Perhaps there will be a revolution in Islam as has finally taken place in Christianity. Now, if others spoke and preached what Islam spreads, there would be a firestorm from the pundits, politicians and professors.
It’s about the ethic…
Judaism coalesced when the Israelites were freed from slavery and brought into the desert. At Mount Sinai God said, “You shall not oppress the stranger; you know how a stranger feels, for you yourselves were once strangers in Egypt” (Exodus 23:9). The story of the Exodus of the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt is well known. God, through the spirit of Moses, had His people released from Pharaoh, and they fled toward the desert and the Sea of Reeds (the Red Sea). But Pharaoh changed his mind and set out after them to capture them. God parted the sea, letting the Israelites pass on dry land and, then, when the Egyptians were in the middle of the sea, God closed the waters and destroyed Pharaoh’s army. The Israelites cheered and sang in honor of God. Miriam, Moses’ sister, took up her tambourine, and all the women joined in the revelry.
There is a commentary in one of the many books about the Bible that imagines God’s response to the happiness of the Israelites after the drowning of the Egyptians. God hears the angels singing and celebrating His great victory. But instead of rejoicing with them over the rescue of His people from enslavement, God weeps and rebukes them.
“Why are you singing?” He asks. “Why are you rejoicing? The Egyptians are My children, too, and they are dead, drowned in the sea. There is no cause for you to sing. Their deaths are not to be celebrated.”
And with that statement came the revolutionary teachings that all people are born with equal intrinsic and that all life is sacred. Rather than calling for revenge and promoting hate the first value taught was to care for the other, the stranger, for you were a stranger in a strange land. Think about that. At a time when tribes were murdering each other, when revenge was the underpinnings of society, when man’s lust for revenge was allowed to be satiated in an honour/shame culture, a group of people, having been enslaved for 400 years, and treated as objects, not subjects, is finally free and what do they do? This was a revolutionary idea and it remains that way, today. Welcome the stranger. Do not fear others simply because they are “others” from a different tribe.
Christianity carried the revolutionary idea forward through massive proselytizing which began with Paul. Sadly, Paul, after his revelation on the road to Damascus, attacked the Jewish people for refusing to accept Jesus.
Early Christian tradition clearly and increasingly places the blame for the death of Jesus on the Jews. In Matthew, the Roman governor washes his hands of Jesus’ blood while the Jews proclaim, “His blood be on us and on our children.”(Matt 27:25. John’s Gospel portrays the Jews as wanting to kill Jesus throughout his ministry (John5:18, John 7:1, John 8:37). Similar sentiments are found elsewhere, including writings by Paul, who himself a Jew, had once persecuted Christians. (1Thess 2:14-15, Phil 3:5-6) The Good Friday Passion Plays often led to bloody pogroms. The Jews have suffered from Christian antisemitism ever since. There have been attempts by Popes to put an end to the hatred and there have been others in various Christian denominations who have pointed out the irrational hate. Yet, it remains. And today has found a new home in the BDS movement.
But when Christianity coalesced in the fourth century after the Nicaean conference, the Hebrew scripture was kept intact and the Gospels were added. Christianity kept the moral teachings and carried forward with the Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In Matthew 5:17, Jesus assured His audience on the mount that He had not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; rather, He had come to fulfill them. Then, in verse 18, Jesus emphasizes the eternal nature of God’s Word:
“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (KJV).
Islam began in Mecca with some very beautiful statements. Yet, one of the first actions taken by Mohammed the prophet of God was to exile two Jewish tribes from Medina and hideously murder the third. And so began the hate for Jews. The Christians do not fare much better because Islam also included in her earliest teaching that not all people are born with equal value-this is the moral dictate of dhimmitude. Non-Muslims will never be equal to Muslims.
In 628, after the siege of Khaybar, lasting a month and a half, the inhabitants surrendered under terms of a treaty known as the dhimmi. Upon the death of Mohammed in 630 C.E., his successor, Omar, issued a charter consisting of 12 laws under which a non-Muslim or dhimmi was allowed to live among believers or Muslims. The charter codified the conditions of life for Jews under Islam and specified that any Jew who broke these codes forfeited his life.
