[ France is facing up finally to the extent of anti-semitism in its midst. Britain has not as yet!MM]
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BBC 'Question Time' Relegates the Holocaust to the Wastebin
http://www.currentviewpoint.com
The BBC Trivialises the Holocaust
23 February 2006
Carol Gould
*************************************
On the primetime, nationally broadcast BBC ‘Question Time’ tonight, a member of the panel, Nigel Farage MEP, objected to the victimisation of British Holocaust denier David Irving, and a young female audience member took the issue one step further by relegating the Holocaust to an event no worse than other episodes of bad human behaviour in recent decades.
In my lifetime I have never been able to get a Briton as excited about the horrors of the Shoah as he or she might get about the crimes of ‘Jewish terrorists in the Irgun’ or about ‘Israeli genocide and apartheid.’
What appalled me tonight was the manner in which the programme’s host, David Dimbleby, allowed the dismissal of the Nazis’ systematic extermination of the Jews to be disseminated. Here was a popular television show being watched by millions, and contributors were being allowed to get away with the mantra that ‘this was just one of many atrocities of war.’
One of the reasons why Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, has boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day for two years running is because he finds the singling out of one victim group as a form of racism in itself. He, like many Britons, feels the day should commemorate all genocides and not pay homage to one race's near-extermination.
What is so repugnant about this mindset -- one that has wide support in many British circles, including the dinner party set who rail at Jewish guests ‘you people invented terrorism’ -- is that there is no public discourse correcting these heinous misconceptions.
The BBC, in its heavyweight position as dominant broadcaster to fifty-five million citizens, has a responsibility to educate its audience. Dimbleby, or one of the many panel members, ought to have made these crucial points:
1. The Holocaust was not just ‘any massacre’ -- it was the culmination of two-thousand years of anti-Semitism emanating from the Christian world and more recently from the Muslim world, poisoned by anti-Jewish, blood libel-themed literature saturating its schools and media.
The first Blood Libel emanated from Britain. The first expulsion of Jews happened in Britain, a nation unique in forbidding Jews to cross into its shores for centuries until the time of Oliver Cromwell. Anti-Semitism was a serious occupation amongst many in Britain. Dr Jonathan Miller pointed out in his excellent recent television documentary that he chose University College London rather than a prestigious institution for his medical training because its patron, Jeremy Bentham, had insisted that a taboo be broken and that Jews be allowed to study there in the nineteenth century.
Dimbleby should have explained that genocide of Jews had been an occupation of the Christian world for two millennia. They were burned alive in York Tower. To this day Jews avoid living in York, England. They were tortured and accused of infanticide and blood- libelled in Lincoln and Norwich. They were massacred in Chmielnicki in the seventeenth centuries to the tune of six figures; three-hundred Jewish communities were wiped out by the Ukrainian murderers. Jews were seen as Christ-killers and this battle cry to genocide lasted into the 1960s.
2. One of the BBC panellists, Nigel Farage MEP, in the context of Holocaust denial being overblown as a crime, snarled about the equally heinous murder by Stalin of two million of his own people.
At this point someone on the panel or Dimbleby should have made this point: Adolf Eichmann, as depicted in a BBC documentary, compiled meticulous inventories of every Jewish community in the world. He had accumulated figures for the United States, Canada, Great Britain, the West Indies, Central and South America, Africa and the Middle East meant for extermination.
The BBC panel and audience needed to be told that there were Nazi sympathisers inside the United States who were ready to take over and convert the American electrical and telephone systems to be compatible with those of the empire of the Third Reich. They were ready to help implement the genocide of Jews and blacks.
Eichmann’s master plan and the conference at Wannsee -- accompanied by less-than-forthcoming hospitality and cruel quotas for refugee Jews wishing to flee to Western nations -- would have resulted in the systematic annihilation of the entire world’s population of Jews. This is not ‘Stalin starving two million of his people.’ This is not, Sir Iqbal, ‘one of many genocides.’ Tutus slaughtering Hutus in Rwanda is NOT a worldwide industrial-strength extermination machine under the eyes of compliant, and even gleeful white Christian collaborators.
3. The hideous and hurtful chatter that has been peppering the airwaves in Britain devaluing the Holocaust as ‘one of many atrocities in human history and as bad as the genocide of the Indians in the USA and of the Palestinians’ and now the denial that the Shoah even happened by the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a step closer to complete dismissal of Jewish suffering.
Yasmin Alibhai Brown, the Ugandan-born commentator based in the UK, has wisely admonished her fellow Muslims that denial of the Holocaust will result in little Jewish sympathy or help when ‘they come for us.’ I will take it one step further and say that when Anglo-Muslim leaders like Inayat Bungalawala and his followers say the creation of the state of Israel was the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century, and when Iqbal Sacranie boycotts Holocaust Day, programmes like tonight’s ‘Question Time’ add to an atmosphere of national rejection of Jewish sensibilities.
It is inexcusable that the BBC allowed the programme to plough along as the Shoah was reduced to a curious event in ugly human history, when as I write worldwide anti-Jewish activity is becoming more virulent every day.
When the Iranian President calls for the genocide of six million Jews, is this the same as ‘Stalin starving his people?’ When imams in London, Birmingham and Luton call for the deaths of Jews is this a curious Stalinist purge? When Middle Eastern regimes allow schools to teach the Blood Libel and their television broadcasts weeks of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is this some little human quirk?
The BBC, which currently wheels out Dr Azzam Tamimi for commentary at every available moment, seems keen to give voice to those who would blow up civilians in Israel but offers no voice on its primetime hit panel discussion programme for Jews or Holocaust survivors.
The survivors’ tattoos are not exactly ‘Stalin starving his people’ . One of these last remnant of European Jewry ought to have been on tonight’s panel. The BBC owes the world Jewish community an apology, and needs to get real.
*******************
Carol Gould is a former British TV Drama network executive and in recent years has been a documentary producer.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
PALESTINIAN CHUTZPAH: the limits of Democracy.
Arab Chutzpah: bowing to the terrorists in Europe!
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The height of hypocrisy.
The Palestinian people collectively have made their democratic choice. They have collectively chosen the representatives of the Organization whose advertised agenda is the non-recognition of Israel; whose avowed aim is the violent destruction of Israel and whose religious adherence to radical Islam advocates incitement to hatred of the Jewish people.
Their spokespeople, like Hannan Ashrawi keep talking about "collective punishment" by the Israeli Government for with-holding funds from them. How do they expect Israel to recognise them if they don't recognize it? How do they expect Israel to respect the Palestinian people if they choose a political Party bent on destroying them? One Danish newspaper in one city in Europe publishes cartoons which "offend" the Moslems, and they "collectively punish" all Westerners. That is OK?
When we, the people make "collective choices" we expect "collective consequences".
If the Palestinians elected Hamas to govern them for other reasons than their relationship with Israel, (in the first Palestinian poll since the elections, only 12% said they chose Hamas for its agenda of calling for the destruction of Israel.-" The Australian", 22/2/06!) then they should have taken the other effects into consideration. It is too late to cry victimhood after the event and blame everyone else for their predicament.
Democracy is not a panacea for all ills,-it brought Hitler to power for the wrong reasons.
Hamas may be there for the wrong reasons too, with possibly the same disastrous results for the Palestinian people. Fatah probably lost for the right reasons. It's all about responsible leadership,- they need leaders who care more for their people than hate the Israeli 'infidels' because the Jewish Western democracy shows-up their Islamic culture,- as a culture which produces nothing other than the subjugation of their women, terrorism and deaths! The testosterone pumped-up young males who are full of inhibitions and prohibitions have to let-off steam somewhere,- so where else except in shooting their rifles, indulging in corruption, drug-running, criminal activities of all kinds and fighting, fighting, fighting! Their "virgin-fixation" is at the root of their problems!
The tiny Jewish State shows up its neighbours in every field,- so instead of learning from Israel's achievements to advance their own people, they want to destroy it and us all so that they can keep their people back in the dark ages!
In a democracy, we have to blame the people for allowing themselves to be led into the abyss. Are the Palestinian masses too stupid to do anything else?
The world's moderate Moslems, particularly in the West, -instead of encouraging the Palestinians to leave their murderous paths behind,- they encourage them in their terrorist pursuits. Feeling sorry for them and expect Israel to commit suicide to appease them is helping no one.
Prime Minister Howard is right in singling out the Islamic Jihadists as not belonging in Australia. While all migrant communities bring with them a criminal element which operates within their own communities,- it is the Islamists that we have to fear the most. They are against everyone,- they don't care whom they destroy, including their own families and communities not only themselves and all of us 'infidels',- one just needs to look at the home-grown London bombers, the Iraqis and the Taliban, not only at Bin Laden and Al Queda and Iran to see that!
Their craziness seems to be infectious,- it's catching on in South America, Asia and Africa.
MM. Miriam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The height of hypocrisy.
The Palestinian people collectively have made their democratic choice. They have collectively chosen the representatives of the Organization whose advertised agenda is the non-recognition of Israel; whose avowed aim is the violent destruction of Israel and whose religious adherence to radical Islam advocates incitement to hatred of the Jewish people.
Their spokespeople, like Hannan Ashrawi keep talking about "collective punishment" by the Israeli Government for with-holding funds from them. How do they expect Israel to recognise them if they don't recognize it? How do they expect Israel to respect the Palestinian people if they choose a political Party bent on destroying them? One Danish newspaper in one city in Europe publishes cartoons which "offend" the Moslems, and they "collectively punish" all Westerners. That is OK?
When we, the people make "collective choices" we expect "collective consequences".
If the Palestinians elected Hamas to govern them for other reasons than their relationship with Israel, (in the first Palestinian poll since the elections, only 12% said they chose Hamas for its agenda of calling for the destruction of Israel.-" The Australian", 22/2/06!) then they should have taken the other effects into consideration. It is too late to cry victimhood after the event and blame everyone else for their predicament.
Democracy is not a panacea for all ills,-it brought Hitler to power for the wrong reasons.
Hamas may be there for the wrong reasons too, with possibly the same disastrous results for the Palestinian people. Fatah probably lost for the right reasons. It's all about responsible leadership,- they need leaders who care more for their people than hate the Israeli 'infidels' because the Jewish Western democracy shows-up their Islamic culture,- as a culture which produces nothing other than the subjugation of their women, terrorism and deaths! The testosterone pumped-up young males who are full of inhibitions and prohibitions have to let-off steam somewhere,- so where else except in shooting their rifles, indulging in corruption, drug-running, criminal activities of all kinds and fighting, fighting, fighting! Their "virgin-fixation" is at the root of their problems!
The tiny Jewish State shows up its neighbours in every field,- so instead of learning from Israel's achievements to advance their own people, they want to destroy it and us all so that they can keep their people back in the dark ages!
In a democracy, we have to blame the people for allowing themselves to be led into the abyss. Are the Palestinian masses too stupid to do anything else?
The world's moderate Moslems, particularly in the West, -instead of encouraging the Palestinians to leave their murderous paths behind,- they encourage them in their terrorist pursuits. Feeling sorry for them and expect Israel to commit suicide to appease them is helping no one.
Prime Minister Howard is right in singling out the Islamic Jihadists as not belonging in Australia. While all migrant communities bring with them a criminal element which operates within their own communities,- it is the Islamists that we have to fear the most. They are against everyone,- they don't care whom they destroy, including their own families and communities not only themselves and all of us 'infidels',- one just needs to look at the home-grown London bombers, the Iraqis and the Taliban, not only at Bin Laden and Al Queda and Iran to see that!
Their craziness seems to be infectious,- it's catching on in South America, Asia and Africa.
MM. Miriam
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Religious pride is fine, but prejudice is no joke.
Religious pride is fine, but prejudice is no joke
Muslims have the right to religious tolerance, but so do the Jews
By Tom HYLAND
The Age
19 Feb 2006
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/02/18/1140151850842.html
IN THE musical Fiddler on the Roof, the peasant Tevye, exasperated by his unmarried daughters, lamenting his arid cow and his lame horse, fearful of Russian pogroms, appeals to God: "I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?"
It's an old joke. A Jewish joke, by and about people forced to play the role of the world's scapegoats. It's hard to find jokes in the Danish cartoons controversy, which ends with Jews as scapegoats. You know the story by now: a Danish newspaper publishes cartoons of dubious merit and taste purporting to portray the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, an act of blasphemy under Islamic faith. The cartoons sink with barely a trace, until four months later, after a concerted campaign by clerics to draw attention to the offence, riots erupt across the Islamic world.
In retaliation, an Iranian newspaper runs a cartoon contest of its own, but the target is not the Danish perpetrators of the original offence, but the Jews. Of course. Not many jokes there, just hypocrisy and prejudice by the bucketful.
Muslims in the West, like members of any religion, have a right to tolerance for their customs and beliefs, so long as they accord with the law and wider community standards. But they can't expect elements of their faith won't sometimes be subjected to the satire that other religions suffer in Western secular societies. Offensive? Humiliating? Particularly hurtful in a climate of Islamophobia? All of that. But that's the way it is. Just ask the Jews.
Obviously it's too much to expect resigned endurance from the theocrats in Iran. Instead, the government-controlled Tehran daily Hamshahri is staging a cartoon contest, designed to test the limits of Western freedom of expression, with Jews the target.
But there's no poking fun at the belief systems of Judaism here: faith isn't mocked, but facts are. Hamshahri doesn't want jokes. Instead, entrants are urged to question "alleged historical events like the Holocaust". In case you haven't got that, the entry form asserts: "Many thinkers express doubt about the accuracy of the Holocaust."
Presumably those "thinkers" include Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, who says the mass murder of European Jewry by the Nazis is a "myth" and who wants Israel "wiped off the map".
"Some European countries insist on saying that, during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps," he says.
Well yes, they do insist on saying that, because it happened. Denmark knows something of the Holocaust. Occupied by Nazi Germany, Danes, in an act of collective courage, saved Jewish citizens from being consumed in the "mythical" Holocaust in 1943. Learning that all 7500 Danish Jews were to be sent to concentration camps, ordinary Danes helped most escape to neutral Sweden. Presumably that, too, is part of the "myth".
The logic of all this is if you can deny the reality of the Holocaust (an attempt to erase Jewry from the human map of Europe), you can then erase Israel off the political map of the Middle East.
Ahmadinejad's outbursts are an extension of an entrenched prejudice across the Middle East, which in seeking to deny Israel's legitimacy questions the humanity of Jewish people.
An internet search will find scores of cartoons from the Middle East press depicting Jews as subhuman, as filthy vermin, as controlling, manipulative killers who drink the blood of Arab children. No satire here, no legitimate political comment about the real grievances of Palestinians, just blatant racism.
Late last year, Iranian state TV broadcast a cartoon that glorified suicide bombings by Palestinian children who kill Israeli civilians. The day before the cartoon was shown, Ahmadinejad declared: "This stain of disgrace (Israel) will be wiped off the face of the world - and this is attainable."
All of this comes as Iran is apparently seeking to develop nuclear weapons - just what you need if you want to wipe an opponent off the face of the earth. Now that's no joke.
________
Tom Hyland is a senior Sunday Age reporter.
Muslims have the right to religious tolerance, but so do the Jews
By Tom HYLAND
The Age
19 Feb 2006
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/02/18/1140151850842.html
IN THE musical Fiddler on the Roof, the peasant Tevye, exasperated by his unmarried daughters, lamenting his arid cow and his lame horse, fearful of Russian pogroms, appeals to God: "I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?"
It's an old joke. A Jewish joke, by and about people forced to play the role of the world's scapegoats. It's hard to find jokes in the Danish cartoons controversy, which ends with Jews as scapegoats. You know the story by now: a Danish newspaper publishes cartoons of dubious merit and taste purporting to portray the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, an act of blasphemy under Islamic faith. The cartoons sink with barely a trace, until four months later, after a concerted campaign by clerics to draw attention to the offence, riots erupt across the Islamic world.
In retaliation, an Iranian newspaper runs a cartoon contest of its own, but the target is not the Danish perpetrators of the original offence, but the Jews. Of course. Not many jokes there, just hypocrisy and prejudice by the bucketful.
Muslims in the West, like members of any religion, have a right to tolerance for their customs and beliefs, so long as they accord with the law and wider community standards. But they can't expect elements of their faith won't sometimes be subjected to the satire that other religions suffer in Western secular societies. Offensive? Humiliating? Particularly hurtful in a climate of Islamophobia? All of that. But that's the way it is. Just ask the Jews.
Obviously it's too much to expect resigned endurance from the theocrats in Iran. Instead, the government-controlled Tehran daily Hamshahri is staging a cartoon contest, designed to test the limits of Western freedom of expression, with Jews the target.
