Holocaust in the Middle East, and Muslim-Jew Relations - Essay Example

Holocaust in the Middle East and Muslim-Jew relations Hostility between Jews and Muslims seems to be an unalterable fact of twenty first century and anyone investigating this issue would at a first glance conclude that this hostility has been there for centuries together and these two religions and races are forever inimical to each other and would remain so for all times to come. To be honest, if an investigator draws such a conclusion simply by observing the current day situation, they might not be too far from truth but it requires a little bit of looking backward in history to unravel the true reasons behind so much hatred and belligerence between these two groups of people. It might seem rather surprising but Jews and Muslims were not so hostile to each other in the earlier centuries, rather they lived peacefully and harmoniously with each other but something transpired in between that vitiated their mutual relations and ties to a point of no return. Similarity between Judaism and Islam At a first glance it seems Jews and Muslims are poles apart and there is absolutely nothing in common between them, rather they are so disparate that possibly mutual hatred is the only shared thread that binds them. But, a deeper look at these two religions would, quite surprisingly, bring out certain common strains that indicate these two religions have much similarity with each other. Both these religions have a common origin in Abraham. While Jews consider Muslims as true followers of ‘Seven Laws of Noah’, it might be a revelation to many that Quran refers to the inhabitants of Israel at least forty three times with Exodus of Jews led by Moses being given special importance. Judaism and Islam also share several broad common perspectives about religious outlook and practice and this theological proximity has over the last 1400 years, notwithstanding last ninety or so years’ hostility, woven certain bridges that neither Muslims nor Jews can ignore. Thus it seems more perplexing that these two religious groups that share the same geographical origin have become bitter enemies of one another (Prager and Telushkin). The most common similarities in religious practices between these two religions are circumcision, prohibition of homosexuality and consumption of pork. While Islam prescribes five times a day prayer, Judaism also insists on five times a day prayer that might however be reduced to twice daily under certain specific circumstances. Jews under Muslim rulers Any honest student of history must admit that while there have been aberrations in the course of centuries, Jews have by and large lived peacefully and prospered under Muslim rulers. The so-called ‘Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula’ when Jews made phenomenal progress in the fields of science of philosophy took place under Muslim rulers. Jews were allowed to freely practice their religion and they had no restrictions about their choice of professions either. Thus, the perception that is being freely bandied all around that Jews and Muslims were inimical to each other right from the beginning is perhaps incorrect and is prompted by some other pernicious motives. That the Jews were given ample respect in Muslim societies is evident from another incident in Persia way back in 16th and 17th centuries during the reign of Safavid dynasty. Jews were forced by the then royal rulers to publicly declare that they have converted to Islam and were given the name Jadid-al-Islam or New Muslims. However, in 1661, an Islamic notification declared such forcible conversions as void and reinstated all religious rights that Jews had enjoyed before their forcible conversion. This single incident perhaps is enough of a pointer that though there have been instances of overzealous rulers repressing Jews in their enthusiasm of being seen as truly religious and extremely pious, Islamic society as such never approved of such activities and rectified any such errors at the first opportunity. Even today, Iran is the only country other than Israel and United States of America, which has 25,000 Jews and, unlike in the United States, they have been recognized in Iran as religious minorities and accorded a seat in Iranian Parliament (ABC News Internet Ventures). Bernard Lewis, possibly the most respected historian of the Middle East and himself a Jew wrote, the position of Jews under Muslim rule “was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst; even if it was never as good as in Christendom at its best” and went on to further elaborate “There is nothing in Islamic history to parallel the Spanish expulsion and Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, or the Nazi Holocaust.” (Lewis) It hardly therefore, requires a repetition that Jews and Muslims were and are never par se hostile to each other. They have lived together peacefully and harmoniously for centuries and could have lived like that for ever had there not been certain high impact political machinations in the Middle East. A short discussion on Holocaust It is perhaps in the fitness of things to briefly discuss holocaust, that darkest period of human history when human beings turned on hapless fellow human beings with such ferocity and venom that even the most ferocious of animals or the most venomous of snakes would have felt ashamed. None would argue the historical fact that Nazi Germany killed approximately six million Jews during the Second World War and Auschwitz will remain a permanent blot in history of