Maidens and Warriors
By Israel Shamir
It is not much fun to be a Muslim in the West
today. Not even to be taken for one. I felt it
on my own skin while flying into the US. A
Mediterranean man with mustachio complete, I was
asked by the US customs officer whether I read
the Koran a lot. A chewing gum wrapping paper
with a comic strip suggested to the officer an
instruction to pray on board the plane, probably
to call Allahu Akbar and attack the crew. “You
are up to no good,” he concluded. I was taken
aback. Our Palestinian brothers and we Israelis
are facially quite similar; I was often taken
for a Palestinian by both sides, but I did not
expect the US immigration to copycat Israeli
Border Police.
Should I say plainly, “I am not a Muslim”,
occurred to me. It did not seem fair. In
occupied Denmark of 1940, Germans ordered the
Jews to wear the yellow Star of David. The king
of Danes wore such a star as a sign of his
solidarity with his Jewish subjects. Would I
fail this test of common humanity and proclaim
my non-Muslim kosher origin? It would feel like
sacrificing a Muslim in my stead. I tried to
compromise: “I do not read the Koran a lot,”
said I. The officer, one Gomez, a big dark man,
did not relent. “But you read Koran?”
“Occasionally,” I tried again. This
pusillanimous response was a beginning of my
undoing. I was searched, verbally abused; every
piece of my luggage was checked and
double-checked.
The personal affront did not matter. In 1812, a
French soldier on the streets of occupied Moscow
turned back Pierre Bezuchov, a Russian nobleman
in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. “The soldier had
stopped my immortal soul,” thought Bezuchov, and
laughed. St Francis of Assisi found even more
joy at being refused entry to a monastery one
cold and rainy night. A go of humiliation is
good for the soul, he explained to his sidekick
St Bernard.
It was more upsetting to see Islam as the
accused in Judeo-American culture. In the US
newspapers and on the Internet, theological
debates are back in vogue with a vengeance after
an eight hundred years lull, as subtle as ever.
Even good friends of Muslims began to hesitate,
as the powerful brainwashing machine began to
produce its hateful output. Islam is accused of
being the faith of Jihad, the permanent war with
infidels, of intolerance and cruelty, of
providing theological basis for terrorism. The
allegations do not stop at politics.
The semi-literate Crusaders of 12th century
accused the Muslims of having orgies in front of
their divinity, Baphomet (probably corrupted
from the name of the Prophet). The latest
frontal attack on Islam in the American public
opinion also has amusing sexual overtones. An
appeal to bomb the hell out of Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria, and Palestine usually contains a
weighty disapproval of the Prophet’s sexual
mores and of alleged Muslim ill treatment of
their womenfolk.
II
The Prophet’s love of his youngest wife, Aisha,
causes much consternation in America; almost
fifty years after the US Supreme Court removed
the ban on that ode to underage love, Vladimir
Nabokov’s Lolita. For the prudish accusers, it
does not matter that Muhammad, peace upon him,
was in love with the girl, as she with him. They
know better what is good for everybody. If the
Prophet had chosen a boy of Aisha’s age, one
feels that fear of homophobia would soften the
blows. But the Prophet was a man of orthodox
tastes.
A modest Talmudic scholar from Jaffa, I would
rise to his defence in the name of our Jewish
tradition. Far from being a sinner, Muhammad
(peace be upon him) acted according to the
letter and the spirit of our holy faith.
Biblical Jacob fell in love with Rachel when she
was only seven, and brought forth from her a
line of saints including Mary, mother of Christ.
The Talmud stipulates the permitted age of
marriage for girls at three years and one day.
It brings us a dialogue worthy of Boccaccio that
took place in Sepphoris of Galilee. A Roman
princess Justine, daughter of Emperor Septimius
Severus son of Anthony asked Rabbi Judah the
Prince, the greatest spiritual and legal
authority of Jews in the post-Biblical period,
what is the permitted age of marriage and
cohabitation.
- Three years and one day, - replied the Rabbi.
- What is the age for childbearing, - persisted
the Princess.
- Nine years [i], - he replied.
- I was married at six, and gave birth at seven,
- she reflected with great regret, - so I wasted
in vain three excellent years of my young life.
