Both Judaism and Islam proceeded from the same fundamental premise,
influenced by the same tribal culture and practically followed the same
orthodox pattern“
Dear Reader. If you find this particular article to be up to debate or have issues regarding the observations and conclusions of Dr. Ezzat, please take your discussion to his site, Pyramidion where, I am sure, you will have a better chance of engaging in intelligent conversation regarding these thorny matters. My few $.02 of snippits and snappits are in this shade of green.
By Dr. Ashraf Ezzat
PYRAMIDION
February 8, 2012
“Police arrest two after residents chase officers, hurl rocks, and burn trashcans to protest the removal of a sign that calls for the separation of men and women on a main street.”
The first guess most people will conjure up on listening to this
piece of news is that the report was probably talking about some Muslim
extremists in Afghanistan or may be Somalia, not so far-fetched a guess,
but to everybody’s astonishment the “Haaretz”
report was talking about Jewish extremists and specifically in Tel Aviv, the very heart
of the state of Israel.
Anyway, those who thought of Muslims as more fitting into this
story of flagrant discrimination against women ought not feel totally
disappointed for it actually doesn’t make much difference whether we were
talking about Jews or Muslims as long as extremism is concerned. For both Judaism and Islam proceeded from the same fundamental
premise, influenced by the same tribal culture and practically followed the
same orthodox pattern.
Here is a picture of an ultra orthodox Haredi Jewish woman in the
Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, wearing the Taliban type burka. This is a recent
picture.
This picture of the Israeli woman wearing the burka was taken from
this article : The whole of a woman is genitalia (or, Jewish women in burkas). Here is
an excerpt:
"The latest news, as
I have read in Israel’s Ha’Aretz, tells of a strange, Jewish women’s cult that
has popped up in rural Israel. This cult abides by an extremely strict dress
code of chastity, reminiscent of Muslim women. A religious woman must dress
chastely, with shirt sleeves covering her elbows and a skirt down to her ankles.
An extremely religious woman may sport a wig over her real hair, as her hair is
“an instrument of seduction”. The women must cover their faces completely, with
a shawl. “The whole of a woman is genitalia. It is forbidden for a man,
other than your husband to see you.” Says one of Keren’s earnest students
and assistant.
Some ultra orthodox Jews say
the woman is deemed as "genitalia" - hence they must cover up. So
this is what is going on among the ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel.
The Salafis in Egypt have said the same thing. Please read this short article Egyptian Sheikh: A woman's face is like a vagina. Here is an excerpt :
“What is a veil? A veil is what covers the woman’s face. Therefore the woman’s face is like her vagina,” Sheik Abou Ishak al-Houwayni was quoted on the Elaph news website as saying."
Here is another article reference on the same subject : Jewish Ultra-Orthodox groups are creating a new Taliban in Jerusalem. An excerpt:
"Jerusalem: Jewish Ultra-Orthodox groups are creating a new Taliban in Jerusalem, who have issued a religious edict calling upon women to cover their bodies and hair in order to be cleared of their sins. Posters promoting the new dress code were spotted in the areas of Jerusalem pre-dominantly inhabited by the Haredim community, the Israeli daily Maariv reported.Women, the posters said, have to wear clothes that are neither tight nor transparent. The clothes have to be black in order to preserve women's modesty and allow them to be cleared of sins. The hair has to be covered as well. Violating those orders, the posters warned, is bound to have grave consequences since this means disobeying the teachings of the Torah."
Nowhere
does the Quran say that a woman is like genitalia. As I have said
before, it is the Jews who started all this Jewish nonsense. All these
strange and funny ideas came from them. They are also the ones who began
this 'This is what God commanded us to do' rubbish. What does the
Quran say about the Jews and the Ahli Kitab ?~ BURQA IN ISRAEL
So
much, indeed, was Muhammad indebted to the Jews for a great portion of his
teaching on this and other subjects that the Qur’an has been described as a
compendium of Talmudic Judaism. (Blair, The Sources of Islam, p. 55).
A lot of westerners are not to be reproached for associating
Muslims with violence, racism, intolerance and discrimination, after all, this
kind of anti-Muslim propaganda is what they have been fed over the last decade
and specifically following 9/11, and ironically by a Jewish-controlled
mainstream media.
ED: It is my belief that this anti-Muslim bias began with the onset
of film with Rudolph Valentino as the Sheikh of Araby. Arabs have since been
undermined from the start and during the last century indoctrination began with
the young through stereotyping in cartoons, especially those of Disney.
And if they haven’t been told different, how we expect them to
know better ~ or even refrain from subscribing to the impending and
irreparable Israeli/American folly in Iran?
And
since this is no mainstream hypnosis, we might as well hit you with
part of the true story about the relation between Judaism and Islam.
