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Is Islam Jewish?
A question that may hold the key to the Age of Messiah
An open letter to my fellow Jews (but you don't have to be Jewish to read it):
Caveat: The proposal presented here may sound naïve, crazy and/or dangerous. I am not insisting that it will work. All I request is that you give it some thought and consider its long-term potential.
Note: Though this article deals with politics, I consider it to be an apolitical, psychological piece. To avoid problems, when I need to refer to the combined area of the State of Israel and the territories it captured in the 1967 war, I will refer to it as The Holy Land.
Note: This is not a religious article, in the sense that belief in a higher being is not required. However, it does require an understanding of religious beliefs, as it is impossible to comprehend events in the Middle East, and the Holy Land in particular, without recognizing the role of religion. This article is written from the perspective of Jewish religious belief, with no suggestion that it represents objective reality or my own personal beliefs.
My search for simple solutions
Ever since I became aware of the Israel/Arab conflict about 50 years ago, I’ve been futilely anticipating its peaceful conclusion. Since moving back to Israel a year ago (I’d lived here previously from 1978 to 1988), I’ve been trying to understand what’s going on here in order to come up with some simple ideas that might be the key to a solution.
A few months ago, I posted an article that earned more praise than any anything I’d ever written on bullying. It was my attempt to understand why Muslims are killing not only Christians, Jews, Yazidis, and Baha’i’s, but mostly fellow Muslims—even different factions of Sunnis are fighting to the death—and to suggest a way to help end religious-based warfare in the world. I proposed an “infidel meme” that infects people with the idea that it’s their divine duty to kill people whose beliefs differ from their own. I suggested that if the Western world were to sanction countries that officially engage in promotion of the infidel meme, those countries would eventually choose to abandon it and the world would become safer.
To my chagrin, the only objector was a close friend of mine, a Muslim. She felt the article was biased against Muslims and that sanctions would result in escalating hostilities. Perhaps there’s something to it.
So now I’m presenting a solution that places us Jews at the helm of our role as “light unto the nations,” putting us in control rather than relying on others to initiate the changing.
The current state of affairs for Jews
It has become increasingly dangerous to be a Jew, largely because of the State of Israel. Israel is now seen as a Goliath rather than a David and, as Wilt Chamberlain said, "Nobody roots for Goliath." Many countries, particularly Muslim Middle Eastern ones, want to destroy it, and hatred of Jews in Europe has risen to a level not seen since the Holocaust. A third Intifada has recently sprouted within Israel.
Simultaneously, religious Jews, including influential rabbis, optimistically talk about the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah), for which we’ve been pining since our exile from the Holy Land two thousand years ago. They believe that only the Moshiach can solve our existential problem, and that our desperate need will force him to appear. However, they don’t know who he will be, how and when he will come, and what the world will look like once he does. Some people envision the Age of Moshiach as a Heaven on Earth, in which only the Jews and righteous Gentiles will survive and live somewhat like angels. The common denominator of all views, though, is that it will be an age of universal peace. That is a goal to which secular social scientists also aspire and believe might even be achievable. It is such an Age of Moshiach that I am trying to foster.
I am hereby hypothesizing that the title of this article may hold the key.
But first a story
There was a man whose life-long wish was to visit New York City, as he’d been told it was the most wonderful city in the world. He had dyslexia, so he couldn’t read signs. People pointed him in the direction, and he embarked on his journey. He spent years walking around, hoping to find himself in the city of his dreams. Wherever he went, he asked, “What is the name of this place?” On some days people told him, “The Bronx.” On others it was “Manhattan,” “Brooklyn,” “Queens” and “Staten Island.” After years of wandering, he got sick and died broken-hearted, believing he failed to achieve his dream.
What does this story have to do with achieving peace? Read on, and I hope it will make sense.
