{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}
Over at Israellycool, Deebo has some interesting statistics concerning Jewish visitation to the Temple Mount, illustrated by a couple of very nice pie charts. The statistics come from both the Jerusalem Post and the Jewish Press.
Here are the pie charts.
The green represents the percentage of Muslim visitation to the Temple Mount in 2013 and 2015.
The yellowish-orange represent Christian visitation.
And that thin blue line that is almost entirely invisible? That is the "slice" of Jewish visitation to the holiest site to the Jewish people.
Deebo explains:
As you can clearly see, in 2 years the blue slice in the pie has grown by a whopping 0.1% among the more than 4,000,000 Muslim visitors the site receives each year. The increased storming is a sure sign that Al Aqsa will fall to the Zionists. At this rate of 0.05% growth per year, the number of Jewish visitors are expected to surpass that of Muslim visitors by the year 3009, assuming the number of Muslim visitors remains equal for the next 994 years.Yes. Yes. Al Aqsa will fall to the Zionists who will transgress upon its sanctity with their filthy feet.
The next time that I am in Israel I intend to really filthy my feet up before I go stomping around on Islam's alleged third holiest religious site. I am not exactly sure how to go about doing that, but I am sure that there is mud to be had.
The truth, of course, is that the Temple Mount is not the third holiest anything to anyone. It is, in fact, the holiest site to the Jewish people, which is precisely why Islam claims it as its own.
If the Jews did not revere it in the first place, you can be sure, neither would Islam.
This is what the place looked like under Ottoman Muslim rule in the nineteenth-century.
Is it not obvious that Arab politicians are constantly trumping up charges against the Jews in order to turn world opinion against the Jewish state and, therefore, against the Jewish people? Is it not obvious that until the Jews returned to the Land of Israel, that Muslims did not much care about Jerusalem?I am pretty sure that most who read Elder of Ziyon or Jews Down Under or Israel Thrives or Israellycool or Love of the Land, or any number of the pro-Israel / pro-Jewish blogs or journals, recognize this.
The problem is that the rest of the world does not.
When the Arabs start wailing that the Jews are invading Al Aqsa the rest of the world shrugs its shoulders and watches Arabs stab Jews in Jerusalem on their laptops over their morning Pop Tarts. They do not understand that it was only when the Jews began to make aliyah that the Arabs resuscitated Yerushalayim as a "holy site."
For many centuries the only people who cared about the Temple Mount were the surviving observant Jewish remnant in that city. No one else.
The classic question is, "Can the whole world be wrong and the Jews be right?" And the answer to that question is, "Yes." To the extent that the "whole world" thinks that the Jews of Israel are the persecutors of the Palestinian-Arabs, and usurpers of their ancestral lands, then they are entirely wrong.
The Arabs of the Middle East have, until recently, been beating the hell out of the Jewish minority since Muhammad showed up on the Arabian peninsula with his mystico-religious head-chopping philosophy of fun.
It was thirteen long centuries of persecution and violence under Arab-Muslim imperial rule and sixty-seven years of constant warfare after that since the Jews shook them off.
There was no Judeo-Muslim Golden Age, as some speak about. Dhimmi status for Jewish people under the boot of Islam was sometimes, and in some places, better and sometimes, and in some places, worse, but for thirteen centuries it was almost never better than black people had it in the abominable Jim Crow South.
For centuries stoning Jews was an Arab-Muslim sport. It was the tenth-century Arab equivalency of American baseball. Children played it in the streets for entertainment and social comradery
The Jews had thriving communities throughout the Middle East, but the Arabs killed them and drove them out because Islamic law, al-Sharia, forbids non-Muslim self-determination on any bit of land that was ever a part of the Umma. Thus Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land is considered an abomination before Muhammad, the Koran, and the Lord God Almighty.
The very fact of Israel's existence is considered a humiliation to these backward-looking Islamists.
And this is why they bravely send Israeli-Arab children out to stab Jews with kitchen knives.
They have not the strength of character to fight their own fights, so they send their own children out to be killed in their stead.
It must be acknowledged, however, that it is the Euro-Liberal-West that enables this behavior.
European guilt for its colonialist-imperialist past is apparently so profound that they are literally willing to forgive any kind of Arab behavior, no matter how heinous, as they go about the process of committing cultural suicide. And, in addition, they are even paying Arabs and anti-Zionists to undermine the Jewish state as they vomit-out their own traditional, democratic, liberal values.
It was just two days ago that Islamists marched into a rock concert in Paris and slaughtered innocent people with the rat-tat-tat of automatic assault weaponry, even as the European Union is slapping a yellow Star of David upon Israel's forehead for products made in the wrong part of Israel.
I would like to say that it was nice to know you, Europe.
But, in truth... not so much.
Good luck.
{You are going to need it.}
When you're ready to join us for a visit to Har HaBayit, we'll be happy to help make the arrangements (-: Also, thanks as always for keeping us in mind.
ReplyDeleteTry reading Elder's post about the Islamic Junta's motivations.
