An Introduction to Islam for Jews

Preface

ix Preface Islam is a complex religious civilization that remains largely unknown to Jews, despite the fact that the future of the Jewish people has become profoundly affected by developments in the Muslim world. For our own personal edification and understanding, therefore, for responsible decisionmaking within the Jewish community and for a world of greater understanding and compassion, writing a book on Islam with the particular interests of Jews in mind is an important undertaking. This book will treat issues and items that are of particular interest to Jews, as well as some that would be of benefit for Jews to understand even if they may not be of obvious interest. It will therefore concentrate on some topics that do not appear in most introductions to Islam. It will likewise omit some subjects found in other introductions that are not of particular importance to Jews. I naturally concentrate on issues of personal interest that I assume are of interest to other Jews as well. I love the languages of Hebrew and Arabic, for example, and I naturally tend to note their similarities in relation to religious issues. I am fascinated by the ways that Islam and Judaism have so many parallels, yet are separate religious systems. Please note: this book is written by an individual and not a scholarly community , and it is only one single volume. It cannot hope to represent all the various internal perspectives of Muslim groups and all the analyses of scholars of religion . It need not and should not be your only source for information on Islam. As any sensitive reader knows, an author can never dissociate himself or herself from what he or she has written. Because of this truth, it is appropriate to reveal something about myself for the sake of full disclosure. x A N I N T R O D U C T I O N T O I S L A M F O R J E W S I am a liberally observant Jew, trained as both a rabbi and an academic. I have lived for some six or seven years in Israel and have raised my children in Jewish day schools in the United States and Israel. We all speak Hebrew in my family, and I am writing this introduction while in Jerusalem. In addition to scholarly works on Islam and its relationship with Judaism and Christianity and pre-Islamic indigenous Arabian culture, I have written an introduction to Judaism for Muslims. I grew up in a household that was deeply Jewish but that respected the wisdom and arts of those who lived outside our own particular religious and cultural framework. Despite sensitivity to the universal value of humanity that I learned from my family, growing up in America naturally instilled within me a number of vague prejudices that were simply imbedded in Jewish or American culture. As a result, when I first traveled to Israel as a naïve American Jewish teenager in 970, I had a vague, unarticulated expectation that the Jewish Israelis would be heroic and upright while the Arabs would be dishonest and deceitful. This evaluation was hazy and indistinct, and I had not thought about it in any kind of conscious way. In fact, it was only some years later that I understood how these prejudices affected my general outlook. I would certainly not define myself as a racist, but like virtually everyone in my generation , I had absorbed vague judgments about self and other that infused my general thinking about the world around me. But soon after arriving in Israel, I was surprised to find some quite unheroic Israelis and some quite upright Arabs. I found myself living in the Muslim Quarter within the aged Ottoman walls of the “Old City” of Jerusalem, where I remained for a few months exploring its alleys and warrens. I also ventured out into the newer sections of the city both in the east and west as well as the villages in its vicinity. I became particularly close to two young Muslim Arab cousins who had each recently married, and I was privileged to spend quality time with them and their extended families. This was during a very special period in Israel. The Palestinians that had come under Israeli control were relieved to find that the Israelis did not engage in a campaign of rape and pillage as they had feared during the 967 War. They were happy when many of their villages were hooked into...