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Total number of comments: 264 (since 2009-08-02 02:24:34)

olive

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  • Americans who support Palestinian cause must be willing to lose friends
    • olive October 23, 2011 at 2:22 pm with 16 replies

      Has anyone noticed the high noumber of Washingtonians (the State, not DC) who support Palestine? This young lady, Rachel Corrie, Brian Baird, Jim McDermott, the list goes on. Can anyone give any reasons as to why this is?

  • In Cairo, we consecrate the freedom of religion
    • olive October 10, 2011 at 7:31 am

      Well, I'm glad that your still holding down the fort :D I can't speak for the other brown people who contribute to Mondoweiss but I do not comment that often because I just don't have that much to contribute. The things that I wanted to say have already been said far more eloquently by commenters like you, Shmuel, Avi and others .

    • olive October 9, 2011 at 6:26 pm

      That seems to be correct, Chaos. It appears that Maimonides left the Iberian Penensula after the Almohads took over Muslim Spain. Interestingly enough, the Almohads were very similar to the modern day Salafi/Wahabi movement . Maimonides ended up travelling to the Middle East to become Saladin's physician after studying medicine at Al-Qarawiyyin University, one of the oldest Islamic madrassas in the world .

  • As Nakba Day approaches, Israeli troops 'conquer' a simulated Arab village
    • olive May 13, 2011 at 10:54 pm

      My dear Taxi, Kaf-Ba-Sin (I "romanized"this due to a lack of an Arabic keyboard on my part) is the triliteral root. The Hans Wehr dictionary (which is a highly respected dictionary) merely examined the various ways that the this triliteral root can be interpreted ( I omited the grammitical points and examples used in the dictionary because I'm too lazy to type the Arabic out even if I had a keyboard)...

      But you get the idea........

    • olive May 13, 2011 at 9:07 pm

      From the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, Third Edition page 811 of the pocket sized paperback:

      Kaf-Ba-Sin: to exert pressure, press, squeeze; to attack, raid, take by surprise, to intercalate, to preserve (in vinegar or the like), pickle; to marinate; to marinate; to conserve IIto press or squeeze hard; to massage.......

    • olive May 9, 2011 at 6:43 pm

      This post may finally motivate me to actually buy the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic instead of just skimming through it at the bookstore!

  • American journalists want to see the Arab spring happening everywhere but Palestine
    • olive April 30, 2011 at 11:01 am

      The really funny thing here is that there is a debate among historians that British commony law has its roots in the Maliki school of Islamic law....

      With that said, I must admit that I am tired of Zionists using the Sharia as an excuse to maintain this unacceptable status quo.

      For those who are sincerely interested in how the Sharia works, here is an excellent introductory lecture by Dr. Tim Winter (Abdal Hakim Murad). The full video costs two dollars to buy but it is worth it:link to youtube.com

      Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of all the speakers on this YT channel. It is only an endorsement of Abdal Hakim Murad.

    • olive April 30, 2011 at 10:53 am

      It's not socially conservative laws that I am worried about, eee, its the ethnic cleansing that's the deal breaker....

  • Oscar night at J St: Michael Sfard says Israel made 'an immoral choice' and makes it again, every day
    • olive February 28, 2011 at 8:48 am

      "Of course it is understandable why the Jewish people has reached that dichotomy. [a word here about our complicated history, I'll get it later]. "

      You know, the moral quality of people can be judged on how they react to things. As I said before, no one will excuse a serial rapist for the things that he did because he had a rough childhood. I seriously believe that the leadership of certain segments of the Jewish community need to stop hiding behind the "Holocaust/program card" to excuse and/or dilute the injustice that they are enabling (if not directly commiting as in the case of Israel).

  • Is this my ancient homeland or are you just happy to see me?
    • olive February 17, 2011 at 7:24 am

      Max Blumenthal recently posted an announcement on his blog that all Hasabara Trolls will be blocked...............I'm just sayin'....

  • Welcome to Palestine…now let’s reset the relationship
    • olive February 16, 2011 at 11:42 pm

      "you mean less heavily oppressive than some other regimes."

      Errrm, such as the Zionist regime?

    • olive February 16, 2011 at 7:41 pm

      Professor Tim Winter of Cambridge discussing this very topic: Listen to it here: link to cambridgekhutbasetc.blogspot.com

      Description of the talk:

      In this sermon the sheikh discusses some aspects of the noble history of Gaza, burial place of the great-grandfather of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and discusses its current despicable treatment by Israel. He mentions various historical and contemporary factors that may have contributed to events, from upcoming Israeli elections to the Arab Revolt incited by the British during First World War which led to the collapse of the Islamic Caliphate. The sheikh relates our search for meaning and understanding of events to one of Islam's earliest tragedies, the murder of Husayn b. 'Ali (may God be pleased with him) which of course also took place in Muharram as the crimes of Gaza have. During their most trying ordeals the Companions of the Prophet and their successors - by God's Mercy - maintained their faith in Him and their commitment to justice whilst resisting the human impulse for revenge and indiscriminate violence. May God Almighty, Lord of All the Worlds, grant the people of Gaza quick relief from their unspeakable suffering and show the ummah and the whole world the path to true justice for them.

      The picture here is of the Great Mosque of Gaza, built as the sheikh mentions on the site of the Eudoxiana church when the people of the city rushed to embrace Islam.

  • America is about to begin a love affair with the Arab world
    • olive February 5, 2011 at 10:16 pm with 2 replies

      I think Maher's comments reveal the elephant in the room: That far too many Western (and Eastern) liberals care more about the enforcement of secularism in the Arab and Muslim world than they do about democracy. This is why I doubt that I will ever hear Maher condemning the Uzbeck government for the things that it does (i.e boiling Islamists alive).

