Islam heeft het Jodendom gered

[Salah]

Dankzij de komst van Islam, werd het Jodendom gered en floreerde het opnieuw.

Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity - also in Christendom - through the medieval period into the modern world.

Almost all the Jews in the world were now ruled by Islam. This new situation transformed Jewish existence. Their fortunes changed in legal, demographic, social, religious, political, geographical, economic, linguistic and cultural terms - all for the better.

Along with legal near-equality came social and economic equality. Jews were not confined to ghettos, either literally or in terms of economic activity. The societies of Islam were, in effect, open societies. In religious terms, too, Jews enjoyed virtually full freedom.

Within this huge area, Jews lived and enjoyed broadly similar status and rights everywhere. They could move around, maintain contacts, and develop their identity as Jews. A great new expansion of trade from the ninth century onwards brought the Spanish Jews - like the Muslims - into touch with the Jews and the Muslims even of India.

The Jews of the Islamic world developed an entirely new culture, which differed from their culture before Islam in terms of language, cultural forms, influences, and uses. Instead of being concerned primarily with religion, the new Jewish culture of the Islamic world, like that of its neighbours, mixed the religious and the secular to a high degree. The contrast, both with the past and with medieval Christian Europe, was enormous.

Full: http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-deb...uslims-do-jews

[Another Jack]

De bron is in het Engels, dan moet het wel waar zijn...

[Salah]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Another Jack

De bron is in het Engels, dan moet het wel waar zijn...

Een Joodse website en Joods auteur met referenties om over het onderwerp te praten.

David J Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University.

[Another Jack]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Salah

Een Joodse website en Joods auteur met referenties om over het onderwerp te praten.

Ja, nu moeten we het zeker blindelings geloven...

[Another Jack]

Als de "jews virtually full freedom" genoten, waarom mochten zij dan niet op een paard zitten?

[Kallikles]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Another Jack

Ja, nu moeten we het zeker blindelings geloven...

David J Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. This article is adapted from last week's Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Als je hiaten ziet in het betoog van professor Wasserstein, dan mag je gerust met ernstig peer reviewed bronnenmateriaal aankomen dat dat tegenspreekt. Maar je kleine duim en wat oneliners ad populum zal niet helpen.

[Another Jack]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Kallikles

David J Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. This article is adapted from last week's Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Als je hiaten ziet in het betoog van professor Wasserstein, dan mag je gerust met ernstig peer reviewed bronnenmateriaal aankomen dat dat tegenspreekt. Maar je kleine duim en wat oneliners ad populum zal niet helpen.

Mochten joden volgens jou dan wel een paard berijden?

[Aton]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Another Jack

De bron is in het Engels, dan moet het wel waar zijn...

En dat is in een zekere zin waar. Het zijn net deze joodse diaspora samen met de ' verketterde ' christenen die de aanzet hebben gegeven voor het ontwikkelen van de Islam.
( zie ook :" Het vierde beest " van Tom Holland )

[Aton]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Another Jack

Mochten joden volgens jou dan wel een paard berijden?

Dat is pas later gekomen.

[Salah]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Another Jack

Ja, nu moeten we het zeker blindelings geloven...

Dat is eigenlijk basis Joodse geschiedenis bevestigd door talloze Joodse historici en Rabbijnen hoor. Het verwoest ook het zionistisch relaas.

“For Jews,” the Geniza story contradicts much of what we thought we knew about Jewish history. For the most part, the modern Jewish conception of Jewish history follows the viewpoint of modern Zionism. ‘In ancient days,’ this view suggests, ‘the Jewish people thrived in the Land of Israel. But then foreign invaders destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and expelled the Jewish nation from its land, thus beginning a dark, two-thousand-year period of homelessness and oppression. Throughout that entire time, Jews in exile yearned to return to their homeland, where they could live together in safety and freedom. Now, with the rise of the modern State of Israel, those dreams can finally come true.’ It is a powerful national mythos. Like every national mythos, the story is true in some ways, grossly oversimplified in others, and a reflection of its people’s deepest values and most heartfelt self-perceptions. But it is also, as we learn from the Geniza, fundamentally incorrect. Reading the Geniza documents, we read of a vibrant, prosperous Jewish community, thriving 1,000 years ago in Egypt, the very symbol of Jewish suffering and oppression. There in the very heart of the ‘two thousand years of darkness,’ we find enlightenment, security and success — not the oppression and suffering we have come to expect.”

http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=590

Rabbi Glickman believes that, “To all of this, the overwhelming response of the Geniza would be, ‘Return to Israel? Us? No, we’re doing fine here in Egypt, thank you. Here we feel at home, here we have friends, here we are active in politics and business and other aspects of daily life. Arabic is our first language. Cairo is our hometown. Yes, we feel a deep bond with the Land of Israel — much more than many of our Jewish neighbors whose connections are with Babylonia … and, yes, we pray for a speedy return to the Land. But when we utter those prayers, we’re talking about a distant messianic future. In the meantime, we’re perfectly happy to stay here in Cairo.”