But there's no poking fun at the belief systems of Judaism here: faith isn't mocked, but facts are. Hamshahri doesn't want jokes. Instead, entrants are urged to question "alleged historical events like the Holocaust". In case you haven't got that, the entry form asserts: "Many thinkers express doubt about the accuracy of the Holocaust."
Presumably those "thinkers" include Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, who says the mass murder of European Jewry by the Nazis is a "myth" and who wants Israel "wiped off the map".
"Some European countries insist on saying that, during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps," he says.
Well yes, they do insist on saying that, because it happened. Denmark knows something of the Holocaust. Occupied by Nazi Germany, Danes, in an act of collective courage, saved Jewish citizens from being consumed in the "mythical" Holocaust in 1943. Learning that all 7500 Danish Jews were to be sent to concentration camps, ordinary Danes helped most escape to neutral Sweden. Presumably that, too, is part of the "myth".
The logic of all this is if you can deny the reality of the Holocaust (an attempt to erase Jewry from the human map of Europe), you can then erase Israel off the political map of the Middle East.
Ahmadinejad's outbursts are an extension of an entrenched prejudice across the Middle East, which in seeking to deny Israel's legitimacy questions the humanity of Jewish people.
An internet search will find scores of cartoons from the Middle East press depicting Jews as subhuman, as filthy vermin, as controlling, manipulative killers who drink the blood of Arab children. No satire here, no legitimate political comment about the real grievances of Palestinians, just blatant racism.
Late last year, Iranian state TV broadcast a cartoon that glorified suicide bombings by Palestinian children who kill Israeli civilians. The day before the cartoon was shown, Ahmadinejad declared: "This stain of disgrace (Israel) will be wiped off the face of the world - and this is attainable."
All of this comes as Iran is apparently seeking to develop nuclear weapons - just what you need if you want to wipe an opponent off the face of the earth. Now that's no joke.
________
Tom Hyland is a senior Sunday Age reporter.
Monday, February 20, 2006
List of current articles posted:31/1-20/2/06.
2/20/2006
Managing religious sensitivities in a multicultural society.
View
2/20/2006
Horror murder of Jewish boy in Paris.
View
2/19/2006
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Saks on enemies and friends.
Miriam M.OR MM
View
2/19/2006
Israel and China.
View
2/16/2006
Where are the silent Muslim majority?
View
2/16/2006
Ex-terrorists now advocates for Israel.
View
2/15/2006
The "insult a Jew competition": the Leunig hoax!
View
2/12/2006
FIGHT HATRED WITH HUMOUR: WUJS CARTOON CONTEST
View
2/10/2006
ZIONISM: Jewish Peoplehood & the realization of their national aspiration.
View
2/10/2006
Takiyya and kitman: the role of deception in Islamic terrorism
View
2/10/2006
Drafting Hitler by David Brooks. NY Times.
View
2/09/2006
A manifesto for murder: Hamas charter!
View
2/09/2006
Mideast Moral Relativism. (Joseph Farah)
View
2/08/2006
Iranian fingerprints on cartoon-rage riots?
View
2/07/2006
'New Islam': violence a first resort? Rabbi Shmuel Boteach.
View
2/07/2006
"Sensitivity" can have brutal consequences. (Mark Steyn)
View
2/06/2006
Media Release by Anti-Defamationa Commission, BB, Melb.
View
2/06/2006
Offensive Cartoons: HonestReporting .com
View
2/06/2006
Egypt's antisemitic cartoons. (BBC)
View
2/06/2006
Re "Hamastan":
View
2/02/2006
Hamastan; Cartoon jihad; Melanie Phillips.
View
2/02/2006
IRAN AND ISRAEL..
View
1/31/2006
Israel doesn't need any favours! Yoel Marcus in Haaretz.
View
1/31/2006
Edit
The International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/01/international-center-for-enhancement.html
Managing religious sensitivities in a multicultural society.
View
2/20/2006
Horror murder of Jewish boy in Paris.
View
2/19/2006
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Saks on enemies and friends.
Miriam M.OR MM
View
2/19/2006
Israel and China.
View
2/16/2006
Where are the silent Muslim majority?
View
2/16/2006
Ex-terrorists now advocates for Israel.
View
2/15/2006
The "insult a Jew competition": the Leunig hoax!
View
2/12/2006
FIGHT HATRED WITH HUMOUR: WUJS CARTOON CONTEST
View
2/10/2006
ZIONISM: Jewish Peoplehood & the realization of their national aspiration.
View
2/10/2006
Takiyya and kitman: the role of deception in Islamic terrorism
View
2/10/2006
Drafting Hitler by David Brooks. NY Times.
View
2/09/2006
A manifesto for murder: Hamas charter!
View
2/09/2006
Mideast Moral Relativism. (Joseph Farah)
View
2/08/2006
Iranian fingerprints on cartoon-rage riots?
View
2/07/2006
'New Islam': violence a first resort? Rabbi Shmuel Boteach.
View
2/07/2006
"Sensitivity" can have brutal consequences. (Mark Steyn)
View
2/06/2006
Media Release by Anti-Defamationa Commission, BB, Melb.
View
2/06/2006
Offensive Cartoons: HonestReporting .com
View
2/06/2006
Egypt's antisemitic cartoons. (BBC)
View
2/06/2006
Re "Hamastan":
View
2/02/2006
Hamastan; Cartoon jihad; Melanie Phillips.
View
2/02/2006
IRAN AND ISRAEL..
View
1/31/2006
Israel doesn't need any favours! Yoel Marcus in Haaretz.
View
1/31/2006
Edit
The International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2006/01/international-center-for-enhancement.html
Managing religious sensitivities in a multicultural society.
RE: Denmark: Managing Religious Sensitivities
by B. Raman, Camp Kozhikode
SAAG International Terrorism Monitor: Paper No. 2412
February 2006
http://saag.org/papers17/paper1699.html
In India, the management of religious sensitivities has always been considered an important component of Law and Order Management. When I joined the Indian Police Service in 1961, the management of religious sensitivities was an important part of our training.
2. The importance of this arises from the conflicting sensitivities of different religious communities. Examples:
§ The Muslims are opposed to any pictorial depiction of their Holy Prophet in any manner by anyone, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. Other religious groups are not opposed to pictorial depictions of their religious leaders.
§ The Muslims are opposed to music and dance at their places of worship and during religious observances. Other religious groups are not.
§ The Muslims are opposed to pork. Others are not.
The Hindus are opposed to beef. Others are not.
One can cite many more such instances of differing sensitivities of various religious groups.
3. The failure to respect these sensitivities often leads to spontaneous outbursts of anger and violence. The temptation to exploit such outbursts for extraneous purposes has always been there. In the past, such outbursts were exploited by criminal elements in all religious communities for indulging in looting etc. Political exploitation of such outbursts became the vogue in the 1930s. The Muslim League, with the complicity of the British colonial administration, instigated and exploited such outbursts for driving a wedge between the Hindus and the Muslims in order to pave the way for the partition of India and the creation of an independent Muslim State in the Indian sub-continent.
4. After India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, the trend towards the political exploitation of religious sensitivities got aggravated in both countries, leading to frequent communal clashes, resulting in the killings of members of what were viewed as adversay religious groups. In Pakistan, it acquired an added dimension due to the conflicting sensitivities of the Sunnis and the Shias. Similarly, in India, it acquired an added dimension due to the differing sensitivities of Hindus belonging to different castes. The large-scale migration of Hindus from Pakistan and of Muslims from India made the problem even more difficult to handle.
5. The techniques adopted by those responsible for law and order management in India included:
§ Issue of advisories, informal or formal, to the media to observe restraint in reporting on matters affecting religious sensitivities and to avoid identifying the communities involved in any incident.
§ Ban on the sale and distribution, if necessary, of newspapers and journals publishing reports etc, which could disturb law and order. District officials have enough powers under the law to be able to do so.
§ Constitution of committees of representatives of different religious groups to help the administration in managing religious sensitivities on occasions when an outbreak of violence is feared or takes place.
Constitution of committees of different political parties in order to pre-empt their exploiting the situation for political purposes and to seek their co-operation in dealing with the situation.
6. In the management of religious sensitivities, the most important task is for the political leadership in power and the officials to convince an offended religious community that they are aware of its hurt religious feelings and would try to do justice to them in whatever way possible under the law.
7. The Danish Government cannot escape its share of responsibility for the outbreak of violence in different countries due to the hurt feelings of Muslims over the deplorable caricaturisation of their holy Prophet by a Danish journal in September last year. The way it conducted itself after the publication when justifiable anger started building up among sections of the Muslims in Denmark showed shocking ineptitude and insensitivity to the hurt feelings of the local Muslims.
8. The Danish Government had two responsibilities----to the media in order to protect the freedom of the press and to the Muslim minority in order to protect their religious sensitivities. It seems to have attached greater importance to the first than to the second.
9. In the past, the exploitation of such anger was generally by criminal, fundamentalist and political elements. In recent years, particularly after 1995, other dangerous elements have entered the fray. Among these one could mention the Al Qaeda, the International Islamic Front (IIF) formed by bin Laden in 1998 and the Hizbut Tehrir (HT). These organisations, in order to achieve their pan-Islamic objectives, have been exploiting every instance of Muslim anger to advance their agenda and to drive what they hope will be an unbridgeable wedge between the Muslims and the non-Muslims. As pointed out by me repeatedly in the past, they have been propagating pernicious ideas such as:
§ The loyalty of a Muslim is first to his religion and then only to the nation of which he is a citizen or resident.
§ Religious solidarity comes before cultural solidarity.
§ The Muslims do not recognise national frontiers and have, therefore, a right to go anywhere to join a jihad to protect their co-religionists.
§ The Muslims have a religious right and obligation to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and use them, if necessary, to protect their religion.
The Muslims should think first as Muslims and then only as human beings. They and particularly the HT, stress the importance of creating a Muslim mind-set so that all Muslims think and act alike.
10. The Muslims too cannot escape their share of responsibility for the relative lack of sympathy for their hurt feelings over the Danish cartoons. Normally, the vast majority of the liberal elements in the world would have rushed to express sympathy with the hurt feelings of the Muslims. This did not happen in the wake of the Danish incident because there has been a growing feeling in large sections of the world that under the influence of such organisations, many Muslims have been conducting themselves as if there is one code of conduct for Muslims and another for non-Muslims and as if the sensitivities of Muslims are more important than those of others.
11. Examples of such conduct of Muslims are:
§ While the Muslims condemn insults to their religion, they do not equally condemn insults by Muslims to other religions. A shocking example was the failure of the vast majority of the Muslims of India and the rest of the world to condemn an Indian Muslim painter, who hurt the feelings of millions of Hindus, by painting in the nude a Hindu goddess, who is as holy and sacred to the Hindus as the Holy Prophet is to the Muslims. There are innumerable instances of similar insults by Muslims to the Hindu and Jewish religions, which have never been condemned by those Muslims who are now condemning the Danish cartoonist.
§ The Muslims emphasise their right to convert non-Muslims to Islam, but do not concede a similar right to non-Muslims. In many Islamic countries, any attempt by a non-Muslim to convert a Muslim is a severe offence punishable with death or long terms in jail.
§ The Muslims emphasise their right to run madrasas to impart religious instruction to their children, but do not concede a similar right to non-Muslims. In many Islamic countries, religious instruction in schools is not permitted for the children of other religions.
§ The leaders of Pakistan keep sermonising to India on the importance of following a secular policy, but insist on the right of an Islamic State to be a theocracy.
§ The Islamic States make it obligatory for non-Muslims to observe the traditions and restrictions imposed by their religion (Islam) such as covering their head, not exposing their legs and arms etc, but insist on their right not to respect the traditions and restrictions of other societies where Muslims take up residence.
Recently, there was an instance in which some non-Muslim Ministers of the Cabinet of a Muslim majority country wrote to their Prime Minister expressing their disquiet over some aspects of the treatment of non-Muslims in that country. There was criticism of their action in openly articulating their disquiet in the form of a joint letter. They had to withdraw their letter. A Muslim has the right to demonstrate, take to violence and even indulge in acts of terrorism if his or her religious sensitivities are hurt, but non-Muslims do not have the right even to write a joint letter of criticism.
12. One can go on citing dozens of such examples which have inevitably been creating an impression in the minds of many that an increasing number of Muslims consider themselves a law unto themselves. This is a trend, which can be arrested and corrected only by enlightened leaders of the Muslim communities all over the world. If they fail to do so, the current backlash against the Muslims is likely to grow worse, which will not be in the interest of peace and harmony.
13. Was the outbreak of violence over the Danish cartoons spontaneous or orchestrated? The way it broke out four months after the publication and spread thereafter indicates that it was more the result of careful orchestration than spontaneous. The needle of suspicion points to the HT, the IIF and Al Qaeda in that order. In this connection, reference is invited to my earlier article on the suspected role of the HT in the outbreak of violence in Afghanistan following allegations of the descecration of the Holy Koran in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba last year. (http://www.saag.org/papers14/paper1377.html)
14. The international community has not paid much attention to monitoring the activities of the HT, whose ideas are as pernicious as those of Al Qaeda, though it claims that it is opposed to terrorism. I am giving below an extract on the HT taken out from an article on Jihadi Terrorism in Central Asia written by me in response to a request for publication in a foreign journal later this year.
15. Denmark and Norway have always been among the targets of Al Qaeda, which has been particularly critical of them because of their role in Iraq and Afghanistan. An Al Qaeda or IIF strike against Danish citizens and interests is an increasing probability in reprisal for the cartoons.16. The evidence of any role of Iran and Syria in the orchestration is more circumstantial than direct.)(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: itschen36@gmail.com)
ANNEXURE: HIZBUT TEHRIR (HT)
41.The HT was formed in 1953 by Sheikh Taqiuddin an-Nabhani al Falastini , a Judge of the Shariat Appeal Court in Jerusalem. After Nakhbani’s death in 1979, Abad al-Qadim Zalum, a Jordanian, took over as its leader. The party’s headquarters were moved to London. Its Multilanguage website is also reportedly operated from London. The London headquarters used to be headed by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, a 42 year-old Syrian, but he is no longer associated with it. One does not know who is its present leader.
42. It has the same objectives as Al Qaeda, namely, introduction of Islamic rule according to the Sharia in Muslim majority countries and the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate, but projects itself as different from Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is essentially an Arab organisation, with Arabs holding senior positions and exercising command and control. As against this, the HT projects itself as a multi-ethnic Islamic organisation in which membership and senior positions are open to any Muslim, irrespective of his or her ethnic background.
43. Its Aims and Objectives say: “The Party accepts Muslim men and women as its members regardless of whether they are Arab or non-Arab, white or coloured, since it is a party for all Muslims. It invites all Muslims to carry Islam and adopt its systems regardless of their nationalities, colours and madhahib (Schools of Thought), as it looks to all of them according to the viewpoint of Islam."
44. Al Qaeda is often accused of working for the Arabisation of Islam in non-Arab countries. The HT seeks to protect itself from such charges. At the same time, it admits that in its work it gave the first priority to the Arab countries and explains it thus: “Although Islam is a universal ideology, its method does not, however, allow one to work for it universally from the beginning. It is necessary, however, to invite to it universally, and make the field of work for it in one country, or a few countries, until it is consolidated there and the Islamic State is established. The whole world is a suitable location for the Islamic da’wah. But since the people in the Muslim countries have already embraced Islam, it is necessary that the da’wah starts there. The Arab countries are the most suitable location to start carrying the da’wah because these countries, which constitute part of the Muslim world, are inhabited by people who speak the Arabic language, which is the language of the Qur’an and hadith, and is an essential part of Islam and a basic element of the Islamic culture. The Hizb began and started to carry the da’wah within some of the Arab countries. It then proceeded to expand the delivery of the da’wah naturally until it began to function in many Arab countries and also in non-Arab Muslim countries as well."
45. It projects itself as a politico-religious movement. It says: “Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political party whose ideology is Islam, so politics is its work and Islam is its ideology. It works within the Ummah and together with her, so that she adopts Islam as her cause and is led to restore the Khilafah and the ruling by what Allah revealed. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political group and not a priestly one. Nor is it an academic, educational or a charity group. The Islamic thought is the soul of its body, its core and the secret of its life. Its purpose is to revive the Islamic Ummah from the severe decline that it had reached, and to liberate it from the thoughts, systems and laws of Kufr, as well as the domination and influence of the Kufr states. It also aims to restore the Islamic Khilafah State so that the ruling by what Allah revealed returns. The Party, as well, aims at the correct revival of the Ummah through enlightened thought. It also strives to bring her back to her previous might and glory such that she wrests the reins of initiative away from other states and nations, and returns to her rightful place as the first state in the world, as she was in the past, when she governs the world according to the laws of Islam. It also aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah into a struggle with Kufr, its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world."