    • olive February 5, 2011 at 10:12 pm with 1 replies

      I don't know.......I have a hard time believing that things will get better just because there may be democracy. Democracy is a form of governance. Its not fullproof. Its a form and PEOPLE are the content. If the people are corrupt (i.e taking bribes etc) then the fact that they will get to vote does not mean much. For example, Pakistan is a democracy (more or less) but its suffocating from problems of corruption.

      If people in the Arab and wider Muslim world want an end to corruption, they need to start in their own houses. It is good character that leads to a healthy society, not revolutions.

    • olive February 5, 2011 at 9:54 pm

      Chris Hedges actually wrote two books about this "New Atheism". Here is the latest one:

      [Review from Amazon]
      Hedges is clear from the outset: there is nothing inherently moral about being either a believer or a nonbeliever. He goes a step further by accusing atheists of being as intolerant, chauvinistic, bigoted, anti-intellectual, and self-righteous as their archrivals, religious fundamentalists; in other words, as being secular versions of the religious Right. Like best-selling atheists Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, Hedges is disgusted with the Christian Right, going so far as to call it the most frightening mass movement in American history. Even more disturbing for Hedges, however, is the notion, which many atheists and liberal churchgoers share, that as a species humanity can progress morally. There is nothing in human nature or human history to support the idea, Hedges maintains, nor that the flaws of human nature will ever be overcome. He discusses the dark sides of the Enlightenment, Darwinism, consumer culture, the justifications for America’s wars (including in Vietnam and now Iraq), and obsession with celebrity, among other equally hot topics. His purpose in this small, thought-provoking book is, he says, to help Americans, in particular, accept the limitations of being human and, ultimately, face reality. --June Sawyers --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. You can get it from here:
      link to amazon.com

  • The Egyptian revolution is coming– to the U.S.A.
    • olive February 1, 2011 at 7:51 pm

      The pleasure is all mine, Ck.

    • olive February 1, 2011 at 6:01 pm

      CK, the Sunni Legal tradition has something called "usul al fiqh" which translates as "Methodological principles of jurisprudence" which is a set of objective principles used to interpret the primary texts of Islam . The differences between the Four Sunni school of law stem from their different methodologies in extracting law from the primary texts. Thus, when a new question that arises in our modern age (ex. genetic engineering of foods), the jurists use the Methodological principles of their school of law to solve these problems. Many modern reform movements (Islamists included) seem to prefer a "Potestant" approach to interpreting texts, instead.

      As for the "Gates of Ijtihad" being closed; they are only closed to those without they keys to go through them (i.e unqualified people).

      As for the "Incoherence of the Philosopher", Shaykh Hamza Yusuf (in a speech given a while ago) explains why Imam al Ghazali wrote this book:
      "Tahafut al-falasifa [Incoherence of the Philosophers] and he also did a great favour because he went through philosophy, he defined six branches of philosophy. He said out of six branches, five branches are actually fine, they are not really a problem. Politics is not a problem, that is an Islamic science. Ethics is not a problem, that is an Islamic science. Mathematics is not a problem, that is an Islamic science. He said these are all fine but when we get into metaphysics, we have a problem and then he identified 20 problems with metaphysics in philosophy and from those 20 problems, he identified three problems in particular and he wrote that in his Tahafut al-falasifa that the philosophers are a problem because they believe in the eternity of the world. They do not believe that the bodies are resurrected and they do not believe that Allah knows particulars. They believe He knows universals. So he refuted why and he did it using logic because that is also one of the branches of philosophy. "

      But, CK, you are correct in saying that this discussion is probably not appropriate to this blog.

    • olive February 1, 2011 at 4:24 pm

      Thanks for the kind words Richard (although I am not deserving of them). As one of my teachers said, a person truly realized in spirituality is some who is realized in three basic realities:

      1.) You
      2.) God
      3.) Your grave

      So we should all be scrupulous in standing up for justice and not oppressing others because wicked deeds are not things that one wants to bring with him to his grave....

      As for your questions, my answer is yes to both.

    • olive February 1, 2011 at 4:02 pm

      I think there might be a misunderstanding of terms such as "Shariah", "Islamism", and "fundementalism". this is not suprising since i doubt that even pundits on TV know what these terms mean when they are thrown around.

      Without being too spammy on my part, let us have Shaykh faraz Rabbani define the Shariah as understood by traditional Sunni scholars
      ----------------------------------------
      In Arabic, Shariah means the clear, well-trodden path to water. Islamically, it is used to refer to the matters of religion that God has legislated for His servants. The linguistic meaning of Shariah reverberates in its technical usage: just as water is vital to human life so the clarity and uprightness of Shariah is the means of life for souls and minds.

      Throughout history, God has sent messengers to people all over the world, to guide them to the straight path that would lead them to happiness in this world and the one to follow. All messengers taught the same message about belief (the Qur�an teaches that all messengers called people to the worship of the One God), but the specific prescriptions of the divine laws regulating people�s lives varied according to the needs of his people and time.

      The Prophet Muhammad (God bless him and give him peace) was the final messenger and his Shariah represents the ultimate manifestation of the divine mercy. �Today I have perfected your way of life (din) for you, and completed My favour upon you, and have chosen Islam as your way of life.� (Qur�an, 5: 3) The Prophet (pbuh) himself was told that, �We have only sent you are a mercy for all creation.� (Qur�an, 21: 179)

      Legal Rulings
      The Shariah regulates all human actions and puts them into five categories: obligatory, recommended, permitted, disliked or forbidden.

      Obligatory actions must be performed and when performed with good intentions are rewarded. Its opposite is the forbidden. Recommended action is that which should be done. Its opposite is the disliked. Permitted action is that which is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Most human actions fall in this last category.

