The Message to the Jews from Today’s Muslim Preachers
Every Friday there pour forth from European mosques messages to the Jews, more-or-less along the lines of this one, dated August 25, 2014, from a town in Spain:
[Allah] described them as killers, so their killing of our brothers in Gaza and in Palestine should come as no surprise. They killed the prophets, the best among mankind…. Allah said [to the Jews]: “Taste the punishment of the burning fire”…. Oh Allah, destroy the plundering Jews. Oh Allah, the Most Merciful, count them one by one, and do not spare a single one of them.” (http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4448.htm)
A bushel-basket full of such inflammatory addresses, intended to terrify all Jews everywhere and uttered from towns and cities in the heart of Europe as well as from everywhere else on earth, is always available from the internet site of Middle East Media Research (memri@memri.org.)
More and more, this odious message is being taken up by non-Muslims for whom solidarity in anti-Zionism trumps all other considerations. According to one site dedicated to documentation of these matters,
Since the beginning of the latest clash between Israel and Hamas on July 8, European Muslim groups (and some European leftists) have engaged in violent protests aimed not only in supporting Palestine .. [but] for the destruction of the Jews…. The now-familiar refrain(s): “Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the Gas” … “Itbah ya Yahud” (“slaughter the Jews”) and “Khaybar Khaybar ya-Yahud” … [are] being shouted out with growing frequency these days on the streets of Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin. [See, Abigail R. Esman, “Anti-Israel demonstrations in Europe —- In Europe, They Call For Death To Jews, www.investigativeproject.com, August 6, 2014.]
As this mentality gains legitimacy among leftists, mob-incitement of this sort is taking place against Jews every day and is captured by the photographers of the global news-broadcasters. Indeed, these bloody-minded goons parade with virtual impunity and in company with the distinguished atheist-intellectuals who dominate European high culture.
The instinct of all decent people is to change the channel. But we have to keep in mind at least two things: (i) that this is regulation-issue teaching regarding the extant duty of Muslims to liquidate the Jews, and (ii) that this duty to liquidate applies to Sunday’s people (us) as well as to Saturday’s people (the Jews.) As to Sunday’s people, I will get to that in subsequent essays. But let’s begin with Saturday’s People.
The Qur’an and Judaism.
Where does this blood-curdling language come from? News reporters and politicians in part of the world tell us that it is a manifestation of “Islamism,” a “certain fringe of current Islam;” they document this point by reference to a hair-raising tirade from somebody’s Mosque in London last week. But the truth is that this message is not the invention of fashionable “Islamists.” It is hardy-perennial Islam. It all comes from the Desk of Prophet Muhammad.
Islamic teaching is that the entire Qur’an proceeded directly and intact from the Angel Gabriel to Prophet Muhammad. However, non-Muslims generally feel free to speak of origins or sources. And among these, the academic scholars agree that the principal source of the theological and the pseudo-historical speculations which appear in the Qur’an is the Hebrew scriptures, together with Talmudic commentary as well as Jewish traditional and apocryphal stories, all of which in various oral forms (because he was illiterate) Muhammad absorbed by ear in the years of his spiritual quests.
But however awesome Jewish scripture may have seemed to him, Muhammad was not intimidated by it. Muhammad affirmed that his message now replaced the message regarding the purposes of God which is corruptly conveyed in the holy books of the Jews and in the holy book of the Christians (the New Testament.) Indeed, the Qur’an so clearly and so absolutely answers all the questions which both Judaism and Christianity struggle to address that only willful blindness could prevent all Jews and Christians from acknowledging this.
Rejected by the Jews, Muhammad Turns to Arab Religion and the Ka’ba.
Muhammad’s expectation that the Jewish people would turn to his message was reflected in his initial decision to require his followers to pray towards Jerusalem, which everyone knew had been the site of the Temple of the Jews. But instead of acknowledging Muhammad as their ultimate Prophet the Jews of Arabia mocked him! (Sura 5: 41-44, 64-67, 78-81.) Muhammad concluded that it was a delusion to think that anybody (including the Christians) owed anything to the Jews, expect perhaps a slavish spirit following from the notion that they, the Jews, had once been the People of God. Now it could be seen that the essence of Islam was rejection of the Jews. This discovery was soon embodied in Muhammad’s declaration that followers of Islam were to reverse the direction of the qibla (the universal object of the prayer of the faithful) away from Jerusalem and towards Mecca (Sura: 2: 141-153.)
In an essay published on this site (“The Muslim Came to Jerusalem,” thebayviewreview.com, December 27, 2012) I described briefly how it came about that, even though Muhammad turned his back upon the Jews and their history, Muslims everywhere now claim that al-Quds, the site of the Temple Mount is now and always has been an exclusively Muslim site.
The mindset out of which this Muslim attitude comes will not go away under persuasion. The conflict between Israel and her enemies is not about an unsatisfied need for political independence, but about the Islamic claim to pre-emptive possession of everything that is sacred to Jews and Christians everywhere.
What Does Islam Have To Say About the Jews and Their History?
