In the Name of My God

To kill in the name of a God you’ve never seen nor met; to maim and indiscriminately take the lives of every person you can – woman or man, youth or toddler – and to proudly claim you are a follower of Allah and the teachings of His Prophet …

To do all these and to not have a fatwa issued against you and the terrorist organisation you are a “proud” member of is truly unthinkable.

But, of course, that’s ok as long as you do it all in the name of Allah, for as long as you don’t mock Allah’s name. This is a very distorted and skewed interpretation of one of the world’s most peaceful – yes, really – religions, Islam.

In 2015, just as ISIS was beginning to peer its hideous head through the rubble of the war-torn Syria, I was asked to give a lecture on Culture and Business at Aberdeen Business School to the students studying International Business Management. At the time I thought it absolutely paramount to talk about Islam and deconstruct some of the perceptions that many young people in that lecture hall may have held against Islam given the atrocities they were reading about in the newspapers and watching on TV.

And let’s be very honest here – the random person on the street, both largely and wrongly, thinks that all Arabs are terrorists and that all Muslims are Arabs.

It is widely held false perceptions and assumptions like these that we need to address – if we can, when we can, and as often as we can:

If any of you ever witnessed/attended any of my lectures/training courses, my “lecturing” style is a dialogue, not a monologue. So, before I played any of my slides for that lecture, I asked the students an open question: “what do you think about Islam?”

You can imagine the answers I received … but then, slowly, I started unpeeling their misconceptions, starting with the one which, in my view, is fundamental in understanding that Islam and Islamic fundamentalists are very, very different things, and the Five Pillars of Islam most Muslims abide by are evidence of that.

Furthermore, and below I shall insert a slide from the lecture I gave to those students over eight years ago, the commandments of Christianity, Judaism and Islam have much more in common than many may imagine:

The State of Israel was established in 1948 and the roots of Judaism, just like the roots of Islam – as proclaimed by their religious scholars – can be traced back to Abraham, and his two sons: Isaac and Ishmael.

Moses, and the teachings he “received” from God on Mount Sinai 2,500 - 3,000 years ago, gave birth to the world’s two largest and most significant monotheistic religions: Judaism and Christianity, and very strong references to the Old Testament’s characters, Moses included, are also present in the Qur?ān (Koran) itself.

We have the same “man”, the same “mountain”, and very similar interpretations of God’s “laws”, yet unlike the Jews and Christians – who today will never knowingly congregate, arm themselves and kill in the name of their faith or of the God they worship – factions of demented Islamic fundamentalists do.

Islam, unlike Christianity or Judaism, is a much “younger” religion. Islamic sources report that a complete written collection of the Qur?ānic revelations was produced only after the Prophet’s death (632 AD), when a great number of those who knew the Qur?ān by heart were killed on the battlefield and the fear arose that knowledge of the Qur?ān might disappear.

But let’s leave faith and religion aside for a while, and see what the historical facts – not fiction, myth, or the legends all religions are rooted in – tell us. I promise I’ll be very succinct. Below is a map of Palestine of 2,000 years ago, according to the US Library of Congress:

Not many heard of a little something called the Balfour Declaration: in 1917, at the height of the WWI, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, a gentleman named Arthur James Balfour, submitted a letter of intent supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine:

The predecessor of the current United Nations, a body called “The League of Nations”, approved the Balfour Declaration in 1922 (100 years ago) although the Arab nations at the time strongly opposed it, for fear that the creation of a Jewish homeland – The Promised Land – would effectively lead to the moral and psychological enslavement of the Arab Palestinians.

Until 1947, basically until the end of WWII, Palestine was controlled by the British Empire. In May 1948 Israel officially became an independent and sovereign state following the political and financial pressures of the Jewish Zionist movement whose single most important goal was the establishment of an Israeli state in the heart of the Palestine. ?

As the laws of physics have taught us, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: a Zionist state, a nationalist state if you wish, gave rise to a nationalist Arab faction.

It is worth mentioning that the United Nations (the “heir” of the League of Nations) did propose to have Palestine split in an Arab state and a Jewish state – but the Arab nations refused this proposal.

Ironically, just as Israel established its state in the Palestinian land, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) , wanted to set up a Palestinian state within Israel, and claimed that it represented all Palestinians living in Palestine before 1947.