The prevailing view of Moshiach
During the past year, I have immersed myself in lectures, books and articles by Orthodox rabbis on the Jewish view of peace and Moshiach. Orthodoxy is the branch that has kept Jewish identity alive over the millennia. Orthodoxy is by far the most influential form of Judaism in the Holy Land. Orthodox religious Zionism has become its leading political force. Regardless of whether it is right, it is Orthodoxy that needs to be consulted to understand the Jewish view of Moshiach.
The following, in a nutshell, is the prevalent view of what is required to bring about the age of Moshiach. I welcome any rabbis or scholars to correct me.
Step One: All Jews must do teshuvah (repent). We must accept our role as a priestly nation, specifically chosen by God to live by the Torah and serve as a “light unto the nations,” a model of moral behavior.
Step Two: We must unquestioningly accept that God gave the Holy Land to us. Non-Jews can live there as equals under the law provided they accept our sovereignty.
Step Three: Once we confidently present a unified stance that God gave us sole rights to the Holy Land, the world will stop disputing our claim.
Step Four: When we rule the Holy Land according to the laws of the Torah, we will be fulfilling our priestly mission. We will be an inspiration to the entire world, which will then take upon itself to live by the Seven Laws of Noah, which are the basis for a civilized, peaceful society. The age of Moshiach will then have become a reality.
The ultimate goal of this process is to arrive at the fourth step, bringing peace to the entire world. The Jewish nation is to be the catalyst of this process, not its purpose.
How is our people’s struggle to bring Moshiach succeeding?
As it stands, we’re not doing too well.
While there has been a renaissance of Jewish religious life in Israel and other parts of the world, most of the world’s Jews are secular and assimilating. About half of the Israeli population is staunchly secular or even anti-religious. There is no good reason to expect that all Jews are going to repent and become religiously observant. Israel’s government and legal system continue to be based mostly on European law, not Torah.
Nor are all of the world’s Jews, including Israelis, accepting the idea that the Holy Land was given by God to the Jews.
On the whole, Jews are losing the ideological struggle against Islam. It has become the world’s fastest growing religion, while we are striving to maintain our numbers. Islam is growing in political strength, threatening Jewish clout in Western countries and our very existence in the Holy Land. The harder we argue that the Muslims are to blame for the state of war between us and for the worldwide plague of terrorism, the harder they argue that Jews and Israel are to blame. Israel survives only by maintaining a military edge over her neighbors. While it has been winning most of the battles, it has been losing the overall war, as the more powerful it becomes, the more despised it becomes, and the more determined Muslim groups become to destroy it. One major loss in battle can spell Israel’s end.
It would even be wise for us to consider whether we have been unwittingly increasing the power of radical Islam. When we publicly argue that Islam is a violent religion, we put mainstream Muslims in a bind. They need to choose between agreeing with their Jewish adversaries–Oppressors of the Palestinians–or their own radical brethren, and they tend to side with their brethren because it’s human nature.
There are 100 Muslims for every Jew in the world. Do we expect them all to suddenly “come to their senses” and declare that we are right after all, or that God will destroy them all for us, as some rabbis predict?
Bleak as the situation may seem, there may be a simple way to make it dramatically better. However, we are not likely to succeed by intensifying efforts that haven’t been working. Perhaps all that is needed is a radically different way of thinking about our situation, a reframing.
Some basic tenets of our religion
Before I present the reframe, I would like to remind us of some basic tenets of our religion.
1. We have 613 basic commandments (mitzvot). They fall into two categories:
2. The age of outright miracles ended with the close of Biblical times; no more splitting of the Red Sea or halting the movement of the sun. If God intervenes on our behalf, it is in accordance with the laws of nature. We may surmise that events reflect the hand of God, but we can't prove it.
3. The Written Torah is not to be taken literally and is unusable without the Oral Torah. Our scholars are given the responsibility of ongoing interpretation of the Torah’s meanings and instructions as times change.
