Peaceful Islam?

by Nic Samojluk

    Focus on Islam

   by Nic Samojluk 

 Yes, Peaceful Islam!

by Nic Samojluk

 A.     Introduction and Disclaimer.

Following the publication by “SDA Forum” of the article entitled “Powell’s Mission Impossible,” I received numerous comments from readers. Two of them generated a series of e-mail exchanges which deserves, to my opinion, a more serious treatment than a mere inclusion in the Reader’s Comments section of the web site. I dealt with one of those respondents in the previous article entitled “Peaceful Islam?” Here I intend to share with you my interaction with Doug R. Clark, Ph.D., Professor of Biblical Studies and Archaeology at Walla Walla College, and Co-director of the archaeological Madaba Plains Project in Amman, Jordan. The views presented here do not necessarily represent my position on the subject, but are rather intended to keep the dialogue about this difficult subject alive in order that each individual reader might make his/her own mind regarding this extremely sensitive topic.

 B.      My Exchange of E-mails with Dr. Doug Clark.

Nic,

Thank you for sending this series of emails. I am extremely disappointed, however, by the total lack of information reflected in the entire series about Palestine and the Palestinians. Attributing the problem to Satan and his mischief, or to the Arabs who, one would guess from the emails, are their own worst enemies, is grossly off target. I would recommend living in the Middle East for a few months and paying attention to Arab news sources like the quite moderate Jordan Times (www.jordantimes.com). Then, stop by a Palestinian Refugee Camp, like my wife did yesterday outside Amman, Jordan, and listen to their stories from 1948 and 1967. Then make up your mind about justice and the right thing to do.

Thanx,

Doug Clark

Douglas R. Clark, Ph.D.

CAORC Senior Fellow

The American Center of Oriental Research

Amman, JORDAN

dclark@index.com.jo

Professor of Biblical Studies and Archaeology

Walla Walla College

Co-director, Madaba Plains Project-`Umayri

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Hi!

Thanks for writing. Since visiting the Middle East is not feasible for me at present, I will limit myself to visiting the web site you suggested. I will follow up with my comments after I do this.

Nic Samojluk, Editor

SDA Forum.Net

www.sdaforum.net

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Nic,

Hope the reference to visiting the Middle East was not too punchy. But Americans are not overly wise about the world and the media sources since 11 September have not been overly even-handed.

Doug

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Hi,

I wonder how you would solve this thorny dispute if you were the referee? I will elaborate on my dilemma in my next email, since I want to share with you an article you might have read.

Nic

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Nic,

Thanx for your response. I do think the Saudi plan is the only reasonable one on the table because it recognizes that at the heart of the entire thing is the land (whatever others were suggesting in the series of emails). It is not hatred of the Jews or a political ploy of the PNA to focus on the land. It is the land that matters. Land is like family to Arabs. And even with the Camp David proposal they would have received only a percentage (somewhere near 40-50%) of the 22% of the original extent of Palestine called the West Bank and Gaza because of the ever expanding settlements and the security zones Israel is creating around them. That's only a tithe of the Palestine from which they were forcibly extricated. Reminds one of native North Americans or Australian aborigines, or …

Doug

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Thanks for writing! Those who do not live in the Middle East, have to rely on the information provided by others. I followed your suggestion and located the attached article, which seems to imply that Saudi Arabia may be holding the key to, perhaps, at least a temporary solution to this intractable problem.

Nic

C.  The “Jordan Times” Article.

What follows is the “Jordan Times” article announcing the incredible news that the Hamas, the notorious Palestinian terrorist organization, is willing to cease its targeting of Israeli civilians. I managed to copy the article, but when I went back to their web site in order to record the specific article web address, I discovered it was no longer available. Maybe you want to try. Their home address is www.jordantimes.com.

Hamas ready `to stop attacking Israeli civilians on a reciprocal basis'

RIYADH (AP) — The Palestinian resistance group Hamas is ready to stop attacks on Israeli civilians if Israel ceases its attacks on Palestinian civilians, the spiritual leader of Hamas said in remarks published on Saturday.

Sheikh Ahmad Yassin told the Saudi newspaper Al Jazira that Hamas' military wing, Izzeddine Al Qassam, attacks Israeli civilians “in response to the death of Palestinian civilians at the hands of Israeli soldiers” in the West Bank.

