Real Muslims
Rue D'Awakening
Posts: 143
since it is a favorite past-time of some MTers to cite http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com and the fringe naturei karta sect as examples of "real judaism" or "real jews" -as opposed to the rest of us jews who have the nerve to value self-preservation and self-determination, i will illustrate how asinine and offensive this shrill identity politics is by applying it to muslims.
(ahem)
Irshad Manji (who is homosexual) and likeminded Muslims are real Muslims. The rest are perverting Islam.
February 09, 2007
IN the past year, a stream of thinkers across the West - from Australian writer Antony Loewenstein to US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt - has punctured the usual parameters of debate about Israel. I, for one, welcome any effort to prevent ideas from calcifying into ideologies. As a Muslim refusenik, that's what I do by defying the conventional prejudices of my fellow Muslims. Why would I resent refuseniks of a different kind?
It's precisely because I embrace intellectual pluralism that I respectfully challenge Jimmy Carter's recent critique of Israel as an apartheid state. To be sure, I've long admired the former US president. In my book The Trouble with Islam Today I cite him as an example of how religion can be invoked to tap the best of humanity. In no small measure, it was Carter's appreciation of spiritual values that brought together Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, compelling these former foes to clasp hands over a peace deal.
Which is why Carter's new book disappoints so many of us who champion co-existence. Entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the book argues that Israel's conduct towards Palestinians mimics South Africa's long-time demonisation of blacks. Of course, certain Israeli politicians have spewed venom at Palestinians, as have some Arab leaders towards Jews, but Israel is far more complex - and diverse - than slogans about the occupation would suggest. In a state practising apartheid, would Arab Muslim legislators wield veto power over anything? At only 20per cent of the population, would Arabs even be eligible for election if they squirmed under the thumb of apartheid? Would an apartheid state extend voting rights to women and thepoor in local elections, which Israel didfor the first time in the history of Palestinian Arabs?
Would the vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens turn out to vote in national elections, as they've usually done? Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? In recent Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. However, Israel's Supreme Court, exercising its independence, overturned both disqualifications. Under any system of apartheid, would the judiciary be free of political interference?
Would an apartheid state award its top literary prize to an Arab? Israel honoured Emile Habibi in 1986, before the intifada might have made such a choice politically shrewd. Would an apartheid state encourage Hebrew-speaking schoolchildren to learn Arabic? Would road signs throughout the land appear in both languages? Even my country, the proudly bilingual Canada, doesn't meet that standard.
Would an apartheid state be home to universities where Arabs and Jews mingle at will, or apartment blocks where they live side by side? Would an apartheid state bestow benefits and legal protections on Palestinians who live outside of Israel but work inside its borders? Would human rights organisations operate openly in an apartheid state? They do in Israel.
For that matter, military officials go public with their criticisms of government policies. In October 2003, the Israel Defence Forces' chief of staff told the press that road closures in the West Bank and Gaza were feeding Palestinian anger. Two weeks later, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service blasted the occupation and called on Ariel Sharon to withdraw troops unilaterally, which later happened in Gaza. Would an apartheid state stomach so much dissent from those mandated to protect the state?
Above all, would media debate the most basic building blocks of the nation? Would a Hebrew newspaper in an apartheid state run an article by an Arab Israeli about why the Zionist adventure has been a total failure? Would it run that article on Israel's independence day? Would an apartheid state ensure conditions for the freest Arabic press in the Middle East, a press so free that it can demonstrably abuse its liberties and keep on rolling? To this day, the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds hasn't retracted an anti-Israel letter supposedly penned by Nelson Mandela but proven to have been written by an Arab living in The Netherlands.
Even the eminence grise of Palestinian nationalism, the late Edward Said, stated flat out that "Israel is not South Africa". How could it be when an Israeli publisher translated Said's seminal work, Orientalism, into Hebrew? I'll cap this point with a question that Said himself asked of Arabs: "Why don't we fight harder for freedom of opinions in our own societies, a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely exists?"