4. Hillel taught that the entire Torah can be summarized as: Whatever is hateful to yourself, do not do to others. Rabbi Akiva taught that the Torah is, Love thy fellow as thyself. These principles are popularly referred to today as the Golden Rule. To act contrary to the Golden Rule is to violate the Torah.
5. Our religious thinking has tended to become more abstract over the centuries. While we may have envisioned the Moshiach as a flesh-and-blood individual with a miraculous power to reincarnate the masses and create a perfect world, today we can reasonably conceive of the Moshiach as an idea that empowers mankind to create a maximally peaceful world, one that runs by Golden Rule.
6. The function of priest is intermediary between man and God. Priests perform rituals that are reserved for them alone. The same is true for the Jews, whose role is to be a priestly nation. Torah commands us to perform many rituals from which Gentiles are exempt and, in fact, may be counterproductive for them to perform.
The simple truth about our religions
While I have been studying Jewish religious thought, I have also been exposing myself to Muslim thought.
Many of you may not like hearing this, but the simple truth is that Islam is awfully Jewish—Orthodox Jewish. They have the same general beliefs regarding our relationship to God and to mankind. Both require prayer, circumcision, dietary restrictions, fasting, charity, modesty in dress, and ritual purification with water. There are some differences in our beliefs and practices, but they are far outweighed by the similarities. Islam is closer to Orthodox Judaism than Christianity is. Not only that, Islam is closer to Orthodox Judaism than is Reform Judaism!
I am not the first person to realize this. There is a wealth of information on the Internet, by serious, respected Torah and Koran scholars, explaining that Judaism and Islam are the same religion. Google it.
Why we are appalled by the Islamic State
We are appalled by the actions of radical Muslims, exemplified by Islamic State. Please forgive me for saying this, but my reaction is, “Why are they taking our Torah so literally? We haven’t been doing that kind of stuff for at least two-and-a-half-thousand years.” I’m sorry to break the news to you, but they are inspired by the Torah. Except for cutting off people’s hands for stealing. That idea came from some other culture. The only hand that the Torah specifically calls for cutting off is that of a woman who tries to save her husband by squeezing the testicles of a man who is attacking him.
The reason Islamic State behavior seems so barbaric to us is that there are one hundred times more Muslims than Jews. Therefore, the extremes among Muslims are likely to be more extreme than the extremes of the Jews. If there were 1.5 billion Jews on the planet, some of us would likely be killing adulterers and idolaters as well.
We Jews consider ourselves passionate seekers of truth. Upon close inspection, can it be denied that Islam and Judaism are versions of the same religion?
What this realization can do
We want to eliminate our adversaries. One way to accomplish this is by destroying them. A much better way is by turning them into friends. The simplest way to start such a process is by realizing how closely related our religions are.
Now let’s get back to the earlier story. Like the man with dyslexia, we think we are failing in our goal. On the contrary! We need to reframe this. The success of Islam is not our failure but our success! And so is that of Christianity, which is an offshoot of Judaism. They have taken our religion’s most important teachings and spread them to billions of people. Most of the world has become a more civilized place thanks to us. Even Hitler recognized this (though he saw it as a minus), for he condemned us for bringing conscience into the world.
Has Islam done a perfect job? Of course not! That’s why there is so much bloodshed amongst them. However, once we embrace Muslims as our spiritual partners, we can don our priestly robes and say,
“Hey, you’re doing a great job overall, but no one’s perfect, not even us Jews, the Chosen People. We consider ourselves your older brothers and are watching from the sidelines. It pains us to see you killing each other and creating millions of refugees. It seems to us that many of you are thinking and behaving in ways that Allah and Mohammed would not possibly approve of. They would not want you killing adulterers and those you consider infidels. Let’s sit down for tea we’ll explain why.”
And most Muslims would agree with us because they already agree with us.
You may think this is farfetched. But that’s only if you think of radical Muslims as representing all Muslims. They don’t. Mainstream Muslims condemn the atrocious behavior of the radicals. However, they also condemn Jews because most of us are not following our own Torah, and because we are fighting with them over control of the Holy Land. Once we embrace them, they will change their attitude towards us. We will not have to convince them that God chose us and gave us the Holy Land because the Koran already says these things.