[Salah]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Another Jack

"jews virtually full freedom"

Yep.

Life in medieval Cairo is described in these terms by Hoffman and Cole: “In the relatively open ‘religious democracy’ Jews were free to practice nearly all the professions, from dyer to stucco worker to banker to phlebotomist to cheese maker to clerk to specialist in carp pickles. They could and did enter into close business partnerships with Muslims and Christians, and lived in any part of town they pleased …. No ghetto existed in that setting, and members of different communities and religions often owned and rented apartments in the very same building.

http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=590

[Salah]

Goitein wrote: “Under Arab-Muslim influence, Jewish thought and philosophy, and even Jewish law and religious practice were systematized and finally formulated. Even the Hebrew language developed its grammar and vocabulary on the model of the Arabic language. The revival of Hebrew in our own times would be entirely unthinkable without the services rendered in Arabic in various ways a thousand years ago. Arabic itself became a Jewish language and, unlike Latin in Europe, was employed by Jews for all secular and religious purposes with the sole exception being the synagogue service.”

[Salah]

Peaceful and Creative Eras

Indeed, some of the most peaceful and creative eras in Jewish history took place in the Muslim world. From the l0th to the 14th centuries, Jews flourished in Islamic countries — in Spain, Persia, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. While the Jewish communities in Christian Europe endured persecution, Jews in these Muslim countries enjoyed freedom and security.

Heart of the Arab World

Living in the heart of the Arab world, Jews first served their apprenticeship in the sciences with Islamic intellectual masters and, in time, became their collaborators in developing the general culture of the region. A striking example of this breadth of interest was Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, 1135-1204), a native of Cordoba. What chiefly characterized Jewish thought in this period was its search for unity — the attempt to reconcile faith with reason, theology and philosophy, the acceptance of authority with freedom of inquiry. In Arab countries in the Near East and North Africa, where there existed this free intermingling of cultures, there blossomed a rich and unique Jewish intellectuality in Arabic.

Beginning with the 10th century, especially in the kingdom of Cordoba under the enlightened Omayyad caliphs Abd al-Rahman and his son, Al-Hakin, there appeared a galaxy of Jewish scholars, historians, philologists , grammarians, religious philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, doctors and poets. During the 11th century, Ubn Usaibia, a Muslim scholar, listed 50 Jewish authors writing in Arabic on medical subjects alone.

The Golden Age of the Jews in Islamic North Africa, Babylonia and Southern Spain may be said to have taken place from the 9th to the 13th centuries. One of the earliest and most gifted mathematicians and astronomers in Spain, for example, was Abraham bar Chivya (d.c. 1136) who became known to the learned Christian world as Abraham Savasorda. He was considered the foremost mathematician of the 12th century in Europe and was the first writer to introduce the scientific method of the Greeks and the Arabs into Europe.

One of the greatest doctors of the Middle Ages — court physician to two Fatimid caliphs and a noted philosopher as well — was Isaac Israeli (b.Egypt, c.844, d. Tunis, c.955). His medical and philosophical works were carefully studied and admired by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. His treatises “On Fever” and “On Diet” remained authoritative in medical practice in Europe for five centuries.

Special Relationship


In Spain, under the Christian Visigoths, Jews were often beaten and executed. Throughout the 7th century, they were subjected to ruinous taxes and often were forced to convert to Christianity. With the Moslem invasion of Spain in 711, Jews participated in their success. They were called upon to garrison captured cities behind Arab armies. This occurred in Cordoba, Grenada, Toledo and Seville. Later Arab geographers referred to Grenada, as well as Lucena and Tarragona, as “Jewish cities.”