I disagree: some people still need to be told that Arab "freedoms" don't compare to those of Israel. The people who need reminding are those who now push the South Africa analogy a step further by equating Israel with Nazi Germany. To them, Zionists are committing hate crimes under the totalitarian nightmare that they dub "Zio-Nazism" (like neo-Nazism).
When it comes to granting citizenship, Israel discriminates in the same way as an affirmative action policy, giving the edge to a specific minority that has faced genocidal injustice. Does this amount to Nazism? Spare me. As a Muslim, I could become a citizen of Israel without having to convert. After all, Israel was one of the few countries anywhere to grant shelter, then citizenship, to the Vietnamese boatpeople who sought political asylum in the late 1970s. I don't have to wonder how Syria compares on that score.
Now for the ultimate proof of Israel's flimsy credentials as a bunker of Hitlerian hate: It's the only country in the Middle East to which Arab Christians are voluntarily migrating. And they are also thriving there, notching much higher university attendance rates than the Arab Muslim citizens of Israel, and enjoying better overall health than Jews.
The Holy Land is gut-wrenching and complicated. As much as I applaud Israel's efforts to foster pluralism, I condemn its illegal Jewish settlements and less visible crimes such as the diversion of water away from Palestinian towns. These contradictions of the Israeli state should be exposed, discussed, even pilloried. And they are: openly as well as often. So there's little point in deciding whose camp is the paragon of vice or virtue. The better question might be: who's willing to hear what they don't want to hear? That's the test of whether a country is more than black or white.
Irshad Manji is author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith (Random House Australia).
(ahem)
Irshad Manji (who is homosexual) and likeminded Muslims are real Muslims. The rest are perverting Islam.
February 09, 2007
IN the past year, a stream of thinkers across the West - from Australian writer Antony Loewenstein to US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt - has punctured the usual parameters of debate about Israel. I, for one, welcome any effort to prevent ideas from calcifying into ideologies. As a Muslim refusenik, that's what I do by defying the conventional prejudices of my fellow Muslims. Why would I resent refuseniks of a different kind?
It's precisely because I embrace intellectual pluralism that I respectfully challenge Jimmy Carter's recent critique of Israel as an apartheid state. To be sure, I've long admired the former US president. In my book The Trouble with Islam Today I cite him as an example of how religion can be invoked to tap the best of humanity. In no small measure, it was Carter's appreciation of spiritual values that brought together Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, compelling these former foes to clasp hands over a peace deal.
Which is why Carter's new book disappoints so many of us who champion co-existence. Entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the book argues that Israel's conduct towards Palestinians mimics South Africa's long-time demonisation of blacks. Of course, certain Israeli politicians have spewed venom at Palestinians, as have some Arab leaders towards Jews, but Israel is far more complex - and diverse - than slogans about the occupation would suggest. In a state practising apartheid, would Arab Muslim legislators wield veto power over anything? At only 20per cent of the population, would Arabs even be eligible for election if they squirmed under the thumb of apartheid? Would an apartheid state extend voting rights to women and thepoor in local elections, which Israel didfor the first time in the history of Palestinian Arabs?
Would the vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens turn out to vote in national elections, as they've usually done? Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? In recent Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. However, Israel's Supreme Court, exercising its independence, overturned both disqualifications. Under any system of apartheid, would the judiciary be free of political interference?
Would an apartheid state award its top literary prize to an Arab? Israel honoured Emile Habibi in 1986, before the intifada might have made such a choice politically shrewd. Would an apartheid state encourage Hebrew-speaking schoolchildren to learn Arabic? Would road signs throughout the land appear in both languages? Even my country, the proudly bilingual Canada, doesn't meet that standard.
Would an apartheid state be home to universities where Arabs and Jews mingle at will, or apartment blocks where they live side by side? Would an apartheid state bestow benefits and legal protections on Palestinians who live outside of Israel but work inside its borders? Would human rights organisations operate openly in an apartheid state? They do in Israel.