In fact, many Muslim imams and right-wing Orthodox rabbis say the very same thing about Jews and the Holy Land: That we need to repent and live according to the instructions of our Torah. Then Arabs will accept our sovereignty over the Holy Land. If we can appreciate a rabbi telling us this, we should be able to tolerate it from an imam as well.
The source of the infidel meme
Because of the infidel meme, many of us may resist making such a major shift in thinking about Christianity and Islam. Christianity, throughout much of its history, took the attitude towards us, “If you don’t accept Jesus, we will kill you.” Islam, in its early days, forced us to accept Mohammed or be killed.
The Oral Torah view is contrary to the infidel meme. We are to discourage Gentiles from converting, while we must let ourselves be killed rather than be forced to convert. Perhaps that’s why there are so few Jews in the world and so many Christians and Muslims. However, as a priestly nation, we were never meant to be the majority of the world’s population. We’d starve to death if everyone was a priest.
Yet even the infidel meme ultimately derives from our Torah, which instructed us to rid the Holy Land of pagans. Unfortunately for untold numbers of people, Christians and Muslims often defined as pagan anyone who doesn’t share their precise beliefs.
And that same infidel meme is what’s driving radical Muslims to kill Muslims who hold slightly differing beliefs. They consider them pagan, not Muslim.
Some sticky questions
Acknowledging the commonality of Islam and Judaism will not lead to an overnight change in the world. It will take years. There are some sticky questions that will have to be dealt with. Here are some:
1. If Islam and Judaism are the same religion, are we allowed to intermarry? (Actually, I believe our rabbis have long ago considered this question, and determined that some of the differences make them ineligible as marriagepartners.)
2. What about the status of Jewish rule over the Holy Land and who has a right to live there? We insist that it is totally ours, and that we need it as a haven for the persecuted Jews of the world. As long as there is a contest over land, there is going to be serious hostility.
This is indeed a tough question. But we need to see the potential. Israel is currently hardly a safe haven for Jews, as it is constantly under attack. If our relationship to Islam changes, we will have less reason to live in fear. Two thousand years have passed since our exile from the Holy Land. We need to consider whether we need to go backwards to a time when we were concentrated in a small tract of land. We have become a universal people, spreading our book throughout the world. The Holy Land can still be our spiritual center, and Jews will continue to flock there as long as it is safe for them. Furthermore, once we recognize that as offspring of Abraham we both belong here, the Muslim world is likely to welcome Jews back into their lands, and we will help them flourish as we have made the Holy Land flourish.
3. How do we deal with secular people? Are they infidels who deserve to be killed? A major reason the Arab world hates Israel is that it brought in Western secularism, which they see as corrupting their own people.
We can tell our Muslim partners, “We Jews stopped punishing nonbelievers long ago, as it is a violation of the Golden Rule, and we’ve found that we’re happier this way. If you try to think like Mohammed, you will probably conclude that he wants us to love them, not persecute them.” The truth is that the Muslim world has already been debating this issue, and most Muslims accept that it is wrong to persecute secular people.
4. If the infidel meme can incite violence even between different Muslim sects, why would they treat Jews any differently?
The change towards us will take years, but the moderate Muslim world is already battling the infidel meme within Islam. If we join Muslims as friends, showing that we have genuine respect for them despite our differences, we will hasten the demise of the infidel meme as applied against us as well.
The world is closely attuned to what happens in the Holy Land. If the Jews and Arabs can become friends, it will be an inspiration for the rest of the world.
In conclusion, peace between the Jewish and Muslim peoples may sound like a crazy dream. But think about it: Can there be an Age of Moshiach without it?
