s issues while avoiding alienating conservative Muslims, the government fostered the murshida program as a way to bring the new laws directly into homes and give them a religious imprimatur.

The program is part of a worldwide movement to elevate the status of Muslim women scholars and leaders, said Daisy Khan, the New York-based founder of Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity. “There’s a rising consciousness that we need to organize and institutionalize ourselves as sisters of other faiths have done before us,” she said.

In most of the Muslim world, although women have served as informal spiritual leaders, official positions of religious power have been the preserve of men. But now in Turkey, hundreds of female preachers, known as vaizes, are working in state-run mosques, and women have also been appointed to lead Turks making the pilgrimage to Mecca. In Egypt, Al-Azhar University has approved the printing and distribution of the first Quranic interpretation written by a woman. From India to Syria, women are becoming muftis, authorized to issue fatwas, or religious decisions.

Morocco, a country of 34 million people, is poor, with double-digit unemployment in urban shantytowns and isolated rural villages. Young people are vulnerable to alcohol abuse, drugs, sniffing glue — and religious extremism, the murshidas said.

The murshidas spend much of their time at the mosque, giving lectures to women, taking questions and offering counseling on personal problems. They also often visit hospitals and prisons. Sometimes they appear on television and radio programs and take calls from listeners.

People want to talk about marital problems, AIDS, rape, teen pregnancy. They come to them in crisis: The woman with cancer who had lost the will to live and wanted to quit treatment. The boy who had a fight with his father and ran away to a blacksmith shop where he found work.

Prerequisites for admission to the murshida program include an honors bachelor’s degree and memorization of at least half of the Quran. The 45-week training includes courses in psychology, law, history, communication and religion — the same coursework an imam goes through.

“I always dreamed of being a leader,” Nassi said. She received her B.A. in Islamic studies from Mohammed V University in Rabat, then worked as an artist and volunteered in her local mosque. She was part of the first class of murshidas to graduate in 2006.

She often becomes close to those she counsels, including the 18-year-old drug user who had been cast out of her parents’ house. She is proud of the impact she has had on her life. “After she was released, she went home,” Nassi said.

Moroccos New Guiding Force - washingtonpost.com

Early Reform and Islamic Exoticism

More Articles By Seth J. Frantzman

Seth J. Frantzman
Posted Jun 03 2009

An 18^th-century portrait in the Barbados Jewish Museum shows a large, fat man sitting on a wooden chair, his merchandise spread out around him, a turban encasing his head and a beard surrounding his jaw. The inscription tells us this is a Jew, though his attire is Islamic - clothing his ancestors would have worn in Spain in the 15^th century before their expulsion.

The painting is no fabrication. Jews dressed like this, as we know from drawings of Maimonides, who is often depicted in a turban (though paintings of him did not appear until the 16^th century). In fact, the color Jews could choose for their turbans was regulated in various Islamic areas (usually yellow for Jews and blue for Christians) so that they could be easily recognized.

The Isaac M. Wise Temple in Cincinnati (formerly known as the Plum Street Temple) reflects this Islamic-Jewish motif in its architecture. Designed by James Keys Wilson, a non-Jew who was an expert in creating Gothic-style buildings, the edifice borrowed heavily from what has been variously described as Romantic, Byzantine or Moorish architectural styles. Contemporary accounts noted it was built to resemble the Alhambra, the famous Islamic citadel in Granada that fell to the Reconquista in 1492 (the year the Jews were expelled).

But whereas the Jewish merchant in Barbados, if the painting is an accurate portrayal, really wore a turban, the temple on Plum Street, despite its domes and minarets, has no connection to Spain. The decision to build a new Alhambra was made by the leading light behind the temple’s founding, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise.

Wise was born in 1819 in Steingrub in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire and is now part of Bohemia in the Czech Republic. He had a traditional Jewish upbringing, combined with a secular education in Prague, and became a rabbi in 1843. Immigrating to America, he became a leader in the nascent, as yet unnamed, Reform movement.

Wise’s congregation in Albany, New York was the first to introduce mixed seating in the U.S. and Wise encouraged the counting of women in the formation of a minyan. (These innovations were not atypical of the ideas considered by Jewish reformers of the time. Radicals such as the German rabbi Samuel Holdheim even voiced support for ending circumcision.)