      The ultimate worth of actions is based on intention and sincerity, as mentioned by the Prophet (pbuh), who said, �Actions are by intentions, and one shall only get that which one intended.�

      Life under the Shariah
      The Shariah covers all aspects of human life. Classical Shariah manuals are often divided into four parts: laws relating to personal acts of worship, laws relating to commercial dealings, laws relating to marriage and divorce, and penal laws.

      Legal Philosophy
      God sent prophets and books to humanity to show them the way to happiness in this life, and success in the hereafter. This is encapsulated in the believer�s prayer, stated in the Qur�an, �Our Lord, give us good in this life and good in the next, and save us from the punishment of the Fire.� (2: 201)

      The legal philosophers of Islam, such as Ghazali, Shatibi, and Shah Wali Allah explain that the aim of Shariah is to promote human welfare. This is evident in the Qur�an, and teachings of the Prophet (pbuh).

      The scholars explain that the welfare of humans is based on the fulfillment of necessities, needs, and comforts.

      Necessities
      Necessities are matters that worldly and religious life depend upon. Their omission leads to unbearable hardship in this life, or punishment in the next. There are five necessities: preservation of religion, life, intellect, lineage, and wealth. These ensure individual and social welfare in this life and the hereafter.

      The Shariah protects these necessities in two ways: firstly by ensuring their establishment and then by preserving them.

      1.Religion: To ensure the establishment of religion, God Most High has made belief and worship obligatory. To ensure its preservation, the rulings relating to the obligation of learning and conveying the religion were legislated.

      2.Life: To ensure the preservation of human life, God Most high legislated for marriage, healthy eating and living, and forbid the taking of life and laid down punishments for doing so.

      3.Intellect: God has permitted that sound intellect and knowledge be promoted, and forbidden that which corrupts or weakens it, such as alcohol and drugs. He has also imposed preventative punishments in order that people stay away from them, because a sound intellect is the basis of the moral responsibility that humans were given.

      4.Lineage: marriage was legislated for the preservation of lineage, and sex outside marriage was forbidden. Punitive laws were put in placed in order to ensure the preservation of lineage and the continuation of human life.

      5.Wealth: God has made it obligatory to support oneself and those one is responsible for, and placed laws to regulate the commerce and transactions between people, in order to ensure fair dealing, economic justice, and to prevent oppression and dispute. (the entire explanation can be read here: link to qa.sunnipath.com)
      -----------------------------------------
      As for Islamism, Dr. Faruq Abdullah explains:
      --------------------------------------------------
      “Islamist” should not be confused with “Islamic” or “extremist.” I use it to refer to various highly politicized twentieth-century revivalist movements with essentialist interpretations of Islam, generally advocating particular state and party ends as Islam’s chief or virtually unique focus. Islamists tend toward literalism but selectively retrieve the texts they follow, often contravening well-established interpretations within Islam’s scholarly tradition. As culturally predatory as they often are regarding traditional Islamic and modern humanistic culture, their general attitude toward culture entails the grave oversight of looking upon modern technology as “culturally” neutral without addressing its sociological underpinnings, especially the implications of the skills, assumptions, and expectations required to produce it.
      ------------------------

      I was planning on also providing a definition of what makes a "Wahabi" but I will stop here for now in the interest of not making my post too long.

    • olive February 1, 2011 at 3:11 pm

      Hi Ck,
      Yes I am familiar some of Olivier Roy's work . His quote that you are sharing is spot on. Of course, both "Western" zealots and Muslim zealots will deny that Islamism's roots ultimately lay in European revolutionary utopianism.

    • olive February 1, 2011 at 2:19 pm

      Just to clarify, Tim winter does not mean that Islamist orginizations are actually run by the "clergy". In another interview, he clarifies : “Bin Laden is an engineer, Zawahiri is a medic. The typical profile of the radical Islamist is not that he is an expert on Islam, rather it is that he is somebody with a Western technical type of education who is sufficiently incensed by Western policies that he is using an Islamic language misunderstood to justify what is essentially a temper tantrum.”

    • olive February 1, 2011 at 2:14 pm with 12 replies

      Part of an interview of Abdal Hakim Murad (aka Tim Winter) of Cambridge University talking aboutthese modern Islamist movements. This was done in 2004 but it is very relevant to the discussion about the MB and Egypts future. Interview was conducted by John Cleary:
      -----------------------------------------------------
      John Cleary: One of the elements of the polarisation that’s pushed even in semi-serious Christian circles is a theological issue, and that is the critique that ultimately Islam in the way it is taught, in the majority of places, has at its heart, a notion of theocracy, which is fundamentally incompatible, and I use ‘fundamentally’ quite deliberately there, incompatible with any notion of secular pluralism.

      Tim Winter: Well clearly, religion in any traditional sense is going to adopt a position of prophetic criticism of the structures of liberal consumer society. There are many aspects of the modern world and globalisation, the degradation of the environment, the control exercised over the planet by the corporations, media moguls etc., that I think people in all religions really want to criticise very sharply, and Islam is certainly not different in that respect. The issue of religion and politics, you have to remember that before say the 18th century, all religious assumed that the two were two ways of expressing the same thing, that the head of the church was the head of the State, and in Christendom, as in the Islamic world, the two were very much elided. But the Muslim tradition is actually to keep the institutions of religion very separate from the institutions of State. The men of the sword are not the men of the pen, to use the traditional language. In the Ottoman Empire the traditional Moghul Empire and elsewhere, while the Sultan, the Caliph claimed some kind of general aura of religious legitimacy, he didn’t legislate, and he had no control over religion. And religion had no formal control over him. What’s happening in modern fundamentalism, is that the tradition Sultan or Caliph figure is being abolished, because the Royal Family has become too decadent, as in the case of pre-revolutionary Iran, for instance, and the ‘clergy’ think that it’s their responsibility now really for the first time in Islamic history, to step into the vacuum and try and put things right. So what we’re seeing now, the sort of theocratic model, the Islamic republican model in many parts of the Islamic world, is something that’s radically new and doesn’t really represent our traditions.