This article is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Menachem Froman.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/resilience-bullying/201601/is-islam-jewish
A question that may hold the key to the Age of Messiah
An open letter to my fellow Jews (but you don't have to be Jewish to read it):
Caveat: The proposal presented here may sound naïve, crazy and/or dangerous. I am not insisting that it will work. All I request is that you give it some thought and consider its long-term potential.
Note: Though this article deals with politics, I consider it to be an apolitical, psychological piece. To avoid problems, when I need to refer to the combined area of the State of Israel and the territories it captured in the 1967 war, I will refer to it as The Holy Land.
Note: This is not a religious article, in the sense that belief in a higher being is not required. However, it does require an understanding of religious beliefs, as it is impossible to comprehend events in the Middle East, and the Holy Land in particular, without recognizing the role of religion. This article is written from the perspective of Jewish religious belief, with no suggestion that it represents objective reality or my own personal beliefs.
My search for simple solutions
Ever since I became aware of the Israel/Arab conflict about 50 years ago, I’ve been futilely anticipating its peaceful conclusion. Since moving back to Israel a year ago (I’d lived here previously from 1978 to 1988), I’ve been trying to understand what’s going on here in order to come up with some simple ideas that might be the key to a solution.
A few months ago, I posted an article that earned more praise than any anything I’d ever written on bullying. It was my attempt to understand why Muslims are killing not only Christians, Jews, Yazidis, and Baha’i’s, but mostly fellow Muslims—even different factions of Sunnis are fighting to the death—and to suggest a way to help end religious-based warfare in the world. I proposed an “infidel meme” that infects people with the idea that it’s their divine duty to kill people whose beliefs differ from their own. I suggested that if the Western world were to sanction countries that officially engage in promotion of the infidel meme, those countries would eventually choose to abandon it and the world would become safer.
To my chagrin, the only objector was a close friend of mine, a Muslim. She felt the article was biased against Muslims and that sanctions would result in escalating hostilities. Perhaps there’s something to it.
So now I’m presenting a solution that places us Jews at the helm of our role as “light unto the nations,” putting us in control rather than relying on others to initiate the changing.
The current state of affairs for Jews
It has become increasingly dangerous to be a Jew, largely because of the State of Israel. Israel is now seen as a Goliath rather than a David and, as Wilt Chamberlain said, "Nobody roots for Goliath." Many countries, particularly Muslim Middle Eastern ones, want to destroy it, and hatred of Jews in Europe has risen to a level not seen since the Holocaust. A third Intifada has recently sprouted within Israel.
Simultaneously, religious Jews, including influential rabbis, optimistically talk about the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah), for which we’ve been pining since our exile from the Holy Land two thousand years ago. They believe that only the Moshiach can solve our existential problem, and that our desperate need will force him to appear. However, they don’t know who he will be, how and when he will come, and what the world will look like once he does. Some people envision the Age of Moshiach as a Heaven on Earth, in which only the Jews and righteous Gentiles will survive and live somewhat like angels. The common denominator of all views, though, is that it will be an age of universal peace. That is a goal to which secular social scientists also aspire and believe might even be achievable. It is such an Age of Moshiach that I am trying to foster.
I am hereby hypothesizing that the title of this article may hold the key.
But first a story
There was a man whose life-long wish was to visit New York City, as he’d been told it was the most wonderful city in the world. He had dyslexia, so he couldn’t read signs. People pointed him in the direction, and he embarked on his journey. He spent years walking around, hoping to find himself in the city of his dreams. Wherever he went, he asked, “What is the name of this place?” On some days people told him, “The Bronx.” On others it was “Manhattan,” “Brooklyn,” “Queens” and “Staten Island.” After years of wandering, he got sick and died broken-hearted, believing he failed to achieve his dream.
What does this story have to do with achieving peace? Read on, and I hope it will make sense.
