While I personally don’t feel compelled to consider the following any sort of proper scholarship, they happen to be the books which Muslims themselves consider to be the highest focus of their scholarship.
The Koran
V.51: O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who takes them for friends is one of them.
V.59: Say: O, People of the Scripture [Jews and Christians]! Do you blame us for aught else than that we believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed aforetime, and because most of you are evildoers?
V.82: Indeed, you will surely find that the most vehement of men in enmity to those who believe are the Jews and the polytheists.
V.60: Say: ‘Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from God? Those whom [i.e. Jews] God has cursed and with whom He has been angry, transforming them into apes and swine, and those who serve the devil. Worse is the plight of these, and they have strayed farther from the right path.’
The Sira
“Kill any Jews that fall into your power” said the Prophet: p.369
Anytime that you see Jews or Christian placed into the text with brackets its to denote what a euphemism’s common interpretation is, according to leading Muslims themselves. Now that we have your first request covered lets move on.
I couldn’t really figure out what you intended to express when you mentioned the possibility that English is not my first language. First, you assumed wrong. Second, whatever ever language I learned first will probably not dictate whether I am in on the secret of Ben-Gurion’s use of the phrase “red-Indian”. I suppose I can just chalk it up to an expression of your general contempt for me. If you would like to better hide your contempt you might want to use fewer condescending phrases.
Listen Pat, I never used the words “level Jerusalem”. You tried to attribute those words to me and if you look at the whole paragraph that has created such an issue for you it began with,”From the time of the Jewish Rebellion in 70AD until the fall of the Byzantine Empire (again to the Arab Conquests) the Jews eked out some sort of life between pogroms.”. You see, I included the Byzantine era. I didn’t think I was writing for anyone whose attention span won’t survive a short paragraph.
“I’ve watched it fairly up close and personal to the point when I was a student in Jerusalem on June 6th 1967 when the city was still Jordanian!”
— I’m assuming, since you mention the part of Jerusalem that you lived in was Jordanian, that you lived in the Old City? I’m curious how you managed to get into Jordan in the 1960′s seeing that you and your dad flew missions for Israel in the late 40′s and early 1950s? Did the Israelis not stamp your passport? As far as I know, if you ever went to Israel in those day,s they would not allow you into most Arab countries, certainly not Jordan.
“And on one point you are correct, Jews have no lock on the most suffering of any peoples which may come as a suprise to you.”
— So, which is it Pat, am I correct in stating that the Jews have no lock on suffering or am I surprised by the point I myself made? You can’t have it both ways.
“It was mentioned as a rebuttal to your point that the Turks had some kind of special hatred and/or singled out Jews for any particular mistreatment.”
— You’ll have to be as convoluted in your reading as you are in your writing to find any place in my posts in which I said the Turks had a special hatred for and/or singled out the Jews. All I ever said was that Jews were generally miserable while living under Muslim rule and this is bourn out by their desire to take on the hardships of immigration to the Land of Israel. It was my point that the Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians. A person who brings up such a point seems to be quite aware of the sort of cruelty the Turks visited on non-Jews. I wasn’t really interested in debating the Armenian issue. I was making the point that the Turks were coming apart at the seems and behaving in ways that made the trenches of WWI look like love ins. I am well aware of the cruelty of Muslims towards each other as well as towards infidels. I am aware of the cruelty of Europeans towards each other and towards non-Europeans. I am aware of the cruelty of red Indians towards each other as well as to non-red Indians. I get it Pat, the world is a harsh place and not just towards the Jews.
Far be it for me to bring up Oslo. I think it is a crime against the Jewish State and the Jewish people. I don’t quite agree with your assessment that Arafat gave into Israeli demands but hey, I’m not all that impressed with other of your assessments either.
The Miao people that I’ve spent time with, I’m not sure if they were Hmong or not, were pretty well assimilated into Han Chinese Culture. Those who still dress in traditional garb, speak their dialect, and live in the traditional Miao manner are currently treated decently but that is a phenomenon in China that is only a few decades old. Yes,the Chinese allow their minorities some level of autonomy (although the Uigur and Tibetans are being aggressively overrun by the Han Chinese) but they too are treated as an other and have suffered violent and prejudicial action, most especially those who have not assimilated. So, my point still stands that folk who do not assimilate are generally made to feel prejudice of various degrees.
I was giving an overview of reasons that Jews are and have been hated. I wasn’t presenting my thoughts on why we are hated as I don’t think there is a reason any more then there is a reason that two hydrogen atoms combine with an oxygen atom. We understand the mechanism by which water is formed but why is another matter. I don’t think there is a rational reason for anti-Semitism. There are simply many rationales. Anti-Semitism is a human phenomenon.
The Christians who support Israel and Zionism are doing so with the expectation that a return of Jews to Israel will bring about the “return” of their messiah. They also expect his supposed return to convince the Jews to become Christian. While that is a form of support it is certainly not support given with the intention that Jews remain Jews.
You’ve gone over my head with the Hirshhorn Museum. I’m pretty sure all the Smithsonian Museums are partially paid for by taxes. What makes this particular museum an especially odious burden and what does it have to do with European causes for disorder in the Middle-East?
You are probably right that the Middle East has a few more decades of strife in it. I simply a not buying that this strife would never have occurred if the Europeans had “minded their own business” or if the Jews had never establish a State in their homeland. There was strife in the Middle East before European intervention and there will be strife there if all Europeans or Jews were to one day abandon that region. Hell, considering what a surprise the Berlin Wall’s fall was for us both, lets hope we are also wrong in prognosticating the duration of strife in the Middle-East.
