Blog : Ragazou

By PAUL LUNGEN, Staff Reporter (CJN)

 

TORONTO ? Forget all the things you know, or think you know, about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It's not about land, it's not about borders, it's not about a two-state solution.

Bat Ye'or

 

The root of the dispute is simpler and more intractable, according to a shariah scholar and convert to Christianity. The source of the conflict is Islamic doctrine and that faith's longstanding antipathy towards Jews, said lecturer and researcher Sam Solomon.

 

Solomon, author of the recently-released Al-Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity and The Jews, said the problem between Jews and Palestinians is centuries old. ?The issue of Israel and Palestinians is a crisis of relationship started way back in the seventh century by Muhammad and his treatment of the Jews and his revelation. These are eternal.?

 

Solomon, an adviser to European parliamentarians on Islam, is in Toronto this week as part of a three-city lecture tour, along with author Bat Ye'or. In addition to a lecture at the Shaarei Tefillah Synagogue on Thursday, they will address audiences in Ottawa and London.

 

Solomon, who was trained in shariah (Islamic) law for 15 years before converting to Christianity, said the Qur'an is replete with derogatory references to Jews. Following Muhammad's initial condemnation of Jews, who rejected his religious claims, Jews lived by sufferance within Islamic lands.

 

While there were  at times warm personal relationships between Muslims and Jews, Islamic doctrine placed Jews in a position of inferiority to Muslims.

 

?There is an eternal conflict in Islam versus the Jews,? Solomon said. As Muslim theologians see it, ?the only solution is for the Jews to convert to Islam.?

 

Under Islamic doctrine, neither Jews nor Christians are accepted as equals to Muslims, he said. That sort of contemptuous attitude is hard on western ears, and some find it too disturbing to be true, he acknowledged

?If you try to analyze this, our analysis is to see it through a Judeo-Christian prism, and it doesn't match. But it's not an intellectual issue. It's a spiritual issue.?

 

Solomon said the advance of Islam around the world is likewise part of the religion's doctrine and mirrors Muhammad's move from Mecca to Medina, ?an Islamic takeover.? This is happening today, where even small Muslim populations can exert great influence over larger communities and stifle criticism of Islam, a restriction on the traditional right to free speech.

 

In Britain, shariah courts make decisions that are legally binding, polygamy is ignored and Muslim women experience reduced rights.

 

?I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is the reality,? Solomon said.

 

Bat Ye'or, who was born in Egypt but whose family was expelled in 1957, said Muslim scholars foresee a condition of ?dhimmitude' for non-Muslim people. Dhimmitude, she explained, ?is the condition that was imposed by shariah laws to non-Muslim peoples vanquished by jihad.?

 

Jews, Christians, Hindus and Zoroastrians (in Persia) who withstood the pressure to convert to Islam ?could keep their religion on condition they would submit to humiliating regulations and buy the right to live by paying a tax mentioned in the Qur'an called the jizyah.?

 

If they didn't pay, they could be killed, or reduced to slavery of have your children taken into slavery, she said.

 

Even today in Egypt, it's very difficult for the country's Coptic Christian minority to build a new church, and Christians live in insecurity, with many attacked, she said.

 

Ye'or, whose name was taken from a biblical reference and means Daughter of the Nile, disputed the claim that Islam is the religion of peace. ?For non-Muslims, things are different,? she said.

 

?Islam developed and expanded by wars of aggression and expansion. That's part of the Islamic religion.?

Islam continues to expand in Europe and the West, though not through war. Now, it's ?peaceful expansion through immigration.?

 

Muslims today are bending the concept of multiculturalism to permit application of shariah law, as in Britain, and to prohibit criticism of Islam and Muslims' treatment of women, she said.

 

The success in forestalling criticism of Islam demonstrates ?we are living under dhimmitude and the rules of shariah without even knowing it.?

 

She called for careful vetting of immigrants from Islamic countries so as to ?not bring those who hate our system and want to destroy it' while allowing in ?those who want to integrate and who are being persecuted.?

 

Ye'or, author of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis  and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide,  said preservation of western values opposed to shariah ?depends on whether the younger generation will decide to take a risk to fight for their freedom and values ? respect for human rights, the dignity of men and women and equality of all human beings ? or will be intimidated or indifferent to that. If not, Judeo-Christian civilization will disappear.?

 

Solomon's and Ye'or's lectures were sponsored by the International Free Press Society-Canada and the Free Thinking Film Society.