46. It projects its struggle as directed against "the disbelieving imperialists, to deliver the Ummah from their domination and to liberate her from their influence by uprooting their intellectual, cultural, political, economic and military roots from all of the Muslim countries. The political struggle also appears in challenging the rulers, revealing their treasons and conspiracies against the Ummah, and by taking them to task and changing them if they denied the rights of the Ummah, or refrained from performing their duties towards her, or ignored any matter of her affairs, or violated the laws of Islam. So all the work of the Party is political, whether it is in office or not. Its work is not educational, as it is not a school, nor is its work concerned with giving sermons and preaching. Rather its work is political."
47. The HT has a three-stage strategy for achieving its objectives. In the first stage, which it claims has already been completed, it concentrated on making individual Muslims all over the world aware of its ideology, message and political programme of action. The goal to be achieved was to create in individual Muslims an Islamic mind-set and Islamic emotions. In the second stage on which it is presently embarked, it concentrates on educating the Ummah as a whole as an entity. In the third stage, it proposes to focus on the achievement of political power in order to pave the way for Islamic rule according to the Sharia all over the Islamic world and the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate.
48. The HT projects itself as an organisation opposed to the use of terrorism or other forms of violence for achieving its objectives. It claims that it wants to achieve its objectives through AGITPROP (agitation-propaganda) techniques. This should not be mistaken to mean that it advises individual Muslims, including its followers, to shun the use of terrorism for promoting the interests of Islam. It sees no contradiction between its opposition to terrorism as an organisation and its followers resorting to jihadi terrorism in countries where such a dichotomy may be required and justified.
49. To quote the HT: "Whenever the disbelieving enemies attack an Islamic country it becomes compulsory on its Muslim citizens to repel the enemy. The members of Hizb ut-Tahrir in that country are a part of the Muslims and it is obligatory upon them as it is upon other Muslims, in their capacity as Muslims, to fight the enemy and repel them. Whenever there is a Muslim amir who declares jihad to enhance the Word of Allah and mobilises the people to do that, the members of Hizb ut-Tahrir will respond in their capacity as Muslims in the country where the general call to arms was proclaimed."
50. What, in effect, it says is that its members have two obligations. As members of the organisation, they cannot take to violence. As members of the Muslim community, they can take to arms if such a course of action is warranted by circumstances. Thus, in the CARs, the HT, as a universal organisation of Muslims, will not issue a call to its members to take to arms, but if the local leaders of the community issue a call to arms, its members would be free to join in their capacity as individual Muslims and not as HT members.
51. Thus, it would be quite in order for a Muslim to propagate overtly the non-violent ways of the HT and, at the same time, take to terrorism covertly as a member of Al Qaeda or the IIF. The clandestine ways of the HT, about whose leadership not much is known, add to the fears about the real nature of the organisation and its linkages with Al Qaeda and the IIF.
52. Some analysts, particularly in Pakistan, describe the HT as an international Sunni movement, similar to Al Qaeda, but the HT itself says that its message and appeal are addressed to all Muslims, whether Sunnis or Shias. It wants its movement to be seen as a universal Muslim movement and not as a Sunni one.
by B. Raman, Camp Kozhikode
SAAG International Terrorism Monitor: Paper No. 2412
February 2006
http://saag.org/papers17/paper1699.html
In India, the management of religious sensitivities has always been considered an important component of Law and Order Management. When I joined the Indian Police Service in 1961, the management of religious sensitivities was an important part of our training.
2. The importance of this arises from the conflicting sensitivities of different religious communities. Examples:
§ The Muslims are opposed to any pictorial depiction of their Holy Prophet in any manner by anyone, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. Other religious groups are not opposed to pictorial depictions of their religious leaders.
§ The Muslims are opposed to music and dance at their places of worship and during religious observances. Other religious groups are not.
§ The Muslims are opposed to pork. Others are not.
The Hindus are opposed to beef. Others are not.
One can cite many more such instances of differing sensitivities of various religious groups.
3. The failure to respect these sensitivities often leads to spontaneous outbursts of anger and violence. The temptation to exploit such outbursts for extraneous purposes has always been there. In the past, such outbursts were exploited by criminal elements in all religious communities for indulging in looting etc. Political exploitation of such outbursts became the vogue in the 1930s. The Muslim League, with the complicity of the British colonial administration, instigated and exploited such outbursts for driving a wedge between the Hindus and the Muslims in order to pave the way for the partition of India and the creation of an independent Muslim State in the Indian sub-continent.
4. After India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, the trend towards the political exploitation of religious sensitivities got aggravated in both countries, leading to frequent communal clashes, resulting in the killings of members of what were viewed as adversay religious groups. In Pakistan, it acquired an added dimension due to the conflicting sensitivities of the Sunnis and the Shias. Similarly, in India, it acquired an added dimension due to the differing sensitivities of Hindus belonging to different castes. The large-scale migration of Hindus from Pakistan and of Muslims from India made the problem even more difficult to handle.
5. The techniques adopted by those responsible for law and order management in India included:
§ Issue of advisories, informal or formal, to the media to observe restraint in reporting on matters affecting religious sensitivities and to avoid identifying the communities involved in any incident.
§ Ban on the sale and distribution, if necessary, of newspapers and journals publishing reports etc, which could disturb law and order. District officials have enough powers under the law to be able to do so.
§ Constitution of committees of representatives of different religious groups to help the administration in managing religious sensitivities on occasions when an outbreak of violence is feared or takes place.
Constitution of committees of different political parties in order to pre-empt their exploiting the situation for political purposes and to seek their co-operation in dealing with the situation.
6. In the management of religious sensitivities, the most important task is for the political leadership in power and the officials to convince an offended religious community that they are aware of its hurt religious feelings and would try to do justice to them in whatever way possible under the law.
7. The Danish Government cannot escape its share of responsibility for the outbreak of violence in different countries due to the hurt feelings of Muslims over the deplorable caricaturisation of their holy Prophet by a Danish journal in September last year. The way it conducted itself after the publication when justifiable anger started building up among sections of the Muslims in Denmark showed shocking ineptitude and insensitivity to the hurt feelings of the local Muslims.
8. The Danish Government had two responsibilities----to the media in order to protect the freedom of the press and to the Muslim minority in order to protect their religious sensitivities. It seems to have attached greater importance to the first than to the second.
9. In the past, the exploitation of such anger was generally by criminal, fundamentalist and political elements. In recent years, particularly after 1995, other dangerous elements have entered the fray. Among these one could mention the Al Qaeda, the International Islamic Front (IIF) formed by bin Laden in 1998 and the Hizbut Tehrir (HT). These organisations, in order to achieve their pan-Islamic objectives, have been exploiting every instance of Muslim anger to advance their agenda and to drive what they hope will be an unbridgeable wedge between the Muslims and the non-Muslims. As pointed out by me repeatedly in the past, they have been propagating pernicious ideas such as:
§ The loyalty of a Muslim is first to his religion and then only to the nation of which he is a citizen or resident.
§ Religious solidarity comes before cultural solidarity.
§ The Muslims do not recognise national frontiers and have, therefore, a right to go anywhere to join a jihad to protect their co-religionists.
§ The Muslims have a religious right and obligation to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and use them, if necessary, to protect their religion.
The Muslims should think first as Muslims and then only as human beings. They and particularly the HT, stress the importance of creating a Muslim mind-set so that all Muslims think and act alike.
10. The Muslims too cannot escape their share of responsibility for the relative lack of sympathy for their hurt feelings over the Danish cartoons. Normally, the vast majority of the liberal elements in the world would have rushed to express sympathy with the hurt feelings of the Muslims. This did not happen in the wake of the Danish incident because there has been a growing feeling in large sections of the world that under the influence of such organisations, many Muslims have been conducting themselves as if there is one code of conduct for Muslims and another for non-Muslims and as if the sensitivities of Muslims are more important than those of others.
11. Examples of such conduct of Muslims are:
§ While the Muslims condemn insults to their religion, they do not equally condemn insults by Muslims to other religions. A shocking example was the failure of the vast majority of the Muslims of India and the rest of the world to condemn an Indian Muslim painter, who hurt the feelings of millions of Hindus, by painting in the nude a Hindu goddess, who is as holy and sacred to the Hindus as the Holy Prophet is to the Muslims. There are innumerable instances of similar insults by Muslims to the Hindu and Jewish religions, which have never been condemned by those Muslims who are now condemning the Danish cartoonist.
§ The Muslims emphasise their right to convert non-Muslims to Islam, but do not concede a similar right to non-Muslims. In many Islamic countries, any attempt by a non-Muslim to convert a Muslim is a severe offence punishable with death or long terms in jail.
§ The Muslims emphasise their right to run madrasas to impart religious instruction to their children, but do not concede a similar right to non-Muslims. In many Islamic countries, religious instruction in schools is not permitted for the children of other religions.
§ The leaders of Pakistan keep sermonising to India on the importance of following a secular policy, but insist on the right of an Islamic State to be a theocracy.
§ The Islamic States make it obligatory for non-Muslims to observe the traditions and restrictions imposed by their religion (Islam) such as covering their head, not exposing their legs and arms etc, but insist on their right not to respect the traditions and restrictions of other societies where Muslims take up residence.
Recently, there was an instance in which some non-Muslim Ministers of the Cabinet of a Muslim majority country wrote to their Prime Minister expressing their disquiet over some aspects of the treatment of non-Muslims in that country. There was criticism of their action in openly articulating their disquiet in the form of a joint letter. They had to withdraw their letter. A Muslim has the right to demonstrate, take to violence and even indulge in acts of terrorism if his or her religious sensitivities are hurt, but non-Muslims do not have the right even to write a joint letter of criticism.
12. One can go on citing dozens of such examples which have inevitably been creating an impression in the minds of many that an increasing number of Muslims consider themselves a law unto themselves. This is a trend, which can be arrested and corrected only by enlightened leaders of the Muslim communities all over the world. If they fail to do so, the current backlash against the Muslims is likely to grow worse, which will not be in the interest of peace and harmony.
13. Was the outbreak of violence over the Danish cartoons spontaneous or orchestrated? The way it broke out four months after the publication and spread thereafter indicates that it was more the result of careful orchestration than spontaneous. The needle of suspicion points to the HT, the IIF and Al Qaeda in that order. In this connection, reference is invited to my earlier article on the suspected role of the HT in the outbreak of violence in Afghanistan following allegations of the descecration of the Holy Koran in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba last year. (http://www.saag.org/papers14/paper1377.html)
14. The international community has not paid much attention to monitoring the activities of the HT, whose ideas are as pernicious as those of Al Qaeda, though it claims that it is opposed to terrorism. I am giving below an extract on the HT taken out from an article on Jihadi Terrorism in Central Asia written by me in response to a request for publication in a foreign journal later this year.
15. Denmark and Norway have always been among the targets of Al Qaeda, which has been particularly critical of them because of their role in Iraq and Afghanistan. An Al Qaeda or IIF strike against Danish citizens and interests is an increasing probability in reprisal for the cartoons.16. The evidence of any role of Iran and Syria in the orchestration is more circumstantial than direct.)(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: itschen36@gmail.com)
ANNEXURE: HIZBUT TEHRIR (HT)
41.The HT was formed in 1953 by Sheikh Taqiuddin an-Nabhani al Falastini , a Judge of the Shariat Appeal Court in Jerusalem. After Nakhbani’s death in 1979, Abad al-Qadim Zalum, a Jordanian, took over as its leader. The party’s headquarters were moved to London. Its Multilanguage website is also reportedly operated from London. The London headquarters used to be headed by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, a 42 year-old Syrian, but he is no longer associated with it. One does not know who is its present leader.
42. It has the same objectives as Al Qaeda, namely, introduction of Islamic rule according to the Sharia in Muslim majority countries and the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate, but projects itself as different from Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is essentially an Arab organisation, with Arabs holding senior positions and exercising command and control. As against this, the HT projects itself as a multi-ethnic Islamic organisation in which membership and senior positions are open to any Muslim, irrespective of his or her ethnic background.
43. Its Aims and Objectives say: “The Party accepts Muslim men and women as its members regardless of whether they are Arab or non-Arab, white or coloured, since it is a party for all Muslims. It invites all Muslims to carry Islam and adopt its systems regardless of their nationalities, colours and madhahib (Schools of Thought), as it looks to all of them according to the viewpoint of Islam."
44. Al Qaeda is often accused of working for the Arabisation of Islam in non-Arab countries. The HT seeks to protect itself from such charges. At the same time, it admits that in its work it gave the first priority to the Arab countries and explains it thus: “Although Islam is a universal ideology, its method does not, however, allow one to work for it universally from the beginning. It is necessary, however, to invite to it universally, and make the field of work for it in one country, or a few countries, until it is consolidated there and the Islamic State is established. The whole world is a suitable location for the Islamic da’wah. But since the people in the Muslim countries have already embraced Islam, it is necessary that the da’wah starts there. The Arab countries are the most suitable location to start carrying the da’wah because these countries, which constitute part of the Muslim world, are inhabited by people who speak the Arabic language, which is the language of the Qur’an and hadith, and is an essential part of Islam and a basic element of the Islamic culture. The Hizb began and started to carry the da’wah within some of the Arab countries. It then proceeded to expand the delivery of the da’wah naturally until it began to function in many Arab countries and also in non-Arab Muslim countries as well."
45. It projects itself as a politico-religious movement. It says: “Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political party whose ideology is Islam, so politics is its work and Islam is its ideology. It works within the Ummah and together with her, so that she adopts Islam as her cause and is led to restore the Khilafah and the ruling by what Allah revealed. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political group and not a priestly one. Nor is it an academic, educational or a charity group. The Islamic thought is the soul of its body, its core and the secret of its life. Its purpose is to revive the Islamic Ummah from the severe decline that it had reached, and to liberate it from the thoughts, systems and laws of Kufr, as well as the domination and influence of the Kufr states. It also aims to restore the Islamic Khilafah State so that the ruling by what Allah revealed returns. The Party, as well, aims at the correct revival of the Ummah through enlightened thought. It also strives to bring her back to her previous might and glory such that she wrests the reins of initiative away from other states and nations, and returns to her rightful place as the first state in the world, as she was in the past, when she governs the world according to the laws of Islam. It also aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah into a struggle with Kufr, its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world."
46. It projects its struggle as directed against "the disbelieving imperialists, to deliver the Ummah from their domination and to liberate her from their influence by uprooting their intellectual, cultural, political, economic and military roots from all of the Muslim countries. The political struggle also appears in challenging the rulers, revealing their treasons and conspiracies against the Ummah, and by taking them to task and changing them if they denied the rights of the Ummah, or refrained from performing their duties towards her, or ignored any matter of her affairs, or violated the laws of Islam. So all the work of the Party is political, whether it is in office or not. Its work is not educational, as it is not a school, nor is its work concerned with giving sermons and preaching. Rather its work is political."
47. The HT has a three-stage strategy for achieving its objectives. In the first stage, which it claims has already been completed, it concentrated on making individual Muslims all over the world aware of its ideology, message and political programme of action. The goal to be achieved was to create in individual Muslims an Islamic mind-set and Islamic emotions. In the second stage on which it is presently embarked, it concentrates on educating the Ummah as a whole as an entity. In the third stage, it proposes to focus on the achievement of political power in order to pave the way for Islamic rule according to the Sharia all over the Islamic world and the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate.
48. The HT projects itself as an organisation opposed to the use of terrorism or other forms of violence for achieving its objectives. It claims that it wants to achieve its objectives through AGITPROP (agitation-propaganda) techniques. This should not be mistaken to mean that it advises individual Muslims, including its followers, to shun the use of terrorism for promoting the interests of Islam. It sees no contradiction between its opposition to terrorism as an organisation and its followers resorting to jihadi terrorism in countries where such a dichotomy may be required and justified.
49. To quote the HT: "Whenever the disbelieving enemies attack an Islamic country it becomes compulsory on its Muslim citizens to repel the enemy. The members of Hizb ut-Tahrir in that country are a part of the Muslims and it is obligatory upon them as it is upon other Muslims, in their capacity as Muslims, to fight the enemy and repel them. Whenever there is a Muslim amir who declares jihad to enhance the Word of Allah and mobilises the people to do that, the members of Hizb ut-Tahrir will respond in their capacity as Muslims in the country where the general call to arms was proclaimed."
50. What, in effect, it says is that its members have two obligations. As members of the organisation, they cannot take to violence. As members of the Muslim community, they can take to arms if such a course of action is warranted by circumstances. Thus, in the CARs, the HT, as a universal organisation of Muslims, will not issue a call to its members to take to arms, but if the local leaders of the community issue a call to arms, its members would be free to join in their capacity as individual Muslims and not as HT members.
51. Thus, it would be quite in order for a Muslim to propagate overtly the non-violent ways of the HT and, at the same time, take to terrorism covertly as a member of Al Qaeda or the IIF. The clandestine ways of the HT, about whose leadership not much is known, add to the fears about the real nature of the organisation and its linkages with Al Qaeda and the IIF.