Muhammad did not merely turn away from Jewish Scripture (which, we recall, he had never read, being illiterate) but he made it clear that merely consulting Jewish Scripture was an unforgivable crime against the truth. The Qur’an declares that the whole of the Jewish scripture from Genesis 15 forward is full of lies. The Qur’an offers a counter-history, wherein God’s promises devolve upon Ishmael, not upon Isaac. A. Yusuf Ali, in his much-esteemed commentary on the Qur’an, offers the facts:
Abraham and Isma‘il together built the House of God in Mecca (long before the Temple of Jerusalem was built.) They purified it and laid the foundations of the universal religion, which is summed up in the word Islam, or complete submission to the Will of God. Abraham and Isma‘il were thus true Muslims. . . . Historically the Temple at Mecca must have been [emphasis added] a far more ancient place of worship than the Temple at Jerusalem. (See explanatory note # 121 (to Sura 2:122-141) The Holy Qur’an, Translation and commentary by A. Yusuf Ali, 1983.]
Unable to win by argument Arabia’s Jews, and defeated at first in his efforts to win them by force of arms — and thus unable to take Mecca for Islam — Muhammad entered into the al-Hudaybiyah agreement, a ten-year peace pact with the local Jews, known as Quraish. Before the end of two years, however, having built up h is military strength, he broke the truce unilaterally and without notice captured the Quraish stronghold. At least six hundred Jewish men were beheaded on one day in Medina, their wives and children made slaves, and their property seized. (Is it necessary to point out that this pattern has resumed in the Arab Middle East in the last few weeks – with the Christians and other non-Muslims of the region in the place of the Arabian Jews of the seventh century?) This deed is commemorated by Muhammad in Sura 33 of the Qur’an.
What the Jews Deserve.
The Qur’an teaches consistently that the Jews are irretrievable liars, deceivers, incapable of belief. In Sura 5: 41-43 we read: “The Jews [are] men who will listen to any lie. . . . [I]t is not God’s will to purify their hearts. For them there is disgrace in this world, and in the hereafter a heavy punishment. . . . For they are not (really) people of Faith.” This indictment stands today at the heart of the Muslim-Jewish relationship. Because the Jews will always be the way that Muhammad described them, Allah has pronounced an inevitable judgment upon them all:
Judgment day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill the Jews, and then the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and Allah will make the stones and trees speak, saying, “Oh Muslim, the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’, except the Guarqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews.
This inspired judgment on what the Jews deserve (there are no loopholes and no exceptions) is repeated faithfully by all teachers of Islam today. Muslim preachers everywhere tell the faithful that hatred of all Jews is not merely something that exists (rightly) among human beings but something that exists no less in nature! Stop and think about it, one distinguished Islamic scholar suggests:
There are none who love the Jews on the face of the earth: not man, not rock, and not tree, everything hates them. They destroy everything, they destroy the trees and destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth, and the day of our victory, Allah willing, will come.” [Source: Steven Stalinsky, “Kingdom Comes to North America,” National Review Online, May 13, 2004.]
The Ultimate Fate of Israel and the Jews.
This loathing of the Jews, this adamantine refusal to stand in the presence of Jews and share daily life with them, is based upon the absolute and categorical command to hate and never to forgive the incorrigible sons of pigs and monkeys, the Jews — the command which was left behind to all Muslims by the Prophet. Hear Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris the official theologian of the Palestine Authority, preaching in Jerusalem:
With the establishment of the State of Israel, the entire Muslim nation was lost because Israel is a cancer that spread in the body of the Islamic nation; because the Jews are a virus similar to AIDS, from which the entire world is suffering. Read the history! . . . You’ll find that Jews [are] behind every conflict on Earth. . . . The suffering of nations? The Jews are behind it! . . . Don’t ask Germany what it did to the Jews, since the Jews are the ones who provoked the Nazis so the world would go to war against it. . . . The Jews provoked – through the Zionist movement – the nations of the world to fight Germany economically, and to boycott. . . . They incited Russia, Britain, France and Italy [and] the anger of the Germans towards the Jews increased significantly . . . .[As to the holocaust which allegedly followed:] it is likely some of them were killed, and it is likely some of them were burned, but they’re exaggerating the description [of the Holocaust] in order to gain world media, and world sympathy . . . . We [Muslims] have ruled the world [in the past] and a day will come, by Allah, and we shall rule the world [again.] The day will come and we shall rule America, Britain, we shall rule the entire world; except the Jews … Listen to your Beloved [Muhammad], who tells you about the most dire end awaiting the Jews. [From a Friday sermon, May 13, 2005, carried by PA TV; the video is to be seen and heard at http://www.pmw.org.il/asx/PMW_MudyrisMay13.asx.%5D
A Sober Conclusion.
Israel is at risk of another Holocaust today; and it is not because diplomatic processes have failed and that there is deadlock over questions of boundaries and denial of sovereignty to “Palestinians.” It has been clear for decades that none of the Palestinian parties, big or small, has any commitment to a day when a Palestinian state will come into existence and live in peace side-by-side Israel. The noises they make to the contrary are for the purpose of keeping the money flowing from the United States, from the EU, from NGOs from the UN, and from the useful idiots who fund their propaganda. The logic by which the Arab Palestinians and their politicians live is the demonic logic that came from the mind of Prophet Muhammad nearly fourteen hundred years.
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