ReplyDeleteThere are two important parts: Over the past several hundred years there has been some watering down of the concept of Dar al-Harb, There have been new divisions added over time from the original two. and But to fundamentalists, the old division of the world into two parts is still the only proper interpretation of Islam and the more modern, realistic Muslims are just as much the enemy as the West.
The first of those shows that there are Islamic doctrines that are compatible with Islam existing as one among other peacable faiths. The second tells us what it is that makes our enemy our enemy. Simply put, it is that they reject the doctrines that allow for peaceful coexistence as equals. Without that rejection, there is no reason to regard them as enemies.
I absolutely agree.
DeleteIn fact, I do not regard Muslims as enemies, at all.
I regard Islamists as enemies. Jihadis as enemies. Those insidious imams who stand before their congregations and hold aloft knives.
Those people are enemies, or should be enemies, to all non-Muslims, all women, and all Gay people.
The fact of the matter is that regular Muslims and Jews get along quite nicely in the United States, but both groups represent tiny minorities.
There are those that look at Islam and claim that the problem is Islam, in general. That Islam is supremacist at the very heart of its religious belief system. Erdogan said that Islam is Islam and Doodad reminded us that Erdogan ought to know and Doodad is right.
But, I cannot get away from the fact that none of the Muslims that I have known in my life have ever expressed anything that I would take to be Jihadi in nature... with the possible exception of a Muslim student at SFSU during a protest. I went up to her and said, "So, what's the hub-bub, bub?"
And she said, "the occupation."
And I said, "of the West Bank?"
And she said, "From the River to the Sea..."
And I said, "Buh-bye, lady."
But the fact of the matter is that whatever Muslims, in general, feel about Jews or women or Gay people, what they mainly want, like everyone else, is to be left the hell alone to conduct their personal business and take care of their families.
So, my beef is not with Muslims, but only those who either hate Jews or seek to impose al-Sharia upon the rest of us.
We were only "getting along", because there were no Muslims here to speak of. Now that the numbers are increasing, we see them bullying Jewish students on campuses. Name one influential Muslim organization in the US that is not rabidly hostile to Jewish people. They may smile at you for now, but they don't wish us well.
DeleteMike,
Deleteit is perfectly reasonable to be concerned and angry about the situation regarding the Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa mosque. It's an extraordinarily emotive situation.
What is unreasonable, anywhere and at any time- is to do what the Western Left do, which is to go back in history and conclude that people are, in some way, responsible for things that happened before they were born. No one is responsible for anything that happened before they were born. It makes no difference whether it's 24 hours before you're born, 50years, or several centuries.
Of course it is necessary to understand history so that we can understand the world as it is. It is obviously important to do so.
However, to concentrate on thirteen hundred years of history as if it can be made central to how people are in the contemporary world is iniquitous. No Muslim person alive today should be made to feel responsible for whatever happened centuries ago. Just as no American alive today should be made to feel personally responsible for slavery, for example; it doesn't stop a whole " industry" which insists on doing exactly that, though. It's important for people to be educated, but not to be told that they have inherited inter-generational guilt. Or that the burden of past events and their " legacy" mean no one can ever be free of them.
This type of thinking does nothing but create more problems.
The other thing that makes no sense is to look back at past centuries - in this case as far back as the Dark Ages - and attempt to evaluate them through the lens of twentieth /twenty-first century values. Of course no one treated people as equals throughout most of human history. The ideas around equal rights for different backgrounds, ethnicities, religion, class, gender etc are entirely the products of the most recent past; and only in certain parts of the world. To blame Muslim society for the ill-treatment of minorities such as Jews, in the Eleventh Century for example, is to pretend that history has been something completely other than it is.
There is no part of the world that had the slightest belief that people should be accorded equal rights up until about ten minutes ago as far as human history is concerned. If you are concerned about the treatment of Jews as second-class citizens in the Muslim world, you have to be equally concerned about the treatment of Jews in the Christian world. I cannot, in truth, see much of a difference.
Supercessionary religions, Christianity and Islam, both have fairly awful beliefs about Jews. And have long histories of taking out their frustrations by scapegoating Jews. These hatreds have been a fixture of both these traditions
for time immemorial. If you can get over the history of the Christian West, then you can get over the history of the Muslim East.
What is really difficult is the modern day anti-Semitism ( and anti-Zionism) that pervades the Arab/Muslim world. Or, at least, so much of it. That is the problem.
Talking about what things were like more than a millennium ago is as pointless as President Obama bringing up the Crusades as if it should mean something to present day Christians. It's not that the past is irrelevant, it's that it is relevant to that time. We don't live in those times. And America abolished slavery a very long time ago. If one keeps holding it against the Arab/Muslim world that the last 13 hundred years were less than perfect, it will be no different than Western leftists who tell us that we in the West can never be redeemed for the "sins" of colonialism and.imperialism. I am interested in what European powers did in the Middle Ages, but I have no desire to be told it was my fault and that I should wander about with a crushing weight on my back that can never be thrown off.
Let's try and address the problems we all face in the world as it is. That's more than enough. Let's not tell each other we should all feel guilty for the supposed "sins" of our ancestors, in times that were totally different to our own.