Muhammad’s wife, Aisha, wasted six years of her
young life, as she was wed at nine. Thus, the
Prophet demonstrated great prudence, also in
full accordance with our Jewish teachings. Our
holy Rabbis permitted very early marriage, but
they were not absolutely sure that three-year
old girls are sufficiently ripe. They taught:
proselytes and paedophiles delay the Coming of
the Messiah and of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Who are the paedophiles in this context, asked
the Talmud. They have to be persons of
legitimate but objectionable behaviour, and
therefore, not the sodomites (as they deserve
death by stoning) nor masturbators (they merit
watery grave). It is those who marry girls
before the nubile age of nine. Thus, the Prophet
is above suspicion according to our Jewish law.
He had a few wives, continue the accusers. Well,
the Jewish law permits us to have as many wives
as we can get. Nowadays, a Muslim has to limit
himself to four wives in this world, but we Jews
have no such constrictions.
The presumed barbarous Muslim custom of veiling
women and keeping them away from a stranger’s
lusty eye annoys today’s accusers. An avid
reader of Washington Post would assume that the
US attacked Afghans just to bomb the veil away.
As the first fruit of American victory in
Afghanistan, CNN presented the sale of smut in
smitten Kabul.
Here again, our Jewish law firmly stands on the
side of the Talibs. A Talmudic sage, Rabbi Isaac
taught: if one gazes at the little finger of a
woman, it is as if he gazed at her
you-know-what! (Do not confuse it with the
You-Know-Who of Harry Potter.) Rabbi Hisda
wistfully said: a woman's leg is also quite an
incitement. Rabbi Sheshet improved on him,
reminding that a woman's hair is a sexual
incitement. That is why pious Jewish women don
the wig. And that master of oneupmanship,
Samuel, upstaged him saying, a woman's voice is
a sexual incitement, as the Holy Writ quoth,
‘sweet is thy voice’. The conclusion of the
debate was the rule kvod bat ha-melech pnima,
meaning a good Jewish woman should stay indoors,
which is the Taliban’s idea, or close enough.
III
Enemies of Islam would not dare to attack our
Jewish faith though all the features of Islam
they profess to dislike can be found in Judaism.
This goes beyond sexual matters. Jihad is but an
Arab translation of the Jewish concept of
Milhemet Mitzva, the Commanded (or Preordained)
War. These concepts differ in this: in jihad,
one is not allowed to kill civilians, but in
milhemet mitzvah, one is commanded to do so.
Look up your Pentateuch and you will find it
there, without an effort. The Messenger, peace
be upon him, softened this Message.
If you think Islam is intolerant, let me quote
you the story written by ‘the perfect sage and
excellent doctor of medicine R. Samuel Sholem in
Constantinople, capital of the great King, our
ruler, mighty Sultan Suleiman’ about Rabbi Gaon
Isaac Campanton (d. 1463), the chief rabbi of
the Castilian community, the most enlightened
Jewish community of all times. He writes, ‘the
great Rabbi, the honorable R. Isaac Campanton
burned Rabbi Samuel Sarsa at the stake. Once,
Rabbis gathered to announce a marriage contract.
They read “such and such year since the Creation
of the world”, and this Sarsa fellow placed his
hand on his beard and alluded to the world’s
existence since time immemorial. The Rabbi
Campanton rose to his feet and exclaimed, ‘Why
isn’t the bush consumed? [1] Let the bush burn!’
They sentenced him to death by burning because
he denied Creation of the World 5000 years ago,
and burned him at the stake.”
If you believe Islam is the reason for Muslim
terrorism, probably Judaism is the reason for
Jewish terrorism. Until now, Muslims succeeded
in assassinating only one Israeli minister. When
Jews dealt with private (as opposed to state)
terror, my saintly ancestors assassinated two
Russian tsars and a whole row of government
ministers, officials, ambassadors and statesmen
of Britain, Germany, Sweden, Russia and Arab
countries. Until nowadays, the records of terror
established by Jews were not beaten, and as a
proud Jew, I reject the futile efforts to pass
this crowning achievement to Muslims or anybody
else.
