Arabs III
There's no such thing as a "fundamentalist arab". First of all, "arab" is not a religion - Islam is. The followers of Islam are called Moslems. Arab is a geographic adjective and has nothing to do with religion. There are Syrian Jews and Egyptian Christians, just as there are Anglo or Spanish Jews and Christians. And Moslems. It is a Zionist thing to make the current conflict in Israel into a Jew vs. Moslem religious war. It has nothing to do with religion. A minority of Moslems actually are Arabs - most Moslems live in Asia in places like China and Indonesia and Pakistan, more than Lebanon and Syria and the Arab countries. Moslems never had anything against Jews, in fact, we got along much better with them than we did with the Christians. (Remember: There was no holocaust in the Arab countries!) Jews and Christians both are considered "protected religions" in Islam - we are not "infidels" to them. The fight in the middle east is political: Zionists vs. Arabs, both who want the same piece of land. It has zero to do with Judaism (it wasn’t those practicing Judaism who took the land to begin with) or Islam (the fight broke out in the middle east because that’s where the land was --- even though there are more moslems in Asia), and the fight did not start until the Zionists declared in the early 20th century that they are taking the land.
Second, Arafat is not a practicing Moslem. He is totally secular - like Sharon is to Judaism. And just like the Arabs are tricked into thinking that heretics like Sharon and his ilk represent what "Jews" hold, Jews are tricked into thinking that secular Arabs like Arafat represent what Moslems hold. Arafat is even married to a Christian (even though in Moslem law technically a man may marry a woman of another religion, though a woman may only marry a fellow Moslem, nevertheless it is very very frowned upon and not done by religious Moslems).
Thirdly, Moslems don't use descriptions such as fundamentalist - that’s exclusive to Christianity.
But just as we have many sects who claim to represent Judaism, such as Conservative and Reform, but are really other religions, there are also many religions vying for the label of legitimate Islam.
The kharijites and their sub-sects (such as wahhabi) and the sub sects of the sub sects are on one end of the spectrum, and the shia are on the other. The kharijites are more of what you would call fundamentalists in another religion. And the wild militant crazies are sub sects of sub sects going in that direction.
And even the crazies of crazies are not motivated by a hatred for Judaism, but rather it is a political war - over the land - and they are targeting Jews as their political enemies because of the political dispute over the land; they don’t care at all about Judaism itself.
The following was part of a public statement by a Hamas murderer ys"v:
Session Details
Guest Name Mr. Usama Hamdan: Member of Hamas, & Hamas Representative in Lebanon
Subject: Mid-East Truce: Will Peace Prevail?
Date Thursday,Jul 10 ,2003
Time Mecca
From... 18:30...To... 20:30
GMT
From... 15:30...To...17:30
Name Daniel - United States
Profession
Question: Greetings Mr. Hamdan. I would like to ask you whether you
and your organizations, and others like yours, both in Palestine and in
the Palestinian diaspora are aware of the fact that there are many religious
Jews who oppose Zionism? ... How ironic that the world forgets that before Zionism the Jewish People never had as good
friends [relatively] as the Arab People!
Answer: First of all, thank you for your greetings and I send you the same. We are certainly aware and very much concerned with you have said. And I would like to clarify that our resistance against the Zionists is just for the fact that they are occupiers. And of course we don't fight them for their religion, on the contrary, with respect to us as Muslims, we are commanded to deal with Christians and Jews with great respect. And that's why the Arab and Muslim region is the only place where Christians and Jews were not killed or persecuted just for their religion.
Now of course, it is needless to say that this does not justify in the slightest nor reduce the intensity of the guilt of people like him and his gang of terrorists who murder innocent people. May G-d avenge them all swiftly and completely! But that is exactly the point - a fight was picked by the Zionists against millions of Arabs, which include animals like the Hamas murderers, and people like the Brisker Rav ZTL and Rav Michoel Ber Weissmandel ZTL warned them that this would happen if they tried to make a Jewish State in Eretz Yisroel. All those deaths are not in the slightest justified - but the Gedolim told us they could have been prevented. If you walk into Harlem at night alone, you may get hurt. Walking alone at night does not justify the mugger, but if you were smart, you could have prevented it. And if you go and scream out racial epithets, antagonizing the Harlem residents, and then get yourself killed, well, even though calling someone names does not in the slightest make him less of a murderer, it makes you an idiot, and suicidal for doing it.