      John Cleary: Some people have also compared it to the Cromwellian period in British history, that is once one overturns one mode of government, one necessarily goes through a sort of theological Puritanism in order to sort things out, but Cromwell didn’t last all that long in England and his legacy is regarded as very mixed.

      Tim Winter: Yes, I think that’s an interesting precedent. The Anglo Saxon world has, as it were, worked through the experiment of religiously zealous government, and found that it didn’t particularly deliver even religiously. One of the consequences of Cromwell’s period was the unleashing of a long tradition of English scepticism about religion, that it had behaved so badly when in power because of its well-meaning desire to drag everybody into heaven by the scruff of their necks, that many people reacted in the normal human way, by wanting to run away from religion. If you force it down people’s throats, then the danger is many of them will want to vomit it up again. And we’re seeing that in many parts of the Islamic world. If you look at the Iranian experience, after 25 years of Islamic rule, their Ministry of Religious Guidance recently published figures that show that only 3% of Iranians now attend Friday prayers. Before the revolution, it was almost 50%. So what kind of Islamic reformation and revival has that actually delivered? Religion is now identified with a kind of prison, the pan-optican idea of the man at the centre of the State looking at everybody, Calvin’s city of glass, nobody being able to misbehave in a way that annoys the clerics or the mullahs without calling down on them, not just the sanction of heaven, but the repressive capacities of the modern corporate State. So I think that there’s a dawning awareness in the Islamic world that the totalitarian model of Islamic government doesn’t actually deliver, even on its own terms, and it may well be that many Muslim countries have to work through that experience by themselves, that the West should actually let the Algerians, the Egyptians, the Yemenis, the Pakistanis and other people, experiment with the model that many of the people clearly want, and after 20 years perhaps they’ll come down to earth and they’ll see that perhaps there’s a more convivial, more sort of compromising, more real politik style of integrating religion with politics that’s more open to the outside world and ultimately more humane. But it may take a long time.
      ---------------------------
      link to abc.net.au

      Just to clarify, Tim winter does not mean that Islamist orginizations are actually run by the "clergy". In another interview, he clarifies : “Bin Laden is an engineer, Zawahiri is a medic. The typical profile of the radical Islamist is not that he is an expert on Islam, rather it is that he is somebody with a Western technical type of education who is sufficiently incensed by Western policies that he is using an Islamic language misunderstood to justify what is essentially a temper tantrum.”

  • 'I would have gone on believing what my own family told me till I actually saw the settlements, saw the roadblocks--'
    • olive December 22, 2010 at 11:25 pm

      Good point, Chaos. I cannot forget an interesting statement while watching Terry Jones' documentary on the Crusades. At one point, the documentary featured an Israeli talking head (probably a historian) who claimed that Saladin was his hero. Irony much?

  • The smoking cable: Israel said it had 'secret accord' with U.S. over expanding settlements even as Obama said in Cairo they must stop!
    • olive December 22, 2010 at 11:31 pm

      "But it’s clear that they would do the same and worse if they could."

      I think this is merely projecting the darkness that is festering in the Zionist heart on to everybody else.

  • Jeffrey Goldberg likens BDS movement to Nazi Germany policies
    • olive December 18, 2010 at 1:50 pm with 3 replies

      Hi Chaos!
      Although I read this blog regularly I am not as familiar with the whole "politics" of the comments situation as others are. What I do know, however, is that your comments are highly valued by a good percentage of folks here and thus it would be a great shame for you to abstain from commenting on account of Hasbara Trolls Inc. . We can't control what other people do but we can certainly try to make the best of the situation at hand.

      Just my two cents.....

    • olive December 18, 2010 at 12:30 pm

      It was my pleasure, MRW. Its just sad that our Zionist friends have to revise history in order to make the Muslim rulers who protected their forefathers look like proto-Nazis.

      This is not to say that every single Sultan was a jew-loving saint but the ingratidude of it all is frankly disgusting.

    • olive December 17, 2010 at 11:30 pm

      2.) Uri Avnery, September 27, 2006: "Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for 50 generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times 'by the sword' to get them to abandon their faith."

      3.) Heinrich Graetz, a 19th century Jewish historian expressed how Islamic rule in Spain favoured the Jews in the context of kindness and liberty of belief,

      “It was in these favourable circumstances that the Spanish Jews came under the rule of Mahometans, as whose allies they esteemed themselves the equals of their co-religionists in Babylonia and Persia. They were kindly treated, obtained religious liberty, of which they had so long been deprived, were permitted to exercise jurisdiction over their co-religionists, and were only obliged, like the conquered Christians, to pay poll tax…”(Jewish Historian H. Graetz. History of the Jews. London,1892, Vol 3, p. 112.)

      3.) Italian Rabbi, Obadiah Yareh Da Bertinoro, travelled to Jerusalem in 1486 CE and he wrote a letter to his father telling him about the country and its people under the Islamic Social Model,

      “The Jews are not persecuted by the Arabs in these parts. I have travelled through the country in its length and breadth, and none of them has put an obstacle in my way. They are very kind to strangers, particularly to anyone who does not know the language; and if they see many Jews together they are not annoyed by it. In my opinion, an intelligent man versed in political science might easily raise himself to be chief of the Jews as well as of the Arabs…”[Rabbi Obadiah Yareh Da Bertinoro, quoted in The Jewish Caravan edited by Leo W. Schwarz, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1946, p. 249]

      So please, eee, spare me the shameless historical revisionism of your ungrateful Zionist hasbarameisters.