Cordoba became the leading center of Jewish culture in the world. During the reign of the Ummayid caliph Abd al-Rahman III (912-61), his Jewish doctor, Hisdai ib Shaprut, brought Jewish scholars, philosophers, poets and scientists to the city. Many compared the rapport the Jewish community established with the liberal caliphs to the age of Cyrus.

http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=590

[Salah]

Jews of Spain

In her book, The Jews of Spain, Jane S. Gerber writes that, “Judaism flourished in an unusual, indeed unique, environment as one component of the medieval Iberian scene that included Muslims and Christians. It was precisely because of this interaction that special sparks and creative energies were generated. In all of medieval Europe, only in Spain were Jews not the sole minority in a homogeneous Christian state. Consequently, Jews experienced two overlords on one soil as Iberia remained home to all three faiths from 711 to 1492 … a Jewish culture that did not adapt to new waves of thought would have become frozen in an ancient mold. To a large extent, then, the story of Jewish history is the story of creative cultural adaptation, and nowhere was this process more thoroughgoing than in Spain.”

According to Gerber, “In the minds of her sons and daughters, Sepharad (Spain) was a second Jerusalem. Expulsion from Spain, therefore, was as keenly lamented as was exile from the Holy Land … There are no other instances in Jewish history of such a close and enduring identification of the Jews with a land outside the holy land. Jews have lived in every corner of the globe, yet only Sepharad has lent its name to a division of world Jewry … Remarkably, during the turmoil of the early 1990s in Serbia, 57 Sephardic Jews of Sarajevo sought to return, not to the land of Israel but to Spain, and successfully sought asylum from King Juan Carlos.

The destruction of Muslim Spain, writes Karen Armstrong in The History of God, was “fatal for the Jews. In March 1492, a few weeks after the conquest of Grenada, the Christian monarchs gave Spanish Jews the choice of baptism or expulsion. Many of the Spanish Jews were so attached to their home that they became Christians, though some continued to practice their faith in secret … Some 150,000 Jews refused baptism, however, and were forcibly deported from Spain; they took refuge in Turkey, the Balkans and North Africa. The Muslims of Spain had given the Jews the best home they ever had in the diaspora, so the annihilation of Spanish Jewry was mourned by Jews throughout the world as the greatest disaster to have befallen their people since the destruction of the Temple in CE 70.”

Ottoman Empire

Jane Gerber points out that, “In the 15th and 16th centuries … it was the Ottoman Empire, then at the zenith of her power, that alone afforded exiles a place where ‘their weary feet could find rest’ … Her sultans — Bayezid II, Mehmet II, Suleiman the Magnificent — were dynamic, far-sighted rulers who were delighted to receive the talented Jewish outcasts of Europe … Bayezid II, responding to the expulsion from Spain, reportedly exclaimed, ‘You call Ferdinand a wise king, who impoverishes his country and enriches our own.’ He not only welcomed Sephardic exiles but ordered his provincial government to assist the wanderers by opening the borders. Indeed, the refugees would find the Ottoman state to be powerful, generous and tolerant.”

Also largely unknown is the role Moslems played in assisting Jews during the Nazi occupation of North Africa and in Nazi-occupied Europe as well. Part of this story is told in the book Among the Righteous by Robert Satloff. In Algeria, when the French Vichy regime stripped citizenship from Jews, one of the main sources of support for Algerian Jews who came from the Muslim religious establishment. “Here,” states Satloff, “the shining star was Abdel amid Ben Badis, leader of Algeria’s Isla (Reform) Party. Ben Badis was an intensely devout man with a modern, open, tolerant view of the world; among his many achievements was the founding of the Algerian League of Muslims and Jews. Regrettably, he died in spring 1940, before he could lend his personal strength and charisma to the Muslim response to Vichy’s coming to power.”

During the Vichy era, that mantle was worn by Saykj Taieb el-Okbi. Like Ben Badis, al-Okbi was a reformist leader who cultivated close ties with the leading Jews of Algeria. El Okbi showed his mettle in early 1942, reports Satloff: “When he heard rumors that leaders of a French pro-Fascist group ... were prodding Muslim troops to launch a pogrom against the Jews of Algiers, el-Okbi did all he could to prevent it, including a formal prohibition of Muslims from attacking Jews.”

Protecting Jews

Beyond this, from the pulpits of Algiers mosques, imams issued instruction to local Muslims not to take advantage of Jewish suffering for financial gain. “This act of self-denial at a time when many French colonialists were getting rich at the expense of Jews,” writes Satloff, “was an especially noble act on the part of the local Muslim community.”