And if you shlep your brothers and sisters and family with you, then you are a criminal. And that does not negate in the slightest the guilt of the murderer; it merely means that you're a murderer as well.
---
If we as Jews know anything about religious persecution, it is that random quotes and laws "on the books" mean nothing in terms of actual beliefs. Zionists have done to the Moslems the exact same thing that the KKK and anti-semites have done to the Jews: takes some halachos and quotes form Torah and, without explaining them in depth, displayed them as "proof" of the Jews' danger to the world.
The following is flaunted on the KKK websites:
Sanhedrin 59a: "A Goy (Gentile) who pries into the law (Talmud) is guilty of death."
"Yebhamoth 11b: "Sexual intercourse with a little girl is permitted if she is of three years of age.
Shabouth Hag. 6b: "Jews may swear falsely by use of subterfuge wording.
Choschen Ham 266, 1: "A Jew may keep anything he finds which belongs to the Akum (Gentile). For he who returns lost property (to Gentiles) sins against the law by increasing the power of the transgressors of the law. It is praiseworthy, however, to return lost property if it is done to honor the name of God, namely if by so doing Christians will praise the Jews and look upon them as honorable people."
"Yebamoth 98a - Egyptians have no fathers ... G-d declared their children to be legally fatherless, as it says "Their flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and their children are like the children of horses"
Goyim in the eyes of the Jews: "Their flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and their children are like the children of horses"
How about the anti-semites who toss around the following halachos, all of which are quotes:
"A goy who worships idols is guilty of the death penalty" AND "Christianity is idol worship". Ergo, all Christians who practice their religion are guilty of the death penalty according to Jewish law.
Heretics that do not believe in the Jewish religion (apikorsim) - are guilty of the death penalty.
Then look up the english translation of "shefoch chamaschah" and try to imagine what it can do in the wrong hands!
And what about the fact that Jews pray 3 ties a day for the death of all "heretics (minim)" - and then list who is a "min" according to the Halachah!
Now we all know that all of this is nonsense, and that without proper context, depth of understanding, and clarification, those quotes - each one 100% accurate totally misrepresent Judaism, even though they are correct quotes, and correct laws.
Take the statement in the Gemora that a girl less than 3 years old is permitted...it makes Jews out to be child molesters! But that quote is thoroughly not meant in that way.
Anti-semites have done this to Jews throughout history, and it has caused the deaths of countless innocent Jewish soul hy"d. And we are appalled at the base evil that doing such a thing entails. It’s the lowest of the low. But now the Zionists are taking lessons from the anti-semites and doing the exact same thing to others.
Of course the Quran has anti-semitic things in it! And of course the Moslems believe that those who do not follow their religion are inferior! But the question is: IS THAT what is motivating Arabs to kill Jews? That is a totally different question, and to that, the answer is absolutely no, because those beliefs were not meant to be used that way.
And of course there are Arab-Moslems who will use their religion as an excuse and a reason to kill Jews --- just as there are Jews who do the same thing by twisting the Torah -- like the Zionists who are currently preaching the nonsense that all Arabs are assumed to be Amalek! I am not kidding - there are Zionist rabbis who are really preaching this. And people like Meir Kahane who use the Torah to create his anti-Torah and anti-Jewish philosophy of violence and hisgarus b'umos.
What you need to do is, to open your eyes and see that the only Moslems who are saying these sort of things - the only ones who have become our mortal enemies - are the Arabs, even though they comprise a SMALL MINORITY of the followers of Islam. The Pakistani guys you see in America are also Moslems (many of them anyway). The ones who own the gas stations and the groceries in OUR neighborhoods -- their attitude toward the Jews is NOT the same as the Arabs. But they are both Moslems.
But just as many Jews do not know or understand the difference between Arab and Moslem, there are many, many Arabs who do not understand the difference between Judaism and Zionism. They believe, because this is what Zionists tell the world - that JUDAISM is what they represent, and so, their acts and the acts of the "Jewish State" represent Jews and Judaism.
And THAT is why the Arabs hate Jews. Because they think that Judaism includes Zionism. Their fight is with Zionism -- they just believe - as do many Jews - that that is part and parcel of Judaism. How can you blame them? Check this out - it’s from Webster's Third New International Dictionary:
antisemitism, anti-semitism
\n, usu cap S 1: hostility towards Jews as a religious or racial minority group often accompanied by social, economic, and political discrimination - compare RACISM 2: opposition to Zionism : sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel.