    • olive December 17, 2010 at 11:22 pm

      Some quotes by Jewish Historians and intellectuals on Jews under Muslim protection compiled by Hamza Andreas Tzortzis.

      1.) Amnon Cohen, an American Jewish historian, studied the 16th century documents stored in the archives of the Shari’ah religious court of Jerusalem (commonly known as sijill), whereby he found 1000 Jewish cases filed from the year 1530 to 1601 CE. Cohen published his research in 1994 during which he made some astonishing discoveries, as he himself states:

      ‘Cases concerning Jews cover a very wide spectrum of topics. If we bear in mind that the Jews of Jerusalem had their own separate courts, the number of cases brought to Muslim court (which actually meant putting themselves at the mercy of a judge outside the pale of their communal and religious identity) is quite impressive[1]…The Jews went to the Muslim court for a variety of reasons, but the overwhelming fact was their ongoing and almost permanent presence there. This indicates that they went there not only in search of justice, but did so hoping, or rather knowing, that more often than not they would attain redress when wronged…The Jews went to court to resolve much more than their conflicts with Muslim or Christian neighbours. They turned to Shari’a authorities to seek redress with respect to internal differences, and even in matters within their immediate family (intimate relations between husband and wife, nafaqa maintenance payments to divorcees, support of infants etc.).’[2]

      Cohen further elaborates upon the Jewish condition in the 16th century Ottoman Jerusalem:

      ‘Their possessions were protected, although they might have had to pay for extra protection at night for their houses and commercial properties. Their title deeds and other official documents indicating their rights were honoured when presented to the court, being treated like those of their Muslim neighbours[3]…The picture emerging from the sijill documents is baffling. On the one hand we encounter recurring Sultanic decrees sent to Jerusalem – in response to pleas of the Jews – to the effect that “nothing should be done to stop them from applying their own law” regarding a variety of matters. There are also many explicit references to the overriding importance of applying Shari’a law to them only if they so choose. On the other hand, if we look closely at some of the inheritance lists, we see that the local court allocated to female members of Jewish families half the share given to male members, exactly as in Islamic law. This meant, ipso facto, a significant improvement in the status of Jewish women with respect to legacies over that accorded them by Jewish tradition, although it actually meant the application of Islamic law in an internal Jewish context [4]…he [the Muslim Judge] defended Jewish causes jeopardized by high-handed behaviour of local governors; he enabled Jewish business people and craftsmen to lease properties from Muslim endowments on an equal footing with Muslim bidders; more generally, he respected their rituals and places of worship and guarded them against encroachment even when the perpetrators were other Muslim dignitaries.[5]’

      And finally Amnon Cohen describes the effectiveness of Islamic law for Jewish interests:

      ‘No one interfered with their internal organisation or their external cultural and economic activities…In a world where civil and political equality, or positive social change affecting the group or even the individual were not the norms, the Sultan’s Jewish subjects had no reason to mourn their status or begrudge their conditions of life. The Jews of Ottoman Jerusalem enjoyed religious and administrative autonomy within an Islamic state, and as a constructive, dynamic element of the local economy and society they could – and actually did – contribute to its functioning.’[6]

      [1] Amnon Cohen, A World Within: Jewish Life as Reflected in Muslim Court Documents from the Sijill of Jerusalem (XVIth Century). Part One, 1994, Pennsylvania, p. 8.
      [2] Ibid, p. 17.
      [3] Ibid, p. 18.
      [4] Ibid, p. 20-21.
      [5] Ibid, p. 22.
      [6] Ibid, p. 22-23.

    • olive December 17, 2010 at 4:45 pm with 3 replies

      One question: Just whatever happened to Chaos? I hope he was not banned.

    • olive December 17, 2010 at 4:38 pm

      A pretty critical review of the book that eee recommended from a person who is rather pro-Israel:

      "David J Goldberg finds that a study of Jews under Muslim rule suffers from its broad-brush approach"

      link to guardian.co.uk

      You can criticize Jewish tretment under various Muslim rulers until the cows come home. It is still far better than Muslim treatment under Jewish rule.

  • When in Rome, do as the Israelis do
    • olive December 15, 2010 at 8:30 pm

      Well, I guess this means that the next time i go my doctor, I will have to tell him to make sure all the Jewish employees clear out of the area . I mean, we have no gurantee that those potentially Mossad trained Israel-firsters wont try to slip a little something in my medicine. Right?

      Besides, was it not eee or one of the other resident Zionists who complained about a Jordanian resturant owner not allowing Israeli's to eat at her establishment?

  • Goldberg/Netanyahu: Because of Spanish Inquisition, and Holocaust, Israel gets to have a nuclear monopoly
    • olive December 11, 2010 at 9:17 pm with 6 replies

      Wasn't the Spanish Inquisition a Catholic attempt to Christianize a recently conquered MUSLIM Spain (this isnt to say that Jews were not effected). Its kind of weird that certain Jews would wish to imply the inquisition for "themselves" as well...

  • My shiksa friend sees the crisis
    • olive December 7, 2010 at 5:14 pm

      Something tells me that if these Rabbi's were Muslims, they would be all over the Daily Show and the Young Turks.

  • The American Jewish belief in the endurance of anti-Semitism is at the core of the problem
    • olive December 4, 2010 at 2:13 pm with 3 replies

      You know, I find the trotting out of alleged anti-Semitism to excuse Israeli crimes to be not only disgusting but very illogical. It is akin to a serial rapist claiming in a courtroom to a judge that he should be let off the hook and keep doing what he's doing because his father used to abuse him in his childhood.

  • Oh, Canada: Al Jazeera investigates 'the other special relationship'
    • olive December 2, 2010 at 11:48 pm with 1 replies

      Just an FYW, the Muslim Canadian Congress is a extremely secularist, fringe group of essentially former Marxists from Pakistan who have now jumped on the bandwagon of bashing other Muslims in an effort to portray themselves as "moderate" and remain relevant.