In the wake of 9/11, an extremely important milestone in the
history of Mossad, and as the mainstream media
spotlights began to focus on Islam as the new global enemy, many in the US
& Europe were made to think of Muslims as some aliens who landed on planet
earth with their weapons of mass destruction, hate-mongering dogma and
premeditated plans to annihilate the west.
And as the shrewd prelude of the ‘clash of civilizations’ was being played out, incessant
questions about Islam that begged an answer, soon surfaced on almost
everybody’s mind “why we never
knew enough about Islam; how was it founded? What’s Islam all about and why is
there so much extremism in this religion?
According to Islam online, Islam is
the religious faith of Muslims, based on the words and religious system founded
by the prophet Muhammad and taught by the Qur’an, the basic principle of
which is absolute submission to a unique and personal god, Allah ~ notice
the etymological correlation with Elohim ~ the
designated word for the god of the Hebrews.
Muslims also believe that Islam is the complete and universal
version of a primordial faith that was revealed at many times and places
before, including through Abraham, Moses and Jesus, whom they consider
prophets. They maintain that previous messages and revelations have been
partially changed or tampered with over time, but consider the Qur’an to be both
the unaltered and the final revelation of God. In other words, and as the
Qur’an put it, with the revelation of the Islamic verses “the pens have been lifted and the pages dried out”
ARABIAN VARIATION ON A HEBREW THEME
Should anyone decide to study those reportedly unaltered and
final words of god in Qur’an, he will be astounded by how much the holy book of
Muslims is crammed with old stories from the Bible and specifically the Hebrew
scriptures.
Now, don’t you get misled into assuming that I’m substantiating
Judaism as the ultimate and genuine revelation from god that is truly
worthy of following, a claim that could easily be challenged by tracing the
Hebrew stories of genesis with the whole epic sequence of Adam & Eve to the
Sumerian mythology and by
tracing the monotheistic theme in Judaism to Akhenaten’s worship of Aten , or even by watching the Israelites’
backbone story of Exodus denied any entry to the ancient Egyptian texts; rather
I’m only trying to underline and pin-point this ‘copy-and-paste’ relation
between Judaism and early Islam ~ so much for the new religion “ Kopimism”
Within the confines of the Qur’an you will meet Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon and the rest of the Hebrew
mythological patriarchs. Their stories are retold again but with variations
that allowed the new prophet’s –unaltered- religion to somehow fit into the
Abrahamic tales one way or another.
Reading the Qur’an will practically feel like recounting
familiar stories from the Midrash and Talmud but
with a Mohamedanian/Arabic flavor.
For
example, the story of binding of Isaac, as awfully sadistic and inhuman
as it is, is retold in the Qur’an in the same melodramatic scenario where
Abraham bound his son, Isaac, before placing him on the altar, all set to
sacrifice him as commanded by Yahweh, but in the
Muslim version Isaac is conveniently replaced with Ishmael and Yahweh/Elohim
with Allah.
Throughout the whole Qur’anic narrative we will encounter other
countless examples of stories, Noah’s flood, slavery of the Jews in Egypt, the
Exodus, the wandering in the wilderness, etc., copied from the Torah, with
exactly the same historical anachronism and exaggeration, and pasted into the
Qur’an.
But
alongside the biblical stories we will also encounter, as we wade through
the chapters of Qur’an, a tribal narrative very similar to that of the oral
discourse of the Jewish rabbis and their formulation of god and the world
around us as exactly found in the Talmud.
Historically speaking, Mohammed ~ who was illiterate and had
worked as some sheep herder for many years of his teens ~ had the privilege of
mingling with the elite of the Arabian society ~ a turning point in his life ~
only after he had been married to Khadija bint Khuwaylid
~ a business woman of intellect, culture and vast wealth and
influence and who practically asked to marry him. And this is actually when the story of Islam commenced.
After his marriage, a new window into the multiculturalism in
the Arab peninsula had suddenly been opened for the newly married shepherd, and
of all the new experiences, contacts and new ideas he was introduced to,
Mohammed was most intrigued by the Jews’ fascinating stories and their pride in
relating to a long line of prophets that goes back to Abraham and his special
pact with god.
Mohammed decided that the Jewish story had to be continued with
new characters, locations and even with a whole new divinity. But as Muhammed was carving up the body of his new religion, little did
he know that he was standing in the precarious shadow of Judaism.
There are abundant examples of the Qur’anic records which are
reliant on Jewish sources that can be traced either to the Bible or to Talmudic
records such as the Midrash, Mishnah, etc.
There were a host of Jewish communities settled in Medinah and
other parts of the Hijaz ~ major cities in the Arab peninsula ~ from which
Mohammed almost certainly obtained his knowledge through direct conversation
and from listening to rabbis educated in Talmudic laws. And this is where and how Islam acquired its radical edge ~ next of
course to being the product of a tribal culture.