The prevailing view of Moshiach
During the past year, I have immersed myself in lectures, books and articles by Orthodox rabbis on the Jewish view of peace and Moshiach. Orthodoxy is the branch that has kept Jewish identity alive over the millennia. Orthodoxy is by far the most influential form of Judaism in the Holy Land. Orthodox religious Zionism has become its leading political force. Regardless of whether it is right, it is Orthodoxy that needs to be consulted to understand the Jewish view of Moshiach.
The following, in a nutshell, is the prevalent view of what is required to bring about the age of Moshiach. I welcome any rabbis or scholars to correct me.
Step One: All Jews must do teshuvah (repent). We must accept our role as a priestly nation, specifically chosen by God to live by the Torah and serve as a “light unto the nations,” a model of moral behavior.
Step Two: We must unquestioningly accept that God gave the Holy Land to us. Non-Jews can live there as equals under the law provided they accept our sovereignty.
Step Three: Once we confidently present a unified stance that God gave us sole rights to the Holy Land, the world will stop disputing our claim.
Step Four: When we rule the Holy Land according to the laws of the Torah, we will be fulfilling our priestly mission. We will be an inspiration to the entire world, which will then take upon itself to live by the Seven Laws of Noah, which are the basis for a civilized, peaceful society. The age of Moshiach will then have become a reality.
The ultimate goal of this process is to arrive at the fourth step, bringing peace to the entire world. The Jewish nation is to be the catalyst of this process, not its purpose.
How is our people’s struggle to bring Moshiach succeeding?
As it stands, we’re not doing too well.
While there has been a renaissance of Jewish religious life in Israel and other parts of the world, most of the world’s Jews are secular and assimilating. About half of the Israeli population is staunchly secular or even anti-religious. There is no good reason to expect that all Jews are going to repent and become religiously observant. Israel’s government and legal system continue to be based mostly on European law, not Torah.
Nor are all of the world’s Jews, including Israelis, accepting the idea that the Holy Land was given by God to the Jews.
On the whole, Jews are losing the ideological struggle against Islam. It has become the world’s fastest growing religion, while we are striving to maintain our numbers. Islam is growing in political strength, threatening Jewish clout in Western countries and our very existence in the Holy Land. The harder we argue that the Muslims are to blame for the state of war between us and for the worldwide plague of terrorism, the harder they argue that Jews and Israel are to blame. Israel survives only by maintaining a military edge over her neighbors. While it has been winning most of the battles, it has been losing the overall war, as the more powerful it becomes, the more despised it becomes, and the more determined Muslim groups become to destroy it. One major loss in battle can spell Israel’s end.
It would even be wise for us to consider whether we have been unwittingly increasing the power of radical Islam. When we publicly argue that Islam is a violent religion, we put mainstream Muslims in a bind. They need to choose between agreeing with their Jewish adversaries–Oppressors of the Palestinians–or their own radical brethren, and they tend to side with their brethren because it’s human nature.
There are 100 Muslims for every Jew in the world. Do we expect them all to suddenly “come to their senses” and declare that we are right after all, or that God will destroy them all for us, as some rabbis predict?
Bleak as the situation may seem, there may be a simple way to make it dramatically better. However, we are not likely to succeed by intensifying efforts that haven’t been working. Perhaps all that is needed is a radically different way of thinking about our situation, a reframing.
Some basic tenets of our religion
Before I present the reframe, I would like to remind us of some basic tenets of our religion.
1. We have 613 basic commandments (mitzvot). They fall into two categories:
- How man relates to God.
- How man relates to his fellow living creatures.
2. The age of outright miracles ended with the close of Biblical times; no more splitting of the Red Sea or halting the movement of the sun. If God intervenes on our behalf, it is in accordance with the laws of nature. We may surmise that events reflect the hand of God, but we can't prove it.
3. The Written Torah is not to be taken literally and is unusable without the Oral Torah. Our scholars are given the responsibility of ongoing interpretation of the Torah’s meanings and instructions as times change.