After all the anti-semitic quotes from the Arabs, it is only those Moslems who have a political conflict with Zionists over the in the middle east that want to kill Jews and it is only after that conflict was started by the Zionists that they became our enemies.
It’s not Moslems - its ARABS that have become bloodthirsty killers of Jews, meaning, those who have a political conflict with Zionism. The current lethal Arab animosity toward Jews has nothing to do with Islam - and the Zionist hatred and animosity toward Arabs has nothing to do with Judaism.
Here is a typical piece of Zionist propaganda, a very common Zionist claim, from http://www.yahoodi.com/peace/antisemitism.html :
Historically, the Islamic world's orientation to genocide against the Jews has not been limited to idle phrasemaking. Even before Israel came into existence in 1948, on November 28, 1941, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin, met in Berlin with Adolph Hitler. The subject of their meeting was "the final solution of the Jewish Question". This meeting, which followed Haj Amin's active organization of Muslim SS troops in Bosnia, included the Mufti's promise to aid German victory in the war. Later, after Israel's trial and punishment of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann in 1961, Iranian and Arab newspapers treated the mass murderer as a "martyr", and congratulated him for having "conferred a real blessing on humanity" by liquidating six million Jews.
The following was authored by Imaam Yahiya Emerick, President of the Islamic Foundation of North America:
According to Sharia Law, an armed struggle can be initiated only for the following reasons:
-to defend your community or nation from aggressors.
-to liberate people living under oppressive regimes
-to remove any government that will not allow the free practice of islam within its borders.
Any war for conquest or glory is forbidden in islam.
"There is no compulsion in religion" -Quran 2:256 ; forced conversion is not legitimate.
An individual Muslim religious figure is not authorized by Islamic law (sharia) to tell his followers to go and fight, because the main principal of Islamic government is mutual consultation, known as Shura. Given that their is no worldwide islamic government or forum as once was (the Caliphate), most of the islamic groups engaging in armed struggle have no legitimacy to Islamic law.
Muslims who are living in a non-muslim society are bound by sharia law to live peacefully with their neighbors so long as no injustice is being done to anyone. Crime and vice must be opposed regardless.
Given that Islam recognizes that Jews and Christians received authentic prophets and revelations in the past, the Quran uses a special title to separate them from mere idolaters.
(What status does the Torah give to gentiles?) The term is Ahl al Kitab, or people of the book. It is an allusion to the fact that Jews and Christians received Holy Books from God long before and can be counted on to have certain ideas and concepts that are similar to Islam's.
The People of the Book have such an elevated status that, according to Islamic Law, a Muslim man is allowed to marry a practicing Jewish or Christian woman. (And he is not allowed to force her to convert or curtail her religious freedom.) In addition, meat prepared by Jews and Christians based on their religious dictates (the kosher standard) is permissible for Muslims to eat.
Many of the verses in the Quran concerning Jews were directed to 3 specific Jewish tribes in Medina, Banu Nadir, Banu Qaynuqa, and the Banu Quraiza.
It is not the concept of being Jewish that the Quran calls into question:
"Rest assured that Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Sabians- whoever believes in God and the last day and performs good deeds- will be rewarded by their Lord; they will have nothing to fear of regret."-Quran 2:62
The Quran maintains that all people are equal in God's sight and that it was only in the strength of their faith that they could be judged.
The Quran refers to the Synagogue as a place of God:
"If God didn't check one set of people by means of another there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of God is commemorated in abundant measure." _Quran 16:118
Islam does not teach its followers to discriminate against Jews. When a Jewish funeral procession was passing by him in Medina, Muhammad stood up in respect for the deceased.
The history of Islam from Muhammad's time until the advent of the 20th century is one of tolerance toward Jews and Judaism. Even as Jews were persecuted in Europe during the Middle Ages, they always enjoyed political and religious freedom in Islamic societies. The greatest example of that is found in the period known as the Golden Age in Spain. From the 8th century until the 15th century, Muslims ruled nearly all of Spain and a small sliver of France. During that time, Jewish citizens of the empire had rights nearly equal to their rights in America today. Jewish historians refer to the time their people lived in Muslim ruled Spain as the Golden Age of Judaism.
