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مشاهدة النسخة كاملة : Interesting article on Islam by a Jew



من هناك
10-12-2007, 06:29 PM
"Biblical Jacob fell in love with Rachel when she was only seven, and
brought forth from her a line of saints including Mary, mother of
Christ...The Talmud stipulates the permitted age of marriage for
girls at three years and one day."

=====

Maidens and Warriors
By Israel Shamir

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/maidens.htm

It is not much fun to be a Muslim in the West today. Not even to be
taken for one. I felt it on my own skin while flying into the US. A
Mediterranean man with mustachio complete, I was asked by the US
customs officer whether I read the Koran a lot. A chewing gum
wrapping paper with a comic strip suggested to the officer an
instruction to pray on board the plane, probably to call Allahu Akbar
and attack the crew. "You are up to no good," he concluded. I was
taken aback. Our Palestinian brothers and we Israelis are facially
quite similar; I was often taken for a Palestinian by both sides, but
I did not expect the US immigration to copycat Israeli Border Police.

Should I say plainly, "I am not a Muslim", occurred to me. It did not
seem fair. In occupied Denmark of 1940, Germans ordered the Jews to
wear the yellow Star of David. The king of Danes wore such a star as
a sign of his solidarity with his Jewish subjects. Would I fail this
test of common humanity and proclaim my non-Muslim kosher origin? It
would feel like sacrificing a Muslim in my stead. I tried to
compromise: "I do not read the Koran a lot," said I. The officer, one
Gomez, a big dark man, did not relent. "But you read
Koran?" "Occasionally," I tried again. This pusillanimous response
was a beginning of my undoing. I was searched, verbally abused; every
piece of my luggage was checked and double-checked.

The personal affront did not matter. In 1812, a French soldier on the
streets of occupied Moscow turned back Pierre Bezuchov, a Russian
nobleman in Tolstoy's War and Peace. "The soldier had stopped my
immortal soul," thought Bezuchov, and laughed. St Francis of Assisi
found even more joy at being refused entry to a monastery one cold
and rainy night. A go of humiliation is good for the soul, he
explained to his sidekick St Bernard.

It was more upsetting to see Islam as the accused in Judeo-American
culture. In the US newspapers and on the Internet, theological
debates are back in vogue with a vengeance after an eight hundred
years lull, as subtle as ever. Even good friends of Muslims began to
hesitate, as the powerful brainwashing machine began to produce its
hateful output. Islam is accused of being the faith of Jihad, the
permanent war with infidels, of intolerance and cruelty, of providing
theological basis for terrorism. The allegations do not stop at
politics.
The semi-literate Crusaders of 12th century accused the Muslims of
having orgies in front of their divinity, Baphomet (probably
corrupted from the name of the Prophet). The latest frontal attack on
Islam in the American public opinion also has amusing sexual
overtones. An appeal to bomb the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria, and Palestine usually contains a weighty disapproval of the
Prophet's sexual mores and of alleged Muslim ill treatment of their
womenfolk.

II

The Prophet's love of his youngest wife, Aisha, causes much
consternation in America; almost fifty years after the US Supreme
Court removed the ban on that ode to underage love, Vladimir
Nabokov's Lolita. For the prudish accusers, it does not matter that
Muhammad, peace upon him, was in love with the girl, as she with him.
They know better what is good for everybody. If the Prophet had
chosen a boy of Aisha's age, one feels that fear of homophobia would
soften the blows. But the Prophet was a man of orthodox tastes.

A modest Talmudic scholar from Jaffa, I would rise to his defence in
the name of our Jewish tradition. Far from being a sinner, Muhammad
(peace be upon him) acted according to the letter and the spirit of
our holy faith. Biblical Jacob fell in love with Rachel when she was
only seven, and brought forth from her a line of saints including
Mary, mother of Christ.

The Talmud stipulates the permitted age of marriage for girls at
three years and one day. It brings us a dialogue worthy of Boccaccio
that took place in Sepphoris of Galilee. A Roman princess Justine,
daughter of Emperor Septimius Severus son of Anthony asked Rabbi
Judah the Prince, the greatest spiritual and legal authority of Jews
in the post-Biblical period, what is the permitted age of marriage
and cohabitation.

- Three years and one day, - replied the Rabbi.

- What is the age for childbearing, - persisted the Princess.

- Nine years [i], - he replied.