      Not a representative group, to say the least......

  • Michael Bloomberg and New York's Muslims: a lesson in how Israel courses through Jewish-Muslim relations
    • olive November 18, 2010 at 3:16 pm

      "....Jewish-Muslim dialogue have often been frustrated with Muslim failures to condemn antisemitism in the Muslim world"
      -----------------------------------------------------------------
      Allow me to quote the Wikipedia article on "The New Anti-semitism" which does a good job in summarizing Norman Finkelstein's views on this particular topic: He argues that Israel's apologists have denied a causal relationship between Israeli policies and hostility toward Jews, since "if Israeli policies, and widespread Jewish support for them, evoke hostility toward Jews, it means that Israel and its Jewish supporters might themselves be causing anti-Semitism; and it might be doing so because Israel and its Jewish supporters are in the wrong".[31]

      Finkelstein asks why, given that the wars in Vietnam and Iraq contributed to anti-Americanism, and the aggression of Nazi Germany gave rise to anti-Teutonic sentiment, it surprises us that an occupation by a self-declared Jewish state should cause antipathy towards Jews. The only surprise, he argues, is that the antipathy does not run deeper, given that mainstream Jewish organizations offer uncritical support to Israel; that Israel defines itself juridically as the sovereign state of the Jewish people; and that Jews themselves sometimes argue that to distinguish between Israel and world Jewry is itself an example of antisemitism. He cites Phyllis Chesler who argues, on the one hand, that "anyone who does not distinguish between Jews and the Jewish state is an anti-Semite," but on the other that "Israel is our heart and soul ... we are family." Gabriel Schoenfeld, the editor of Commentary magazine, writes that "Iranian anti-Semitic propagandists make a point of erasing all distinctions among Israel, Zionism and the Jews," while Hillel Halkin argues that "Israel is the state of the Jews ... To defame Israel is to defame the Jews." It would seem to be antisemitic, Finkelstein concludes, "both to identify and not to identify Israel with Jews."[32]

      Btw, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, arguably the most renowned Islamic Scholar in North America, has repeatadly condemned anti-Semitism among Muslims.
      -------------------------------------------------------------------------

  • Burston on the Jewishness of Israel
    • olive November 6, 2010 at 3:16 pm

      "I couldn’t care less. If Olive can’t understand why countries like Austria and Latvia have laws on the books against anti-Semitism, it’s her problem, not mine"

      Well, at least you no longer deny that these countries do reserve the right to throw people in jail for saying things offensive towards Jews. We are making progress! I don't have a problem with the law per se. I merely pointed it out to show that the vast majority of European Jews see themselves as an ethnicity, which causes them to lobby for Gentile countries to pass anti-racism laws on behalf of Jews. I'm a guy, btw.

      "I don’t happen to favor the Holocaust denial laws on free speech grounds, but I certainly do not think the Muhammad cartoon crisis is a reason to invalidate them. I’d be interested to learn the reasons Olive feels the way she does instead of being told I need to justify laws that came about after centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust."

      Well, I find it disturbing that people in a supposedly " free" Europe can AND have served prison time for questioning historical aspects about the Holocaust. I, for one, am not a Holocaust denier but I do find it disgusting that people should have to rot in a European dungeon just for making an academic point (even if its a silly academic point). I am also disgusted by the hypocrisy that criminalizing Holocaust denial is seen as necessary to protect a religious minority from demagoguery but insulting and mocking the Prophet Muhammad in the context of inciting hatred against the Muslim community is "free speech" that must be defended at all costs.

      "I’d also be interested to learn what Olive has done to speak out against anti-Semitic cartoons in the Muslim world, which are constant and dwarf the number of anti-Islamic cartoons in the West. "

      How do you know that anti-Semitic cartoons in the Muslim world dwarf the number of anti-Islamic cartoons in the West. Did you do a count? I, of course, condemn anti-Jewish cartoons in the Muslim world but I do not EVER recall Muslims drawing cartoons insulting Moses, Jesus, or any other religious figure that Jews and Christians hold dear.

    • olive November 6, 2010 at 9:14 am

      I would suggest that people look at the link that tree posted and see for themselves who is being honest and who is not.

    • olive November 5, 2010 at 11:34 am with 8 replies

      "By giving them second class citizenship and making them pay a special tax"
      --------------------------------------------------------------------
      The thing about second class citizenship is true but the issue of the taxes is overblown. Non-Muslims paid a poll tax instead of having to pay the Zakat tax that Muslims are required to pay. The upshot is that everybody had to pay taxes. Therefore that objection is not valid unless you are some sort of uber-extreme libertarian who doesn't like the idea of paying any type of tax at all.
      ---------------------------------------------------------------

      "I don’t know of any special Western laws against antisemitism. "
      ------------------------------------------------------------
      Well, according to the "Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism", anti-semitism is specifally singled out as a CRIME in Romania, Spain, Mexico, Latvia,sweden, Ausstria, and Switzerland. Keep in mind that this is excluding Western countries that criminalize Holocaust denial. Reflect on this next time Western extremists invoke "freedom of speech" when they want to insult the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).

    • olive November 5, 2010 at 7:14 am

      Jonah,

      GF Haddad discusses the tensions between the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and the Jewish tribes. The words in brackets are by me:
      ------------------------------------------------------
      The Banu Qurayza [the Jewish tribe in question] committed high treason by breaking their oath of alliance with the Muslims and turning against them in time of war. When the battle against them was over, the Prophet, upon him peace, searched for an arbiter known and accepted to both sides who would rule concerning their penalty. The arbiter chosen was Sa`d ibn Mu`adh, who had been mortally wounded and died shortly afterwards. Sa`d said: "I will judge them according to the Law of Musa [Moses]." He was of the tribe of Aws, who were the allies of the Jewish Banu Qurayza, the men who were executed. They assented to whatever verdict he would give as a leader from Aws.

