Israel, the hope of the Muslim world
Diesen Artikel in der Asia Times fand ich sehr interessant:
The state of Israel embodies the last, best chance for the Islamic world to come to terms with the modern world. Received wisdom in the foreign ministries of the West holds that relations with Muslims would be ever so much easier without the annoying presence of the Jewish state, which humiliates the Muslim world. Just the opposite is true. The Israeli presence in the the Muslim world, precisely because it constitutes a humiliation.
The premise of Western policy is to tread lightly upon Muslim sensibilities. That is an error of first magnitude, for Muslim sensibilities are what prevents the Islamic world from creating modern states. Islam cannot produce the preconditions for democracy in the Western sense out of its own resources.
Free elections in Muslim lands tend to hand power to fanatical despots. Why should that be true? The first premise of Western democracy, that the rights of the weakest and most despised citizens are sacred, stems from the Judeo-Christian notion of divine humility. The creator of the universe suffers along with his creatures, and bears a special love for the weak and helpless, a belief that appears absurd in Islam. Islam has no inherent concept of humility; it can only be imported to Muslim countries from the outside.
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No injunction to “turn the other cheek” is found in the Koran, no reflection on how to learn from defeat. Something like the Book of Lamentations, which tradition attributes to the Prophet Jeremiah after the fall of Jerusalem, is unimaginable in Islam. Jeremiah tells defeated Israel, “It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young … Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace.”
The words “humble” and “humility” occur rarely in the Koran, and in most cases (7:206 and 17:109) refer not to Muslims but rather to Jews or other conquered peoples, as in “And [the children of Israel] fall down on their faces weeping, and it adds to their humility”, or “We sent [apostles] to nations before you then We seized them with distress and affliction in order that they might humble themselves.” There are a few references to the virtue of being humble before Allah, but not one suggestion that it is good to show humility to other human beings. Nothing like Hannah’s praise of YHWH, (I Samuel 2:28), “You save the humble, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them low,” occurs in Muslim scripture.
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Because success is central to Islam’s promise, and the restoration of the Jewish commonwealth in its historic territory along with its ancient capital seems to validate Jewish scripture rather than the Koran, Israel offers an existential challenge to the Muslim world. Muslims will never accept the permanent presence of Israel unless compelled. But the bad news in this case is the good news, for if the Muslim world were to accept Israel’s existence, the collective humiliation would be so profound as to force the concept of humility into Muslim political life. The best thing Western governments could do to foster democracy in the Muslim world, in fact, is to move their embassies to Jerusalem.
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Abgelegt unter : Psychologisches, Religionsphilosophie, arabische Laender