Kate,
Deletehistory may be in the past, but it rings within the present.
No one is guilty for whatever happened before they were born, however current generations are responsible for either keeping alive bad ideas or relegating them to the dust-bin of history.
Contemporary Europeans may, or may not, be friendly toward Jews, but they have largely given up the forms of Christian medieval anti-Semitism.
Islam throughout the Middle East has not done so. They continue the old traditions, including the stoning of Jews and the amazingly toxic belief that we are the murderers of the prophets and despised in the sight of Allah.
Muslims have maintained a direct line of Jew Hatred from Muhammad to the present and we can no more discuss the present situation of Jews in that part of the world without reference to 1,300 years of second and third class non-citizenship under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism than black people can discuss contemporary anti-black racism in the United States without reference to slavery and Jim Crow.
To do otherwise erases history and, therefore, the necessary context.
No. I disagree.
DeleteThe really central problem is that a combination of things has not allowed for Islam to go through the process of reform that Christianity and Judaism went through. But those religions only did so 'relatively' recently. And even then there was the Holocaust.
History is complicated and, sadly, difficult. It always will be.
If you talk about anti-black racism in the U.S., it is, of course, necessary to talk about slavery and Jim Crow. It is not necessary, or indeed productive, to carry on telling everyone in America that the past can never be got over. The whole of human history is littered with atrocities and things which in today's world we find unacceptable, to say the least. History is difficult and painful as well as fascinating and extraordinary.
No one wants to erase history, but to imply that all Muslims have maintained a direct line of Jew-hatred from Mohammed to the present is not to understand theology. In all probability, much of what is written in the Quran is, like other religions, cobbled together from other existing traditions. Recent discoveries seem to help point to that. In most of the Islamic world it is blasphemous to suggest that. That is the main part of the problem. If the texts of Islam can be properly subjected to the scrutiny of scholars, then the Islamic world can start to teach that much of what is now taken literally is actually really myth, or appears in the texts for other reasons. Exactly as happened with the Bible. And following that, different parts of the texts can be put into historical and political context. Context is everything. Just as it is with the Bible. A whole process of opening up needs to occur. You should be rooting for that, not blaming ordinary Muslims for the failure of their elites. Or for the fact that parts of the world, such as the Arab Muslim world and Africa, were built along tribal lines that, amongst other things, made evolving into liberal democracies almost impossible. That's not the fault of ordinary people. It can't be.
Also, re America and racism: Yes, to understand is vital. To put things in context is vital. To continue to tell African Americans that America's history with slavery means they have no chance of a future, is obscene. And there are far too many people who have a vested interest in doing that. And it is fiercely destructive. As, I'm sure you can observe.
Name one influential Muslim organization in the US that is not rabidly hostile to Jewish people.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you would consider them influential, but there's the American Islamic Congress which is actually quite anti-anti-semitic.
For the most part, it is unhelpful to assume that " organizations" are actually genuine spokesmen for ordinary people. Most of the organizations to which Jacob is probably referring are organizations which - similar to many in the UK - tend to make things worse not better.
DeleteIt is less a feature of belonging to any particular religion, and more a feature of how multiculturalism encourages these sorts of organizations, and accords them status and influence which becomes divisive. Not least, for ordinary Muslims.
Best book to read to understand this process is : " The Diversity Illusion" by Ed West.
Organizations represent their "constituents" feelings in the broad sense.
DeleteWhere is any evidence that other kind of Muslims exist in discernable numbers? And we can see the trend, as Britain becomes more Muslim, politicians became more antisemitic to cater to their preferences. Campuses in US are a preview of what Jewish/Muslim relations will look in the near future.
Jacob,
Deleteactually it's not necessarily true that organizations represent their constituents feelings in the broad sense. Just as self-appointed community leaders often do not. The dangers of multiculturalism can be - and certainly have been in Europe - that it encourages groups to form who are led by people who have a vested interest in creating problems rather than solving them. Otherwise they'd be out of a job.
It's really quite complicated because such groups - from all sorts of communities - get rewarded for discovering problems and for establishing grievances. In Britain we often find that the groups that, for example, receive government funding and have influence with politicians and the media have not very much in common with the people they are supposed to represent. That doesn't mean said groups can't be really unpleasant, but it does mean they need to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt.
2)
DeleteHeavily politicized groups are only allowed to flourish with the support of governments and the media. It is interesting to note how groups like CAIR, for example, get given so much credibility and air-time when what they are peddling is so divisive. One would have to conclude that a combination of ignorance and misplaced sensitivity help that happen. Also, unfortunately, a wish to develop groups as potential voting blocs.
In the UK we often have so-called community leaders being asked to comment on significant events by our media. It is not infrequent that ordinary Muslims ring up and complain, to the BBC for example, that the people invited on are pushing views that are not held by the majority of British Muslims. The media here, and I imagine in the States, tend to like to seek out their idea, of what Muslims should be like. People whose views fit in with the media's own preferred narrative.
It's fantastically unhelpful.