In 1967, although not “assigned” to it by the United Nations, Israel took control of the Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and Golan Heights following a 6-day war with Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

This document depicts a very interesting “expansion” of Israel’s borders over the past 100 years:

There have been many, sadly way too many bloody and deadly conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Palestine included: there have been two Palestinian Intifadas, two Lebanon Wars, The Yom Kippur War, the Suez Crisis and multiple conflicts with the Sunni Hamas who, just like its Hezbollah Shi’ite counterpart, is a terrorist organisation, one which was born out of the Palestinian Authority’s (Fatah) lack of leadership, willingness to negotiate, inability to command respect and support from within and who refuses to acknowledge the existence of the State of Israel.

Now, a bit more history if you allow me. Sunnis and Shi’as are two antagonistic strands of Islam: Sunnis oppose Prophet Mohammed’s bloodline as being His descendants, meanwhile Shi’as believe that Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Mohammed was his rightful “heir” and religious “descendant”. The two Islamic factions though seem to be able to waive their religious differences when it comes to their common “enemy”, Israel.

Some may know this, others may not, but even in 2023 not all UN Member States recognise the State of Israel and, of particular concern is the fact that the most significant neighbours of Israel don’t recognise it either: Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

In this light, what is very worrying is that Iran, the Shiite Kingdom, has just called on ALL Islamic Arab nations to join their forces together against Israel:

Before I draw this article to a close, I would like to point out some very interesting facts about nation states who sponsor Islamic extremism and how these states, instead of being chastised and held to account by the international community, they are cuddled and kept cosy, and even allowed to host the 2023 Football World Cup, of course!

It is not just Hamas, Hezbollah or ISIS that receive(d) state-sponsorship; Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network (Taliban) have been allowed to exist and thrive by nation-states, too, some already mentioned above.

Should Israel stop its advancement in the occupied territories? It should.

Should Israel agree to a two-state solution? It should.

Should Israel provide a much better treatment of the Palestinians living within its borders and treat them as one would a neighbour and a millennia-old “brother”? It should.

Should the Palestinians eradicate the Hamas extremists, and any and all fundamentalist extremists who have been allowed to fester in their communities? They should.

Should the Palestinians find a decent leader who understands their needs and priorities, and who can lead them to prosperity and peace with Israel? They should.

Should the religious leaders of Islam – all imams preaching in all the mosques around the world, not just in the Middle East – issue a fatwa on Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, decrying any and all acts of murder and terrorism against any and all civilians, Israeli or not? They should.

Should Benjamin Netanyahu leave politics and his own nationalist extremism aside and understand that peace can only be based on compromise, not on imposition or forceful compliance? He should.

Should all Palestinian and Israeli mothers join hands, form a human chain and march together on the streets of Gaza and Jerusalem, demanding that no more children are killed? They should.

After all, when a child is born, s/he is religion-free, faith-free and nationality-free.

How many of the Israeli and Palestinian children of yesterday, the adults of today, would have chosen Islam or Judaism seeing what being a Muslim in Israel looks like today, and seeing what being a Jew in Israel feels like today?

We are in 2023, in the 21st century; I should not need to be asked, when I land in Tel Aviv, whether I want my passport stamped (by the way, the Israeli Border Control does offer you the option of a little ticket instead of a stamp in your passport, just in case you are refused entry in an Arab Middle Eastern country) or not – honestly, we are sending missions to Mars, investing trillions of dollars in artificial intelligence, yet we are afraid to show an Israeli stamp in our passports? What zombie apocalypse do we live in???

Anyway, I have reached the end of my article. I could say so much more but I’d rather you say it further.

There is one more thing I would very much appreciate it if you could do it: the slide below has embedded in it the Jewish prayer for the dead – El Malei Rachamim, beautifully chanted by Cantor Shai Abramson.

It is only 5 minutes long.

And, as you watch/listen to it and if you can, please stand and light a candle NOT JUST for the Israelis that have been killed this past week, but for ALL the other foreign nationals who have been caught in the massacre.

As for the Palestinian/Muslim lives needlessly lost this week, while Islam forbids the lighting of candles for the dead, as you listen to Cantor Shai, do so facing Mecca (if you have access to a computer or a smart phone, Google’s Qibla Finde r will point you in the right direction).

This way, we can remember and pray for them all.

Shabbat shalom.

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Written by a human - me.