      Ibn Kathir in al-Bidaya mentions that the number of the men executed after the 25-day siege were 400, and that another version says 700. Someone said that the decision was probably taken by Sa`d ibn Mu`adh in light of Deuteronomy 20:12-14.
      -------------------------------------------------
      Therefore, Zionists should not use Muhammad's (peace and blessings be upon him) tensions with some of the Jewish tribes as a way to attack Islam because the Jewish tribes in question turn out not to look very good. I would also like to mphasize what GF Haddad said, which is that the Jews were punished according to their own JEWISH law from the Hebrew Bible , not the Shariah. Thus, Zionists Jews and fundementalist Christians are really shooting themselves in the foot if they wish to rail wail againts this punishment.

    • olive November 4, 2010 at 10:24 pm with 14 replies

      Two points:

      1.) Apples and oranges. Most Jews seem to see themselves first and foremost as an ETHNIC group. So demanding that one recognize Israel as a Jewish state is akin to recognizing Germany as an White "Aryan" state. Doesn't look very promising.

      2.) States that have legitamtly based their identity on Islam (such as the Ottoman Empire) have allowed other religious communities to have their own identies and even civil courts. Militant ethnocentrism was not really a factor until late in the life of the Ottoman Empire (and look where that got them).

      Zionists can't have theire cake and eat it. You cannot say that Jews are first and foremost an ethnic group who are entitled to certain privelages not given to other religious communities in the West (such as laws againts anti-Semitism) but then turn around and try to validate your racist colonial enterprises by pointing at the Muslims and saying "But look, why can't we have our Jewish state if they can have their Islamic one!"

  • Brooklyn rabbis Lippman and Bachman are part of the Am Yisroel Chai crowd
    • olive October 23, 2010 at 6:08 pm with 1 replies

      What do guy's tink of Rabbi Michael Lerner? I ask because he seems to have close relations with Muslims, particularly the scholars of Zaytuna College (America's first Muslim college).

      link to youtube.com

      Do you think the scholars of Zaytuna College are being taken for a ride? Or is Rabbi Lerner "legit"?

  • Brian Lehrer's evenhandedness disappears when it comes to Israeli violence
    • olive October 21, 2010 at 7:31 am

      This is an interesting seminar for anyone near the NYU area:
      -------------------------------------------------------------
      Islamic Law: How Shariah is Derived and Applied with Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
      Saturday, October 23 · 10:00am - 6:00pm
      Location NYU School of Law: Vanderbilt Hall, room 204
      40 Washington Square South
      New York, NY
      Islamic Law: How Shariah is Derived and Applied with Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

      Saturday, October 23rd from 10am to 6pm
      New York University
      Location: Vanderbilt Hall, room 204
      40 Washington Square South
      New York, NY 10012

      A full day thought provoking seminar into Shariah Law, taught by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani.
      ___________________________

      Admission: This seminar is free and open to the public. Due to limited seating, pre-registration is highly encouraged.

      To register please visit link to icnyu.org...
      ___________________________

  • Blogging for the enemy
    • olive October 15, 2010 at 3:00 pm

      It would be a shame for you to leave, Avi.

      I am having some difficulty in understanding why this website needs a "Zionist voice." Is not the mainstream media sufficient for that already? Nontheless, at the end of the day this is still Mr. Weiss' blog (audience financial contributions not withstanding) so we are just gonna have to bite the bullet on this one.

      However, I do hope that the guys in charge of this blog will not allow WJ's views to go unchallenged..

  • 'Hey BU you've been had, Dershowitz is WICKED bad!': Boston University students protest CAMERA
  • Where is the Gandhi of Israel?
    • olive October 4, 2010 at 6:33 pm

      The Jews who lived in historic Palestine, then converted to Christianity under the Romans, who then converted to Islm and adopted the Arabic language, were there for thousands o years.

      The descendents of Khazar kingdoms ( i.e' the founders of Israel) don't count.

    • olive October 4, 2010 at 4:19 pm

      We should also remember that the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent are native to that area, the only difference is that their ancstors converted from Hinduism. The case with Palestine, on the other hand, has Europeans claiming ownersip to a land that is not even on their continent.

    • olive October 4, 2010 at 3:41 pm

      That's a strange claim Postherd, considering that all the books on Islamic law require that a husband must pay a woman a marriage payment in order to marry her.

      As for Muslims living with Hindu's; the Hanafi school of law (which is the dominate Sunni Muslim legal school of thought in the Indian subcontinent ) allows for Hindus and Buddhists to be treated in the same way as People of the Book. The same goes for the Maliki school of law.

  • NYU to host debate - 'Is Judaism fundamentally violent?'
    • olive September 23, 2010 at 6:41 pm

      Here is the best lecture on "Islam and Violence" that I have ever seen. Its presented by a Cambrige academic. What I like about it is that although it puts things in context, it is unapologtic about what traditional Sunni Islam has to say about warfare. Its truly worth a viewing:

      link to youtube.com

  • A history lesson in Jerusalem
    • olive September 23, 2010 at 7:24 am

      "maybe this occupation is less oppressive than earlier ones"

      You're joking, right? None of the other occupations, with exception of the Crusaders (who were involved in cannibalism) match the brutality and oppressiveness of the current Jewish one.

      Give me the Ottomans any day...

