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Musings on Moses & Muhammad

During the last full week of February, Jews and Muslims memorialized their respective founding prophets who, coincidentally, both died on their own birthdays.

Judaism commemorated Adar 7 as the day when Moses was born and died (coinciding with February 21); Islam commemorated Rabi-al-Awwal 12 (coinciding with February 26) as Muhammad's birthday and the anniversary of his death. The day, Milad an-Nabi, has religious as well as cultural significance. In Southeast Asia, for instance, it is marked by a carnival atmosphere. More conservative Muslim authorities hold that there is no theological basis to sanctify the day.

Yet this year in Damascus, it was a pan-Islamic occasion which saw Syrian President Bashar Assad, an Alawite, and the Persian Shi'ite president of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinijad, attend a Sunni-led service.

Among Jews, the day is set aside for fasting and penitence but nowadays observed only by sectors within the Orthodox world. During medieval times, in Egypt, for example, Adar 7 took on communal and cultural significance; while Adar 8 was a carnival day! This made some conservative rabbis unhappy and they imposed restrictions on the participation of women.

The two faiths use different calendars so this year's convergence of birth/death anniversaries was mere coincidence. Yet there are some notable parallels along with dissimilarities between the two founders.

Moses was raised as a prince, but his birth father plays only a cameo role in the Torah and Muhammad's father, Abdullah, died while the prophet-to-be was still in his mother's womb. Some of Muhammad's successors were uncomfortable with the parallels the Koran draws with the Torah -- as when the Muslim holy book replicates the Torah's story of Moses smiting the rock for water.

Where Moses was a reluctant leader; Muhammad was keen and confident. Both men were warrior prophets, but Moses went to battle unenthusiastically, and appeared not to relish the role as commander-in-chief. Perhaps that is a reason why modern Israel memorializes those of its fallen soldiers whose graves are not known on the same day it remembers Moses.

Muhammad saw himself as more than the inheritor of Moses' mantle; he had come to perfect the earlier prophet's message. Muhammad, who came into contact with the Jewish tribes of Arabia viewed Judaism as a direct challenge to his religious mission. There is an account, for instance, of how his face changed color when he saw a follower reading from the Torah. The Hadith has Muhammad declaring that were Moses his contemporary, the Israelite would have become a Muslim.

Whereas Moses died with Joshua designated as his clear successor, Israelite fragmentation along tribal lines, notwithstanding -- Muhammad's demise led to a schism played out to this day between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

In the end, Moses expired in presence of God alone, whereas Muhammad passed away from an illness in his wife Aisha's home today. No one knows where Moses' burial place is. Muhammad is buried in the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi Mosque in Medina.

German liberalism

Friedrich Naumann

When thinking of 20th century Germany, the first thing that comes to mind isn't its liberal tradition. Yet not only has a centrist liberal polity emerged from the ashes of the Nazi regime which ruled from 1933 until 1945, but the origins of liberalism in Germany can be traced to a political tradition dating back to the early 1900s.

To hear Prof. Moshe Zimmermann, the 67 year-old-head of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem tell it, modern German history could have gone either way; there is nothing metaphysical in the German political character that made the rise of the Nazis inevitable. It was, instead, a matter of circumstances and bad luck framed by economic depression and military defeat in the First World War.

To drive home this point, Zimmerman cited the legacy of Friedrich Naumann (1860-1919) a Lutheran pastor turned politician and Reichstag member who sought to navigate his middle class constituents toward social reform and political tolerance.

Speaking Monday at a seminar on German liberalism at Hebrew University, co-sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty, Zimmerman insisted that liberalism and emancipation were as much a part of Germany's political legacy as its darker contributions.

Naumann's answer to the Jewish question, Zimmermann told Jewish Ideas Daily, was to proclaim that there really ought to be no Jewish question at all; that anti-Semitism was wrong and counter-productive, and that there was no trans-national or over-arching Jewish problem; that whatever problems Jews faced (or, presumably, were thought to cause) could be solved within the framework of the countries in which they lived.

These progressive views were enunciated in a political environment in which hatred of Jews permeated even democratic movements.

Naumann visited Palestine in 1898 – the same year as did Kaiser Wilhelm II and Theodore Herzl – and returned home with mildly anti-Zionist attitudes. Why? Firstly, because he didn't conceive of the Jews as a nation, people or ethnicity, but as a religious denomination. Nor did he think the Zionist enterprise would take off. And, finally, he worried that Zionism would exacerbate intolerance toward Jews within Germany.

As far as Zimmerman knows, Naumann did not give Zionism further consideration and did not publicly react to the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

GERMAN LIBERALS of the early 1900s have little in common with their 21st century counterparts, Zimmerman said. Though it is doubtful whether the Friedrich Naumann Foundation -- which is affiliated with the Free Democratic Party, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition -- would agree. Germany's foreign minister is FDP chair Guido Westerwelle. He and Merkel currently disagree about taxes (he wants them cut) and nuclear power plans (he wants them built).

