Friday, June 12, 2009
Suffering through the Koran – Sura 17 named 'The Israelis'.
Ah, now getting to the heart of Koranic racism and supremacism. A jolly read this is not.
by Ferdinand III
Do 'moderate' Muslims believe in the immoderate and fundamentalist Koran ? If they do, how can they be moderate ? Do the so-called few 'Liberal' Muslim groups promoting Islamic adaptation within the West to Western mores and civilization support such Suras ? If so how can they defend the outright racism and will-to-power of this and every other Sura ? Are such ideas compatible with civilization or barbarism ? Sura 17 on the 'Israelis' is a marked example of Arab-Muslim hatred of the Jew.
The Sura starts off with the usual Muslim claim that all Jewish prophets were actually envoys of the great moon deity Allah, “We gave Moses the Book, and made it a Guide to the Children of Israel, (commanding): “Do not take other than Me as the Disposer of (your) affairs.”
Okay so for about the thousandth time in 176 pages, the reader is told that all Jewish prophets and leaders are in fact Muslims, and that 'We' or 'Muslims' gave Moses et al their words, books, powers and insights. Why would anyone believe such nonsense ? Anyways the point of the Sura as given in the second verse is clear and quite repetitive – the Jews left the true 'path' of Allah's enlightenment and therefore must be destroyed.
Verse 4 sums up the Muslim antipathy and the Arab-Muslim penchant for dialectical history; “And We gave (clear) warning to the Children of Israel in the Book, that twice would they do mischief on the earth and be elated with mighty arrogance (and twice would they be punished)!”
The Jews had their first temple and state destroyed in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians, the successors to the Assyrian empire. The Romans annihilated the second temple in 70 A.D in reprisal for the 3rd major Jewish uprising in 3 generations. The Romans not only destroyed Jerusalem's holy sites but scattered the Jews in a diaspora, forcibly exiling, removing and extraditing hundreds of thousands of Jews from their state, across the Roman empire. Hence the origins of the Jewish network and future European influence.
But apparently the Jewish wars and associated carnage and outcome was not the work of Rome, or in the case of the first great Jewish revolt, the Byzantine Greeks, but of course the moon-guy, Allah. Of course it was Allah who had pronounced the Jews guilty and it was of course Allah who guided the Greeks and Romans to punish the wayward Jews – the ones who had left the true path of God and had sinned.
And of course the Jews were at it again during the time of Mohammed. Allah and his Muslim supporters had every moral and divine right of course, to desecrate Jewish communities as verse 16 states so emphatically, “When We decide to destroy a population, We (first) send a definite order to those among them who are given the good things of this life and yet transgress; so that the word is proved true against them: then (it is) We destroy them utterly.”
Ah, how very peaceful and accommodating and rational. Let's see – 'We' the Muslims or We perhaps Mohammed and Allah, will decide who is naughty, and who is nice. The naughty ones are the people who need to be killed – completely. So we will trick them and make them rich and comfortable – like say the Jewish communities in 7th century Arabia. When they do everything wrong, we will then have proof that they ignored the teachings of the 'book' which 'they' developed some 1800 years before Mohammed, and we can than kill them all.
The Muslim 'We' – whatever it is – is rather cunning and full of violence and hate isn't it ? This Sura like every Sura has nothing or very little which could be considered an ethical program, the Golden Rule, or higher metaphysics designed to elevate life, human worth and dignity. No, this Sura like every other Sura focuses on death, conversion and racism and universal will to rule. It is an Arabic Wagenerian epic – one designed to impress the reader with the culpability of all Jews, and the divinely sanctioned approval of all Muslims.
There are three verses out of 111 which deal with some form of ethics. Verse 31 says, “Do not kill your children....”, the Arabs in the 7th century A.D. were still practitioners of child sacrifice – a practice the Jews had stopped around 2000 B.C. Verse 32 says, “Nor come near to adultery....” - a good rule and one that does the Koran credit especially since ethics is so rarely pronounced. Verse 33 adjures, “Nor take life – which Allah has made sacred – except for just cause.” This is also a good idea, except it references of course only Muslim life. Non-believers are to be killed or converted as each Sura and innumerable verses make clear.
Part of the genetic Arab hate for Jews is directly attributable to the Koran, as much as it is to the history of Arab-Semitic trading and warring. In this Sura for instance there is the usual gibberish about obeying Allah interspersed with such insights as those of Sura 58, “There is not a population but We shall destroy it before the Day of Judgment or punish it with a dreadful Penalty: that is written in the (eternal) Record.” So Muslims have the divine sanction to eradicate non-Muslim nations. Verse 59 identifies any non-Muslims as objects for terror, “...We only send the Signs by way of terror (and warning from evil).” Sounds tolerant.
This Sura like most of the Koran makes little sense. It screams and cries that the Jews were originally supporters of Allah and that they should now be killed off since they no longer follow the 'book' or the 'Koran' which now, for Arabs at least, supersedes the Jewish Torah. The illogic is staggering. The Jews no longer follow an Arab book which was developed 3000 years or more after the first Jewish texts were first formed in an oral tradition and some 1600 years after they were first written and therefore Arabs have divine sanction to kill them ? What monstrosity of racist illogic informs such ideas ?
This Sura has little to recommend it. It repeats the same, tired, illiterate and irrational claims that the previous 170 odd pages had already claimed. There is no metaphysical, spiritual or moral program worth mentioning. It is poorly writtern and even more poorly organised. It is a testament more to insanity and the shrillness of a will to power racist ideology, than to ethical programs and peace. But alas that is the purpose of the Koran. Convince, conquer, kill.
[Note: This sura is taken from 'The Holy Quran', translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, reprinted in 1995, Goodword Books. Regarded as one of the best translations from Arabic to English of the Koran.]