52. Some analysts, particularly in Pakistan, describe the HT as an international Sunni movement, similar to Al Qaeda, but the HT itself says that its message and appeal are addressed to all Muslims, whether Sunnis or Shias. It wants its movement to be seen as a universal Muslim movement and not as a Sunni one.
Horror murder of Jewish boy in Paris.
The vicious killing and torture in Paris last week of a young Jewish man, 20, has not been tied to a racist motive yet, but it is strongly suspected. He was kidnapped and a ransom demand was made to his family who are not wealthy.
It is assumed that this angered the kidnappers, while the torture was because they found out that he was Jewish.
On Sunday, despite the rain, approximately 5,000 people marched in Paris, from Republic Square to Nation Square. The march was dedicated to the memory of Ilan Halimi (z"l), viciously assasinated this past week.
A 24-year old blonde student was being questioned after being recognized as the 'bait' via the internet.
(Guysen Israel news).
It is assumed that this angered the kidnappers, while the torture was because they found out that he was Jewish.
On Sunday, despite the rain, approximately 5,000 people marched in Paris, from Republic Square to Nation Square. The march was dedicated to the memory of Ilan Halimi (z"l), viciously assasinated this past week.
A 24-year old blonde student was being questioned after being recognized as the 'bait' via the internet.
(Guysen Israel news).
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Saks on enemies and friends.
[In the USA, the President makes an annual "State of the Union" address to the population. Rabbi Jonathan Saks makes the equivalent address below to British and C'wlth. Jewry.
It is a brilliant analysis about to be published in full in the Jewish Chronicle, UK).
Thursday, 16 February 2006
Divestment: Chief Rabbi on enemies and friends.
The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, has written a hard-hitting article regarding the Church of England's divestment decision. The article is in tomorrow's Jewish Chronicle. It is reproduced here with their permission. As we ran Rowan Williams' letter in full, it is only fair to do the same forSir Jonathan.
At the end is the leader comment from Jeff Barak, JC managingeditor, and after that more from Lord Carey, addressing the Three FaithsForum. The Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks argues that British Jewry must remain calm in the face of recent, highly disturbing events, and continue to engage with the wider community'The strength of a people is tested in troubled times. These are troubled times. Events have succeeded one another at breakneck pace: the Iranian threat to wipe Israel off the map; the election by the Palestinians of Hamas, a group committed to the destruction of Israel; the violence following the publication of the Danish cartoons; and the Abu Hamza trial.
Locally there was the vote of the synod of the Church of England to heed a call to divest from companies associated with Israel; the Populus poll ofBritish Muslims; and Guardian articles accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. These are of altogether lesser consequence, but they have added to our sense of vulnerability. How should we respond?First let us acknowledge our anger and pain. Israel has taken great risksfor peace, yet it seems at every stage to be rewarded with furtherhostility.
The Jewish community in Britain has contributed immensely to national life, yet after 350 years we still feel at risk. Nor are our fears ungrounded. We have long and bitter memories. We recognise danger when we see it. To feel anger and pain is natural. To act on it, though, is another matter entirely. It is what our enemies anticipated. Often, it is what they intended. Action in the heat of emotion can be rash and ill-judged. It can make things worse. It can lead people to focus on the moment instead of thinking long-term. Especially if a group is small, it must choose its battlegrounds carefully. Wherever possible, it should not fight alone. It must win friends, and make its case from the highest of moral grounds. That is not weakness but wisdom.
Be deliberate in judgement, said the sages. They might have added: especially when the stakes are high.We carry with us decisive grounds for courage. The Jewish people has survived longer than any other religion or civilization the West has known.It was threatened by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval empires of Christianity and Islam, and in thetwentieth century by the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Each once bestrode the narrow world like a colossus, but all were eventually consigned to the pages of history. The Jewish people - seemingly small, weak,powerless - still lives. These encounters were not without their human cost, sometimes immense. But after each, the Jewish people rebuilt itself, never more so than after the Holocaust. If the strength of the people is tested in troubled times, ours is a people of awe-inspiring strength.We must now work together as a community, developing strategies, pooling our wisdom, cultivating our allies, sharing our strengths. Several meetings to this end have already taken place in recent days, and the work will continue in the coming months. We must respond with dignity and calm, thinking long-term, avoiding predictable reactions, never stooping to the level of our opponents. In tense times, the advantage goes to the group with the strongest nerves. After all that has befallen our people, we have strong nerves.
The most important fact about the present situation is that on the big issues, neither Israel nor the Jewish people stand alone. An Iran with nuclear capability is a threat not only to Israel but to the world. Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair have seen this clearly. So too have Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel. Chirac's statement on January 19 that France was prepared to launch a nuclear strike against any country sponsoring a terrorist attack against French interests, and Angela Merkel's comparison of Ahmadinejad to Hitler were immensely significant signals. These politicians know that the diatribes against Israel are a thinly disguised attack on the West and its freedoms.
As for the election of Hamas, this became inevitable because of the corruption of the previous regime. Every Palestinian knew this. The point, though, is that so did leading European politicians, who none the less continued to fund the Arafat administration. The politics of "sup with the devil so long as it's the devil you know" works in the short term but never in the long. America discovered this after funding the mujahideen radicals-Osama bin Laden's early associates - in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Europe must not make this mistake again.The violence following the Danish cartoons exceeded all bounds. Rightly, key representatives of the British Muslim community have dissociated themselves from it. The cartoons should not have been published. But if free speech has limits for the Danish press, it has limits for those who protest against the Danish press. As John Locke, the architect of tolerance, said more than three centuries ago: "It is unreasonable that any should have a free liberty of their religion who do not acknowledge it as a principle of theirs that nobody ought to persecute or molest another because he dissents from him in religion."
On all these issues we take our stand with those prepared to fight for tolerance, non-violent conflict resolution, moderation, mutual respect, self-restraint and the civilities of a free society. This is not a Jewish struggle but a human one, and we will work with people of goodwill, whatever their faith or lack of it.The vote of the synod of the Church of England to "heed" a call todivestment from certain companies associated with Israel was ill-judged evenon its own terms. The immediate result will be to reduce the Church's ability to act as a force for peace between Israel and the Palestinians for as long as the decision remains in force. The essence of mediation is the willingness to listen to both sides.The timing could not have been more inappropriate. Israel has risked civil war to carry out the Gaza withdrawal, the first time in the history of the Middle East that a nation has evacuated territory gained in a defensive war without a single concession, even the most nominal, on the other side.
Israel faces two enemies, Iran and Hamas, open in their threat to eliminate it. It needs support, not vilification.For years I have called on religious groups in Britain to send a message of friendship and coexistence to conflict zones throughout the world, instead of importing those conflicts into Britain itself. The effect of the synod vote will be the opposite. The Church has chosen to take a stand on the politics of the Middle East over which it has no influence, knowing that it will have the most adverse repercussions on a situation over which it has enormous influence, namely Jewish-Christian relations in Britain.That is why we cannot let the matter rest. If there was one candle of hope above all others after the Holocaust it was that Jews and Christians at last learned to speak to one another after some 17 centuries of hostility that led to exiles, expulsions, ghettoes, forced conversions, staged disputations, libels, inquisitions, burnings at the stake, massacres and pogroms. We must not let that candle be extinguished.The Church could have chosen, instead of penalizing Israel, to invest in the Palestinian economy. That would have helped the Palestinians. It would have had the support of most Israelis and most Jews.
Indeed it is anAustralian-born Jew, James Wolfensohn, former head of the World Bank, who is supervising the reconstruction of the Palestinian economy on behalf of the Group of Four, and who personally raised the funds to buy for thePalestinians the Israeli agricultural facilities in Gaza. The Church's gesture will hurt Israelis and Jews without helping the Palestinians. As a community, we must engage more actively in the promotion of good community relations, especially at the local level. We must teach ourselves and others the full history of our people's four-thousand-year bond with the land of Israel; how we were ousted by empire after empire but always returned; how Israel in the days of the prophets and today tirelessly sought peace, only to be rewarded with war. We must cultivate the friendship of people of generosity of spirit in all faiths. We must work with journalists who know that truth is never partisan. We must seek the support of politicians who speak to the highest, not the lowest, instincts of the public. We have enemies, but we have many friends.Above all, we must take our stand on the value system Abraham and Judaism conferred on the world.
The crisis humanity faces in the 21st century is not just political or economic, military or diplomatic. It is moral and spiritual. Can we be true to our faith while being a blessing to others regardless of their faith? Can we heed the call of God to mend not destroy?Aggression is the child of fear, and the only lasting antidote is the faith that says, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for You are with me."
We will never cease to love Israel, pray for peace, and work for the benefit of humanity. Our nerves must stay strong, our judgment calm and our language cool. And we will win. For if Jewish history has a message to the world, it is that there is something in the human spirit that cannot be defeated -something that gave and still gives our tiny, afflicted, tempest-tossed people the strength to outlive all its enemies while enlarging the moral imagination of mankind.'
In the JC's lead comment this week Jeff Barak, JC Managing Editor, writes:"The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, is known for his moderation and distaste for public bickering. Indeed, his supporters often chide him for failing to speak his mind. So for the Chief Rabbi to call a Church of England synod decision 'ill-judged', and to warn, in an article written especially for this newspaper, that the synod's vote to heed a call to divestment from certain companies associated with Israel will have 'the most adverse repercussions' on Jewish-Christian relations in Britain constitutes, in his vocabulary, a severe tongue-lashing. The Church of England, and in particular, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who voted in favour of the divestment call, deserves no less. In an extraordinarily convoluted letter to the Chief Rabbi, the Archbishop wrote that it was 'especially unfortunate' that the synod motion was voted on at a time when 'anti-Semitism is a growing menace and when the state of Israel faces some very particular challenges' both in terms of Hamas's election victory and the worrying developments in Iran.
This obviously begs the question as to why then the Archbishop still felt it necessary to lend his support to a motion that could only cause hurt to the British Jewish community. The Chief Rabbi is correct in saying that in the post-Holocaust world one ray of light has been the improvement in Christian-Jewish relations. But these closer ties should not be taken for granted, either by Jews or Christians. The organised leadership of the British Jewish community needs to make sure that the Jewish community's friends in the Christian world, and we do have friends there, are aware of this hurt. It will then be up to the Church to find a positive way to make amends for the regrettable and damaging synod decision. If it does not, the Jewish community should then begin to reassess its ties with the Anglican world."
According to Lord Carey, addressing the Three Faiths Forum, nothing demonstrated the need for the deepening of dialogue and understanding more than the recent uproar over the Danish cartoons and the call by the General Synod for "disinvestment" from certain businesses operating in Israel. Lord Carey said there was some commonality between the two actions, both of them illustrating the "law of unintended circumstances" and both of them essentially swipes at another faith that only deepen conflict and open fresh wounds. Applying the "law of unintended circumstances" to the Danish cartoons, Lord Carey asked if the papers would have printed the cartoons if they knew at the time that some people would lose their lives, others would be wounded, property destroyed and Muslims scandalised? He doubted it.
Similarly, he wondered whether the delegates to the General Synod were aware that their "disinvestment" call would be seen in Israel as calling its very legitimacy into question, enflaming anti-Semitism and encouraging terrorism?Sadly, he reflected, the decision of the Synod profoundly affects what he, Canon Andrew White and others were trying to do through the Foundation forReconciliation in the Middle East. It would affect the work of the Council of Christians and Jews and the International Council, too."Let us all hope and pray that instead of negative fall-out in the days to come, people of goodwill will be even more determined to create better understanding," he said.
It is a brilliant analysis about to be published in full in the Jewish Chronicle, UK).
Thursday, 16 February 2006
Divestment: Chief Rabbi on enemies and friends.
The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, has written a hard-hitting article regarding the Church of England's divestment decision. The article is in tomorrow's Jewish Chronicle. It is reproduced here with their permission. As we ran Rowan Williams' letter in full, it is only fair to do the same forSir Jonathan.
At the end is the leader comment from Jeff Barak, JC managingeditor, and after that more from Lord Carey, addressing the Three FaithsForum. The Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks argues that British Jewry must remain calm in the face of recent, highly disturbing events, and continue to engage with the wider community'The strength of a people is tested in troubled times. These are troubled times. Events have succeeded one another at breakneck pace: the Iranian threat to wipe Israel off the map; the election by the Palestinians of Hamas, a group committed to the destruction of Israel; the violence following the publication of the Danish cartoons; and the Abu Hamza trial.
Locally there was the vote of the synod of the Church of England to heed a call to divest from companies associated with Israel; the Populus poll ofBritish Muslims; and Guardian articles accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. These are of altogether lesser consequence, but they have added to our sense of vulnerability. How should we respond?First let us acknowledge our anger and pain. Israel has taken great risksfor peace, yet it seems at every stage to be rewarded with furtherhostility.
The Jewish community in Britain has contributed immensely to national life, yet after 350 years we still feel at risk. Nor are our fears ungrounded. We have long and bitter memories. We recognise danger when we see it. To feel anger and pain is natural. To act on it, though, is another matter entirely. It is what our enemies anticipated. Often, it is what they intended. Action in the heat of emotion can be rash and ill-judged. It can make things worse. It can lead people to focus on the moment instead of thinking long-term. Especially if a group is small, it must choose its battlegrounds carefully. Wherever possible, it should not fight alone. It must win friends, and make its case from the highest of moral grounds. That is not weakness but wisdom.
Be deliberate in judgement, said the sages. They might have added: especially when the stakes are high.We carry with us decisive grounds for courage. The Jewish people has survived longer than any other religion or civilization the West has known.It was threatened by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval empires of Christianity and Islam, and in thetwentieth century by the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Each once bestrode the narrow world like a colossus, but all were eventually consigned to the pages of history. The Jewish people - seemingly small, weak,powerless - still lives. These encounters were not without their human cost, sometimes immense. But after each, the Jewish people rebuilt itself, never more so than after the Holocaust. If the strength of the people is tested in troubled times, ours is a people of awe-inspiring strength.We must now work together as a community, developing strategies, pooling our wisdom, cultivating our allies, sharing our strengths. Several meetings to this end have already taken place in recent days, and the work will continue in the coming months. We must respond with dignity and calm, thinking long-term, avoiding predictable reactions, never stooping to the level of our opponents. In tense times, the advantage goes to the group with the strongest nerves. After all that has befallen our people, we have strong nerves.
The most important fact about the present situation is that on the big issues, neither Israel nor the Jewish people stand alone. An Iran with nuclear capability is a threat not only to Israel but to the world. Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair have seen this clearly. So too have Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel. Chirac's statement on January 19 that France was prepared to launch a nuclear strike against any country sponsoring a terrorist attack against French interests, and Angela Merkel's comparison of Ahmadinejad to Hitler were immensely significant signals. These politicians know that the diatribes against Israel are a thinly disguised attack on the West and its freedoms.
As for the election of Hamas, this became inevitable because of the corruption of the previous regime. Every Palestinian knew this. The point, though, is that so did leading European politicians, who none the less continued to fund the Arafat administration. The politics of "sup with the devil so long as it's the devil you know" works in the short term but never in the long. America discovered this after funding the mujahideen radicals-Osama bin Laden's early associates - in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Europe must not make this mistake again.The violence following the Danish cartoons exceeded all bounds. Rightly, key representatives of the British Muslim community have dissociated themselves from it. The cartoons should not have been published. But if free speech has limits for the Danish press, it has limits for those who protest against the Danish press. As John Locke, the architect of tolerance, said more than three centuries ago: "It is unreasonable that any should have a free liberty of their religion who do not acknowledge it as a principle of theirs that nobody ought to persecute or molest another because he dissents from him in religion."
On all these issues we take our stand with those prepared to fight for tolerance, non-violent conflict resolution, moderation, mutual respect, self-restraint and the civilities of a free society. This is not a Jewish struggle but a human one, and we will work with people of goodwill, whatever their faith or lack of it.The vote of the synod of the Church of England to "heed" a call todivestment from certain companies associated with Israel was ill-judged evenon its own terms. The immediate result will be to reduce the Church's ability to act as a force for peace between Israel and the Palestinians for as long as the decision remains in force. The essence of mediation is the willingness to listen to both sides.The timing could not have been more inappropriate. Israel has risked civil war to carry out the Gaza withdrawal, the first time in the history of the Middle East that a nation has evacuated territory gained in a defensive war without a single concession, even the most nominal, on the other side.
