July 3, 2008 Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski: A spiritual budget (TOUCHING!) Jeff Jacoby: Israel still paying for its defeat JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part IV by Rabbi David Aaron July 2, 2008 Jonathan Tobin: Appeasers Make Poor Patriots The Kosher Gourmet By Kathleen Purvis: Slaw, y'all: For BBQs or Sabbath dinner, these southern recipes are something else! JWisdom:: Rabbi Mordechai Becher: Jewish Rx for A Simpler Life July 1, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. I think it's important to leave a legacy to my children. How much should I save towards this end? Paul Greenberg:A President who is history deficient? JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism June 30, 2008 Jonathan Rosenblum: Remembering the architect of Torah Judaism for the modern world Abe Novick: Hulk: Still a Jew? JWisdom: : Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality, Part 2: The Abandoned Child June 26, 2008 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Quantum leap to evil Caroline B. Glick: Victimized families must not be allowed to dictate policy June 25, 2008 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Today in Biblical History: King Jeroboam of Israel prevents pilgrimage to Jerusalem Jonathan Tobin: Real Friends and Real Enemies JWisdom: Raping of reason By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky June 25, 2008 Steven Emerson: Kristof: Never Mind the Terrorists Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch? JWisdom: Rabbi David Aaron: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part III June 24, 2008 Caroline B. Glick: What were they thinking!? Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Guilty knowledge JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Warping Innocence June 23, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Diploma dilemma Jeff Jacoby: A world without children JWisdom: Rabbi Dovid Gross: Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality --- Introduction June 20, 2008 Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Man: The Crowning Glory of Creation Caroline B. Glick: Israel's darkest week JWisdom: We aren't worthy? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky June 19, 2008 Rabbi Elazar Meisels: The saints who don't come marchin' in Chris Christoff: Muslim woman demands an apology from Obama after camera snub June 18, 2008 Jonathan Tobin: Still Dancing Around Jerusalem The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Chilled fruit and vegetable soups JWisdom: Souls Need A Check Up? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher June 17, 2008 Rabbi Avi Shafran: Baby Einstein Caroline B. Glick: Bush's rhetoric, Bush's policies JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part II by Rabbi David Aaron June 16, 2008 Varda Branfman: Bob Dylan, won't you please come home? Diana West: Academic dares to question the 'religion of peace' JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Positive Backfire June 13, 2008 Rabbi Berel Wein: Trading manna for whine Caroline B. Glick: Peace with friends JWisdom: From the mouths of … by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky June 12, 2008 Michael Feldberg: Meet Paul Revere's pal, the Orthodox Jew who played a key role in laying Boston's cultural and business infrastructure The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: No need to be tempted by Wendy's mandarin chicken salad JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron June 11, 2008 Rabbi Avi Shafran: What would Hillel say? Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA and NGOs: The Real U.N. 'Insult' JWisdom: Sara Yoheved Rigler: Greatness Made Simple: How a momentary decision shifted life's course and destination June 6, 2008 Rabbi Pinchas Stolper: Revelation: The basis of faith Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Mere hours after becoming Israel's new 'best friend' Obama backtracks on status of Jerusalem Caroline B. Glick: UN choosing to protect rogue nuclear programs JWisdom: Sameness in difference by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky June 5, 2008 David Lightman: Now Obama wants to be Israel's newest 'best friend' Obama's remarks to AIPAC policy conference The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Lokshen Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread JWisdom: Why a Jewish Jerusalem makes so many nervous by Rabbi Mordechai Becher June 4, 2008 Jonathan Rosenblum: A different sort of 'religious broadcaster' Jonathan Tobin: Misgivings on the Road to Damascus JWisdom: 44 Years Without An Argument? by Sara Yoheved Rigler June 3, 2008 Daniel Pipes: Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East Everything's Relative: There is a crisis growing in Orthodox synagogues worldwide, reveals Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel JWisdom: White Facades; Black Secrets by Rabbi Mordechai Becher June 2, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Lie to outsmart discriminator? He writes the songs that make our souls sing:Gavriel Aryeh Sanders interviews Jewish music legend Ben Zion Shenker; includes stirring, uplifting song JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Of