- I was married at six, and gave birth at seven, - she reflected with
great regret, - so I wasted in vain three excellent years of my young
life.

Muhammad's wife, Aisha, wasted six years of her young life, as she
was wed at nine. Thus, the Prophet demonstrated great prudence, also
in full accordance with our Jewish teachings. Our holy Rabbis
permitted very early marriage, but they were not absolutely sure that
three-year old girls are sufficiently ripe. They taught: proselytes
and paedophiles delay the Coming of the Messiah and of the Kingdom of
Heaven.

Who are the paedophiles in this context, asked the Talmud. They have
to be persons of legitimate but objectionable behaviour, and
therefore, not the sodomites (as they deserve death by stoning) nor
masturbators (they merit watery grave). It is those who marry girls
before the nubile age of nine. Thus, the Prophet is above suspicion
according to our Jewish law.

He had a few wives, continue the accusers. Well, the Jewish law
permits us to have as many wives as we can get. Nowadays, a Muslim
has to limit himself to four wives in this world, but we Jews have no
such constrictions.

The presumed barbarous Muslim custom of veiling women and keeping
them away from a stranger's lusty eye annoys today's accusers. An
avid reader of Washington Post would assume that the US attacked
Afghans just to bomb the veil away. As the first fruit of American
victory in Afghanistan, CNN presented the sale of smut in smitten
Kabul.

Here again, our Jewish law firmly stands on the side of the Talibs. A
Talmudic sage, Rabbi Isaac taught: if one gazes at the little finger
of a woman, it is as if he gazed at her you-know-what! (Do not
confuse it with the You-Know-Who of Harry Potter.) Rabbi Hisda
wistfully said: a woman's leg is also quite an incitement. Rabbi
Sheshet improved on him, reminding that a woman's hair is a sexual
incitement. That is why pious Jewish women don the wig. And that
master of oneupmanship, Samuel, upstaged him saying, a woman's voice
is a sexual incitement, as the Holy Writ quoth, `sweet is thy voice'.
The conclusion of the debate was the rule kvod bat ha-melech pnima,
meaning a good Jewish woman should stay indoors, which is the
Taliban's idea, or close enough.

III

Enemies of Islam would not dare to attack our Jewish faith though all
the features of Islam they profess to dislike can be found in
Judaism. This goes beyond sexual matters. Jihad is but an Arab
translation of the Jewish concept of Milhemet Mitzva, the Commanded
(or Preordained) War. These concepts differ in this: in jihad, one is
not allowed to kill civilians, but in milhemet mitzvah, one is
commanded to do so. Look up your Pentateuch and you will find it
there, without an effort. The Messenger, peace be upon him, softened
this Message.

If you think Islam is intolerant, let me quote you the story written
by `the perfect sage and excellent doctor of medicine R. Samuel
Sholem in Constantinople, capital of the great King, our ruler,
mighty Sultan Suleiman' about Rabbi Gaon Isaac Campanton (d. 1463),
the chief rabbi of the Castilian community, the most enlightened
Jewish community of all times. He writes, `the great Rabbi, the
honorable R. Isaac Campanton burned Rabbi Samuel Sarsa at the stake.
Once, Rabbis gathered to announce a marriage contract. They
read "such and such year since the Creation of the world", and this
Sarsa fellow placed his hand on his beard and alluded to the world's
existence since time immemorial. The Rabbi Campanton rose to his feet
and exclaimed, `Why isn't the bush consumed? [1] Let the bush burn!'
They sentenced him to death by burning because he denied Creation of
the World 5000 years ago, and burned him at the stake."

If you believe Islam is the reason for Muslim terrorism, probably
Judaism is the reason for Jewish terrorism. Until now, Muslims
succeeded in assassinating only one Israeli minister. When Jews dealt
with private (as opposed to state) terror, my saintly ancestors
assassinated two Russian tsars and a whole row of government
ministers, officials, ambassadors and statesmen of Britain, Germany,
Sweden, Russia and Arab countries. Until nowadays, the records of
terror established by Jews were not beaten, and as a proud Jew, I
reject the futile efforts to pass this crowning achievement to
Muslims or anybody else.