In Tunisia, Prime Minister Mohamed Chenik, with long-standing ties to the Jewish community, regularly warned Jewish leaders of German plans, helped Jews avoid arrest orders, intervened to prevent deportations, and even hid individual Jews so they could evade a German dragnet. Even members of the royal court hid Jews who had escaped from German labor camps.

The same story is told about Morocco, where Sultan Muhammad V did his best to protect his Jewish subjects. At the annual Throne Day ceremony, with the elite of Moroccan and Vichy officialdom gathered at the royal place, the sultan made a point of welcoming the leaders of the Jewish community in attendance. “I must inform you that, just as in the past, the Israelites will remain under my protection,” he declared. “I refuse to make any distinction between my subjects.”

It was not only in North Africa that there is evidence of Muslims who saved Jews. The head of what could be considered the most important Muslim institution in Europe, the Great Mosque of Paris, was Si Kaddour Benghabrit. Built in the 1920s, the mosque was a gift from the French government to recognize the 100,000 or so Muslim soldiers who died in World War I. Benghabrit was a religious leader, spiritual guide, and well-connected political actor at the same time.

Mosque’s Role

“Stories of the mosque’s role in aiding Jews during the war have circulated for years,” Satloff notes. “The principal source was a North African Jew named Albert Assouline, a captive in a German prison camp. According to Assouline, he and an Algerian named Yassa Rabah escaped together from the camp and stealthily traversed the countryside across the French-German border heading for Paris. Once in Paris, they made their way to the mosque, where, evidently thanks to Rabah’s connections to the Algerian community, the two found refuge. Eventually Assouline continued his journey and joined up with Free French forces to continue the fight against the German occupation … the most fantastic part of the story was his claim that the mosque provided sanctuary and sustenance to Jews hiding from the Vichy and German troops as well as to other fighters in the anti-Fascist repentance.”

In a 1983 article for Almanach due Combattant, a French veterans’ magazine, Assouline wrote: “No fewer than 1,732 resistance fighters found refuge in its underground caverns. These included Muslim escapees but also Christians and Jews. The latter were by far the most numerous.” According to him, the senior imam of the mosque, Si Mohammed Benzouaou took “considerable risk” by hiding Jews and providing many (including many children) with certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could avoid deportation and certain death.

In Satloff’s view, “Assouline’s stunning story described the mosque as a virtual Grand Central Station for the Underground Railroad of Jews in France.”

[Jan van den Berghe]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Salah

Dankzij de komst van Islam, werd het Jodendom gered en floreerde het opnieuw.

Salah ontpopt zich zo stilaan als forumnar. Nu we de bubbels wat naar de achtergrond zijn geraakt, biedt Salah een humoristisch alternatief!

[Aton]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Salah

Dat is eigenlijk basis Joodse geschiedenis bevestigd door talloze Joodse historici en Rabbijnen hoor. Het verwoest ook het zionistisch relaas.

Maar anderzijds haalt het ook de bron van de Islam onderuit zoals die wordt onderwezen. Niks ' openbaringen ' en ' Gabriël als boodschapper ', maar joodse en christelijke mythologie ( en niet te verwaarlozen ook het Perzische Zoroastrisme )

[Aton]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Jan van den Berghe

Salah ontpopt zich zo stilaan als forumnar. Nu we de bubbels wat naar de achtergrond zijn geraakt, biedt Salah een humoristisch alternatief!

Hij is als nar nog lang niet op jou niveau.

[Jan van den Berghe]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Aton

Maar anderzijds haalt het ook de bron van de Islam onderuit zoals die wordt onderwezen. Niks ' openbaringen ' en ' Gabriël als boodschapper ', maar joodse en christelijke mythologie ( en niet te verwaarlozen ook het Perzische Zoroastrisme )

Inderdaad. Het boek "Le vrai Mahomet" is op dat vlak een ware openbaring.

[Salah]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Jan van den Berghe

Salah ontpopt zich zo stilaan als forumnar. Nu we de bubbels wat naar de achtergrond zijn geraakt, biedt Salah een humoristisch alternatief!

Je kunt er gewoon niks tegenin brengen, vandaar dat je met persoonlijke aanvallen begint, het summum van intellectuele zwakheid. Dat laatste is dan ook uw kenmerk.

[Zipper]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Another Jack

De bron is in het Engels, dan moet het wel waar zijn...

Inderdaad, “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it probably must be a duck"