IS
ALLAH A ZIONIST ?
On another page of our Middle East Desk site we have quoted
chapters and verses to show the unbiased reader of the Koran that Allah’s will
regarding the Land of Israel is explicit and categorical: the “banu Isra’il”
(the Children of Israel) are to inherit and inhabit it. No reservation is made
in favour of any other people. We have not cited all available evidence leading
to this conclusion. Listing and examining all relevant passages in the Koran
and commentaries down the centuries would call for a book, a task beyond the
scope of our Web site. Sooner or later an intrepid Islamic scholar will
undertake such a task.
Intrepid? He will have to
be. The issue of who holds the legal title to the Promised Land is beset with emotional landmines. It is
not accidental that in our century even outstanding Muslim scholars of Islam
have kept away from this sensitive subject. Had they examined it and been
brought to the inevitable conclusion, however reluctantly, that the Koran – that is to say Allah through his
chosen Messenger - has assigned
the Land of Israel to the banu Isra’il and no one else, they would have risked
their standing, livelihood,
possibly even their life,
for such perplexing and unwanted support of infidels like the Zionist
Jews reclaiming their ancient heirloom..
Arab Muslims might say that how they interpret or misinterpret the Koran
on the issue of the Holy Land ownership title or on any other subject is their
own in-house business. And that they are not accountable to anyone outside
their faith. But we outsiders
maintain that this subject with all its links to adjacent subjects is of
pertinent international interest on several grounds. One is obviously
theological: The Holy Land has been a matter of concern to non-Muslims
throughout the world, first to the
banu Isra’il in Egypt as the “Promised Land”, then to Christians because of the
life and death there of Jesus Christ – that is to say long before Islam came
into the world.
Another reason for international interest is historic and political: to Jews who live in Israel and base
their claim to ownership on the Bible, on their national past, or on both. They
call themselves “Zionists”. (Zion
is a poetic synonym for Jerusalem, the Promised Land as a whole and the
Jewish people since King David.
Why they have ignored the Koranic testimony that reaffirms their
Biblical title to the Land of Israel is an interesting subject too which the Middle
East Desk will take up in another item on this site).
Summing it up, independents like our team regard the Israel ownership
issue as a proper and legitimate matter for historic, religious, legal and
political study and of public interest because of its possible
impact on contemporary political issues in the Middle East. Today we are looking at one facet of
this subject: to find out whether
today Muslims who think of themselves as true believers, at one with their
Koran, can reconcile Allah’s explicit command - that the banu Isra’il should live in the Holy Land - with their religious and political
leaders’ evasion or outright rejection of it. “For the earth
is Allah’s and he lets those of his servants inherit it as he pleases.
In the end he favours the righteous.” (Sura 7, verse 129).
We assume that the
religious scholars and leaders of Islam do know the Koran and its traditional
commentaries well enough and need no instruction from us on this subject. We
are not so certain about their political leaders. On Judgment Day they can at
least plead mitigating ignorance. Not so religious leaders and experts of those
countries that declare themselves governed by Islamic Law, the Shariya, like Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia,
Sudan, Libya, Iran, etc. They
cannot feel comfortable with the knowledge (as far as it has been at their
disposal) that the Koran assigns “the land We have blessed” to the Children of
Israel, but withhold that knowledge from the entire Muslim world.
It is easy to see
reasons for this secretiveness of the learned Arab Muslims. They face a conflict between their
religious conscience and their political interest in seeing the state of Israel
removed from the Middle East. And their conscience loses. They cannot feel at
ease with such a decision. The Koran tells them that those who defy Allah’s
will will suffer for it. A devout
Muslim, reading the history of the Middle East of this century, might well be
driven to the conclusion that the Arab nation as a whole is already being made
to pay heavily for acting against Allah’s solemn will and affirmation of an
earlier divine promise. Contrary
to their expectations of easy
victory five Arab armies sent into Palestine in May 1948 to nip the renascent
state of Israel in the bud were beaten back. Egypt, Jordan and Syria, trying again in 1967, suffered another defeat. Jordan lost
the hold on “the western part of
the land” it had secured in 1948, and was reduced to the territory east
of the Jordan River. Syria lost the Golan Height, until then its small share
of the Holy Land granted it by
France when the Ottoman Turkish empire was carved up after the first world war. A third Arab attempt,
in October 1973, coordinated by
Egypt and Syria, fared no better.
If the Islamic dogma of Allah’s foreordained and immutable will has any
meaning, these defeats should
cause the true believers to raise the question of whether they are not defying
it, or to explain them otherwise in terms of Islamic theology.
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