The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

It is a welcome moment when both Muslims and Jewish people come together shoulder to shoulder against one common issue, the phobia against their respective faiths. I say this warmly from a personal experience. I, along with a handful of fellow Muslims at my place of work say our Friday prayers in a space provided by a local Jewish Chapel. I also say this because one of the weekly publications of the organization of this blog was the first one in history to raise voice against Hilter, while the rest of the world was in silence:

“The West may rightly be described as a continent of “isms”. Capitalism, Socialism, Bolshevism, Facism, Communism — these are the so many manifestations of a restless soul seeking after some true solution of a social system. On top of them all now comes in Germany what may be called Hitlerism. Whether this new tide will take the German people back to the promised land flowing with milk and honey is yet to be seen. In the meantime it has launched a bitter campaign of hatred against the Jews who, as reports show, are subjected to severe persecutions all over Germany. This is deplorable, to say the least and no movement based on hatred can be expected to blow any good to humanity. Europe in quest of a social order has tried so many isms, each having landed it in deeper social bogs. Will it not give a trial to the one “ism” that sprang from the soil of Arabia and which combines all that is best and is free from all that is evil in all the “isms” it has so far tried, viz., Islamism?” [The Light, Lahore – India, 8 April 1933; emphasis added; see link on this blog]

Being a Muslim, it is a constant waxing question as to what are the root causes of Islamophobia and by extension the hatred against the Jewish people. From a Muslim lens, the hatred towards Islam clearly emanates from Christian quarters and the Jewish help that it enjoys if nothing else from the mass media. The media can justify itself by using the excuse of just 'reporting it', even while magnifying it, but one cannot ignore the role of Hollywood scripted productions which make money by putting villainous faces of Muslim characters, real or fictitious, on the screen. Still, it might be just a passing fad in the likes of John Wayne taking out the scores of “Red Indians” singlehandedly. Once such ventures stop making money as the joke is too boring now, the next face might be the Chinese. Russians are an old story, who disappeared from the news faster than their glasnost. Who knows with Putin back in Red Square, James Bond might return for another stint of love East of Urals?

The historical roots of Islamophobia can be found when the Middle East, North Africa and Spain lost its Christian character against the spread of early Islam, which expanded both from the merits of its faith and it’s military. The Christian hatred towards Muslims got aggravated further when Crusades failed despite the ‘lion hearted’ attempts for centuries by the invented doctrine of ‘holy war’ and its battle cry of ‘Deus Vult’. Probably the Jews suffered more in Europe than the Muslims, Christian and Jews together at the hands of the crusaders in the not so ‘Holy Land’. To add insult to the injury was the Turkish faces knocking at the doors of Vienna in the aid of Transylvanians, a few centuries later, which only threatened further the assumed indelibility of the Christian identity of Europe. One good thing that came of out of Turkish retreat from Austria was that the modern-day Starbucks got is root planted there by the coffee left behind by the Turks which was too bitter to the local taste thus requiring milk and honey along with the new crescent shaped commemorative Croissant.

Doctrinally, the hatred against Muslims by the Christians lies in very fact that other religions might be non-Christian, but Islam is singularly anti-Christian. Islam uniquely stands against son-ship and sun-ship. While standing against son-ship of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), it flushes away the ‘mysteries’ of crucifixion and resurrection. It does not hesitate to expunge the bad math of ‘three equals one’. It also does away with the moral value of sun-ship originated by Constantine and his Sun’day, Paulian tonsure ‘disks’ of the monks, eastward facing entrances of sun-altars – the Churches, celestial festivals of winter solstice and vernal equinox – the Christmas and Easter, the cross’ing of Sun through Pisces – the symbol fish, the virgin births, the resurrections and healing powers of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Babylonian and Persian sun-gods – including Jesus of the New Testament. It even bodily buries Jesus, the prophet, in a heaven on earth, the vale of Kashmir and the mother, Mary in Murree, not too far from the son.

Admittedly, there is hatred against Jews amongst Muslims or vice versa. Historically, it could be hypothesized that it started with the displacement of the three seditious Jewish tribes amongst the many more Jewish residents of Medina who remained there long after. However, even if there is such a vestige, it must not be forgotten that one of the Prophet’s wife was a Jewish widow of Khaibar, Safia, who upon her death bequeathed her property to her brother who belonged to Jewish faith. Incidentally, she probably belonged to the tribe of Bata at Khaibar, the same brand footwear that is most popular in the Muslim world today. There are anecdotes that being a non-Arab, she was at times taunted at by other wives, and Prophet in his humor told her to rebut others with the fact that unlike them her ‘fathers’ were prophets Moses and Aaron.