Wise moved to Cincinnati in 1854 and became rabbi of Congregation Kehilat Kedushah B’nai Yeshurun, which he led for the next 46 years (the Plum Street edifice was built in 1866) and which was widely considered the leading Reform temple in America.

He later became the first president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and founder of Hebrew Union College. Thus his influence and his decision to build the Plum Street Temple in the Moorish style is not only important but is also connected with the foundations of Reform Judaism itself.

According to the Isaac M. Wise Temple website,

[T]he building reflects a synagogue architectural style that had emerged in Germany in the nineteenth century, a Byzantine-Moorish style. It hearkens to a previous era of the Golden Age of Spain in Jewish history, and reflects Rabbi Wise’s optimism that the developing American Jewish experience would be the next Golden Age . The complex design of Plum Street Temple mirrors many cultures: from the outside the tall proportions, three pointed arched entrances and rose window suggest a Gothic revival church; the crowning minarets hint of Islamic architecture; the motif’s decorating the entrances, repeated in the rose window and on the Torah Ark introduce a Moorish theme . The chandeliers and candelabra, formerly gaslight, are now electrical but still the original fixtures. The original pipe organ, itself historical in nature and a unique instrument, built by the Cincinnati firm of Koehnken and Company is still in place, although in need of restoration.

Wise’s Alhambra was not the first Jewish Moorish-style mosque to be built. Nor was it the most grand. According to Alan Silverstein’s Alternatives to Assimilation: The Response of Reform to American Culture 1840-1930, Philadelphia’s Keneseth Israel Temple preceded the Plum Street building by one year. That temple was an imitation of a Reform temple in Kassel, Germany. However, whereas Plum Street borrowed directly from Islamic motifs, Keneseth Israel’s steeple or minaret looks more like Big Ben clock tower than something found in Riyadh.

Other famous and large Reform temples in the U.S have been similarly influenced either by Moorish Reform synagogues in Europe or Muslim edifices. Temple Emanu El in San Francisco, opened in 1926 and designed primarily by Arthur Brown, Jr. (designer of the War Memorial Opera House, the Hoover Library at Stanford and, with two others, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge), was modeled on Hagia Sophia in Istanbul with a smaller, but no less grand, 150-foot dome. In this case the Reform movement was actually copying a copy of a church. The Turks had simply put minarets around Hagia Sophia, a giant Orthodox church, when they captured Constantinople in the 15^th century.

The Central Synagogue in New York, built in 1872 in the Moorish Revival style, is another example. Designed by architect Henry Fernbach of Germany, it was built by German immigrant members of Congregation Ahawath Chesed. One description of it notes it “is dominated by two octagonal towers rising 122 feet. They are meant to be reminiscences of Solomon’s Temple. The towers are topped onion-shaped, green copper domes.”

The Central Synagogue appears in Barbaralee Diamonstein Spielvogel’s The Landmarks of New York, Andrew Dolkart’s Guide to New York City Landmarks and at nyc-architecture.com. But despite the allusions to Solomon’s temple, it is actually a conscious copy of the Great Synagogue on Dohany Street in Budapest, a massive structure with some 2,964 seats built in the 1850s by the Neolog (Hungarian Reform) Jewish community of Pest according to the plans of the Viennese architect Ludwig Foerster.

Other Reform buildings from the period used a similar style; one such was the Oranienburger Strasse New Synagogue, which opened in Berlin in 1866. But perhaps the most mosque-like of any European Reform synagogue is the Rumbach Utca synagogue in Budapest. Built between 1869 and 1872 by the architect Otto Wagner (no relation, apparently, to the composer Richard Wagner), it contains two minarets, much like the temple on Plum Street.

Most bizarre of all, these minarets not only include Islamic styles such as specifically Arabesque and Moorish geometric shapes and lines, but also railings and a sort of crow’s nest where the Muslim muezzin would have shouted the call to prayer. But this railing, the purpose of which is to protect one from falling, has no function in a Jewish synagogue and is as out of place as a shofar or a bell tower in a mosque.