In any event, the liberals of old opposed the conservative understanding of civil society (Gesellschaft) as an "organism" which worked best under authoritarian rule. In contrast, the liberals championed individual over group rights.

Definitions of liberalism have evolved over the decades, but at minimum it is an ideology that "considers individuals the seat of moral value and each individual as of equal worth," according to political sociologist John A. Hall.

The German liberals of Naumann's era engaged in political combat against the aristocracy and oligarchy on the one hand, and the working classes on the other.
Their natural constituency was the middle class – the bourgeois – the very strata in which the Jews felt most at home.

******
THE argument that racism and authoritarianism were not inherently more at home in the pre-WWII German body politic than liberalism is, shall we say, revisionist. But in championing this position, Zimmerman, who wrote his master's thesis on Naumann, is hardly being at his most controversial.

The product of a privileged national-religious Jerusalem home, Zimmerman has established a notorious reputation beyond the sphere of his academic work for having compared IDF soldiers serving in Judea and Samaria to the SS, and Hebron settlers to the Hitler Youth.

All of which goes to show that even agreeable academic, an expert on liberalism, can give voice to intolerance.

CHECK OUT MY NEW HOME

Dear Reader,

Below is the final editorial I have written for The Jerusalem Post in my capacity as Editorial Page Editor.

I am delighted to tell you that I have accepted a new job with the Jewish Ideas Daily website as managing editor. It is an ideas-driven (as opposed to news driven) site and I look forward to the challenge. I join an outstanding team of editors.

So, please visit Jewish Ideas Daily: http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/ and take a moment to register.

My thanks to all my friends and colleagues at The Post for nearly 11 fascinating years of creativity.

Elliot


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Passport ‘rage’


Dahu Khalfan Tamim now has a world-class reputation for detective work. The head of the Dubai police swiftly determined that Hamas’s Mahmoud Mabhouh did not die of natural causes at the five-star Bustan Rotana Hotel on Jan. 20. He was assassinated.

Let’s for the sake of argument grant that Israel did away with Mabhouh; that he was not killed by Iran or over some intra-Palestinian dispute, and that clues pointing to Israeli culpability are genuine.

Mabhouh certainly deserved to be assassinated by Israel. Hamas declared war on Israel. And he co-founded its military wing and was personally involved in the (separate) 1989 killings of IDF soldiers Ilan Sa’adon and Avi Sasportas.

Mabhouh was a key link in the unlawful syndicate which delivers Iranian weapons to Gaza. He was apparently tasked with importing an arsenal that would make life hellish for Israelis living in metropolitan Tel Aviv. He was, perhaps, Hamas’s equivalent to Hizbullah’s Imad Mughniyeh, whose car blew up in Damascus two years ago.

YOU CAN tell a great deal about the moral compass and political leanings of a society by observing its reaction to the Mabhouh liquidation.

There is unease in Europe because the purported assassins identified by Dubai were travelling under forged French, German, Irish and British passports; and identities of Israelis with dual-citizenship were utilized.

Even The Times of London, whose editorial page has been sympathetic toward Israel, expressed chagrin over the affair, saying this country had shown poor regard for the “future security of British passport holders overseas.” Frankly, there is little reason to think that the tradecraft employed in this assassination – which we will not second guess at this stage – jeopardizes anyone.

Actually, what troubles us is the question of whose passport Mabhouh was traveling under and why he was allowed to enter neutral Dubai on gun-running business.

Of course, that’s not how the British see it. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen warned that if Israel had used British passports for “nefarious” purposes – meaning sending Mabhouh to his Maker – Bowen expected, or would it be more accurate to say, hoped for, “a crisis” in relations between London and Jerusalem.

The Guardian quoted a Foreign Office mandarin as gloating: “Relations were in the freezer before this. They are in the deep freeze now.” The paper then grumbled about the British government’s “supine” response to the assassination, editorializing against the government’s proposal to lift the threat of lawfare. The Guardian wants visiting Israeli ministers to continue to worry about facing Palestinian-inspired “war crimes” charges.

With the British media delighting in the assassination-passport kerfuffle – a Daily Mail headline screamed: “Dragged into a Mossad murder plot” – Menzies Campell, a routinely anti-Israel elder of the Liberal Democrats, declared that “Israel has some explaining to do.”

An anyway beleaguered Prime Minister Gordon Brown intoned: “We have got to carry out a full investigation into this. The British passport is an important document that has got to be held with care.” Sentiments echoed by Opposition Leader David Cameron.