For that matter, military officials go public with their criticisms of government policies. In October 2003, the Israel Defence Forces' chief of staff told the press that road closures in the West Bank and Gaza were feeding Palestinian anger. Two weeks later, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service blasted the occupation and called on Ariel Sharon to withdraw troops unilaterally, which later happened in Gaza. Would an apartheid state stomach so much dissent from those mandated to protect the state?
Above all, would media debate the most basic building blocks of the nation? Would a Hebrew newspaper in an apartheid state run an article by an Arab Israeli about why the Zionist adventure has been a total failure? Would it run that article on Israel's independence day? Would an apartheid state ensure conditions for the freest Arabic press in the Middle East, a press so free that it can demonstrably abuse its liberties and keep on rolling? To this day, the East Jerusalem daily Al-Quds hasn't retracted an anti-Israel letter supposedly penned by Nelson Mandela but proven to have been written by an Arab living in The Netherlands.
Even the eminence grise of Palestinian nationalism, the late Edward Said, stated flat out that "Israel is not South Africa". How could it be when an Israeli publisher translated Said's seminal work, Orientalism, into Hebrew? I'll cap this point with a question that Said himself asked of Arabs: "Why don't we fight harder for freedom of opinions in our own societies, a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely exists?"
I disagree: some people still need to be told that Arab "freedoms" don't compare to those of Israel. The people who need reminding are those who now push the South Africa analogy a step further by equating Israel with Nazi Germany. To them, Zionists are committing hate crimes under the totalitarian nightmare that they dub "Zio-Nazism" (like neo-Nazism).
When it comes to granting citizenship, Israel discriminates in the same way as an affirmative action policy, giving the edge to a specific minority that has faced genocidal injustice. Does this amount to Nazism? Spare me. As a Muslim, I could become a citizen of Israel without having to convert. After all, Israel was one of the few countries anywhere to grant shelter, then citizenship, to the Vietnamese boatpeople who sought political asylum in the late 1970s. I don't have to wonder how Syria compares on that score.
Now for the ultimate proof of Israel's flimsy credentials as a bunker of Hitlerian hate: It's the only country in the Middle East to which Arab Christians are voluntarily migrating. And they are also thriving there, notching much higher university attendance rates than the Arab Muslim citizens of Israel, and enjoying better overall health than Jews.
The Holy Land is gut-wrenching and complicated. As much as I applaud Israel's efforts to foster pluralism, I condemn its illegal Jewish settlements and less visible crimes such as the diversion of water away from Palestinian towns. These contradictions of the Israeli state should be exposed, discussed, even pilloried. And they are: openly as well as often. So there's little point in deciding whose camp is the paragon of vice or virtue. The better question might be: who's willing to hear what they don't want to hear? That's the test of whether a country is more than black or white.
Irshad Manji is author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith (Random House Australia).
Anti Zionism is not Anti Semitism
Most antizionists are antisemites
Most antizionists are antisemites
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
oh come on, you can do better than a one-word response.
accept the risk that you might sound ridiculous to other people if you explain why you think this is "polarization", or how you think that word even applies to describe the situation? i'm dying to know.
Most antizionists are antisemites
You stated yourself the reason for this thread was a retaliation to perspectives on "real jews". So therefor you are posting because those other posts caused you to polarize in the opposite. Unless you genuinely believe this is "real muslim" in which case you are just ignorant. Either way, it's pretty much pointless.
And why did you point out that the dude is homosexual? Got a problem with fags? Don't be dissin' on my homos!
yeah see, i thought by your one-word response that you misunderstood the point of this thread, but i didn't want to jump to conclusions. now i see that i was right.
if you re-read my message, you'll find that the word 'retaliation' isn't there. you will find words that explicity state the purpose of my posting, which is "to demonstrate how asinine and offensive this shrill identity politics is".
i demonstrated that by applying the same facile logic to a demographic which garners much more sympathy on MT than Jews, Muslims.