Israel faces two enemies, Iran and Hamas, open in their threat to eliminate it. It needs support, not vilification.For years I have called on religious groups in Britain to send a message of friendship and coexistence to conflict zones throughout the world, instead of importing those conflicts into Britain itself. The effect of the synod vote will be the opposite. The Church has chosen to take a stand on the politics of the Middle East over which it has no influence, knowing that it will have the most adverse repercussions on a situation over which it has enormous influence, namely Jewish-Christian relations in Britain.That is why we cannot let the matter rest. If there was one candle of hope above all others after the Holocaust it was that Jews and Christians at last learned to speak to one another after some 17 centuries of hostility that led to exiles, expulsions, ghettoes, forced conversions, staged disputations, libels, inquisitions, burnings at the stake, massacres and pogroms. We must not let that candle be extinguished.The Church could have chosen, instead of penalizing Israel, to invest in the Palestinian economy. That would have helped the Palestinians. It would have had the support of most Israelis and most Jews.
Indeed it is anAustralian-born Jew, James Wolfensohn, former head of the World Bank, who is supervising the reconstruction of the Palestinian economy on behalf of the Group of Four, and who personally raised the funds to buy for thePalestinians the Israeli agricultural facilities in Gaza. The Church's gesture will hurt Israelis and Jews without helping the Palestinians. As a community, we must engage more actively in the promotion of good community relations, especially at the local level. We must teach ourselves and others the full history of our people's four-thousand-year bond with the land of Israel; how we were ousted by empire after empire but always returned; how Israel in the days of the prophets and today tirelessly sought peace, only to be rewarded with war. We must cultivate the friendship of people of generosity of spirit in all faiths. We must work with journalists who know that truth is never partisan. We must seek the support of politicians who speak to the highest, not the lowest, instincts of the public. We have enemies, but we have many friends.Above all, we must take our stand on the value system Abraham and Judaism conferred on the world.
The crisis humanity faces in the 21st century is not just political or economic, military or diplomatic. It is moral and spiritual. Can we be true to our faith while being a blessing to others regardless of their faith? Can we heed the call of God to mend not destroy?Aggression is the child of fear, and the only lasting antidote is the faith that says, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for You are with me."
We will never cease to love Israel, pray for peace, and work for the benefit of humanity. Our nerves must stay strong, our judgment calm and our language cool. And we will win. For if Jewish history has a message to the world, it is that there is something in the human spirit that cannot be defeated -something that gave and still gives our tiny, afflicted, tempest-tossed people the strength to outlive all its enemies while enlarging the moral imagination of mankind.'
In the JC's lead comment this week Jeff Barak, JC Managing Editor, writes:"The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, is known for his moderation and distaste for public bickering. Indeed, his supporters often chide him for failing to speak his mind. So for the Chief Rabbi to call a Church of England synod decision 'ill-judged', and to warn, in an article written especially for this newspaper, that the synod's vote to heed a call to divestment from certain companies associated with Israel will have 'the most adverse repercussions' on Jewish-Christian relations in Britain constitutes, in his vocabulary, a severe tongue-lashing. The Church of England, and in particular, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who voted in favour of the divestment call, deserves no less. In an extraordinarily convoluted letter to the Chief Rabbi, the Archbishop wrote that it was 'especially unfortunate' that the synod motion was voted on at a time when 'anti-Semitism is a growing menace and when the state of Israel faces some very particular challenges' both in terms of Hamas's election victory and the worrying developments in Iran.
This obviously begs the question as to why then the Archbishop still felt it necessary to lend his support to a motion that could only cause hurt to the British Jewish community. The Chief Rabbi is correct in saying that in the post-Holocaust world one ray of light has been the improvement in Christian-Jewish relations. But these closer ties should not be taken for granted, either by Jews or Christians. The organised leadership of the British Jewish community needs to make sure that the Jewish community's friends in the Christian world, and we do have friends there, are aware of this hurt. It will then be up to the Church to find a positive way to make amends for the regrettable and damaging synod decision. If it does not, the Jewish community should then begin to reassess its ties with the Anglican world."
According to Lord Carey, addressing the Three Faiths Forum, nothing demonstrated the need for the deepening of dialogue and understanding more than the recent uproar over the Danish cartoons and the call by the General Synod for "disinvestment" from certain businesses operating in Israel. Lord Carey said there was some commonality between the two actions, both of them illustrating the "law of unintended circumstances" and both of them essentially swipes at another faith that only deepen conflict and open fresh wounds. Applying the "law of unintended circumstances" to the Danish cartoons, Lord Carey asked if the papers would have printed the cartoons if they knew at the time that some people would lose their lives, others would be wounded, property destroyed and Muslims scandalised? He doubted it.
Similarly, he wondered whether the delegates to the General Synod were aware that their "disinvestment" call would be seen in Israel as calling its very legitimacy into question, enflaming anti-Semitism and encouraging terrorism?Sadly, he reflected, the decision of the Synod profoundly affects what he, Canon Andrew White and others were trying to do through the Foundation forReconciliation in the Middle East. It would affect the work of the Council of Christians and Jews and the International Council, too."Let us all hope and pray that instead of negative fall-out in the days to come, people of goodwill will be even more determined to create better understanding," he said.
Israel and China.
Chinese Scholar of Judaic Studies Urges Closer Ties
By Anthony Weiss
February 17, 2006
In the same week that China handed Israel a major diplomatic victory by agreeing to allow the isssue of Iran's nuclear weapons program to be reported to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions, China's leading scholar of Judaic studies urged Jews and Jewish organizations to seek a stronger relationship with China.
Xu Xin, one of China's first scholars of Judaic studies and founder of the Center for Jewish Studies at Nanjing University, said that while the notion of stronger ties between Jews and China has been discussed and praised, he has seen little activity.
"We need people to endorse programs," he told the Forward. "They should take action."
Xu's remarks come at a time when Sino-Israeli relations are shifting in the wake of China's agreement to apply diplomatic pressure on Iran. The move surprised some observers who had assumed that China's dependence on Iran's oil would dissuade it from supporting diplomatic pressure on the nuclear issue.
China's rise as an economic, political and military power has led to increasing tensions with the United States. At the same time, this increasing profile on the world stage has brought some Chinese interests into harmony with those of Israel and Jews worldwide. In addition to China's growing concern about the dangers of Iran arming itself with nuclear weapons, Beijing has begun pointing to ties between Al Qaeda and Muslim separatist groups in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. According to Xu, although the Chinese government would not say so openly, Beijing believes that "Israel is not a threat. Islamic fundamentalism is a threat."
Xu has been pushing for efforts to capitalize on the growing points of agreement between China and Israel. Shalom Salmon Wald's 2004 strategy paper, titled "China and the Jewish People," drew heavily on Xu's expertise. The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a think tank established by the Jewish Agency for Israel, commissioned the paper.
The document urged the world's Jewish communities to cultivate an independent relationship with China as Jews, separate from American and Israeli interests. The paper makes a number of policy recommendations, including a permanent delegation in China representing world Jewry, greater distribution of Jewish materials through books, television and the Internet and greater support for Jewish scholarship in China.
Xu endorsed the findings of the paper, particularly the call for greater support for such Judaic studies programs as his own.
Xu said that while some Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Congress, had cultivated contacts with government officials, they had done little to promote Jewish studies in China.
"Political policy can be changed at any time, for any event," Xu said. Scholarly efforts, he added, would "lay a better foundation" for Chinese-Jewish relations.
During a recent visit to the United States, Xu spoke at a session of the Proshansky Jewish Studies Seminar Series at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In his remarks, he described the history of China's attitude toward Jews and Judaism.
Though a small Jewish community lived in the city of Kaifeng from the 12th through the 19th century, he said, the Chinese had little awareness of the Jews as a group until the 19th century, when the country was forcibly opened to Western influences. At that point the Chinese began to develop a positive image of Jews. They viewed the Jews as a minority that was, like China, oppressed by the Western powers but that had nonetheless registered great achievements as intellectuals, a minority that wielded impressive economic and financial power.
In the early 20th century, as China sought to modernize, various Chinese intellectuals turned to the Jews for inspiration. Many Chinese writers pointed to Yiddish literature as a model for the development of a vernacular, and Sun Yat-sen, modern China's nationalist hero, praised the Zionist movement as an exemplar of a popular quest for independence. In 1920, Sun wrote to the Shanghai Zionist Association in support of the Balfour Declaration.
China's contact with Jews persisted through World War II, as the cities of Shanghai, Harbin and Tianjin became home to thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe. Contact with the Jewish world largely ceased after the Communist Party took control of the country in 1949. However, interest in Jews was revived following the visit of Henry Kissinger, then assistant to President Nixon for national security affairs, in 1971 and the 1978 visit of Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal, who had been a refugee in Shanghai during World War II.
China has historically favored Arab countries over Israel in the Middle East. But Beijing and Jerusalem still have managed to develop an extensive and, at times, mutually beneficial relationship.
Israel formally recognized the People's Republic of China in 1950, though China did not extended full diplomatic recognition to Israel until 1992 — a move that Xu suggests was an attempt by China to improve its international image in the wake of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Starting in the early 1990s, Israel began supplying military weapons and technology to China for more than a decade. Then, in 2000, the United States blocked Israel from selling Phalcon radar equipment to China. Israeli-American tensions over China flared up again in 2004, when Washington pressured Jerusalem not to return Harpy attack drones that China had sent to Israel for upgrading.
Xu described a recent political cartoon that depicted Israel's military industry surrounded by a gate, with America holding the key.
In the wake of these incidents, the relationship between Israel and China has shifted away from military cooperation and toward technological and financial partnerships. Xu said that the Israeli consulate in Shanghai now announces on an almost weekly basis new agreements worth more than $100 million for Israeli investments in China, joint venture projects, new factories and other economic development projects. So frequent and so lucrative are the agreements that, according to Xu, it's as if "less than $100 million doesn't count."
Xu said that critical Chinese media coverage of the second intifada has had a negative effect on the image in China of Jews and Israel (the two are often conflated, he explained).
However, according to Xu, Israel and Israeli leaders still have a great deal of support in China. He noted that in the wake of Ariel Sharon's decision to break with the Likud, online polls in China showed 90% support for the leader, who was praised as "great hero" and a "real man."
Though China ceased to view Jews as victims after the formation of the State of Israel, Xu said that most Chinese continue to have a positive view of Jews, though not always an accurate one. Many Chinese wish to emulate the success of Jews in the realms of science, technology, business and finance. Some even see the power of American Jewish lobbying groups as a model for their own efforts to influence American policy.
Xu said he hopes that, in turn, the major Jewish organizations will recognize the long-term importance of establishing contacts in Chinese society beyond the government level, particularly in reaching out to Chinese scholars.
"If you have a better foundation, you can stand any kind of shocks," he said. "I hope people in empowered positions realize it."
Copyright 2006 © The Forward
By Anthony Weiss
February 17, 2006
In the same week that China handed Israel a major diplomatic victory by agreeing to allow the isssue of Iran's nuclear weapons program to be reported to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions, China's leading scholar of Judaic studies urged Jews and Jewish organizations to seek a stronger relationship with China.
Xu Xin, one of China's first scholars of Judaic studies and founder of the Center for Jewish Studies at Nanjing University, said that while the notion of stronger ties between Jews and China has been discussed and praised, he has seen little activity.
"We need people to endorse programs," he told the Forward. "They should take action."
Xu's remarks come at a time when Sino-Israeli relations are shifting in the wake of China's agreement to apply diplomatic pressure on Iran. The move surprised some observers who had assumed that China's dependence on Iran's oil would dissuade it from supporting diplomatic pressure on the nuclear issue.
China's rise as an economic, political and military power has led to increasing tensions with the United States. At the same time, this increasing profile on the world stage has brought some Chinese interests into harmony with those of Israel and Jews worldwide. In addition to China's growing concern about the dangers of Iran arming itself with nuclear weapons, Beijing has begun pointing to ties between Al Qaeda and Muslim separatist groups in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. According to Xu, although the Chinese government would not say so openly, Beijing believes that "Israel is not a threat. Islamic fundamentalism is a threat."
Xu has been pushing for efforts to capitalize on the growing points of agreement between China and Israel. Shalom Salmon Wald's 2004 strategy paper, titled "China and the Jewish People," drew heavily on Xu's expertise. The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a think tank established by the Jewish Agency for Israel, commissioned the paper.
The document urged the world's Jewish communities to cultivate an independent relationship with China as Jews, separate from American and Israeli interests. The paper makes a number of policy recommendations, including a permanent delegation in China representing world Jewry, greater distribution of Jewish materials through books, television and the Internet and greater support for Jewish scholarship in China.
Xu endorsed the findings of the paper, particularly the call for greater support for such Judaic studies programs as his own.
Xu said that while some Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Congress, had cultivated contacts with government officials, they had done little to promote Jewish studies in China.
"Political policy can be changed at any time, for any event," Xu said. Scholarly efforts, he added, would "lay a better foundation" for Chinese-Jewish relations.
During a recent visit to the United States, Xu spoke at a session of the Proshansky Jewish Studies Seminar Series at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In his remarks, he described the history of China's attitude toward Jews and Judaism.
Though a small Jewish community lived in the city of Kaifeng from the 12th through the 19th century, he said, the Chinese had little awareness of the Jews as a group until the 19th century, when the country was forcibly opened to Western influences. At that point the Chinese began to develop a positive image of Jews. They viewed the Jews as a minority that was, like China, oppressed by the Western powers but that had nonetheless registered great achievements as intellectuals, a minority that wielded impressive economic and financial power.
In the early 20th century, as China sought to modernize, various Chinese intellectuals turned to the Jews for inspiration. Many Chinese writers pointed to Yiddish literature as a model for the development of a vernacular, and Sun Yat-sen, modern China's nationalist hero, praised the Zionist movement as an exemplar of a popular quest for independence. In 1920, Sun wrote to the Shanghai Zionist Association in support of the Balfour Declaration.
China's contact with Jews persisted through World War II, as the cities of Shanghai, Harbin and Tianjin became home to thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe. Contact with the Jewish world largely ceased after the Communist Party took control of the country in 1949. However, interest in Jews was revived following the visit of Henry Kissinger, then assistant to President Nixon for national security affairs, in 1971 and the 1978 visit of Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal, who had been a refugee in Shanghai during World War II.
China has historically favored Arab countries over Israel in the Middle East. But Beijing and Jerusalem still have managed to develop an extensive and, at times, mutually beneficial relationship.
Israel formally recognized the People's Republic of China in 1950, though China did not extended full diplomatic recognition to Israel until 1992 — a move that Xu suggests was an attempt by China to improve its international image in the wake of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Starting in the early 1990s, Israel began supplying military weapons and technology to China for more than a decade. Then, in 2000, the United States blocked Israel from selling Phalcon radar equipment to China. Israeli-American tensions over China flared up again in 2004, when Washington pressured Jerusalem not to return Harpy attack drones that China had sent to Israel for upgrading.
Xu described a recent political cartoon that depicted Israel's military industry surrounded by a gate, with America holding the key.
In the wake of these incidents, the relationship between Israel and China has shifted away from military cooperation and toward technological and financial partnerships. Xu said that the Israeli consulate in Shanghai now announces on an almost weekly basis new agreements worth more than $100 million for Israeli investments in China, joint venture projects, new factories and other economic development projects. So frequent and so lucrative are the agreements that, according to Xu, it's as if "less than $100 million doesn't count."
Xu said that critical Chinese media coverage of the second intifada has had a negative effect on the image in China of Jews and Israel (the two are often conflated, he explained).
However, according to Xu, Israel and Israeli leaders still have a great deal of support in China. He noted that in the wake of Ariel Sharon's decision to break with the Likud, online polls in China showed 90% support for the leader, who was praised as "great hero" and a "real man."
Though China ceased to view Jews as victims after the formation of the State of Israel, Xu said that most Chinese continue to have a positive view of Jews, though not always an accurate one. Many Chinese wish to emulate the success of Jews in the realms of science, technology, business and finance. Some even see the power of American Jewish lobbying groups as a model for their own efforts to influence American policy.
Xu said he hopes that, in turn, the major Jewish organizations will recognize the long-term importance of establishing contacts in Chinese society beyond the government level, particularly in reaching out to Chinese scholars.
"If you have a better foundation, you can stand any kind of shocks," he said. "I hope people in empowered positions realize it."
Copyright 2006 © The Forward
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Where are the silent Muslim majority?
[An academic writes:]
Shalom Aleichem (Salaam Aleikum),
We wake up this morning to see video on CNN showing rampaging Muslims around the world. In Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Rim ... Muslim Mobs spreading mayhem. It seems that these angry Muslims are rioting and firing their AK-47s into the air because of cartoons. Yes . This latest epidemic of Muslim outrage comes to us because some newspapers in Norway and Denmark, insensitively (believing that they were just exercising freedom of speech), published some cartoons depicting Mohammed. Muslim outrage huh. OK ... let's do a little historical review:
Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.
Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building, in Saudi Arabia, because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to a Christian school in Indonesia. No Muslim outrage.