In America, Jews can’t do wrong, and whoever
thinks otherwise, is branded an anti-Semite or
self-hating Jew. By proving the Jewish origin of
the alleged faults of Islam, we therefore proved
that the Islam-bashers are anti-Semites and
probably hidden Holocaust deniers. Whoever
doubts it, may look up the Washington Post of
November 27. The editorial by the ex-CIA chief
James Woolsey is accompanied by a much-retouched
hysterical close-up picture of the bestial and
demonic Semite, dark-skinned, full-lipped,
cruel, and savage. Der Sturmer, the Nazi
newspaper, would have loved it [ii]. The
contents of the article are also eminently
suitable for Der Sturmer. Woolsey, in an
Orwellian-named article, Objective: Democracy,
calls to ‘take out Iraqi air defences and hit
Iraqi ground forces’ as ‘we did to Afghanistan’.
The great Russian playwright, Anton (‘The
Seagull’) Chekhov, established the law of scene:
if there is a gun hanging on the wall in the
first act, it will fire in the third act. Life
imitates theatre, or, as Shakespeare put it,
this world is but a stage. The gun of
anti-Semitism fired as expected, but it shot at
real Semites, the Arabs. Paradoxically, among
new anti-Semites, there are many persons with
Jewish names, or known by their sympathy to
Jews. How can this be?
It brings us back to the adage of our sages,
regarding paedophiles and proselytes. Jewish
faith is extremely suspicious of proselytes.
They are like scabs on the head of Israel,
taught Rabbi Helbo, and modern practice supports
his learned opinion. Judaism is too complicated
to receive in mature age. People born and raised
as religious Jews got used to being the Chosen
folk, and take it easy, but neophytes go dizzy
at the thought.
It is not strange. The true English aristocrat
Tony Benn supports the rights of ordinary folk,
while freshly created parvenu Conrad Black
promotes the oppression of Europeans and Muslims
alike in his numerous newspapers. Some of the
worst racists in Hebron, a frontline of Israeli
apartheid are actually proselytes who took
literally some risky Biblical ideas. Witness the
converted American Gentile Nazi who took the
name of Eli Hazeev (the Wolf) and was slain by
Palestinian guerrillas, or this scourge of
cyberspace, Dr Andrew Mathis who converted and
began to defend his version of Judaism on
various Internet localities. Some new-Jews are
un-aware that Judaism is a thoroughly
interpreted/commented religion in which NO WORD
of the Bible may (safely) be supposed to mean
what it seems to say.
A reader sent me a disturbing letter: “my sister
who converted to Judaism years ago (although
we're WASPs) has gone over the edge. Last night
when I asked her to interrupt her niggerization
of Arabs long enough to cite just one
example...anytime in history...when Israel did
something...anything...wrong (pointing out that
peace cannot possibly be attained when one party
thinks itself totally OK, and thinks the other
party is completely at fault), the best she
could come up with was "collateral" damage –
i.e. the unintentional bombing of civilians when
a "legitimate" target was the intent. My sister
is quite active in the Jewish community in St.
Louis, and perhaps in a position to do a fair
amount of damage to whatever chances remain for
world peace’.
Yes, Rabbi Helbo had a good reason for his
suspicion. Real Jews knew they lived in the real
world, and left their fantasies for Sabbath.
They remained humble, studied Talmud and did not
try to find a modern equivalent of Amalek or the
Red Heifer, to retake the Holy Land by force or
by stealth, or to preach hatred of Gentiles.
They knew: these concepts should be left
untouched like hidden files in the Windows file
system. They are there for historical reasons
and one should not meddle with them. Neophytes
lack the ability to make suitable distinctions.
It is not a question of race: neophytes, whether
of Jewish or Gentile extraction, are equally
blind to reason. That is why the ferocious
Neo-Cons of America, Gentile Israel-firsters
like Jeanne Kirkpatrick and secular Jews like
the infamous Norm Podhoretz, her mentor from
Commentary, relentlessly call for the
destruction of the Islamic world and poison the
minds of Americans.
Islam is a form of Christianity particularly
close to the Jews. While Eastern Orthodox Church
was influenced by Greek culture, and Catholics
partook of Roman world, Islam returned the ideas
of Christianity to the Semitic milieu. The
Prophet, peace be upon him, upheld the Jewish
concepts of strict monotheism, of fear of graven
images, of protectiveness towards women and
integrated them with the universal message of
Christ and his apostles. The cowardly enemies of
Islam besmirch it, as they fear and envy its
unbroken spirit, the valour of its warriors and
the chastity of its maidens. |