As for pointing out that Irshad Manji (who is a woman, not a dude) is homosexual, that was to illustrate that she is removed from the mainstream Muslim community. and then I made the "claim" (which you should have figured out by now is not a sincere claim but a sarcastic, facetious statement meant to mimick the antizionistjewsaretheonlyrealjews trope) that Irshad Manji, lesbian, zionist, Irshad Manji, and other Muslims like her, represent "real" Islam.
understand now?
Most antizionists are antisemites
In every head is a different world.
to begin, i'm not making a claim as to who is a "real jew".... i mean, you are as real a jew as any other person who calls himself a jew in my mind... the definition of "real jew" is subjective. i would, however, argue that groups like neturei karta are the most orthodox jews in the religious sense. i would like to know is it not true that, according to them, "Neturei Karta have added nothing to nor have they taken anything away from the written and oral law of the Torah"? because, otherwise, when it comes to religious arguments for or against the creation of the israeli state, i think their opinion is most valuable. however, at the same time, i don't at all value religious opinions when it comes to politics. i only value them in the context of religion, and i think religion is absurd. Neturei Karta claims that jews are forbidden by their god to establish state of israel until they find their messiah. the belief in their god is absurd, as is the belief in any god. they point out that the father of zionism, Theodore Herzl, was an athiest. so it makes sense that their views on zionism are antithetical to his. Herzl, i'm sure, defined who is a jew by a shared cultural experience, whether the members of this culture have totally abandoned their cultural forefathers' religious beliefs, stayed completely true to them, or have modified them (the latter case being the majority of Jews, I would argue). and this is exactly how i would define a "real Jew", except in a purely religious sense, to which I would have to defer to the so-called "ultra-othodox Jews".
so what is the best argument for the case of re-establishing a Jewish homeland in the Levant? i think there are good ones, and I think it could be done right. i think something should be done. after all, it is not fair that until 1948, Jews, unlike most other cultural groups, could not point to a place on a map and say "home". it is also not fair that this home has been continually under attack.
but what about the arabs who called palestine home? what about everyone else in the rest of the world who has seen this conflict change global politics and affect their lives? i have to wonder what the middle east would be like without Israel. maybe the arabs and kurds and turks and iranians would still be at war with each other. maybe sunnis and shias would be as well. its hard to tell. but undoubtedly, the biggest conflict is between israelis and the supporters of palestine.
so it is clear that what has been done, is wrong. very fucking wrong.
despite their religious rhetoric, when you read through Neturei Karta's website - http://www.nkusa.org - their arguements are very well thought out and very passionate. they may have a silly worn-out belief in a righteous God who guides them, but i think it is very clear they are of good will.
when you read the words of zionist leaders, it is clear they exhibit the very opposite of good will:
"We must expel Arabs and take their places."
-- David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
-- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
"There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"
-- David Ben Gurion Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.
"There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
-- David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.
"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country."
-- David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan's "Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.
"If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel."
-- David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth's Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).
David Ben Gurion
Prime Minister of Israel
1949 - 1954, 1955 - 1963
"The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country."
-- Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.
"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple."
-- Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.
"(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls."
-- Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
Yizhak Shamir
Prime Minister of Israel
1983 - 1984, 1986 - 1992
"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."
-- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister of Israel
1996 - 1999
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online
Ariel Sharon
Prime Minister of Israel
2001 - 2006
Rue, dont waste the space man. Your not going to convert any of these hard core Israel bashers. I wouldn't even waste my time on a guy like Ahnimus.
Yea, Israel sucks man. I'm sure it's a beautiful place and the people are extremely nice. But that doesn't change the fact of how it was created and it doesn't erase it's borders. I hate Canada too, I hate borders and nationalism. You have that correct. But your wrong in assuming that I hate people.
Then I don't understand why you throw comments out like that.
Most of them are, but some of them are fucking arseholes, like the bus driver that almost drove off and left me in the middle of the desert while I was shitting my guts out in a truckstop thanks to some dodgy arab food. . . .
-C Addison
and how was the "new world" created?
Take my hand, my child of love
Come step inside my tears
Swim the magic ocean,
I've been crying all these years