What agonizingly irks Muslims is that it is they who revived Jewish culture, literature and art. They resurrected a ‘golden age’ for the followers of Abraham in Spain and the world knows Maimonides only because of Moors and Egyptians. Unlike under Christians there were no ‘Jewish Ghettos’ under Moors, rather they had ‘Jewish Cities’ with their own governments, Jewish law and judges. Moorish bureaucracy was none but Jewish. After the Spanish Inquisition, it was the North Africans and the Ottomans who gave shelter to the displaced and persecuted Jews.   There is no trace of pogroms in Islamic history against Jewish people. Despite it all, the Muslims ask a fundamental question, and that is the question of Israel at the cost of Palestinians, who are both Christian and Muslims. Israel gets equated to as the cause for the largest ghetto in the world, Gaza.

Doctrinally, Quran singly restores the prophetic status of the prophets of the old-Testament, absolves them of historical smears, and proclaims the universality of one common God. It makes it as a matter of faith to believe in all the Jewish prophets at par with Prophet Muhammad. It only reminds the Muslims of the decay of monotheism into ritualism with the example of followers of Moses, that secular Jewish history itself testifies to independently. It is the Quran, which gives the fundamental correction to Jewish life, the usury, which probably is the sole cause for Jewishphobia of thousands of years, and even now, when it states:

2:275-281. Those who swallow usury cannot arise except as he arises whom the devil prostrates by (his) touch. That is because they say, Trading is only like usury. And Allah has allowed trading and forbidden usury. To whomsoever then the exhortation has come from his Lord, and he refrains, he shall have what has already passed. And his affair is in the hands of Allah. And whoever returns (to it) — these are the companions of the Fire: in it they will abide. Allah will blot out usury, and He causes charity to prosper. And Allah does not love any ungrateful sinner. Those who believe and do good deeds and keep up prayer and give the due charity — their reward is with their Lord; and they have no fear, nor shall they grieve. O you who believe, keep your duty to Allah and relinquish what remains (due) from usury, if you are believers. But if you do not, then be apprised of war from Allah and His Messenger; and if you repent, then you shall have your capital. Wrong not, and you shall not be wronged. And if (the debtor) is in difficulty, let there be postponement till (he is in) ease. And that you forgo it as charity is better for you, if only you knew. And guard yourselves against a day in which you will be returned to Allah. Then every soul will be paid in full what it has earned, and they will not be wronged. [Emphasis added, Translation by Maulana Muhammad Ali, Ed. Dr. Zahid Aziz]

The commentary on the above verses can be found on any online bank calculator with the following example:

Base amount: $1.00, Interest Rate: 10%, Effective Annual Rate: 10%, Calculation period: 500 years, (interest compounded yearly – added at the end of each year). Balance at the end of each year is as follows:

Year 1: $ 1.10

Year 10: $ 2.59

Year 100: 13,780.61

Year 200: $ 189,905,276.46

Year 300:$ 2,617,010,996,188.46

Year 400: $ 36,064,014,027,525,600.00

Year 500: $ 496,984,196,731,246,739,456.00 = “Holy Sh*t”

One can always argue as to who will live for 500 years to receive such a return. The fact of the matter is that it is not the individuals who live that long; it is the banking families which live to collect it from the governments over generations and in turn governments from the people. It is the ordinary people who then go into perpetual servitude of reparations. In only one such recent example, keeping in mind that their seeding money was not 1 dollar as in above example, but the funding of millions of pounds to Duke of Wellington against Napoleon at Waterloo. Imagine the windfall and the power that it vested and continues to vest in those families who in turn, in the words of Henry Ford, run the super capital and the super government, in whose hands the Bushes and Obamas are only tail wagers. It was to one of such descendant, not to a group, that Israel was guaranteed by a personal letter in the Belfour Declaration (see link).

Just like Muslims, who have to distance themselves from the terrorist doctrine of Al-Qaida and other similar organizations and their activities, so do the Jewish people have to stand up against the exploitative nature of usury which emanates from Jewish bankers, that consumes the hard work of ordinary people across the globe who are taxed on their daily labor to repay the interests on loans of their dysfunctional governments and corrupt officials. It raises the cost of food, education, shelter and ordinary living for everybody. It can even snatch hope and future from a family. An ordinary Jewish person has nothing to do with such global exploiters amongst their midst, but has been scapegoated instead across history. Unless both Muslims and Jews stand shoulder to shoulder against the numerical minority amongst their midst that is hijacking their faiths, cultures and values, they will never be able to extricate themselves from the phobias that will only increase against them with passage of time, be it by the next terrorist activity or the next society going bankrupt.