Transcending False Perceptions
Posted: 04/ 3/2012 10:23 am
Alon Ben-Meir
Senior Fellow, NYU's Center for Global Affairs
In a recent article, I argued that Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt should accept the fact that they exist and will continue to exist in the same neighborhood indefinitely, both as an acknowledgement of their mutual realities and as a way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and improve Israeli-Egyptian relations. Nonetheless, deeper than an acceptance of reality and beyond the MB is the need for a rapprochement between Israel and the Islamic Arab world, which must be based not on necessity but on the desirability of coexistence between Muslims and Jews.
The Quran provides the very source that Islamist extremists draw deliberate textual misinterpretations from to justify the notion of an eternal and inevitable struggle between Muslims and Jews. That said, religious reconciliation between the two sides cannot occur unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is settled on the basis of a two-state solution -- a solution which necessarily requires the cessation of the occupation, which has provided the rationale and justification for Jihad against Israel.
Israel and the Islamic Arab world must coexist, as coexistence simply is not optional and the alternative will only prolong the strife and bloodshed between the two sides. A telling example is the situation in Jerusalem and Hebron, where Muslims and Jews are religiously stuck in the same place, live side by side, and cannot entertain the idea of excluding the other or harming each other's holy shrines without incurring unacceptable consequences. Some Muslims argue that such coexistence is derived by necessity and not by choice. But note that an important feature of al-Isra wa al-Miraj -- that is Prophet Mohamed's prayer with all previous prophets, including Abraham and Moses, at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem -- implies the inclusive nature of the divine message.
If hardcore Islamists and extreme, right-wing Israeli activists maintain that Islam orthodoxy is inherently anti-Jewish and need further convincing that this is not the case, they must transcend their false perceptions and look deeper into the Quran to find that coexistence between Jews and Muslims is natural to the teachings of Islam. There are Quranic texts in favor of coexistence; literal interpretations taken out of their specific contexts however, can undermine relations, as they have in the past, between Muslims and Jews. Importantly, the broader picture that the Quran provides explicitly recognizes the Jews as a nation worthy of respect.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/israel-palestine-religion_b_1399522.html
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