  • Islamaphobia, sexism and American demagoguery in the 21st century
  • Honored speaker at Bard College derides Muslims' praying habits and sniggers at First Amendment
  • Mearsheimer: Israel has used 'nuclear coercion' to force U.S.'s hand
    • olive July 9, 2010 at 7:11 pm

      "It’s pretty clear that the Sunnis fear a Shiite bomb more than a Jewish one."

      Evidence, please.

    • olive July 9, 2010 at 8:37 am

      "It's my belief that Obama has backed off on settlements because of nuclear coercion: that Israel has blackmailed him by threatening to bomb Iran. But that's just me, sitting in the woods.)"

      Actually, George Frriedman of STRATFOR also says that Israel potentially attacking Iran with nuclear weapons is what is causing the US to behave aggresively towards Iran. The Israeli strategy seems to be "If you dont attack the Iranians for us, we are going to use nukes."

  • What's the difference between incitement and patriotism?
    • olive June 22, 2010 at 4:33 pm

      Seham, as I said on this thread, I agree that Shaykh Qaradawi is not taken to be an authoritative voice among Sunni Muslim scholars. However, the Shia only make up around 8-10% of the global muslim population so its probably a bit unfair to judge a scholar based on what a minority believe.

      But I do understand your point and it is a good one.

    • olive June 22, 2010 at 4:16 pm

      According to Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

      "Traditional scholars caution about Shaykh Qaradawi;s fiqh [Islamic Law] methodology and especially his excessive leniency that often reaches the point of laxity.

      This is because he does not limit himself to reliable positions within the four Sunni schools of Fiqh, and is notorious among scholars for many aberrant stances and positions.

      They respect him as a scholar, but they are cautious and caution others about positions he takes that depart from the mainstream."

    • olive June 22, 2010 at 1:42 pm

      Ah yes, lets hope that no unfortunate incidents happen on the SS Freud .....

    • olive June 22, 2010 at 11:45 am with 3 replies

      I suspect that this story is just an amusing hoax but hey, you never know....

    • olive June 22, 2010 at 11:41 am with 4 replies

      Psychiatrist of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Commits Suicide

      link to rebelnews.org

  • Casual prejudice against Muslims
    • olive June 20, 2010 at 11:37 am

      Hmm, it seems my full reply was not posted.

      here is what i was supposed to start my last post with

      "but in today’s world, its usefulness and values are no longer valid. "

      According the whims of certain Western liberals, perhaps. But they need to prove 1.) how is the Islamic tradition invalid and 2.) how is the liberal system valid (this will be especially interesting considering the mess that their economic system has got us in).

    • olive June 20, 2010 at 11:30 am

      >>>....today’s world, its usefulness and values are no longer valid<>Legal tradition allows you 4 wives...<>and as many concubines as you can equitably support....<<

      This used to be in practice in the past because slavery as an institution was in place. However, living scholars of the Shariah say that the practice of having as concubines no longer applies, as Shaykh GF Haddad summarizes: " Slavery is unlawful (1) in the absence of the Caliph of the Muslims AND (2) unless it results from captives following a lawful war. Even so, there was always the alternative to {let the captives go free, either with or without any ransom} (47:4). Furthermore, the Ottoman Caliphate had declared - long before the US Abolition - that it prohibited slavery in its realm."

      I must also point out the irony, Walid, that "the world" (which seems to be your code word for North America and the EU :D) allows for men to marry other men and for men to cheat on their wives with as many women as they want. So you will have to excuse me if I don't take what these people say with regards to the Islamic legal tradition seriously.

      As for your caims about divorces, all I ask is that you re-examine your views by actually checking what our legal manuals say about the matter.

      You see, Walid, the reason that I am having this discussion with you is to illustrate that claims made about how Islam needs "reform" to fit the dicates of crazy European liberals have no basis and that is dangerous for Arabs such as yourself (I'm assuming your an Arab) to wholesale regurgitate whaterver these people have to say without taking a critical look at their ontologicl foundations.

      The Muslim world is in the mess that it is in due to two main factors: Materialism and nationalism. Religion has very little to do with it (other than modernist Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and misguided reformists like the Wahabis). The fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslim governments are secular dictatorships is a proof of this.

    • olive June 20, 2010 at 10:11 am

      The thing is, Walid, the excerpt that I added above from the Sunni Islamic law book says that "each male receives twice the amount of each female (A: since men are obliged to support women in Islam (dis:m11) and not vice versa)."

      We really need to be cognizant of the Islamic legal tradition, because if we just keep on following the ever-moving goal posts and values of modern day Western liberals, we will become more vulnerable to imperialistic designs of certain Western countries that wish to subjugate us.

    • olive June 20, 2010 at 4:20 am

      @Walid"It is said that 4 of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim Prime Ministers had had to convert to Shia Muslims because they had daughters and no sons because it was the only way for the daughters to inherit them"

      Walid, where did you get this idea that daughters don't inherit from fathers in Sunni Islam?!? The Reliance of the Traveller, an Islamic Law book written in the 14th century lays out the inheritance of the daughter.
      ----------------------------------------------------
      L6.7

      (N: A summary of X's daughter's share:

      -1/2 if there are no other of X's sons or daughters (n: whether full or half brothers of sisters to her).

      -2/3 for her to share equally (if there are no sons) with other daughters, if any.

      -She is co-universal heir (def:L10.3) with X's sons(s) if existent, meaning that they jointly constitute the universal heir, dividing this share so that each male receives twice the amount of each female (A: since men are obliged to support women in Islam (dis:m11) and not vice versa).

      -The daughter's share is not eliminated by anyone.)

      -1- X's sole daughter (O: who is without a co-universal heir such as her brother, and without someone else on her own level, such as her sister) receives half of the estate.

      -2- Two or more daughters jointly receive two-thirds.

    • olive June 19, 2010 at 8:48 pm

      Thanks for the articles, sky7i, I am a big fan of Abdal hakim Murad.

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