Jews were also prominent in the courts of Baghdad, Cairo, Istanbul, and elsewhere, being palace physicians, finance officers, and even Viziers, or government ministers. The Islamic Millet, or Sectional system, operated to the benefit of religious minorities by setting up an official board of people from every religion who ruled over their coreligionists according to their own religious laws. (Non-Muslims are exempt from following many aspects of Islamic Law).
In recent times, however, political conditions have cast a pall over Muslim-Jewish relations that never existed before. The tension of the Arab-Israelis conflict has divided Muslims and Jews irreparably, it seems. However, recent efforts have been made to heal some of the mistrust, and tentative steps towards peace may yet restore amicable relations between the followers of the world's two purest monotheistic religions.
---
Second, Arafat is not a practicing Moslem. He is totally secular - like Sharon is to Judaism. And just like the Arabs are tricked into thinking that heretics like Sharon and his ilk represent what "Jews" hold, Jews are tricked into thinking that secular Arabs like Arafat represent what Moslems hold. Arafat is even married to a Christian (even though in Moslem law technically a man may marry a woman of another religion, though a woman may only marry a fellow Moslem, nevertheless it is very very frowned upon and not done by religious Moslems).
Thirdly, Moslems don't use descriptions such as fundamentalist - that’s exclusive to Christianity.
But just as we have many sects who claim to represent Judaism, such as Conservative and Reform, but are really other religions, there are also many religions vying for the label of legitimate Islam.
The kharijites and their sub-sects (such as wahhabi) and the sub sects of the sub sects are on one end of the spectrum, and the shia are on the other. The kharijites are more of what you would call fundamentalists in another religion. And the wild militant crazies are sub sects of sub sects going in that direction.
And even the crazies of crazies are not motivated by a hatred for Judaism, but rather it is a political war - over the land - and they are targeting Jews as their political enemies because of the political dispute over the land; they don’t care at all about Judaism itself.
The following was part of a public statement by a Hamas murderer ys"v:
Session Details
Guest Name Mr. Usama Hamdan: Member of Hamas, & Hamas Representative in Lebanon
Subject: Mid-East Truce: Will Peace Prevail?
Date Thursday,Jul 10 ,2003
Time Mecca
From... 18:30...To... 20:30
GMT
From... 15:30...To...17:30
Name Daniel - United States
Profession
Question: Greetings Mr. Hamdan. I would like to ask you whether you
and your organizations, and others like yours, both in Palestine and in
the Palestinian diaspora are aware of the fact that there are many religious
Jews who oppose Zionism? ... How ironic that the world forgets that before Zionism the Jewish People never had as good
friends [relatively] as the Arab People!
Answer: First of all, thank you for your greetings and I send you the same. We are certainly aware and very much concerned with you have said. And I would like to clarify that our resistance against the Zionists is just for the fact that they are occupiers. And of course we don't fight them for their religion, on the contrary, with respect to us as Muslims, we are commanded to deal with Christians and Jews with great respect. And that's why the Arab and Muslim region is the only place where Christians and Jews were not killed or persecuted just for their religion.
Now of course, it is needless to say that this does not justify in the slightest nor reduce the intensity of the guilt of people like him and his gang of terrorists who murder innocent people. May G-d avenge them all swiftly and completely! But that is exactly the point - a fight was picked by the Zionists against millions of Arabs, which include animals like the Hamas murderers, and people like the Brisker Rav ZTL and Rav Michoel Ber Weissmandel ZTL warned them that this would happen if they tried to make a Jewish State in Eretz Yisroel. All those deaths are not in the slightest justified - but the Gedolim told us they could have been prevented. If you walk into Harlem at night alone, you may get hurt. Walking alone at night does not justify the mugger, but if you were smart, you could have prevented it. And if you go and scream out racial epithets, antagonizing the Harlem residents, and then get yourself killed, well, even though calling someone names does not in the slightest make him less of a murderer, it makes you an idiot, and suicidal for doing it.
And if you shlep your brothers and sisters and family with you, then you are a criminal. And that does not negate in the slightest the guilt of the murderer; it merely means that you're a murderer as well.
---
If we as Jews know anything about religious persecution, it is that random quotes and laws "on the books" mean nothing in terms of actual beliefs. Zionists have done to the Moslems the exact same thing that the KKK and anti-semites have done to the Jews: takes some halachos and quotes form Torah and, without explaining them in depth, displayed them as "proof" of the Jews' danger to the world.
The following is flaunted on the KKK websites:
Sanhedrin 59a: "A Goy (Gentile) who pries into the law (Talmud) is guilty of death."