Yassin referred to the brutal Israeli military offensive on the West Bank that began March 29 — two days after a suicide bombing in the Israeli town of Netanya that killed 29 people — and ended five weeks later. Israel claimed it launched the offensive to destroy the resistance cells behind such suicide attacks.

Palestinian resistance fighters have carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israeli public places, such as shopping malls and restaurants, during 19 months of the uprising against occupation, killing scores of Israeli civilians. Hamas has claimed responsibility for more attacks than any other group, and it has been responsible for the deadliest blasts.

“We are the first to reject the killing of civilians, and we decided to abide by this policy, but the Israeli forces committed massacres against our people in Jenin and other areas, and this is what made us respond with the same method,” Yassin said.

The refugee camp of Jenin was the target of the fiercest Israeli onslaught during the West Bank offensive. Palestinians have claimed a massacre occurred, but Western rights groups such as Human Rights Watch have said they have found evidence of war crimes but not a massacre. Israel said that most of the Palestinian fatalities were resistance fighters, but it “regrets” the death of seven civilians.

Hamas “is ready to stop its military acts against Israeli civilian targets on condition that Israel stops targeting Palestinian civilians,” Yassin said.

Palestinian officials said this week that Hamas has come under growing pressure from Saudi Arabia to halt its suicide attacks in Israel. The officials said Hamas leaders are to hold talks in Cairo with Saudi officials in the coming days. Yassin was not asked about this issue. Sunday, May 19, 2002

D. The Rest of Our Dialogue.

Nic,

I wasn't born yesterday, but I would have to say that the Saudi plan is extremely simple in concept and is still the best offer in town. It would bring back at least some dignity to a people forcibly removed from their land over 50 years ago. Seems that with the support of the Arab world, the United Nations, the US administration, the European Union, the Russians, the Chinese, etc., etc., this ought to be doable. It is not only doable; it is the right thing to do.

Doug

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Hi!

I wonder how do you respond to the Jewish argument that in 1917 the League of Nations promised the whole land of Palestine to the Jews, which Great Britain later parceled out to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Nic

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Nic,

Good question! But even if the League of Nations or even the United Nations now were to say the same thing, I don't see how that takes away from the moral demand of returning land to people who were forcibly removed from it. Fortunately, the UN has made appropriate resolutions, and with the agreement of virtually the entire global community.

Doug

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Hi!

As I stated in my previous communication, my dilemma is based on what I  have heard and read about the subject, which is always limited, in spite of  my desire to be fair in my assessment of the problem.

First, I consider the dire situation of the countless Palestinian refugees, who would like to return to their homeland, the land they inherited  from their ancestors. I also take into account the fact that in this latest Intifada, more Palestinians were killed than Jews, and I do not ignore the fact that in this uneven struggle, the underdog seems to be the Palestinians.

At the same time, I try to listen to the arguments presented in the article I am mailing to you entitled "A Moment of Truth." Let me highlight some of  them:

                A. Some Palestinian extremists share the feelings of Ayatollah Khomeini who declared that "The purest joy in Islam is to kill and be killed for Allah."

                B. Many of them believe in what their prophet declared when he said: "Who relinquishes his faith, kill him," and "Take not the Jews and Christians as friends ... slay the idolaters wherever ye find them."

                C. The same believe what even some American Moslem extremists have stated. One good example is Fayiz Azzam, who said in 1989: "Blood must flow, there must be widows, orphans, hands and limbs must be severed and limbs and blood must spread everywhere in order that Allah’s religion stand on its feet."

Considering these undeniable facts, how can you come up with a fair solution. The Jews, for security reasons, are not willing to let the Palestinian refugees return to the land of their ancestors, whose presence would tend to destabilize the region. They feel that this is the land they were promised by God, and that their ancestors lived in the disputed territory longer than the Palestinians, for which reason they have implemented a policy of building new settlements in the occupied lands. Palestinian extremists, on the other hand, will rather die as terrorists than renege on their right to return to the land of their birth.

Given the intransigence on both sides, the future does not seem very promising for peace. The Jews at least are willing to talk, but the Palestinian terrorists do not seem to be willing to compromise. The fact is that every time there is a glimmer of hope for peace, extremists are sure to orchestrate another suicidal killing of innocent civilians.