humankind. But, with all respect to all the Jews who lost their lives or faced inhuman torture, one has to admit that Jews were not the only race or group of people that were brutally tortured in the hands of the Nazis. Around 200,000 Gypsies (also known as Roma) and another 200,000 physically or mentally disabled Germans were killed by the Nazis. They also murdered nearly three million Soviet prisoners of war either directly or through neglect and starvation and hundreds of thousands of others that included Polish intelligentsia other than the Jews, communists, socialists and homosexuals (Bergen). Almost all sections of Europe were victims of Nazi brutality and not only the Jews as it is sometimes made out to be possibly for garnering sympathy and support for the Jewish cause of colonizing Palestine. Anatomy of the hostility Jews were flourishing in Iraq and Egypt too, particularly during 1920s and 1930s till the rise of Zionism and British promise (The Balfour Declaration in 1917) of a Jewish state in Palestine that was thought to be the country which they could finally call their own. Such a promise also coincided with the rising tides of Arab nationalism which, ironically enough was also promoted by Britain. This surge of Arab nationalism took up the cause of Palestine and started vehemently opposing Jewish immigration to Palestine. Almost at the same time, Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, a fundamental organization, also began to oppose Jews pouring into Palestine and started painting all Jews, though only a few of them were Zionists, with the black brush of disloyalty and deceit. Nazis kept fanning Arab world’s hatred and mistrust against the Jews by venomous propaganda over the radio right through the 1930s and this belligerence reached ominous proportions with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Nearly half a million Jews were hounded out of the Muslim countries where they had been staying for centuries and took shelter in Israel. One really feels sorry for their plight and misfortune but, almost simultaneously, nearly same number of Palestinian Arab refugees were driven out of Israel. So, it was a tragic flow of human traffic caused purely due to a highly misplaced sense of nationalism and patriotic fervor. So deep has been the chasm between Jews and Arabs that with the exception of Iran where nearly 25,000 Jews live at present and Morocco, where nearly 2000 Jews continue living, encouraged by King Muhammad VI, there are hardly any Jews left in any of the other Muslim countries of the Middle East (Gilbert). As Jews poured in Israel, dispossession of local Arab population in Palestine of their land and other immovable property continued; fulfilling the Zionist agenda of carving out a pure Jewish state. But this sort of blatant colonization of an area that had been the motherland of Palestinians for more than 1200 years was bound to create strong resentment and violent opposition from those that were disposed and hounded away. Just to put things in proper perspective, there were already more than 700,000 Arabs who called Palestine their home in 1919. This piece of statistic is provided just to bring in sharper focus the audacity of the Zionists in their attempt to set up a pure Jewish state in this region. It is also one of the cruelest ironies of history that these Zionists who claim to have been hounded from one place to another for 1400 years and thus needed a piece of land which they could well and truly call their own, adopted equally brutal and repressive measures against original inhabitants of that ‘promised’ piece of land. Quite naturally, such an attempt can never be successful without military effort and it is equally natural that the resistance to such a move would also assume a violent form. Hamas, the more radical Islamic Resistance Movement against Zionist aggression, promulgated a Charter in 1988 that reflects this hatred and determination to fight it out till the last bitter end: “The Prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say 0 Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Conclusion It must be mentioned that ire of Palestinians is not directed so much against the Jews as a community as the Zionists. The early Jewish settlers in Palestine had come there more for religious reasons than in support of any political agenda and had no conflict with the local Arab inhabitants. But with gradual ascendance of Zionists in Jewish community, the attitude and agenda altered to creation of an ethnically pure Jewish state that would exclude all non-Jews and this was the root cause of Middle East Crisis. The situation in Middle East has reached a point where unless Israel accepts the right of Palestinians to self determination and also admits the practical reality that it cannot thrive and prosper for long in a permanently hostile environment, it would probably be impossible to find a solution to this crisis. Works Cited ABC News Internet Ventures. "Irans religious minorities waning despite own MPs." 16 February 2000. Baháí Association of the University of Georgia. 26 November 2010 . Online. Bergen, Doris. War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Print. Gilbert, Martin. "A Path to Peace Inspired by the Past: A Solution to the Turmoil in the Middle East Seems as Far Away as Ever." History Today. Volume: 60. Issue: 8. (2010): 28-34. Print Lewis, Bernard. The Jews of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Print Prager, D. and J. Telushkin. Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983. Print. Read More