Daniel Pearl, Wall Street Journal reporter, beheaded on Arab TV. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Sinai, Egypt. No Muslim outrage.
A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
Over two hundred tourists killed by Muslim terrorists in Bali, Indonesia. No Muslim outrage.
Let's go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.
Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage
Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.
Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed. Muslims are outraged.
Dead children. Dead tourists. Dead teachers. Dead doctors and nurses. Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims .. No Muslim outrage ...
But publish a cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and all hell breaks loose.
Come on, is this really about cartoons? They're rampaging and burning flags. They're looking for Europeans to kidnap. They're threatening innkeepers and generally raising holy Muslim hell, not because of any outrage over a cartoon. They're outraged because it is part of the Islamic jihadist culture to be outraged. You don't really need a reason. You just need an excuse. Wandering around, destroying property, murdering children, firing guns into the air and feigning outrage over the slightest perceived insult.
I know and understand that these bloodthirsty murderers do not represent the majority of the world's Muslims. When, though, do they become outraged? When do they take to the streets to express their outrage, at the radicals who are making their religion, the object of worldwide hatred and ridicule? Islamic writer Salman Rushdie wrote of these silent Muslims in a New York Times article three years ago.
… "As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?"
Indeed. Why not? .
You may not necessarily agree with me ,and as an academic I respect your right to do so. After visiting and living in ten Islamic countries, I had always hoped, that a small amber of decency would enflame the Islamic world, and create a firestorm of enlightment and tolerance.
Please let me know why you disagree.(and me too. MM)
Shalom and Aloha,
Rafi
Hawaii 96732
Shalom Aleichem (Salaam Aleikum),
We wake up this morning to see video on CNN showing rampaging Muslims around the world. In Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Rim ... Muslim Mobs spreading mayhem. It seems that these angry Muslims are rioting and firing their AK-47s into the air because of cartoons. Yes . This latest epidemic of Muslim outrage comes to us because some newspapers in Norway and Denmark, insensitively (believing that they were just exercising freedom of speech), published some cartoons depicting Mohammed. Muslim outrage huh. OK ... let's do a little historical review:
Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.
Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building, in Saudi Arabia, because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to a Christian school in Indonesia. No Muslim outrage.
Daniel Pearl, Wall Street Journal reporter, beheaded on Arab TV. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Sinai, Egypt. No Muslim outrage.
A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
Over two hundred tourists killed by Muslim terrorists in Bali, Indonesia. No Muslim outrage.
Let's go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.
Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage
Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.
Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed. Muslims are outraged.
Dead children. Dead tourists. Dead teachers. Dead doctors and nurses. Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims .. No Muslim outrage ...
But publish a cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and all hell breaks loose.
Come on, is this really about cartoons? They're rampaging and burning flags. They're looking for Europeans to kidnap. They're threatening innkeepers and generally raising holy Muslim hell, not because of any outrage over a cartoon. They're outraged because it is part of the Islamic jihadist culture to be outraged. You don't really need a reason. You just need an excuse. Wandering around, destroying property, murdering children, firing guns into the air and feigning outrage over the slightest perceived insult.
I know and understand that these bloodthirsty murderers do not represent the majority of the world's Muslims. When, though, do they become outraged? When do they take to the streets to express their outrage, at the radicals who are making their religion, the object of worldwide hatred and ridicule? Islamic writer Salman Rushdie wrote of these silent Muslims in a New York Times article three years ago.
… "As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?"
Indeed. Why not? .
You may not necessarily agree with me ,and as an academic I respect your right to do so. After visiting and living in ten Islamic countries, I had always hoped, that a small amber of decency would enflame the Islamic world, and create a firestorm of enlightment and tolerance.
Please let me know why you disagree.(and me too. MM)
Shalom and Aloha,
Rafi
Hawaii 96732
Ex-terrorists now advocates for Israel.
Video of three reformed terrorists who appear not to be afraid to say the truth. A wake-up call for the US and the West?
They were interviewed on American television.
http://tinyurl.com/dl2dm
These three, and others, travel the world to advocate Israel. I often feel ashamed that these ex terrorists love Israel so much more than so many Jews. But it is also heartwarming.Some, like Walid Shoebat, have websites well worth visiting. Here is a quote from Walid Shoebat's book "Why I left Jihad""The Israeli Arab Conflict is not about geography but about Jew hatred; Throughout the Islamic as well as Christendom's history Jews have been persecuted, the persecution of Israel is just the same as the old antisemitism.
http://www.shoebat.com/
Just as fascinating is the story of Brigitte Gabriel. Brought up in Lebanon to hate Israelis, she developed an intense love when her mother needed medical attention that could only be obtained in Israel. She started the "American Congress for Truth" and has now dedicated her life to provide a clearer understanding of the Middle East conflict. See http://www.americancongressfortruth.com/index.html
To get a sample of her stirring passion you can see her speech at Columbia Unversity on the ICJS web site at
http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?article=160
Brigitte Gabriel interviewed by Phyllis Chesler on TV, in the same vein can be viewed at
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/db_video.html
MM
They were interviewed on American television.
http://tinyurl.com/dl2dm
These three, and others, travel the world to advocate Israel. I often feel ashamed that these ex terrorists love Israel so much more than so many Jews. But it is also heartwarming.Some, like Walid Shoebat, have websites well worth visiting. Here is a quote from Walid Shoebat's book "Why I left Jihad""The Israeli Arab Conflict is not about geography but about Jew hatred; Throughout the Islamic as well as Christendom's history Jews have been persecuted, the persecution of Israel is just the same as the old antisemitism.
http://www.shoebat.com/
Just as fascinating is the story of Brigitte Gabriel. Brought up in Lebanon to hate Israelis, she developed an intense love when her mother needed medical attention that could only be obtained in Israel. She started the "American Congress for Truth" and has now dedicated her life to provide a clearer understanding of the Middle East conflict. See http://www.americancongressfortruth.com/index.html
To get a sample of her stirring passion you can see her speech at Columbia Unversity on the ICJS web site at
http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?article=160
Brigitte Gabriel interviewed by Phyllis Chesler on TV, in the same vein can be viewed at
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/db_video.html
MM
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The "insult a Jew competition": the Leunig hoax!
The joke is on Leunig!
See:
Leunig in "insult a Jew competition" (www.theage.com.au)
Leunig's Iranian cartoon competition entry a 'set up'
The first news broadcast Tuesday morning (14/2) had the following item:
Leunig publishes Holocaust cartoon
From: Agence France-Presse By Siavosh Ghazi in tehran
February 14, 2006
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18141781-29277,00.html
RENOWNED Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig has submitted the first entry
in a controversial contest for cartoons of the Holocaust launched in Iran in
a tit-for-tat move over the caricatures of the prophet Mohammed that have
enraged Muslims worldwide.
"As a show of solidarity with the Muslim world, and an exercise in free
speech, I would like to submit a cartoon to you on the theme of the
Holocaust," Leunig was quoted as saying on Irancartoons.com, the website
organising the competition with Iran's biggest selling newspaper Hamshahri,
triggering outrage in the US and Germany in particular.
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already prompted international
anger by dismissing the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland
Europe's Jews as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel.
The first of the Melbourne-based Leunig's two cartoons on the website show a
poor man with a Star of David on his back walking towards the Auschwitz
death camp in 1945 with the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance.
The second shows the same scene but depicting "Israel 2002" with the slogan
"War Brings Peace" over the entrance and the same man walking towards it
bearing a rifle.
"I have had some difficulty getting this work published in my own country,
and I believe it would help highlight the hypocrisy of the West's attitude
to free speech if you were to publish it," Leunig was quoted as saying.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By 8.30am he had been interviewed on the ABC and denied any knowledge of this until someone alerted him to the website the previous night.
In the interview he tried to describe the cartoon (which had been banned at the time by the editor of the Age who was severely criticised for it but was subsequently shown on TV) as anti-war: i.e. that war is as deceptive as "Arbeit macht frei" over the gates of Aschwitz and described the other panel of the cartoon as "the Jewish soldier" in front of a gate saying: "war brings peace".
John Faine picked him up immediately: "Jewish soldier?" Dead silence! "Oh I am sorry,- I mean Israeli,--- forgive me, I've been up most of the night." He then went on a diatribe about how he was subjected to hate mail and threats over this and other cartoons,- but again John Faine interrupted him: "but your house wasn't burnt down nor was your life threatened, was it?"
"Not yet" was his reluctant reply!MM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Katherine Kizilos
February 15, 2006
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/drawn-into-controversy/2006/02/14/1139890738799.html
WHEN the news helicopter landed in the paddock next to the studio, even the three Jack Russells knew it was a big day at Michael Leunig's house.
The Age cartoonist's home near Euroa, in central Victoria, was disrupted yesterday by journalists seeking to inquire how it was that a Leunig cartoon, rejected for publication by former Age editor Michael Gawenda, was entered in a competition launched by the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri. The competition, to find a cartoon on the Holocaust insulting to Jews, follows the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper that angered Muslims around the world.
The first frame of the cartoon sent to Hamshahri shows a man with a Star of David on his back walking towards the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. The camp bears the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance. The second frame, set in Israel in 2002, shows a man with a rifle walking towards an entrance bearing the sign "War Brings Peace". The cartoon was accompanied by a note purporting to be from Leunig.
But Leunig said yesterday that he did not send the material — although he had received anonymous emails "trying to bait me into" entering the competition. He was pleased that the material was removed from the website when he wrote to the paper explaining that it was a hoax.
"I have gotten used to dirty tricks, dirty tactics, from the pro-war lobbyists," he said. "They want it proclaimed for all to see that Leunig is a friend of Muslim terrorists. They want to … distort my position."
He said that since taking an anti-war stance three years ago, he had received anonymous mail addressed to "Michael Leunig — friend of mass murderers". Death threats have arrived, too.
The cartoonist has no quarrel with those who take issue with his stance and write angry letters. He respects this as being part of the cut and thrust of public life. But he is concerned by the threatening, anonymous attacks. The war on Iraq has had an effect on the quality of our civil life, he says, and the threats against him are part of this.
Outside the sun is shining on his olive trees and vegetable patch. The war on Iraq is a long way away. "I want to paint pictures and listen to music and make wine," Leunig says. "I feel like I have been dragged from my civilian life into a horrible war."
The Age's senior deputy editor Paul Ramadge said yesterday that the paper shared Leunig's "frustration over this blatant misuse of his illustrations and false reporting of his words".
Age lawyer Peter Bartlett, from Minter Ellison, said a phone number connected to the email sent to Hamshahri was connected to the satirical website The Chaser, although this did not mean that people connected to The Chaser had sent it.
Julian Morrow, writer, performer and executive producer of the television satire The Chaser, said that he knew nothing about the matter and "it's nothing to do with the television show".
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ On the ABC news tonight, one of the writers for The Chaser admitted sending it! They are known for manufacturing hoaxes!
The editorial in The Australian accuses The Age of double standards when it comes to Leunig's ultra-Left cartoons: they claim not to wish to offend any section of the community, therefore won't be publishing the Mohammed cartoons! MM]
See:
Leunig in "insult a Jew competition" (www.theage.com.au)
Leunig's Iranian cartoon competition entry a 'set up'
The first news broadcast Tuesday morning (14/2) had the following item:
Leunig publishes Holocaust cartoon
From: Agence France-Presse By Siavosh Ghazi in tehran
February 14, 2006
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18141781-29277,00.html
RENOWNED Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig has submitted the first entry
in a controversial contest for cartoons of the Holocaust launched in Iran in
a tit-for-tat move over the caricatures of the prophet Mohammed that have
enraged Muslims worldwide.
"As a show of solidarity with the Muslim world, and an exercise in free
speech, I would like to submit a cartoon to you on the theme of the
Holocaust," Leunig was quoted as saying on Irancartoons.com, the website
organising the competition with Iran's biggest selling newspaper Hamshahri,
triggering outrage in the US and Germany in particular.
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already prompted international
anger by dismissing the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland
Europe's Jews as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel.
The first of the Melbourne-based Leunig's two cartoons on the website show a
poor man with a Star of David on his back walking towards the Auschwitz
death camp in 1945 with the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance.
The second shows the same scene but depicting "Israel 2002" with the slogan
"War Brings Peace" over the entrance and the same man walking towards it
bearing a rifle.
"I have had some difficulty getting this work published in my own country,
and I believe it would help highlight the hypocrisy of the West's attitude
to free speech if you were to publish it," Leunig was quoted as saying.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By 8.30am he had been interviewed on the ABC and denied any knowledge of this until someone alerted him to the website the previous night.
In the interview he tried to describe the cartoon (which had been banned at the time by the editor of the Age who was severely criticised for it but was subsequently shown on TV) as anti-war: i.e. that war is as deceptive as "Arbeit macht frei" over the gates of Aschwitz and described the other panel of the cartoon as "the Jewish soldier" in front of a gate saying: "war brings peace".
John Faine picked him up immediately: "Jewish soldier?" Dead silence! "Oh I am sorry,- I mean Israeli,--- forgive me, I've been up most of the night." He then went on a diatribe about how he was subjected to hate mail and threats over this and other cartoons,- but again John Faine interrupted him: "but your house wasn't burnt down nor was your life threatened, was it?"
"Not yet" was his reluctant reply!MM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Katherine Kizilos
February 15, 2006
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/drawn-into-controversy/2006/02/14/1139890738799.html
WHEN the news helicopter landed in the paddock next to the studio, even the three Jack Russells knew it was a big day at Michael Leunig's house.
The Age cartoonist's home near Euroa, in central Victoria, was disrupted yesterday by journalists seeking to inquire how it was that a Leunig cartoon, rejected for publication by former Age editor Michael Gawenda, was entered in a competition launched by the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri. The competition, to find a cartoon on the Holocaust insulting to Jews, follows the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper that angered Muslims around the world.
The first frame of the cartoon sent to Hamshahri shows a man with a Star of David on his back walking towards the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. The camp bears the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance. The second frame, set in Israel in 2002, shows a man with a rifle walking towards an entrance bearing the sign "War Brings Peace". The cartoon was accompanied by a note purporting to be from Leunig.
But Leunig said yesterday that he did not send the material — although he had received anonymous emails "trying to bait me into" entering the competition. He was pleased that the material was removed from the website when he wrote to the paper explaining that it was a hoax.
"I have gotten used to dirty tricks, dirty tactics, from the pro-war lobbyists," he said. "They want it proclaimed for all to see that Leunig is a friend of Muslim terrorists. They want to … distort my position."
He said that since taking an anti-war stance three years ago, he had received anonymous mail addressed to "Michael Leunig — friend of mass murderers". Death threats have arrived, too.
The cartoonist has no quarrel with those who take issue with his stance and write angry letters. He respects this as being part of the cut and thrust of public life. But he is concerned by the threatening, anonymous attacks. The war on Iraq has had an effect on the quality of our civil life, he says, and the threats against him are part of this.
Outside the sun is shining on his olive trees and vegetable patch. The war on Iraq is a long way away. "I want to paint pictures and listen to music and make wine," Leunig says. "I feel like I have been dragged from my civilian life into a horrible war."
The Age's senior deputy editor Paul Ramadge said yesterday that the paper shared Leunig's "frustration over this blatant misuse of his illustrations and false reporting of his words".
Age lawyer Peter Bartlett, from Minter Ellison, said a phone number connected to the email sent to Hamshahri was connected to the satirical website The Chaser, although this did not mean that people connected to The Chaser had sent it.
Julian Morrow, writer, performer and executive producer of the television satire The Chaser, said that he knew nothing about the matter and "it's nothing to do with the television show".
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ On the ABC news tonight, one of the writers for The Chaser admitted sending it! They are known for manufacturing hoaxes!
The editorial in The Australian accuses The Age of double standards when it comes to Leunig's ultra-Left cartoons: they claim not to wish to offend any section of the community, therefore won't be publishing the Mohammed cartoons! MM]
Sunday, February 12, 2006
FIGHT HATRED WITH HUMOUR: WUJS CARTOON CONTEST
WUJS Global campaign "Against Hatred""Fight hate with humor" Cartoon Contest
http://www.wujs.org.il/home/cartoon.php
The World Union of Jewish Students in conjunction with editorial cartoonists, Edward Margolis and Noah Crissey, has announced an International Editorial Cartoon Competition for students called “Fight Hate with Humor.” Acting in response to an Iranian contest where students around the world have been invited to join in a global competition to create hate cartoons depicting “A World without Zionism”, “A World without the United States”, and glorifying the “Intifada”, they plan with humor “to stand the Iranians on their heads.”Furthermore, a prominent Iranian newspaper announced the launch of a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. ( see CNN article)
According to cartoonist, Margolis, “the whole thing about the Iranian Contest would be hilarious if it weren’t so terrifying.” In that vein, Margolis and his partner, Crissey, submitted their “Iranian College Bowl” spoof in the Iranian Contest. WUJS Chairperson, Viktoria Dolburd states that: "Although cartoons, such as the ones published in the Danish newspaper against the prophet Mohammed may be offensive, nevertheless this is no justification for the recent acts of violence targeting European representatives and citizens worldwide including boycotting products from said countries or burning down embassies". "As the younger generation we have a responsibility to strive for world peace so that our children and grandchildren will have a safer future. The origins of all the local and global conflicts in the world came from hatred. We need to act to reduce hatred, through all means possible just as education, activism, or as in this case, through humor".