What is your solution to this tough dilemma?

Nic

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Nic,

I don't have a lot of time right now, but want to respond to a couple of things in your note. I am also including a piece I wrote some time ago, which will give you a sense of my own perceptions. Later, I will give you a copy of the report my wife and friend are writing up about their visit to the homes of several Palestinian women in refugee camps.

In response to the following: to assume that extremist statements from some members of any group (Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Basque, Catholic or Protestant in northern Ireland) represent the group is ludicrous. If you want blood-curdling Israeli statements about the Palestinians, you can find them everywhere in the Israeli press -- and Sharon has authored many of them (and I don't think they represent well all Israelis either!). If you want absolutely vacuous assertions about Palestine and Israel by conservative Christian leaders in the US congress, they are currently available in the Congressional Record. This will take us nowhere.

The better approach to the truth of any people's perspectives will be gained from listening to the people themselves who have stories to tell. And the truth of this story is that the Palestinians have been for 54 years outcasts from their own land. And the Israelis have continued to violate international laws about shooting even suspected criminals (that's not how justice is done), let alone civilians; UN resolution after UN resolution; the principles of democracy; human rights; guidelines about land acquisition -- all at the expense of US taxpayers. And, the truth be told, the Israeli leadership is not at all willing to talk, not without impossible restrictions on a Palestinian infrastructure totally (and totally unnecessarily) in ruins, even the education and medical ministries. A quick review of Sharon's history of terrorizing will demonstrate well his way with Palestinians in the way of his objectives.

I despise the senseless suicide bombings, but the Israeli tactics, shadowed by the US' war on terror, are only state sponsored terror. This explains why 450 Israeli army reservists, while committed to their country, have refused to serve in the Palestinian territories, citing the immoral and undemocratic practices Israel is perpetrating on the Palestinians as the reason. In any case, here is my statement. I have lots of Israeli friends, but I simply cannot support their administration's approach to this problem.

Thanx,

Doug

E. Clark’s Position Paper.

Embracing the Palestinian People

Douglas R. Clark, Ph.D.

Amman, Jordan

dclark@index.com.jo

4 April 2002

Having lived and traveled extensively in Jordan and throughout the Middle East over the past three decades, I have become enamored more and more with the potential and necessity for Americans (citizens and government) to embrace the Palestinian people – now more than ever before.

By imagining this idea, I am not suggesting we shun others along the way, whoever they might be. I personally, for example, have many Israeli friends whom I treasure and for whom I wish the same kind of peace and security as I do for the Palestinians. But right now, at this propitious moment, Americans could, should, indeed must, I think, embrace the Palestinian people – quickly, completely, sincerely, publicly, profoundly. I recommend this for three major reasons: empathy, morals, pragmatics.

An empathetic response. Americans, more than anyone else since September 11, should have a shared empathy with the Palestinians. We were hit hard as a nation, hit below the belt, hit unexpectedly, shocked to our souls. We lost members of our families. We have been forced to endure economic hardship in the face of unemployment and lost life savings, examine who we are, answer whether or not we were going to take it sitting down, explore the options for getting back at our attackers and securing our way of life, restore our sense of dignity in the face of incomprehensibly destructive and demoralizing acts. And Americans, long accustomed to the strength and freedom to rally ourselves around our problems and solve them, did that in justifiably proud fashion. I have nothing but admiration for the people of our nation who have converged collectively to rescue and reassure.

What about the Palestinian people? Do they have any stories to tell about events like those Americans experienced on September 11? What about all the Septembers for the past five decades? What does it mean to exist under fear of being hit hard any day, let alone on September 11, to be shocked to the soul? How do they – in the face of ongoing humiliation (I have watched it happen at checkpoints and in the middle of towns and villages scores of times), dehumanization and demoralization through the loss of homes, teenage children, families, the basic facilities, orchards, playgrounds, hospitals, schools, courthouses, employment (somewhere over 50% unemployment), life savings, a place to call home – how do they find ways to secure a good life and maintain dignity?