4. Hillel taught that the entire Torah can be summarized as: Whatever is hateful to yourself, do not do to others. Rabbi Akiva taught that the Torah is, Love thy fellow as thyself. These principles are popularly referred to today as the Golden Rule. To act contrary to the Golden Rule is to violate the Torah.
5. Our religious thinking has tended to become more abstract over the centuries. While we may have envisioned the Moshiach as a flesh-and-blood individual with a miraculous power to reincarnate the masses and create a perfect world, today we can reasonably conceive of the Moshiach as an idea that empowers mankind to create a maximally peaceful world, one that runs by Golden Rule.
6. The function of priest is intermediary between man and God. Priests perform rituals that are reserved for them alone. The same is true for the Jews, whose role is to be a priestly nation. Torah commands us to perform many rituals from which Gentiles are exempt and, in fact, may be counterproductive for them to perform.
The simple truth about our religions
While I have been studying Jewish religious thought, I have also been exposing myself to Muslim thought.
Many of you may not like hearing this, but the simple truth is that Islam is awfully Jewish—Orthodox Jewish. They have the same general beliefs regarding our relationship to God and to mankind. Both require prayer, circumcision, dietary restrictions, fasting, charity, modesty in dress, and ritual purification with water. There are some differences in our beliefs and practices, but they are far outweighed by the similarities. Islam is closer to Orthodox Judaism than Christianity is. Not only that, Islam is closer to Orthodox Judaism than is Reform Judaism!
I am not the first person to realize this. There is a wealth of information on the Internet, by serious, respected Torah and Koran scholars, explaining that Judaism and Islam are the same religion. Google it.
Why we are appalled by the Islamic State
We are appalled by the actions of radical Muslims, exemplified by Islamic State. Please forgive me for saying this, but my reaction is, “Why are they taking our Torah so literally? We haven’t been doing that kind of stuff for at least two-and-a-half-thousand years.” I’m sorry to break the news to you, but they are inspired by the Torah. Except for cutting off people’s hands for stealing. That idea came from some other culture. The only hand that the Torah specifically calls for cutting off is that of a woman who tries to save her husband by squeezing the testicles of a man who is attacking him.
The reason Islamic State behavior seems so barbaric to us is that there are one hundred times more Muslims than Jews. Therefore, the extremes among Muslims are likely to be more extreme than the extremes of the Jews. If there were 1.5 billion Jews on the planet, some of us would likely be killing adulterers and idolaters as well.
We Jews consider ourselves passionate seekers of truth. Upon close inspection, can it be denied that Islam and Judaism are versions of the same religion?
What this realization can do
We want to eliminate our adversaries. One way to accomplish this is by destroying them. A much better way is by turning them into friends. The simplest way to start such a process is by realizing how closely related our religions are.
Now let’s get back to the earlier story. Like the man with dyslexia, we think we are failing in our goal. On the contrary! We need to reframe this. The success of Islam is not our failure but our success! And so is that of Christianity, which is an offshoot of Judaism. They have taken our religion’s most important teachings and spread them to billions of people. Most of the world has become a more civilized place thanks to us. Even Hitler recognized this (though he saw it as a minus), for he condemned us for bringing conscience into the world.
Has Islam done a perfect job? Of course not! That’s why there is so much bloodshed amongst them. However, once we embrace Muslims as our spiritual partners, we can don our priestly robes and say,
“Hey, you’re doing a great job overall, but no one’s perfect, not even us Jews, the Chosen People. We consider ourselves your older brothers and are watching from the sidelines. It pains us to see you killing each other and creating millions of refugees. It seems to us that many of you are thinking and behaving in ways that Allah and Mohammed would not possibly approve of. They would not want you killing adulterers and those you consider infidels. Let’s sit down for tea we’ll explain why.”
And most Muslims would agree with us because they already agree with us.