"Yebhamoth 11b: "Sexual intercourse with a little girl is permitted if she is of three years of age.
Shabouth Hag. 6b: "Jews may swear falsely by use of subterfuge wording.
Choschen Ham 266, 1: "A Jew may keep anything he finds which belongs to the Akum (Gentile). For he who returns lost property (to Gentiles) sins against the law by increasing the power of the transgressors of the law. It is praiseworthy, however, to return lost property if it is done to honor the name of God, namely if by so doing Christians will praise the Jews and look upon them as honorable people."
"Yebamoth 98a - Egyptians have no fathers ... G-d declared their children to be legally fatherless, as it says "Their flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and their children are like the children of horses"
Goyim in the eyes of the Jews: "Their flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and their children are like the children of horses"
How about the anti-semites who toss around the following halachos, all of which are quotes:
"A goy who worships idols is guilty of the death penalty" AND "Christianity is idol worship". Ergo, all Christians who practice their religion are guilty of the death penalty according to Jewish law.
Heretics that do not believe in the Jewish religion (apikorsim) - are guilty of the death penalty.
Then look up the english translation of "shefoch chamaschah" and try to imagine what it can do in the wrong hands!
And what about the fact that Jews pray 3 ties a day for the death of all "heretics (minim)" - and then list who is a "min" according to the Halachah!
Now we all know that all of this is nonsense, and that without proper context, depth of understanding, and clarification, those quotes - each one 100% accurate totally misrepresent Judaism, even though they are correct quotes, and correct laws.
Take the statement in the Gemora that a girl less than 3 years old is permitted...it makes Jews out to be child molesters! But that quote is thoroughly not meant in that way.
Anti-semites have done this to Jews throughout history, and it has caused the deaths of countless innocent Jewish soul hy"d. And we are appalled at the base evil that doing such a thing entails. It’s the lowest of the low. But now the Zionists are taking lessons from the anti-semites and doing the exact same thing to others.
Of course the Quran has anti-semitic things in it! And of course the Moslems believe that those who do not follow their religion are inferior! But the question is: IS THAT what is motivating Arabs to kill Jews? That is a totally different question, and to that, the answer is absolutely no, because those beliefs were not meant to be used that way.
And of course there are Arab-Moslems who will use their religion as an excuse and a reason to kill Jews --- just as there are Jews who do the same thing by twisting the Torah -- like the Zionists who are currently preaching the nonsense that all Arabs are assumed to be Amalek! I am not kidding - there are Zionist rabbis who are really preaching this. And people like Meir Kahane who use the Torah to create his anti-Torah and anti-Jewish philosophy of violence and hisgarus b'umos.
What you need to do is, to open your eyes and see that the only Moslems who are saying these sort of things - the only ones who have become our mortal enemies - are the Arabs, even though they comprise a SMALL MINORITY of the followers of Islam. The Pakistani guys you see in America are also Moslems (many of them anyway). The ones who own the gas stations and the groceries in OUR neighborhoods -- their attitude toward the Jews is NOT the same as the Arabs. But they are both Moslems.
But just as many Jews do not know or understand the difference between Arab and Moslem, there are many, many Arabs who do not understand the difference between Judaism and Zionism. They believe, because this is what Zionists tell the world - that JUDAISM is what they represent, and so, their acts and the acts of the "Jewish State" represent Jews and Judaism.
And THAT is why the Arabs hate Jews. Because they think that Judaism includes Zionism. Their fight is with Zionism -- they just believe - as do many Jews - that that is part and parcel of Judaism. How can you blame them? Check this out - it’s from Webster's Third New International Dictionary:
antisemitism, anti-semitism
\n, usu cap S 1: hostility towards Jews as a religious or racial minority group often accompanied by social, economic, and political discrimination - compare RACISM 2: opposition to Zionism : sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel.
After all the anti-semitic quotes from the Arabs, it is only those Moslems who have a political conflict with Zionists over the in the middle east that want to kill Jews and it is only after that conflict was started by the Zionists that they became our enemies.
It’s not Moslems - its ARABS that have become bloodthirsty killers of Jews, meaning, those who have a political conflict with Zionism. The current lethal Arab animosity toward Jews has nothing to do with Islam - and the Zionist hatred and animosity toward Arabs has nothing to do with Judaism.