My Israeli friends are in terrible straights as well, but I am talking here about the Palestinian people. How do they rally themselves around their problems and solve them?Like millions of Americans, I was caught in transit on September 11 and grounded far from home in Memphis, Tennessee (not a bad place, really, but not home either). Having arrived from Atlanta, I was 30 minutes from boarding my flight home to the West Coast at the time the cancellation announcement came for all flights. When I asked an airport official how long she thought we would be grounded, she told me: "Oh, it looks like this will last at least an hour." Four days later, I was on my way, disappointed, late for some appointments, exhausted ... and demoralized from the non-stop media blitz on the hotel TV of planes crashing again and again into the World Trade Towers.

The visually repeated assaults on symbols of American pride and economic power are still with me, as fresh as if it happened yesterday. Our friends in the Palestinian territories have watched first hand and repeatedly the rockets hitting crowded urban centers – not on TV, but just down the street. At least I could finally leave Memphis; Palestinians don’t have the option of leaving the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. If for no other reason, our shared shattered worlds should bring us together in empathy. Isn’t this sufficient cause to embrace the Palestinian people?A moral imperative. Americans have often politically and personally taken up moral causes on behalf of the underdogs. We keep talking about human rights and wrap nations on the wrist for violating them. We stand for democracy – in fact, die to protect democracy. We have taken on abusive regimes in order to provide hope and survival for marginalized ethnic Albanians, for the Somalis, for European Jewry during World War II. Why not the disenfranchised, demoralized, demonized Palestinians?

Whatever we decide to do or continue doing for the Israeli State, isn’t there somewhere a moral imperative to take up the cause of a people whose marginalized status is recognized by virtually all Western nations of Europe and many countries elsewhere as well as the United Nations agency for relief to Palestinians, UNRWA? Most colonial powers don’t do well in this regard. On the receiving end, Native Americans come quickly to mind; so too aboriginal Australians and, a few years ago, South Africans. So too, we might remind ourselves, a rag-tag revolutionary band in late eighteenth-century North America, who only sought to establish, sustain and secure a free and democratic way of life.I have long been intimately aware of the genocide perpetrated against European Jewry during the Holocaust and am always moved when visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (where I have taken literally two to three hundred friends over the years) and the National Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C.

 There is not a year in my teaching career that goes by without my assigning Holocaust literature to my college students in several classes (mostly on the biblical prophets who themselves consistently sided with the oppressed). I take my Christian students to Synagogues to expand their religious awareness and sensitize them to the good that people can make out of inconceivably horrendous past acts against them. What about the Palestinian people? While maintaining friendships with Israel and its citizens and trying to help protect them against senseless bombings, what could, should, indeed must we do for the Palestinians, who have endured – are enduring – a holocaust of their own? What would the human moral barometers of past ages, the biblical prophets, recommend? What would our own experience from past history suggest? What is the right, the moral thing to do?

Why have so many national voices from around the world rallied in support of embattled, beleaguered and bereft Palestinian mothers and fathers, teenagers, school children, infants, medical care providers, elderly citizens – not without attention to Israeli families, of course, who daily face the threat of injury and death – while the U.S. was virtually silent. Has our "war on terrorism" made us myopic to the rest of the world, much of which lives under oppression most of the time? Has it forced on us too small a window through which to view the world? Why have 330 Israeli military reservists, while deeply committed to their country and its defense, declared their unwillingness to fight in the occupied territories? The words of reservist Major Ishai Menuchin may help us focus: "It is morally impossible to be both a devoted democratic citizen and a regular offender against democratic values. Depriving people of the right to equality and freedom, and keeping them under occupation, is by definition an anti-democratic act" (The New York Times, reprinted in the Jordan Times, 20 March 2002). He goes on to say: "I will not obey illegal orders to execute potential terrorists or fire into civilian demonstrations.... And I will not take part in ‘less violent’ actions like keeping Palestinians under curfew for months, manning roadblocks that prevent civilians moving from town to town or carrying out house demolitions and other acts of repression aimed at the entire Palestinian population."

Aren’t there sufficient moral grounds for us to embrace the Palestinian people?Pragmatic considerations. Embracing the Palestinians makes sense for purely practical reasons. The U.S. is not on good terms with a lot of the rest of the world. This is complex business. Our past actions have helped and hindered positive assessments from others. But the recent Pew Research Center survey of international opinion leaders, reported by James J. Zogby, provides a startling reality check in this regard. While the U.S. perceives (ca. 75% to 25%) that most areas of the world, including the Middle East, like us and support what we do, the figures drawn from around the world suggest the exact opposite (see the Jordan Times, 8 January 2002). My own perceptions, garnered over and over during the past 30 years in Jordan, for example, consistently find all the citizens of Jordan (including those forced out of Palestine years ago) warm, welcoming, genuinely hospitable and helpful to Americans personally, but just as consistently puzzled about and angered by U.S. foreign policy in the region.

