Past and Present



Jewish World Review Feb. 14, 2002 / 3 Adar, 5762


Irshad Manji

Take a leaf from the Prophet, Yasser

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- SALAAM, Yasser! How goes the battle? Okay, bad choice of words.

Your recent op-ed article in The New York Times was nice to read, even if it missed a little context. Allow me.

I've been reading Raja Shehadeh's new book, Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine. Even if you don't know Raja very well, you'll recall his father, Aziz. A lawyer and human-rights activist, like his son. Ring any bells? After the 1967 war, Aziz became the first Palestinian to draft a two-state solution to the conflict that has plagued you, every Israeli and U.S. leader, and the rest of us.

Now you remember? I wonder if you think, maybe Aziz had it right?

Of course, that wasn't your view back then. In fact, what shocks me is how, according to Raja, you and your guys responded to his father's proposal, calling him "a traitor, a despicable collaborator," on Arabic radio. "You shall pay for your treason," your PLO said. "We shall eliminate you. Silence you forever."

Aziz lived till the mid-1980s, but he was murdered. And long before that, the Palestinian lawyers union disbarred him.

Come to think of it, that's not unlike what happened last year to playwright Ali Salem. The Egyptian writers union booted him out because of his visits to Israel. Or was it because the lessons he picked up on those visits fuelled his calls for Muslim moderation? Oy, it's muddled.

Why resurrect the past? you ask. Because it shows us that preserving Arab honor is non-negotiable, right? The challenge is to find an approach to sharing the land that will let Palestinians retain dignity, identity and integrity.

Well, in the Arab tradition of mediation, please allow a Muslim sister from North America to help. Laugh if you must, but I think I've got the key to a new way of thinking this puzzle through. It starts with a piece of Arab history that most Muslims were never taught at the madrassa: namely, that Jews cultivated the climate in which Prophet Mohammed could survive and spread the word about Islam.

Mecca's pagan Arab population did not exactly welcome the Prophet in the early seventh century. They oppressed him to the point of threatening his life, obliging him to flee north to Medina. As Albert Hourani observed in A History of the Arab Peoples, his escape was helped by traders who needed an arbiter in tribal disputes. "Having lived side by side with Jewish inhabitants of the oasis, they were prepared to accept a teaching expressed in terms of a prophet and a holy book."

Don't you see, Yasser? The groundwork for Mohammed's safety was laid by that gang who embraced earlier prophets and scripture. Say it with me: J-e-w-s.

And it gets more curious. Every Muslim knows that Prophet Mohammed's journey to Medina is referred to as the hijra,or flight. Yet how many of us know that, in its original translation, the word means "seeking protection by settling in a place other than one's own?" Rather like what Jews did after the Second World War.

Do you glimpse the breakthrough? I mean, here's a form of Arab ammo, rooted in an Arab past, that permits Palestinians to claim the occupied territories as their own and yet compels them to welcome the other children of Abraham! Jewish tradition provided our Prophet with sanctuary and succor. Today, it's payback time.

I appreciate that none of this settles the finer points of any deal. But what it does is remind you of the moral obligation to reach one -- based not simply on rights, but also on reciprocity. If your people don't know this, teach them their history.





Irshad Manji is a broadcaster with Vision TV, the world's only multi-faith TV network. Comment by clicking here.


© 2002, Irshad Manji