You may think this is farfetched. But that’s only if you think of radical Muslims as representing all Muslims. They don’t. Mainstream Muslims condemn the atrocious behavior of the radicals. However, they also condemn Jews because most of us are not following our own Torah, and because we are fighting with them over control of the Holy Land. Once we embrace them, they will change their attitude towards us. We will not have to convince them that God chose us and gave us the Holy Land because the Koran already says these things.
In fact, many Muslim imams and right-wing Orthodox rabbis say the very same thing about Jews and the Holy Land: That we need to repent and live according to the instructions of our Torah. Then Arabs will accept our sovereignty over the Holy Land. If we can appreciate a rabbi telling us this, we should be able to tolerate it from an imam as well.
The source of the infidel meme
Because of the infidel meme, many of us may resist making such a major shift in thinking about Christianity and Islam. Christianity, throughout much of its history, took the attitude towards us, “If you don’t accept Jesus, we will kill you.” Islam, in its early days, forced us to accept Mohammed or be killed.
The Oral Torah view is contrary to the infidel meme. We are to discourage Gentiles from converting, while we must let ourselves be killed rather than be forced to convert. Perhaps that’s why there are so few Jews in the world and so many Christians and Muslims. However, as a priestly nation, we were never meant to be the majority of the world’s population. We’d starve to death if everyone was a priest.
Yet even the infidel meme ultimately derives from our Torah, which instructed us to rid the Holy Land of pagans. Unfortunately for untold numbers of people, Christians and Muslims often defined as pagan anyone who doesn’t share their precise beliefs.
And that same infidel meme is what’s driving radical Muslims to kill Muslims who hold slightly differing beliefs. They consider them pagan, not Muslim.
Some sticky questions
Acknowledging the commonality of Islam and Judaism will not lead to an overnight change in the world. It will take years. There are some sticky questions that will have to be dealt with. Here are some:
1. If Islam and Judaism are the same religion, are we allowed to intermarry? (Actually, I believe our rabbis have long ago considered this question, and determined that some of the differences make them ineligible as marriagepartners.)
2. What about the status of Jewish rule over the Holy Land and who has a right to live there? We insist that it is totally ours, and that we need it as a haven for the persecuted Jews of the world. As long as there is a contest over land, there is going to be serious hostility.
This is indeed a tough question. But we need to see the potential. Israel is currently hardly a safe haven for Jews, as it is constantly under attack. If our relationship to Islam changes, we will have less reason to live in fear. Two thousand years have passed since our exile from the Holy Land. We need to consider whether we need to go backwards to a time when we were concentrated in a small tract of land. We have become a universal people, spreading our book throughout the world. The Holy Land can still be our spiritual center, and Jews will continue to flock there as long as it is safe for them. Furthermore, once we recognize that as offspring of Abraham we both belong here, the Muslim world is likely to welcome Jews back into their lands, and we will help them flourish as we have made the Holy Land flourish.
3. How do we deal with secular people? Are they infidels who deserve to be killed? A major reason the Arab world hates Israel is that it brought in Western secularism, which they see as corrupting their own people.
We can tell our Muslim partners, “We Jews stopped punishing nonbelievers long ago, as it is a violation of the Golden Rule, and we’ve found that we’re happier this way. If you try to think like Mohammed, you will probably conclude that he wants us to love them, not persecute them.” The truth is that the Muslim world has already been debating this issue, and most Muslims accept that it is wrong to persecute secular people.
4. If the infidel meme can incite violence even between different Muslim sects, why would they treat Jews any differently?
The change towards us will take years, but the moderate Muslim world is already battling the infidel meme within Islam. If we join Muslims as friends, showing that we have genuine respect for them despite our differences, we will hasten the demise of the infidel meme as applied against us as well.
The world is closely attuned to what happens in the Holy Land. If the Jews and Arabs can become friends, it will be an inspiration for the rest of the world.
In conclusion, peace between the Jewish and Muslim peoples may sound like a crazy dream. But think about it: Can there be an Age of Moshiach without it?
This article is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Menachem Froman.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/resilience-bullying/201601/is-islam-jewish