Whether it is true or not that the "Palestinian Problem" lies at the heart of most of Middle Eastern disdain for the U.S., this is the perception; this is how the majority of people in this part of the globe think. It is hard for Palestinians and their relatives throughout the Arab world to feel otherwise when they read "Made in America" on attack helicopters, brandishing American military hardware, firing American-made rockets into crowded urban Palestinian camps, taking out schools, homes, ambulances, friends, cousins, sisters, infants. Whether or not internationally accepted rules of engagement are followed by those using American weapons, there is no separation in the public mind between blue-and-white and red-white-and-blue flags as the source of incomprehensible devastation and destruction.And because the violence has escalated recently to unprecedented levels, without U.S. intervention, we have an incredibly huge and growing PR problem. Our need for an image make-over is immediate and inescapably clear if we hope to lay the foundation for lasting peace. Otherwise, attitudes among those of the current young generation of Palestinians who have, especially over the past 18 months, lost their childhood, their families and friends, their homes, and their respect for some in the rest of the world quietly observing their demise at a distance, will produce another twenty or forty years of festering hatred against the U.S., however good our intentions.

And they have nothing to lose – absolutely nothing – by standing up against anyone, including Palestine National Authority leadership, in whatever fashion they can, militarized or not. However unacceptable the violence some choose against others might be to us, the people as a whole are in search of a way to recover and preserve the dignity their parents and grandparents once owned, but which has suffered humiliation and disenfranchisement for far too long. Getting at the root of their dissatisfaction and dealing with it as a hedge against continued violence – isn’t this sufficient pragmatic reason to embrace the Palestinian people?

It appears to me that there are sufficiently strong motivations – empathetic, moral and pragmatic – for the citizens and the government of America to help the Palestinian people. But how do we go about the task? Some modest suggestions:

–By shedding some of our own cultural insensitivities and broadening our world view. This is the work of a lifetime and will only happen by persistent, intentional commitment to tolerance, cultural openness, expanded horizons in educational and religious settings. While we are Americans, we are also part of the human family and some human values transcend American ones. Travel to foreign countries helps immensely as does the purchase and reading of some of the scores of books now available from Palestinian points of view.

–By expanding educational offerings, beginning in elementary school, in the areas of foreign languages and cultures.

–By returning to some degree of even-handedness in the U.S. media, which, as I have compared them with local and other foreign sources of information, have been uncharacteristically one-sided. There is no such thing as unbiased reporting, but the American media have to some degree lost touch with how the rest of the world views things.

–By assiduously avoiding incendiary language which can only result in blocking communication and raising the level of hostility: "crusade," "axis of evil."

–By becoming further engaged as a nation in the process of peace-making – with all parties. The American shunning of the duly elected president of the Palestine National Authority may play well in Peoria, but it has been thoroughly panned in Palestine.

–By bringing Arab advisers to the very highest levels of administrative information-gathering and decision-making. Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent visit to the region should illustrate this need well enough. In spite of his claims as covered by the American media that the regional nations saw the danger in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, somehow lost in the news was the fact, quite prominent in this part of the world, that every Arab nation he visited in the entire area opposed any action on Iraq and drew his attention rather to the main issue at hand, the Palestinian situation. Highly placed Arab advisers would provide at least some kind of balance to the well endowed Jewish lobby and the well peopled evangelical Christian segments of American society which influence public policy significantly.

–By paying attention to the published voices of Arabs in the region, especially those of moderation as represented in such sources as the Jordan Times (www.jordantimes.com).

–By providing massive U.S. financial support in Palestine for education, income-generating programs, rebuilding of the infrastructure destroyed by weapons either funded or supplied by America, reconstruction of hundreds of flattened homes, provision of food and poverty relief. Could we pour this on with a ferocious generosity matched only by that of the Palestinian people themselves? This may – absolutely SHOULD – mean re-channeling some of the funds spent on Israeli munitions to the more pressing Palestinian domestic needs.

June 8/2002