* * *

These Reform temples in the Moorish style that evoke memories of Spain and the Alhambra, and of mosques in general, are not only distinguished by their Islamic elements but also by their sheer physical size.

Whether in Berlin or San Francisco these buildings dominated their surroundings and their cities, eventually becoming national landmarks. Some are considered important architectural masterpieces of the second half of the 19^th century. In all cases it is pointed out that their grandeur represented the newly elevated status of late-19^th century Jews, who were increasingly wealthy and receiving a greater share of equal rights in their countries of residence.

But not all Jews were constructing such grand edifices. The large buildings were built almost without exception by Reform Jews, and the synagogues that used Islamic themes were exclusively Reform.

According to Silverstein, this was deliberate. “Pride in Reform was evident in the opulence and magnificence of the buildings constructed.” Golden domes “loomed garishly” over the skylines of cities and “imposing structures testified to the rapid pace of congregational growth” and “the grandeur of these Moorish edifices was a statement of acculturation.”

Silverstein notes that the buildings were intended to evoke the idea of grand temples - indeed, to evoke the word “temple” rather than “synagogue.” It was the belief of Isaac Mayer Wise that “synagogue” represented mourning whereas “temple” would bring gladness to worship.

“Previously reserved solely for the temple in Jerusalem,” these new temples, Wise wrote in his book American Israelite, would be “without prayers for bodily resurrection, the coming of the messiah [or] the returning to Palestine.”

The exteriors may have been Islamic, but the interiors resembled Christian churches. The Reform movement in Europe had borrowed heavily from churches, installing organs in its temples and instituting mixed seating, with pews and giant open-air basilica-style naves to house large congregations. It was part of the general Reform determination to bring Judaism into the modern world - and for 19^th-century Reform Jews, modernity meant Christian Europe and assimilating into it.

Assimilation into Christian Europe did not, however, result in architectural assimilation - and therein lies a great mystery and a question that gets to the heart of our subject. Why did Reform Judaism become Islamic in its trappings?

Wise was one of the great advocates of Moorish-style architecture and memorializing the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry by designing buildings that reminded him of the Alhambra, a Muslim fortress. He wasn’t as interested in reminding himself of the Torah-adherence of Spanish Jewry, nor did he wish to wear a turban or dress in the manner of Sephardi chief rabbis. For him the clothing had to be European and the interior of a temple likewise European and reminiscent of a church - while the exterior, ideally, would resemble a mosque.

This preference bears many of the hallmarks of what some have termed Jewish Orientalism, a reference to the tendency among Jewish intellectuals in the 19^th and 20^th centuries to take an academic and romantic interest in the East and the history of Islamic culture and Jewish connection to the Islamic world.

In his widely acclaimed book The Orientalist, Tom Reiss writes, “The Jewish Orientalist saw the East as a place not to discover the exotic Other but to find his own roots, and for him the Arabs were nothing less than blood brothers . The anti-Semitic slur, of course, was that the Jews were an alien, Oriental race in Europe - but Jewish Orientalists turned the slur on its head, embracing their ancient desert nobility. Jews drew themselves closer to their lost ‘brothers’ in the East and attempted to explain Semitic culture, including Islam, in the West.”

This was the path taken by the protagonist of Reiss’s book, Azerbaijani-born author Lev Nussimbaum, also known as Essad Bey and Kurban Said.

Middle East scholar Martin Kramer has drawn similar links, even using a photo of the Budapest synagogue on the cover of The Jewish Discovery of Islam, a book of essays on the subject he edited in 1999. And historian Bernard Lewis has noted that “The role of [Jewish] scholars in the development of every aspect of Islamic studies has been immense - not only in the advancement of scholarship but also in the enrichment of the Western view of Oriental religion, literature, and history, by the substitution of knowledge and understanding for prejudice and ignorance.”

* * *

But if Jews were deeply involved in Orientalism and the exploration of the Islamic “other,” it still does not entirely explain the Reform fascination for building what amounts to mosques. So the question remains: Why did the Reform movement, even as it sought to tear itself from its roots in Jerusalem, attempt to become more Islamic and thus more Eastern?