In the Jewish Talmud ~ a word repeatedly mentioned in the
Qur’anic verses ~ the rabbis put attitude before everything else, so they made
sure that Jews were superior to the gentiles in intellect, in morality and as a
race.
And likewise did Mohammed in the Qur’an and managed to keep
this prejudice but with a new attitude as he featured the Arabs as god’s best people ever ~ a new variation on the “chosen
people” theme.
For
it is important to know that Mohammed was acquainted with Jewish teachings not
by reading the Bible, Talmud and Midrash, but through serious conversations
with the Jews. (Rosenthal, Judaism
and Islam, p. 8).
Now, with history, copying ancient tales and theology aside, I
ask you to take a look at the so called extremists in both Saudi Arabia ~ the
hub of ultra-conservative Muslims- and Israel ~ the world’s political asylum
for ultra-conservative Jews, and see if you could tell the difference between
the Haredim community and the wahhabis’.
DOGMA BROTHERS
Once again, you will be surprised by how
similar ultra-conservative Jews and Muslims are in regard to their
looks (the untrimmed beard, the 19th century outfit), their cuisine
(Kosher and Halaal) and their
interpretation of the ever-changing world around them through the rigid
scriptures they recite and hold as the only and indisputable truth … and yes,
and most of all, you will be bewildered by how similarly they both perceive and
treat the woman pretty degradingly.
According to tribal culture and values ~ the shared roots of
Judaism and Islam ~ women’s ‘misbehavior’ is not only a shame on the family but
on the community, the village, the tribe, the neighborhood and the neighbors.
Here is an advertising poster with the face of a woman that has been defaced. The sign at the top right indicates 'No women' in Hebrew. One State in Malaysia has done the same thing. They don't allow women's faces on public advertisements. A similarity in fanaticism.
Here is an advertising poster with the face of a woman that has been defaced. The sign at the top right indicates 'No women' in Hebrew. One State in Malaysia has done the same thing. They don't allow women's faces on public advertisements. A similarity in fanaticism.
When
it comes to women’s rights, both Haredim and Wahhabis or
Salafis kind of speak the same language. It’s a racist and hate language
actually. For them the woman is a constant reminder of the mythological first
sin and how Eve (the woman) seduced Adam (the man) and therefore got him kicked
out of God’s heavenly kingdom.
And again leaving the rituals, with all the wailing at the wall
and the rotation around the Kabaa aside, both hard-line Muslims and Jews view
the woman, according to their tribal and religious culture, as a man’s
possession and a reflection of his honor and who should never be equated with
him.
Both the wahhabis/salafis and the haredi believe that the woman
should be segregated from men in public domain, should cover up and should
confine to her home and to only go out in case of absolute necessity.
Bearing that deeply entrenched misogynistic concept in mind, we
won’t find it peculiar to read about women, covered up from head to toes and
banned from driving cars in Saudi Arabia, for it is a practice that could propagate prostitution and lead
every unmarried woman to eventually lose her virginity and turn into some
whore…
Nor it would be strange to hear of “Mehadrin” buses ~ those Israeli buses which
are separated by gender and require women to sit at the back … or to even hear
of the shocking story of Na’ama Margolis, an eight-year-old girl student at the
Orot LeBanot School in Tel Aviv who has been subjected to harassment by Haredi
men, in beit shemesh, who believed she dressed immodestly and therefore spat on her face and hurled
stones and insults at her like “prutza” (whore) and “shiksa”
(the Yiddish term for a non-Jewish woman).
What’s
painfully ludicrous is that hard-line Muslims and Jews recognize each other as
bitter enemies unaware, through their blatant ignorance of history, of the fact
that they both claim authority from practically the same dogma.
Commented one of the Beit Shemesh haredim community interviewed
by Israel’s TV Channel 2’s Shai Gal
“Absolutely, I would not hesitate to spit on any woman who is not dressed in a modest way as the Torah commands, yes, even if she was a 7-year-old girl. After all, I’m a sane man”
Ask city councilor Rachel
Azaria, who has led the fight against haredi extremism in Jerusalem
for years.
“We are trying to determine what kind of society we are ~ is this a democracy where the majority decides, or is there a minority that pushes everyone in one direction?”
Mrs. Azaria’s question didn’t pass unanswered, and while the
wahhabis and the salafis are reaping the fruits of the Arab spring and gaining
more strongholds in the region, that haredi from Beit Shemesh assured his
interviewer form Israel channel 2 with a defiant tone that
“whether you like it or not, all of Israel will be ultra-Orthodox. And nothing anyone can do about it.”
But
I tend to disagree with that fanatic ultra-orthodox Jew or
any of his Muslim counterparts for that matter. Indeed, there is
something which all of us can do that will help us take the
first exit out of this speedy and crazy way to Armageddon , we can draw the
line, that thin and often overlooked one, between history and myth.
HISTORY, HISTORY! WE FOOLS,
WHAT DO WE KNOW OR CARE.
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