Saturday, January 31, 2009

Why I always reject the idea of Anti-Semitism ( Jew-hating)

In response to Yola Malinda's article in The Red Carpet Broadcast
http://trcb.com/news-and-society/international/root-of-the-war-i-3888.htm

Since she was influenced by Abu Muhammad Waskito from UGM
http://wandi.web.ugm.ac.id/?p=124
then transitively, this article also responded to Wandi's article

Bismillahirrahmanirraahim

Firstly, she mentioned "After Sulaiman’s era, Bani Israil Kingdom then destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar from Byzantium Kingdom (Surah Al Israa’: 4-5)". Well, Nebuchadnezzar was a Babylonian king, not Byzantium. They were even from different age.

Secondly, after the first Jews temple was destroyed, they became slaved of Babylonians untill Cyrus, king of Persian and Mede freed them. Some of Quran commentator believe Zulkarnayn was Cyrus, not Alexander of Macedonia as thought by many people. The Jews came back to their home and started built the second temple.

Thirdly, The second temple was destroyed 30-40 years after the event of crucification by Romans. For the second time, the jews were spread again.

Here, I had prove her point number 4 was incorrect. Even in the Quran itself, Al-Israa 5-7 said the temple was destroyed two times.

Fourthly, in 200 CE until 500 CE, the roman allowed the Jews to came back to Jerusalem until it separated into West Roman and East Roman (Byzantium). In 628, Emperor Heraclius had dream his kingdom would fall to a group of circumcized people and based on the dream he executed all Jews who had not converted to Christianity. Again, the Jews were kicked out from Jerusalem

Fifthly, when Umar ibn Khattab conquered Jerusalem, he allowed 70 Jews family to come back to Jerusalem, after he became mediator between Jews and Christianity.

Sixthly, Umar knew exactly where was the Jews temple and he denied Ka'ab Al-Akhbar idea of building the mosque on the exact place where the Jews prayed. Dome of the Rock (Masjid Kubah) was added by Ummayad Caliph later (72 years after Hijrah)

Seventhly, when the first crusade happened, the crusader slain every non-christian they found in Jerusalem, which were Muslims and Jews

Eighthly, some of Shalahuddin Al-Ayyubi's personal doctors were Jews. This was the guy who reclaim Jerusalem for Muslim and yet, he had Jews in his service such as Maimonides, Abu al-Bayyan al-Mudawwar, Abu Al-Ma'ali. And after recapture Jerusalem, he offered resettle for the Jews in Jerusalem (since most of Christian left the city).

Here, I had proved that her point number 6 was incorrect and Prophet Muhammad never pulled Jews from Arab and neither the caliphs after him except one mad caliph from fatimiyyah dynasty. There were some false history spread by anti-Jews ulama about how the prophet trick a Jew, or how Umar forbidden Jews in Jerusalem, or how a clan of Jews was slain but it had all been disproved by hadith testimony of Muhammad character, Quranic principles regarding war and sin, Islamic rules of engagement, and testimony from non-muslim (Christian and Jews) which contradict all of them. Ibn Hanbal mentioned never believed in Maghazi (story of war) while Malik ibn Anas denounce historian ibn Ishaq.

Ninthly, since she mentioned Spain, she have to remember the fact not only Jews were slain by Spain in 1492 but also thousands of Muslims. They were slain because they refused to convert to Christianity. Those radical christian in the middle ages always made false accusation to other group such as 'homosexual', 'godless', infidel', 'blasphemy', 'human sacrifice', 'devil worshiper'.

Some of Jews escape to north and west Europe ( and they were known as Ashkenazy), and some of them seeked asylum to Ottoman Dynasty (and they were known as Sephardim) and spread from North Africa, nowadays Turki, to Persian. And of course there were Jews that had been in Arab-Middle East long before Alhambra massacree and they were known as Mizrahi.

Those Mizrahi and Sephardim live peacefully, coexistence with their muslim neighbour, under the rule of Ottoman dynasty, and the were usually called "Arabic Jews" (Musta'arabim) until the rise of zionism from Ashkenazy which raised suspicious to Jews.

In 1948, after the declaration of Israel state, there are anti-Jews riot which attack those Mizrahi and Sephardic families. Some of those who couldn't bear torture, join their Ashkenazy brother in Israel. Indeed, Irgun, the radical group of zionism had violate the right of Palestinian Arabs but it would not justified the behavior of our muslim brothers in Arab, North Africa, and Middle East which commited riot against those Mizrahi and Sephardic in their neighbourhood.

Here again, I had proved her point number 6 was totally wrong. The Jews in Arab did not united with the Jews in Europe before the rise of Zionism. And most of them reunited in Israel after the were forced to leave their home in 1948 by anti-Jews riot.

Remember, not all Jews are supporter of Israel. There are groups of Jews who against the state of Israel such as Naturei Karta. There are also some of citizen of Israel who disagree a lot with their government, support recognition of independent Palestinian State such as Bradley Burston and Gideon Levy from leftist daily paper, haaretz.

A quote from Quran (translated by Pickthall), Al-Maidah verse 8:
"O ye who believe! Be steadfast witnesses for Allah in equity, and let not hatred of any people seduce you that ye deal not justly. Deal justly, that is nearer to your duty. Observe your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is Informed of what ye do."



Some interesting articles to read
Public Broadcasting Service ( a public TV stations ) post the story of Umar of his decision about Jews in Jerusalem. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/heritage/episode3/documents/documents_15.html


There also stories in Robert G. Hoyland book titled Seeing Islam As Other Saw It (part of Study of Early Islam and Late Antiquity series).

WN Arafat gave twelve reason to not believe the story of Qurayza massacre (googling "Arafat qurayza"). The story contradicted Islamic values guided by Quran. It is either the story itself was false or the prophet did contradict himself.


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