Here is a typical piece of Zionist propaganda, a very common Zionist claim, from http://www.yahoodi.com/peace/antisemitism.html :
Historically, the Islamic world's orientation to genocide against the Jews has not been limited to idle phrasemaking. Even before Israel came into existence in 1948, on November 28, 1941, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin, met in Berlin with Adolph Hitler. The subject of their meeting was "the final solution of the Jewish Question". This meeting, which followed Haj Amin's active organization of Muslim SS troops in Bosnia, included the Mufti's promise to aid German victory in the war. Later, after Israel's trial and punishment of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann in 1961, Iranian and Arab newspapers treated the mass murderer as a "martyr", and congratulated him for having "conferred a real blessing on humanity" by liquidating six million Jews.
The following was authored by Imaam Yahiya Emerick, President of the Islamic Foundation of North America:
According to Sharia Law, an armed struggle can be initiated only for the following reasons:
-to defend your community or nation from aggressors.
-to liberate people living under oppressive regimes
-to remove any government that will not allow the free practice of islam within its borders.
Any war for conquest or glory is forbidden in islam.
"There is no compulsion in religion" -Quran 2:256 ; forced conversion is not legitimate.
An individual Muslim religious figure is not authorized by Islamic law (sharia) to tell his followers to go and fight, because the main principal of Islamic government is mutual consultation, known as Shura. Given that their is no worldwide islamic government or forum as once was (the Caliphate), most of the islamic groups engaging in armed struggle have no legitimacy to Islamic law.
Muslims who are living in a non-muslim society are bound by sharia law to live peacefully with their neighbors so long as no injustice is being done to anyone. Crime and vice must be opposed regardless.
Given that Islam recognizes that Jews and Christians received authentic prophets and revelations in the past, the Quran uses a special title to separate them from mere idolaters.
(What status does the Torah give to gentiles?) The term is Ahl al Kitab, or people of the book. It is an allusion to the fact that Jews and Christians received Holy Books from God long before and can be counted on to have certain ideas and concepts that are similar to Islam's.
The People of the Book have such an elevated status that, according to Islamic Law, a Muslim man is allowed to marry a practicing Jewish or Christian woman. (And he is not allowed to force her to convert or curtail her religious freedom.) In addition, meat prepared by Jews and Christians based on their religious dictates (the kosher standard) is permissible for Muslims to eat.
Many of the verses in the Quran concerning Jews were directed to 3 specific Jewish tribes in Medina, Banu Nadir, Banu Qaynuqa, and the Banu Quraiza.
It is not the concept of being Jewish that the Quran calls into question:
"Rest assured that Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Sabians- whoever believes in God and the last day and performs good deeds- will be rewarded by their Lord; they will have nothing to fear of regret."-Quran 2:62
The Quran maintains that all people are equal in God's sight and that it was only in the strength of their faith that they could be judged.
The Quran refers to the Synagogue as a place of God:
"If God didn't check one set of people by means of another there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of God is commemorated in abundant measure." _Quran 16:118
Islam does not teach its followers to discriminate against Jews. When a Jewish funeral procession was passing by him in Medina, Muhammad stood up in respect for the deceased.
The history of Islam from Muhammad's time until the advent of the 20th century is one of tolerance toward Jews and Judaism. Even as Jews were persecuted in Europe during the Middle Ages, they always enjoyed political and religious freedom in Islamic societies. The greatest example of that is found in the period known as the Golden Age in Spain. From the 8th century until the 15th century, Muslims ruled nearly all of Spain and a small sliver of France. During that time, Jewish citizens of the empire had rights nearly equal to their rights in America today. Jewish historians refer to the time their people lived in Muslim ruled Spain as the Golden Age of Judaism.
Jews were also prominent in the courts of Baghdad, Cairo, Istanbul, and elsewhere, being palace physicians, finance officers, and even Viziers, or government ministers. The Islamic Millet, or Sectional system, operated to the benefit of religious minorities by setting up an official board of people from every religion who ruled over their coreligionists according to their own religious laws. (Non-Muslims are exempt from following many aspects of Islamic Law).
In recent times, however, political conditions have cast a pall over Muslim-Jewish relations that never existed before. The tension of the Arab-Israelis conflict has divided Muslims and Jews irreparably, it seems. However, recent efforts have been made to heal some of the mistrust, and tentative steps towards peace may yet restore amicable relations between the followers of the world's two purest monotheistic religions.
---
Labels: Arabs, Zionism related "groups"
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