Margolis points to the fact that “editorial cartoons in Iran and throughout the Middle East are taken very seriously and are considered to be a barometer of public opinion. Totalitarian governments recognize the power of these strong visual images and through state controlled media use cartoons to manipulate the masses even where literacy is low. Meanwhile, In the U.S., newspapers have actually been eliminating staff editorial cartoonists, and the independence of this once powerful voice has been muted.” Through this contest, Margolis hopes to both stimulate interest amongst would-be student editorial cartoonists and put the U.S. media on notice of the propaganda threat posed by the hate cartoons coming out of Iran.
How can I participate?
Do you or someone you know have a talent at drawing cartoons.....?Are you interested in taking part in the global WUJS campaign designed to teach about the alternatives to negative and aggresive PR throughout the world? The cartoon competition is looking for funny answers/examples of how to fight hatred with humour!
From Febuary, 1st until May 1st you will have the opportunity to submit your cartoons here. Afterwards a jury will select the best cartoons which will be published as part of the global WUJS campaign against hatred. Check us out to find out more about the prizes available to the winners of the competition.
Help WUJS spread the word so that we can successfully fight hate with the help of humor!See also: WUJS promotes "Buying Danish." This wonderful people and their King stood by the Jewish people when it mattered. =========================================================================ZNN is for distributing and getting information about Zionism, Israel, Israeli and Zionist history, Israel advocacy and anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionist and other racist materials not accepted. Contents are solely the responsibility of the posters. This is not a discussion group. Please use our forums for discussions: http://www.zionism-israel.com/cgi/yabb/YaBB.cgi http://www.zionismontheweb.org/boardsVisit these web-sites: http://www.zionism-israel.com/ http://www.zionismontheweb.org/ http://www.zionism.netfirms.com/=========================================================================
SPONSORED LINKS
Zionism
Middle east
Israel
Politics
American politics
http://www.wujs.org.il/home/cartoon.php
The World Union of Jewish Students in conjunction with editorial cartoonists, Edward Margolis and Noah Crissey, has announced an International Editorial Cartoon Competition for students called “Fight Hate with Humor.” Acting in response to an Iranian contest where students around the world have been invited to join in a global competition to create hate cartoons depicting “A World without Zionism”, “A World without the United States”, and glorifying the “Intifada”, they plan with humor “to stand the Iranians on their heads.”Furthermore, a prominent Iranian newspaper announced the launch of a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. ( see CNN article)
According to cartoonist, Margolis, “the whole thing about the Iranian Contest would be hilarious if it weren’t so terrifying.” In that vein, Margolis and his partner, Crissey, submitted their “Iranian College Bowl” spoof in the Iranian Contest. WUJS Chairperson, Viktoria Dolburd states that: "Although cartoons, such as the ones published in the Danish newspaper against the prophet Mohammed may be offensive, nevertheless this is no justification for the recent acts of violence targeting European representatives and citizens worldwide including boycotting products from said countries or burning down embassies". "As the younger generation we have a responsibility to strive for world peace so that our children and grandchildren will have a safer future. The origins of all the local and global conflicts in the world came from hatred. We need to act to reduce hatred, through all means possible just as education, activism, or as in this case, through humor".
Margolis points to the fact that “editorial cartoons in Iran and throughout the Middle East are taken very seriously and are considered to be a barometer of public opinion. Totalitarian governments recognize the power of these strong visual images and through state controlled media use cartoons to manipulate the masses even where literacy is low. Meanwhile, In the U.S., newspapers have actually been eliminating staff editorial cartoonists, and the independence of this once powerful voice has been muted.” Through this contest, Margolis hopes to both stimulate interest amongst would-be student editorial cartoonists and put the U.S. media on notice of the propaganda threat posed by the hate cartoons coming out of Iran.
How can I participate?
Do you or someone you know have a talent at drawing cartoons.....?Are you interested in taking part in the global WUJS campaign designed to teach about the alternatives to negative and aggresive PR throughout the world? The cartoon competition is looking for funny answers/examples of how to fight hatred with humour!
From Febuary, 1st until May 1st you will have the opportunity to submit your cartoons here. Afterwards a jury will select the best cartoons which will be published as part of the global WUJS campaign against hatred. Check us out to find out more about the prizes available to the winners of the competition.
Help WUJS spread the word so that we can successfully fight hate with the help of humor!See also: WUJS promotes "Buying Danish." This wonderful people and their King stood by the Jewish people when it mattered. =========================================================================ZNN is for distributing and getting information about Zionism, Israel, Israeli and Zionist history, Israel advocacy and anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionist and other racist materials not accepted. Contents are solely the responsibility of the posters. This is not a discussion group. Please use our forums for discussions: http://www.zionism-israel.com/cgi/yabb/YaBB.cgi http://www.zionismontheweb.org/boardsVisit these web-sites: http://www.zionism-israel.com/ http://www.zionismontheweb.org/ http://www.zionism.netfirms.com/=========================================================================
SPONSORED LINKS
Zionism
Middle east
Israel
Politics
American politics
Friday, February 10, 2006
ZIONISM: Jewish Peoplehood & the realization of their national aspiration.
ISRAEL: what this nation means to the Jewish people everywhere.
(What this tiny nation gave to the world, see prev. post below
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2005_11_20_anivlam_archive.html )
Jerusalem Program 2004 : definition of Zionism.
Zionism is a dynamic ideology. That is why the core definition and aims of Zionism are periodically revised and updated. Below is the text that was endorsed in the Zionist Council session that took place in June 2004 in Jerusalem.
Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, brought about the establishment of the State of Israel, and views a Jewish, Zionist, democratic and secure State of Israel to be the expression of the common responsibility of the Jewish people for its continuity and future.
The foundations of Zionism are:
1. The unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation;
2. Aliyah to Israel from all countries and the effective integration of all immigrants into Israeli Society.
3. Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state and shaping it as an exemplary society with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people, rooted in the vision of the prophets, striving for peace and contributing to the betterment of the world.
4. Ensuring the future and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education, fostering spiritual and cultural values and teaching Hebrew as the national language;
5. Nurturing mutual Jewish responsibility, defending the rights of Jews as individuals and as a nation, representing the national Zionist interests of the Jewish people, and struggling against all manifestations of anti-Semitism;
6. Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism.
Regarding the Jewish connection with Israel see:
http://zionism-israel.com/issues/Zionism_Israel_Wujs_Jewish_right.html
Regarding "was Israel created because of the Holocaust" see two
long articles at MidEastWeb
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000346.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000349.htm
"If I forget thee O' Jerusalem"
-----------------------------------------
Eyes watchful
I yearn day after day
And wonder
When I will come and witness
Jerusalem rebuilt.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(What this tiny nation gave to the world, see prev. post below
http://anivlam.blogspot.com/2005_11_20_anivlam_archive.html )
Jerusalem Program 2004 : definition of Zionism.
Zionism is a dynamic ideology. That is why the core definition and aims of Zionism are periodically revised and updated. Below is the text that was endorsed in the Zionist Council session that took place in June 2004 in Jerusalem.
Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, brought about the establishment of the State of Israel, and views a Jewish, Zionist, democratic and secure State of Israel to be the expression of the common responsibility of the Jewish people for its continuity and future.
The foundations of Zionism are:
1. The unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation;
2. Aliyah to Israel from all countries and the effective integration of all immigrants into Israeli Society.
3. Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state and shaping it as an exemplary society with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people, rooted in the vision of the prophets, striving for peace and contributing to the betterment of the world.
4. Ensuring the future and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education, fostering spiritual and cultural values and teaching Hebrew as the national language;
5. Nurturing mutual Jewish responsibility, defending the rights of Jews as individuals and as a nation, representing the national Zionist interests of the Jewish people, and struggling against all manifestations of anti-Semitism;
6. Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism.
Regarding the Jewish connection with Israel see:
http://zionism-israel.com/issues/Zionism_Israel_Wujs_Jewish_right.html
Regarding "was Israel created because of the Holocaust" see two
long articles at MidEastWeb
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000346.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000349.htm
"If I forget thee O' Jerusalem"
-----------------------------------------
Eyes watchful
I yearn day after day
And wonder
When I will come and witness
Jerusalem rebuilt.
How pleasant is her dwelling place,
How very lovely her inheritance,
Mountains surround her,
A wall of fire-
The flame of God.
(XIIIth Century, traditional hymn of the Jews of North Africa in Seder Yedidut)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Takiyya and kitman: the role of deception in Islamic terrorism
A comment sent following Rabbi Boteach's article earlier on this blog, re "taqiyya" made me look it up. I found amongst thousands of refs. on Google, the following interpretation.
I am not sure whether the comment was made to imply that the rioting about religious offense is only a diversion from the real political purpose of punishing Europe and Denmark in particular, prior to censuring Iran at the Security Council; or to prove how "democratic" these countries are,- they are allowed to 'protest',- as long as it is not against their own Governments and leaders!! But it's all about 'lying',- supposedly allowed only to save themselves????Save whom,- Iran and Syrian leaders?
Now we know why the Arab leaders say one thing to Western audiences in English and something else in Arabic to their people. In Christianity, lying is a sin, but it seems that this is a worthy ploy against "infidels" in Islamic cultures.
MM
--------------------------------------------------------------
Shortcut to: http://www.ci-ce-ct.com/Feature%20articles/02-12-2002.asp
Taqiyya and kitman: The role of Deception in Islam.
Tradecraft. Persona. Deception. Disinformation. Cover: Western operational terms and techniques.
But, Islamic terrorists have their own terms: taqiyya (pronounced tark-e-ya) : precautionary dissimulation or deception and keeping one’s convictions secret and a synonymous term, kitman: mental reservation and dissimulation or concealment of malevolent intentions...
Taqiyya and kitman or ‘holy hypocrisy’ has been diffused throughout Arabic culture for over fourteen hundred years since it was developed by Shiites as a means of defence and concealment of beliefs against Sunni unbelievers. As the Prophet said: 'he who keeps secrets shall soon attain his objectives.’
The skilful use of taqiyya and kitman was often a matter of life and death against enemies; it is also a matter of life and death to many contemporary Islamic terrorists. As so often in the history of Islam, a theological doctrine became operational.
During the Spanish inquisition, Sunni Moriscos attended mass and returned home to wash their hands of the ‘holy water’. In operational terms, taqiyya and kitman allowed the ‘mujahadeen ’ to assume whatever identity was necessary to fulfill their mission; they had doctrinal and theological and later jurisprudential sanction to pretend to be Jews or Christians to gain access to Christian and Jewish targets: ‘the mujahadeen can take the shape of the enemy’.
Taqiyya is common to both Shiite and Sunni Muslim discourse and has significant implications for understanding Islamic fundamentalism and terrorist operations. The theory and practice of counter terrorism would be counter productive, indeed pointless, and even harmful, without reference to taqiyya and kitman and the crucial role of deception ranging from Islamic jurisprudence to Al Qaeda training manuals, which carry detailed instructions on the use of deception by terrorists in Western target countries.
According to Christian ethics lying is a sin; In Islamic jurisprudence and theology, the use of taqiyya against the unbelievers is regarded as a virtue and a religious duty.
"Verily the most honourable of you in the sight of God is the most pious among you; verily, God is knowing, aware!" 49:13
Shi'a interpret the phrase above as "he among you who exercises Taqiyya most"
Like many Islamic concepts taqiyya and kitman were formed within the context of the Arab-Islamic matrix of tribalism, expansionary warfare and conflict. Taqiyya has been used by Muslims since the 7th century to confuse and split 'the enemy’. A favored tactic was ‘deceptive triangulation’; to persuade the enemy that jihad was not aimed at them but at another enemy. Another tactic was to deny that there was jihad at all. The fate for such faulty assessments by the target was death.
I am not sure whether the comment was made to imply that the rioting about religious offense is only a diversion from the real political purpose of punishing Europe and Denmark in particular, prior to censuring Iran at the Security Council; or to prove how "democratic" these countries are,- they are allowed to 'protest',- as long as it is not against their own Governments and leaders!! But it's all about 'lying',- supposedly allowed only to save themselves????Save whom,- Iran and Syrian leaders?
Now we know why the Arab leaders say one thing to Western audiences in English and something else in Arabic to their people. In Christianity, lying is a sin, but it seems that this is a worthy ploy against "infidels" in Islamic cultures.
MM
--------------------------------------------------------------
Shortcut to: http://www.ci-ce-ct.com/Feature%20articles/02-12-2002.asp
Taqiyya and kitman: The role of Deception in Islam.
Tradecraft. Persona. Deception. Disinformation. Cover: Western operational terms and techniques.
But, Islamic terrorists have their own terms: taqiyya (pronounced tark-e-ya) : precautionary dissimulation or deception and keeping one’s convictions secret and a synonymous term, kitman: mental reservation and dissimulation or concealment of malevolent intentions...
Taqiyya and kitman or ‘holy hypocrisy’ has been diffused throughout Arabic culture for over fourteen hundred years since it was developed by Shiites as a means of defence and concealment of beliefs against Sunni unbelievers. As the Prophet said: 'he who keeps secrets shall soon attain his objectives.’
The skilful use of taqiyya and kitman was often a matter of life and death against enemies; it is also a matter of life and death to many contemporary Islamic terrorists. As so often in the history of Islam, a theological doctrine became operational.
During the Spanish inquisition, Sunni Moriscos attended mass and returned home to wash their hands of the ‘holy water’. In operational terms, taqiyya and kitman allowed the ‘mujahadeen ’ to assume whatever identity was necessary to fulfill their mission; they had doctrinal and theological and later jurisprudential sanction to pretend to be Jews or Christians to gain access to Christian and Jewish targets: ‘the mujahadeen can take the shape of the enemy’.
Taqiyya is common to both Shiite and Sunni Muslim discourse and has significant implications for understanding Islamic fundamentalism and terrorist operations. The theory and practice of counter terrorism would be counter productive, indeed pointless, and even harmful, without reference to taqiyya and kitman and the crucial role of deception ranging from Islamic jurisprudence to Al Qaeda training manuals, which carry detailed instructions on the use of deception by terrorists in Western target countries.
According to Christian ethics lying is a sin; In Islamic jurisprudence and theology, the use of taqiyya against the unbelievers is regarded as a virtue and a religious duty.
"Verily the most honourable of you in the sight of God is the most pious among you; verily, God is knowing, aware!" 49:13
Shi'a interpret the phrase above as "he among you who exercises Taqiyya most"
Like many Islamic concepts taqiyya and kitman were formed within the context of the Arab-Islamic matrix of tribalism, expansionary warfare and conflict. Taqiyya has been used by Muslims since the 7th century to confuse and split 'the enemy’. A favored tactic was ‘deceptive triangulation’; to persuade the enemy that jihad was not aimed at them but at another enemy. Another tactic was to deny that there was jihad at all. The fate for such faulty assessments by the target was death.
Drafting Hitler by David Brooks. NY Times.
Drafting Hitler
By David BROOKS
New York Times
February 9, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/opinion/09brooks.html
You want us to know how you feel. You in the Arab European League published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank so we in the West would understand how offended you were by those Danish cartoons. You at the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri are holding a Holocaust cartoon contest so we'll also know how you feel.
Well, I saw the Hitler-Anne Frank cartoon: the two have just had sex and Hitler says to her, "Write this one in your diary, Anne." But I still don't know how you feel. I still don't feel as if I should burn embassies or behead people or call on God or bin Laden to exterminate my foes. I still don't feel your rage. I don't feel threatened by a sophomoric cartoon, even one as tasteless as that one.
At first I sympathized with your anger at the Danish cartoons because it's impolite to trample on other people's religious symbols. But as the rage spread and the issue grew more cosmic, many of us in the West were reminded of how vast the chasm is between you and us. There was more talk than ever about a clash of civilizations. We don't just have different ideas; we have a different relationship to ideas.
We in the West were born into a world that reflects the legacy of Socrates and the agora. In our world, images, statistics and arguments swarm around from all directions. There are movies and blogs, books and sermons. There's the profound and the vulgar, the high and the low.
In our world we spend our time sifting and measuring, throwing away the dumb and offensive, e-mailing the smart and the incisive. We aim, in Michael Oakeshott's words, to live amid the conversation - "an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure in which, in imagination, we enter a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves and are not disconcerted by the differences or dismayed by the inconclusiveness of it all."