laws and lives March 22, 2007 J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 1, 2006 / 3 Tishrei, 5767 The gap between Islam and peace By Diana West http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | When George W. Bush says "Islam is peace," and Tony Blair insists the war now begun "has nothing to do with Islam," some of us scratch our heads and try, brows furrowed, to reconcile their soothing words with our frightening vision: the dirty war on Western civilization waged by evil forces in the name of Islam. The experts tell us militant Islamic fundamentalists, or "Islamists," represent a narrow, if murderous, fringe. They number no more than 10, maybe 15, percent of all Muslims. That estimate works out to somewhere between 100 million and 150 million people. Which is a lot of murderous fringe. Meanwhile, where is that peaceable majority overflowing Islamdom? Are they filling the streets in unity with America's effort to eradicate Islamist terrorism, "marginal" though its supporters may be? Hardly. Only last week, UPI reported that Pakistan's Tahirul Qadri had become "the first prominent Muslim scholar to condemn Osama bin Laden and the Taliban so strongly in public." Even if the wire service missed a bin Laden-condemning cleric here or there, the singularity of Qadri's achievement is striking. Indeed, sampling some of the world's largest mosques, The New York Times recently found clerics from England to Pakistan denouncing America, saluting the Taliban, or even declaring solidarity with Osama bin Laden. In Cairo, the paper reported, Friday prayers at the famous Al Azhar University mosque ended with a rousing chant of: "America is the enemy of Arabs and Muslims. Let us die in our war against America." In New Delhi's largest mosque, the imam urged "moral" support for Taliban jihad. In Nairobi, services progressed from attacking the United States to the parable: "Every Muslim is Osama bin Laden." Every Muslim, of course, is not Osama bin Laden. But why don't more Muslims say so, quite loudly and very specifically? Muslim condolences after Sept. 11 very often came across as rather generic expressions of sympathy, equally as suitable for a natural disaster as for a terrorist act of war committed by co-religionists. Little sense of the magnitude of events is being communicated, and, thus, little recognition of the urgent need for civilized people of all faiths and nations to denounce this evil, vociferously and by name, and array themselves in warring solidarity against it. What accounts for this weakness? And what is a reflexively tolerant, post-multicultural Westerner to make of it? Our dauntless leaders may repeat that the Islamist threat has nothing do with Islam, but, frankly, their mantra is getting a little ridiculous. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Amir Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, recently declared that "to claim the attacks had nothing to do with Islam amounts to a whitewash." It's also, he wrote, a "disservice to Muslims, who need to cast a critical glance at the way their faith is taught, lived and practiced." Taheri, frank as he was, did not offer how-to specifics. But with reporters mining Islam for information previously limited to specialists, it's clear how important this call for Islamic reform really is. As the horrors of our Taliban enemy have become common knowledge, we also learn, for example, that a similar strain of Islam, Wahabbism, is practiced and exported by our so-called ally Saudi Arabia. Examining a textbook for one of five compulsory religion classes for Saudi 10th-graders, The New York Times quoted a lesson regarding whom "good Muslims" should befriend. "After examining a number of scriptures which warn of the dangers of having Christian and Jewish friends, the lesson concludes: `It is compulsory for the Muslims to be loyal to each other and to consider infidels their enemy.'" This comes straight from the Quran. "O believers," the Quran says (Sura 5, Verse 50), "do not hold Jews and Christians as your allies. They are the allies of one another; and anyone who makes them his friends is surely one of them." As historian Paul Johnson noted in National Review, such "canonical commands" — along with "slay the idolaters wheresoever you find them" (Sura 9, Verse 5) — "cannot be explained away or softened by modern theological exegesis, because there is no such science in Islam." Johnson goes on to explain that contrary to the evolving nature of both Christianity and Judaism, Islam has never undergone any update, reformation or enlightenment since its inception in the seventh century. "Islam," he wrote, "remains a religion of the Dark Ages. The seventh-century Quran is still taught as the immutable word of G-d, any teaching of which is literally true. In other words, mainstream Islam is essentially akin to the most extreme form of Biblical fundamentalism." This stagnation is a key to the problem. The solution, however, is beyond the grasp of non-Muslims. This most critical, internal challenge falls to those Muslims around the world who desire to live and worship in peace. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here. Archives © 2006, Diana West