Apparently, while Reform leaders wanted to remake Judaism in a more progressive and modern image, they preferred to remain “foreign” in Europe and America. But instead of remaining foreign and Jewish by maintaining traditions such as kashrut, Reform chose to remain foreign in its outward style, its architecture.

And since there was no Jewish architecture to look to, Islam, as the ultimate non-European “other,” was the perfect choice. So it was that Jews attempting to assimilate into Europe and become more “modern” actually became, in terms of their houses of worship, outwardly Islamic in order to retain some identification as the “other.”

The irony of Reform’s penchant for Islamification is that it presaged precisely what Europeans would be doing 150 years later in their attempt to accommodate Islam and graft it into modern Europe.

Isaac Mayer Wise could never have imagined how much of a sage he was when he sat down with his gentile architect and designed a mosque with minarets for Cincinnati. He dreamed of a new Golden Age. He swallowed whole the Orientalist myth of the “tolerant East” where Jews lived in harmony with Muslims, ignoring or forgetting that long before the Christian Reyes Catolicos expelled the Jewish community in 1492, many individual Jews had already been forced out by the Muslim Almohads in the 13^th century, among them the family of Maimonides. This was the other side of the “golden age.”

The need to romanticize the “other,” this tragedy of the West, was present in Cincinnati in 1865. It was present in the romance and the exotic love of a mythologized East encapsulated in the temple constructed on Plum Street.

In sharp contrast, the real Jew, the one selling his wares in the painting in the Barbados Jewish Museum, was not romantic. He was considered savage and hard, dirty and mean. Only his style of dress was romantic.

And therein lies the problem. Some of us desire the exotic clothing, the kaffiyah, the romantic East, even as we ignore the reality. We want to hearken back to Istanbul and Muslim Spain, but we forget that these were societies built on the bodies of slaves, societies of mass rape where women were locked in harems and sold at young ages, societies of genocide against minorities, societies that imported Africans to stand all day and fan the local sultans.

Seth J. Frantzman is a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He can be contacted at sfrantzman@hotmail.com.

Early Reform and Islamic Exoticism,Seth J. Frantzman

The political parsing of President Obama’s address to the Muslim world will go on for days but one point was clear instantly — quotes from the Quran prompted almost all the applause.

Obama hit point after point on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, September 11th, nuclear disarmament, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the social and political gifts and flaws of modernization and the virtues of democracy. And the Cairo University audience largely sat on their hands.

But they responded with cheers and whistles for any mention of the Quran that punctuated the speech, starting with Obama’s first selection: “Be Conscious of God and speak always the truth.”

He also turned to the Bible twice –”Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9) and the Golden Rule (Luke 6:31)

And Obama cited the Talmud, the rabbinical discourse on law, ethics and tradition in the Torah, the Hebrew Scriptures, saying, “The whole Torah is for the sake of peace.”

Obama’s Quran quotes stressed mutual devotion to God and to peace.

He paraphrased from Sira (chapter) 5), saying “whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.”

He skipped the qualifying phrase about killing “unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land.”

Likewise, he picked up on the unity of Sira 49 — “O mankind. We created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you many know each other,” while dropping the last line that lauds Allah as “the most righteous.”

Obama pinned his call for peace between Israelis and Palestinians to the story of Isra and Mi’raj. Often cited in interfaith gatherings, it refers to Mohammed’s night flight to the circles of heaven where he speaks with the earlier prophets acknowledged by Islam.

Obama said:

Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.

And Obama called finally on the Golden Rule, describing it as “a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.”

Expect U.S. religious voices to pump out the press release reactions all day today and I’ll keep you updated here.

First out of the box: Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Chicago, says he and other faith leaders are ready to join Obama in working for Middle East peace.

And The Oval, our blog on the Obama presidency, has the National Jewish Democratic Council praising the speech as well.

DO YOU THINK… President Obama, by stressing religious language, made any headway — either in bringing a new respect for Islam to Americans or for American democracy to Muslims worldwide?

Photo by Larry Downing, Reuters: President Barack Obama waves before he delivering a speech at Cairo University that stressed the common concerns between a global superpower and global Islam — “justice progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Clapping for the Quran: Holy text is Obama’s best draw - Faith & Reason