Included in this charter was a prohibition forbidding Jews to touch the Koran. It also compelled Jews to wear distinctive clothes, usually dark blue or black, and further compelled them to wear a yellow piece of cloth as a badge (This yellow cloth became the inspiration for the yellow star which the Nazi government of Germany forced upon Jews). Other rules prohibited the wearing shoes or sandals. Jews were also prohibited from performing their religious practices in public. Jews were not allowed to own a horse or to drink wine in public. The anti-Jewish laws went so far as to prohibit Jews from letting their grief be heard by Muslims during or after a Jewish burial.
Rules would be formulated to deny the dhimmi due process of the law. Both Jews and Christians had to pay a special head tax and a special property tax as protection money to the Muslim government. This tax came from an edict in the Koran:
“Fight against those Jews and Christians who believe not in Allah …. until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.” (Surah 9:29)
Living under the laws of dhimmitude meant being barely tolerated in your dispossessed land. And on a whim a pogrom would ensue. Communities could find themselves evicted, women raped, exorbitant ransoms placed on them, children abducted and forced to convert, and in other cases mass murders of the dhimmi population was condoned.
And dhimmitude makes these statements possible.
I am providing numerous examples of Islam from Muslims. Look for the similarities amongst Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Hamas’s TV channel has warned Israelis that “[we] love death more than you love life.” Or as Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has put it:
“The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”
Or as a 16-year-old Taliban warrior declared:
“War is our best hobby. The sound of guns firing is like music for us…. The Americans love Pepsi Cola, we love death.”
PA TV Preacher:
“Allah, punish Your enemies, the enemies of religion, count their numbers and kill them to the last one, and bring them a black day. Allah, punish the wicked Jews, and those among the atheists who help them. Allah, we ask that You bestow upon us respect and honor by enabling us to repel them, and we ask You to save us from their evil.”[Official PA TV, April 22, 2016]
And this. A Hebrew Music Video Glorifying the Killing of Israeli Jews Circulates on Palestinian Social Media.
This link takes you to an animated music video with Hebrew lyrics that was posted on July 28 2017 on a Palestinian YouTube channel. The video was part of a campaign that had been making the rounds on Palestinian social media under the hashtag #Rage_For_Al-Aqsa following the Al-Aqsa Mosque unrest. It includes footage from stabbing and car-ramming attacks, and contains lyrics such as:
“I will attack you, tear you apart, and stab you” and “I will cleanse my country of every Jew.”
Not exactly love thy neighbour.
President Barack Obama once famously said, “[P]eople have been drawn to Islam’s message of peace. And the very word itself, Islam, comes from salam — peace,” adding that “the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims embrace Islam as a source of peace.”
Islam itself says the ultimate meaning of Islamic peace is all of us living in Dar-al-Islam—the house of submission. This is not a “radical” interpretation. Modern-day Islamic scholar, Ibrahim Sulaiman, says submission and peace can be very different concepts, even if a form of peace is often brought about through forcing others into submission.
“Jihad is not inhumane, despite its necessary violence and bloodshed, its ultimate desire is peace which is protected and enhanced by the rule of law.”
Thomas Paine said belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
In a series of lectures on the “Minor Signs of Qayamaah – The Last Day”, Toronto Imam Said Rageah said that Muslims will eventually defeat the Christians and take over Rome, the Capital of Italy where the Vatican City is located. Allah will give the Muslims victory over the Christians.
This is brought to you on Peace TV.
Memphis Imam Yasir Qadhi’s Vicious Jew Hatred. He teaches that Hitler did not intend to murder the Jews.
Today Imams around the world preach hadiths [the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad], like these that order the need for jihad against infidels:
The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him…. (Sahih Muslim Book 041, Number 6985)
There are verses in the Quran that state:
And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers. (Quran 2:191-193)
Jew hatred spewed forth from the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California on July 21. The Egyptian-born American preacher Ammar Shahin delivered a Friday sermon praying to Allah to “liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews” and to “annihilate them down to the very last one,” not sparing any of them. “Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this,” This following the terrorist attack by Israeli Muslims on the Temple Mount against Israeli Border Police. You can read the rest of the sermon here.
Now tell me again how Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the three Abrahamic religions.
Perhaps there will be a revolution in Islam as has finally taken place in Christianity. Now, if others spoke and preached what Islam spreads, there would be a firestorm from the pundits, politicians and professors.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it.”