In America, Jews can't do wrong, and whoever thinks otherwise, is
branded an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew. By proving the Jewish
origin of the alleged faults of Islam, we therefore proved that the
Islam-bashers are anti-Semites and probably hidden Holocaust deniers.
Whoever doubts it, may look up the Washington Post of November 27.
The editorial by the ex-CIA chief James Woolsey is accompanied by a
much-retouched hysterical close-up picture of the bestial and demonic
Semite, dark-skinned, full-lipped, cruel, and savage. Der Sturmer,
the Nazi newspaper, would have loved it [ii]. The contents of the
article are also eminently suitable for Der Sturmer. Woolsey, in an
Orwellian-named article, Objective: Democracy, calls to `take out
Iraqi air defences and hit Iraqi ground forces' as `we did to
Afghanistan'.

The great Russian playwright, Anton (`The Seagull') Chekhov,
established the law of scene: if there is a gun hanging on the wall
in the first act, it will fire in the third act. Life imitates
theatre, or, as Shakespeare put it, this world is but a stage. The
gun of anti-Semitism fired as expected, but it shot at real Semites,
the Arabs. Paradoxically, among new anti-Semites, there are many
persons with Jewish names, or known by their sympathy to Jews. How
can this be?

It brings us back to the adage of our sages, regarding paedophiles
and proselytes. Jewish faith is extremely suspicious of proselytes.
They are like scabs on the head of Israel, taught Rabbi Helbo, and
modern practice supports his learned opinion. Judaism is too
complicated to receive in mature age. People born and raised as
religious Jews got used to being the Chosen folk, and take it easy,
but neophytes go dizzy at the thought.

It is not strange. The true English aristocrat Tony Benn supports the
rights of ordinary folk, while freshly created parvenu Conrad Black
promotes the oppression of Europeans and Muslims alike in his
numerous newspapers. Some of the worst racists in Hebron, a frontline
of Israeli apartheid are actually proselytes who took literally some
risky Biblical ideas. Witness the converted American Gentile Nazi who
took the name of Eli Hazeev (the Wolf) and was slain by Palestinian
guerrillas, or this scourge of cyberspace, Dr Andrew Mathis who
converted and began to defend his version of Judaism on various
Internet localities. Some new-Jews are un-aware that Judaism is a
thoroughly interpreted/commented religion in which NO WORD of the
Bible may (safely) be supposed to mean what it seems to say.
A reader sent me a disturbing letter: "my sister who converted to
Judaism years ago (although we're WASPs) has gone over the edge. Last
night when I asked her to interrupt her niggerization of Arabs long
enough to cite just one example...anytime in history...when Israel
did something...anything...wrong (pointing out that peace cannot
possibly be attained when one party thinks itself totally OK, and
thinks the other party is completely at fault), the best she could
come up with was "collateral" damage – i.e. the unintentional bombing
of civilians when a "legitimate" target was the intent. My sister is
quite active in the Jewish community in St. Louis, and perhaps in a
position to do a fair amount of damage to whatever chances remain for
world peace'.

Yes, Rabbi Helbo had a good reason for his suspicion. Real Jews knew
they lived in the real world, and left their fantasies for Sabbath.
They remained humble, studied Talmud and did not try to find a modern
equivalent of Amalek or the Red Heifer, to retake the Holy Land by
force or by stealth, or to preach hatred of Gentiles. They knew:
these concepts should be left untouched like hidden files in the
Windows file system. They are there for historical reasons and one
should not meddle with them. Neophytes lack the ability to make
suitable distinctions.

It is not a question of race: neophytes, whether of Jewish or Gentile
extraction, are equally blind to reason. That is why the ferocious
Neo-Cons of America, Gentile Israel-firsters like Jeanne Kirkpatrick
and secular Jews like the infamous Norm Podhoretz, her mentor from
Commentary, relentlessly call for the destruction of the Islamic
world and poison the minds of Americans.

Islam is a form of Christianity particularly close to the Jews. While
Eastern Orthodox Church was influenced by Greek culture, and
Catholics partook of Roman world, Islam returned the ideas of
Christianity to the Semitic milieu. The Prophet, peace be upon him,
upheld the Jewish concepts of strict monotheism, of fear of graven
images, of protectiveness towards women and integrated them with the
universal message of Christ and his apostles. The cowardly enemies of
Islam besmirch it, as they fear and envy its unbroken spirit, the
valour of its warriors and the chastity of its maidens.

مقاوم
10-13-2007, 04:21 AM
WOW!!
this article should be widely spread

من هناك
10-13-2007, 10:22 AM
Jazaka Allah Khairan and Takabballa Allah mina wa minkoum.

this is what I am doing right now :)