We believe in progress and in personal growth. By swimming in this flurry of perspectives, by facing unpleasant facts, we try to come closer and closer to understanding.
But you have a different way. When I say you, I don't mean you Muslims. I don't mean you genuine Islamic scholars and learners. I mean you Islamists. I mean you young men who were well educated in the West, but who have retreated in disgust from the inconclusiveness and chaos of our conversation. You've retreated from the agora into an exaggerated version of Muslim purity.
You frame the contrast between your world and our world more bluntly than we outsiders would ever dare to. In London the protesters held signs reading "Freedom Go to Hell," "Exterminate Those Who Mock Islam," "Be Prepared for the Real Holocaust" and "Europe You Will Pay, Your 9/11 Is on the Way." In Copenhagen, an imam declared, "In the West, freedom of speech is sacred; to us, the prophet is sacred" - as if the two were necessarily opposed.
Our mind-set is progressive and rational. Your mind-set is pre-Enlightenment and mythological. In your worldview, history doesn't move forward through gradual understanding. In your worldview, history is resolved during the apocalyptic conflict between the supernaturally pure jihadist and the supernaturally evil Jew.
You seize on any shred - even a months-old cartoon from an obscure Danish paper
- to prove to yourself that the Jew and the crusader are on the offensive, that the apocalyptic confrontation is at hand. You invent primitive stories - like the one about Jews who kill children for their blood - to reinforce your image of Jewish evil. You deny the Holocaust because if the Jews were as powerful as you say, they would never have allowed it to happen.
In my world, people search for truth in their own diverse ways. In your world, the faithful and the infidel battle for survival, and words and ideas and cartoons are nothing more than weapons in that war.
So, of course, what started in Denmark ended up for you with Hitler, the Holocaust and the Jew. But in your overreaction this past week, your defensiveness is showing. Democracy is coming to your region, and democracy brings the conversation. Mainstream leaders like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani are embracing democracy and denouncing your riots as "misguided and oppressive."
You fundamentalists have turned yourselves into a superpower of dysfunction, demanding our attention week after week. But it is hard to intimidate people forever into silence, to bottle up the conversation, to lock the world into an epic war only you want. While I don't share your rage, I do understand your panic.
By David BROOKS
New York Times
February 9, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/opinion/09brooks.html
You want us to know how you feel. You in the Arab European League published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank so we in the West would understand how offended you were by those Danish cartoons. You at the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri are holding a Holocaust cartoon contest so we'll also know how you feel.
Well, I saw the Hitler-Anne Frank cartoon: the two have just had sex and Hitler says to her, "Write this one in your diary, Anne." But I still don't know how you feel. I still don't feel as if I should burn embassies or behead people or call on God or bin Laden to exterminate my foes. I still don't feel your rage. I don't feel threatened by a sophomoric cartoon, even one as tasteless as that one.
At first I sympathized with your anger at the Danish cartoons because it's impolite to trample on other people's religious symbols. But as the rage spread and the issue grew more cosmic, many of us in the West were reminded of how vast the chasm is between you and us. There was more talk than ever about a clash of civilizations. We don't just have different ideas; we have a different relationship to ideas.
We in the West were born into a world that reflects the legacy of Socrates and the agora. In our world, images, statistics and arguments swarm around from all directions. There are movies and blogs, books and sermons. There's the profound and the vulgar, the high and the low.
In our world we spend our time sifting and measuring, throwing away the dumb and offensive, e-mailing the smart and the incisive. We aim, in Michael Oakeshott's words, to live amid the conversation - "an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure in which, in imagination, we enter a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves and are not disconcerted by the differences or dismayed by the inconclusiveness of it all."
We believe in progress and in personal growth. By swimming in this flurry of perspectives, by facing unpleasant facts, we try to come closer and closer to understanding.
But you have a different way. When I say you, I don't mean you Muslims. I don't mean you genuine Islamic scholars and learners. I mean you Islamists. I mean you young men who were well educated in the West, but who have retreated in disgust from the inconclusiveness and chaos of our conversation. You've retreated from the agora into an exaggerated version of Muslim purity.
You frame the contrast between your world and our world more bluntly than we outsiders would ever dare to. In London the protesters held signs reading "Freedom Go to Hell," "Exterminate Those Who Mock Islam," "Be Prepared for the Real Holocaust" and "Europe You Will Pay, Your 9/11 Is on the Way." In Copenhagen, an imam declared, "In the West, freedom of speech is sacred; to us, the prophet is sacred" - as if the two were necessarily opposed.
Our mind-set is progressive and rational. Your mind-set is pre-Enlightenment and mythological. In your worldview, history doesn't move forward through gradual understanding. In your worldview, history is resolved during the apocalyptic conflict between the supernaturally pure jihadist and the supernaturally evil Jew.
You seize on any shred - even a months-old cartoon from an obscure Danish paper
- to prove to yourself that the Jew and the crusader are on the offensive, that the apocalyptic confrontation is at hand. You invent primitive stories - like the one about Jews who kill children for their blood - to reinforce your image of Jewish evil. You deny the Holocaust because if the Jews were as powerful as you say, they would never have allowed it to happen.
In my world, people search for truth in their own diverse ways. In your world, the faithful and the infidel battle for survival, and words and ideas and cartoons are nothing more than weapons in that war.
So, of course, what started in Denmark ended up for you with Hitler, the Holocaust and the Jew. But in your overreaction this past week, your defensiveness is showing. Democracy is coming to your region, and democracy brings the conversation. Mainstream leaders like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani are embracing democracy and denouncing your riots as "misguided and oppressive."
You fundamentalists have turned yourselves into a superpower of dysfunction, demanding our attention week after week. But it is hard to intimidate people forever into silence, to bottle up the conversation, to lock the world into an epic war only you want. While I don't share your rage, I do understand your panic.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
A manifesto for murder: Hamas charter!
A manifesto for murder [Daniel Goldhagen on Hamas charter]
Los Angeles TimesFebruary 5, 2006
A manifesto for murderBy Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
DANIEL JONAH GOLDHAGEN, a member of Harvard's Center for European Studies, is the author of "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-goldhagen5feb05,0,1890552.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
[Seldom in the modern world has a political party enshrined such hallucinatory hatred and overt murderousness against another people in its constitution, and more seldom still has such a party taken power. The Nazi Party Program of 1920 also contained much anti-Semitism, but compared to Hamas' charter, its demonology and prescriptions were tame. Given the extreme political costs of such speech, governments, political parties and political leaders rarely speak the language of annihilation openly. So when they do, we should take them at their word. The last 100 years have shown that those expressing murderous dreams, like Hitler, mean it.]
MUCH HAS been said about the Hamas charter's call for the destruction of Israel and the need for Hamas to renounce this goal as the condition for being granted international legitimacy, economic aid and diplomatic recognition.But an examination of the charter (available at http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html ) reveals that Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is not just dedicated (however wrongly or murderously) to the destruction of Israel. It shows Hamas to be governed by a Nazi-like genocidal orientation to Jews in general.It would be no surprise if a self-styled Palestinian liberation movement depicted Israel in unflattering or even (if we indulge the movement some license to exaggerate) venomous terms. Yet Hamas' 9,000-word charter of 1988 - repeatedly reconfirmed by its leaders - pits Jews, Israelis and Zionists (used pretty much interchangeably in the charter) in Manichaean conflict, not just with Palestinians, but with Islam, which to Hamas is synonymous with all goodness."Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims," Article 28 of the charter says.
This otherwise stunning statement is not surprising, given that Hamas describes Jews and Israel as a cosmic evil. Almost mimicking Nazi textbooks, Hamas contends that Zionism does "not hesitate to take any road, or to pursue all despicable and repulsive means to fulfill its desires." And what are those desires? "To demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam. It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion." (Article 28)Hamas sees Jews as extremely malevolent and also extremely powerful, capable of achieving their desires. In a hallucinatory anti-Semitic passage recalling the most extreme Nazi ideologues, the charter asserts that the Jews amassed wealth that permitted them to "take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe in order to fulfill their interests and pick the fruits. They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there." (Article 22)Pursuing this hallucinatory reverie (among the clandestine organizations the Jews allegedly use to take over the world, "Rotary Clubs" are highlighted), Hamas' charter then describes Jewish power and malevolence as still more sinister: The Jews "used the money to take over control of the Imperialist states and made them colonize many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread their corruption therein.. They stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate .. They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials and prepared for the establishment of their state."As if this wild, anti-Semitic litany, which includes Jews establishing the United Nations as part of their plan for world domination, is insufficient, Hamas declares that "there was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it." (Article 22)With how much power will the Jews be satisfied? According to Hamas, "Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." (Article 32)
Faced with this demonic enemy, Hamas is determined to rouse the Islamic world to act in the only manner adequate to the danger. Negotiation, compromise, any permanent modus vivendi with Israel and Jews (Jews' very existence in Israel is deemed an affront against Islam), is not thinkable. Jihad and destruction is.
Proclaiming every inch of Palestine, including all of Israel, to be Palestinian and Islamic, and in accord with its demonic view of Jews, the charter declares, "[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement."Why? Because "renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad." (Article 13)
So what is left for Hamas and all Muslims to do? Despite Hamas' pro-forma statement that "humane" Hamas will tolerate Jews and Christians only under the impossible condition that they live under Islamic fundamentalist domination (Article 31), the genocidal logic of Hamas' foundational document is explicit: "Hamas has been looking forward to [implementing] Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree." (Article 7)
This is no selective reading of Hamas' charter, as the extensive quotations indicate. The charter's almost classically Nazi accounts of Jews and its annihilative reveries form the core of Hamas' uncompromising and divinely ordained canonical version of the Declaration of Independence.As a lifelong student of Nazism and its radical murderousness, I have always been extremely reluctant to use the epithet "Nazi" for other reprehensible, anti-Semitic or genocidal movements. Whatever the other differences, the anti-Semitism and the murderous logic that form the principal content and rhetorical structure and substructure of this charter and this political party are unmistakably Nazi-like with regard to Jews.Imagine if a territory or country next to the United States, Germany, France or Britain were governed by a political party that had repeatedly terrorized and murdered citizens of its neighbor, and had issued a governing charter about Americans, Germans, French or Britons that described the people of that country as Hamas describes Jews - calling not only for that country's destruction but also for the mass murder of its people.Would people in that country accept the threatening political party as a fit partner in peace? Would people say that a political party harboring such profoundly irrational beliefs, fomenting such uncompromising hatred and speaking the language of mass murder should receive international aid that could only further its hold on power and facilitate its murderous intentions?Hamas' charter should not be dismissed as just words, and all that it contains would not be nullified even if Hamas, under pressure, renounced its goal to destroy Israel. (So far, Hamas has adamantly defended its genocidal charter.)
Seldom in the modern world has a political party enshrined such hallucinatory hatred and overt murderousness against another people in its constitution, and more seldom still has such a party taken power. The Nazi Party Program of 1920 also contained much anti-Semitism, but compared to Hamas' charter, its demonology and prescriptions were tame. Given the extreme political costs of such speech, governments, political parties and political leaders rarely speak the language of annihilation openly. So when they do, we should take them at their word. The last 100 years have shown that those expressing murderous dreams, like Hitler, mean it.Yahoo!
Los Angeles TimesFebruary 5, 2006
A manifesto for murderBy Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
DANIEL JONAH GOLDHAGEN, a member of Harvard's Center for European Studies, is the author of "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-goldhagen5feb05,0,1890552.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
[Seldom in the modern world has a political party enshrined such hallucinatory hatred and overt murderousness against another people in its constitution, and more seldom still has such a party taken power. The Nazi Party Program of 1920 also contained much anti-Semitism, but compared to Hamas' charter, its demonology and prescriptions were tame. Given the extreme political costs of such speech, governments, political parties and political leaders rarely speak the language of annihilation openly. So when they do, we should take them at their word. The last 100 years have shown that those expressing murderous dreams, like Hitler, mean it.]
MUCH HAS been said about the Hamas charter's call for the destruction of Israel and the need for Hamas to renounce this goal as the condition for being granted international legitimacy, economic aid and diplomatic recognition.But an examination of the charter (available at http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html ) reveals that Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is not just dedicated (however wrongly or murderously) to the destruction of Israel. It shows Hamas to be governed by a Nazi-like genocidal orientation to Jews in general.It would be no surprise if a self-styled Palestinian liberation movement depicted Israel in unflattering or even (if we indulge the movement some license to exaggerate) venomous terms. Yet Hamas' 9,000-word charter of 1988 - repeatedly reconfirmed by its leaders - pits Jews, Israelis and Zionists (used pretty much interchangeably in the charter) in Manichaean conflict, not just with Palestinians, but with Islam, which to Hamas is synonymous with all goodness."Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims," Article 28 of the charter says.
This otherwise stunning statement is not surprising, given that Hamas describes Jews and Israel as a cosmic evil. Almost mimicking Nazi textbooks, Hamas contends that Zionism does "not hesitate to take any road, or to pursue all despicable and repulsive means to fulfill its desires." And what are those desires? "To demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam. It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion." (Article 28)Hamas sees Jews as extremely malevolent and also extremely powerful, capable of achieving their desires. In a hallucinatory anti-Semitic passage recalling the most extreme Nazi ideologues, the charter asserts that the Jews amassed wealth that permitted them to "take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe in order to fulfill their interests and pick the fruits. They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there." (Article 22)Pursuing this hallucinatory reverie (among the clandestine organizations the Jews allegedly use to take over the world, "Rotary Clubs" are highlighted), Hamas' charter then describes Jewish power and malevolence as still more sinister: The Jews "used the money to take over control of the Imperialist states and made them colonize many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread their corruption therein.. They stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate .. They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials and prepared for the establishment of their state."As if this wild, anti-Semitic litany, which includes Jews establishing the United Nations as part of their plan for world domination, is insufficient, Hamas declares that "there was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it." (Article 22)With how much power will the Jews be satisfied? According to Hamas, "Zionist scheming has no end, and after Palestine they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Only when they have completed digesting the area on which they will have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion, etc. Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." (Article 32)
Faced with this demonic enemy, Hamas is determined to rouse the Islamic world to act in the only manner adequate to the danger. Negotiation, compromise, any permanent modus vivendi with Israel and Jews (Jews' very existence in Israel is deemed an affront against Islam), is not thinkable. Jihad and destruction is.
Proclaiming every inch of Palestine, including all of Israel, to be Palestinian and Islamic, and in accord with its demonic view of Jews, the charter declares, "[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement."Why? Because "renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad." (Article 13)
So what is left for Hamas and all Muslims to do? Despite Hamas' pro-forma statement that "humane" Hamas will tolerate Jews and Christians only under the impossible condition that they live under Islamic fundamentalist domination (Article 31), the genocidal logic of Hamas' foundational document is explicit: "Hamas has been looking forward to [implementing] Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree." (Article 7)
This is no selective reading of Hamas' charter, as the extensive quotations indicate. The charter's almost classically Nazi accounts of Jews and its annihilative reveries form the core of Hamas' uncompromising and divinely ordained canonical version of the Declaration of Independence.As a lifelong student of Nazism and its radical murderousness, I have always been extremely reluctant to use the epithet "Nazi" for other reprehensible, anti-Semitic or genocidal movements. Whatever the other differences, the anti-Semitism and the murderous logic that form the principal content and rhetorical structure and substructure of this charter and this political party are unmistakably Nazi-like with regard to Jews.Imagine if a territory or country next to the United States, Germany, France or Britain were governed by a political party that had repeatedly terrorized and murdered citizens of its neighbor, and had issued a governing charter about Americans, Germans, French or Britons that described the people of that country as Hamas describes Jews - calling not only for that country's destruction but also for the mass murder of its people.Would people in that country accept the threatening political party as a fit partner in peace? Would people say that a political party harboring such profoundly irrational beliefs, fomenting such uncompromising hatred and speaking the language of mass murder should receive international aid that could only further its hold on power and facilitate its murderous intentions?Hamas' charter should not be dismissed as just words, and all that it contains would not be nullified even if Hamas, under pressure, renounced its goal to destroy Israel. (So far, Hamas has adamantly defended its genocidal charter.)
Seldom in the modern world has a political party enshrined such hallucinatory hatred and overt murderousness against another people in its constitution, and more seldom still has such a party taken power. The Nazi Party Program of 1920 also contained much anti-Semitism, but compared to Hamas' charter, its demonology and prescriptions were tame. Given the extreme political costs of such speech, governments, political parties and political leaders rarely speak the language of annihilation openly. So when they do, we should take them at their word. The last 100 years have shown that those expressing murderous dreams, like Hitler, mean it.Yahoo!
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