The most encouraging view – paradoxically – came from Robert Fisk, the Independent’s inveterate Israel-basher: He suspects that London and Paris colluded with Jerusalem in Mabhouth’s assassination, in a reprise of the 1956 Sinai Campaign. That explained, he wrote, the flawless biometric passports.

What an uplifting (if improbable) scenario: MI6 and the Directorate-General for External Security working in tandem with the Mossad to stop Iranian arms from reaching Hamas.

PERHAPS the shrill reaction in some (though certainly not all) British quarters is not rooted purely in anti-Israelism. Chances are that at least parts of the British intelligentsia and media would have reacted similarly if the man in that hotel room had been Osama bin Laden... or Adolf Eichmann. And this pigheaded refusal to acknowledge that sometimes the ends do justify the means reflects a moral impoverishment that’s not limited to Britain.

Some pundits here have also gone wobbly, asking whether the Mabhouh hit was worth the trouble; others are rashly calling for the resignation of Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In fact, removing a Mabhouh or a Mughniyeh – agents of evil engaged in sensitive compartmentalized work – significantly disrupts Hamas and Hizbullah. It sows distrust within enemy ranks. And it forces whoever replaces them to dissipate their energies just trying to stay alive.

Iran...as time runs out

The eleventh hour


The Islamic Republic of Iran celebrated its 31st anniversary yesterday with an enormous rally held in the shadow of the Azadi Tower. The monument was built by the Shah in 1971 to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. The plaza surrounding the monument has been cynically renamed Freedom Square.

One day, when the Iranian people overthrow this evil regime, perhaps they will rededicate the square as a memorial to the victims of the Khomeinists – dissidents such as Muhammad Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour, who were judicially executed last month. Of the 5,000 people arrested since the country’s June 2009 “elections,” 11 have met a similar fate.

A recent Amnesty International report tells the stories of some of the regime’s victims who were simply murdered: Amir Javadifar, a 25-year-old student of management at Qazvin Azad University, was beaten and tortured to death. Twenty-eight-year-old Taraneh Mousavi was raped and tortured before her burned body was dumped in an open field. Those who speak against the regime place not only themselves but also family members in jeopardy. This is true even for disillusioned Khomeinists.

ALL THIS helps explain why the regime’s celebrations went unmolested. Dissidents previously released from custody were warned to stay home. State-controlled media were reminded to watch what they disseminated. All images coming out of the country were carefully controlled by the regime. Foreign media outlets such as CNN and BBC have been banned from Iran. Internet and other new media (Twitter, Facebook) were disrupted.

Opposition figures who did try to rally supporters were intercepted by government thugs and intimidated into returning home; others were arrested. The AP, relying on opposition Web sites, reported on clashes between security forces and protesters away from the pro-government rally. Police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators, and paintballs to mark them for arrest.

Footage broadcast on YouTube showed small numbers of – undoubtedly courageous – opposition demonstrators waving green ribbons. But an unprecedented police clampdown appears to have snuffed out any hope that the opposition could parlay the regime’s party into a day of meaningful protest.

Instead, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad harangued – Castro-style – those who turned up for over an hour, telling them that Iran had already produced its first batch of uranium enriched to a 20-percent level. If true, it’s a step that brings an atomic bomb exponentially closer. In his next breath, the disingenuous dictator declared: “When we say we do not manufacture the bomb, we mean it.”

ON Wednesday, the Obama administration intensified existing US sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. It blocked the assets of an Iranian general and four companies affiliated with the IRGC.

The administration argues that its unsuccessful year-long effort to reason with the mullahs has given it the political capital to ask the UN Security Council to support a system of sanctions that would further hinder Iran’s banking, shipping and insurance industries. The world will soon learn whether Russia and China will feign cooperation while working to water down President Barack Obama’s proposed resolution.

David E. Sanger of The New York Times suggests Obama is gambling that a global agreement on sanctions will persuade the mullahs to stop spinning their centrifuges. We’d like the president to raise the stakes and press the UN to prohibit the export of refined petroleum to Iran.

Some say tough sanctions will send the masses into the arms of the government and undermine the opposition. But yesterday’s rally showed that the regime doesn’t have a problem putting on a show of support; and that the opposition is weak, fragmented and under siege.

The prospects of the opposition are unpredictable, regardless of what happens on the sanctions front. Pretending otherwise strikes us as a lame excuse for doing nothing.

We also understand that sanctions on gasoline could enrich the IRGC, which already controls Iran’s black market in commodities. Still, the debilitating impact on the regime of endless lines at petrol stations should not be underestimated.

Dawdling by two US administrations and by an international community preoccupied with immediate economic gratification has brought the world to this eleventh hour. It may already be too late for the real sanctions option.

But given the stark alternative – isn’t it worth a try?