Crisis in the Middle East – 3
ANTHONY O’MAHONY
Sons of Abraham
Relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours have been tense since the country was
founded in 1948. But Jewish connections to Islam have a much longer history – connections that,
in the wake of change in Egypt, could be used to restart the search for peace in the region
T
he current political crisis in Egypt
and the wider Middle East will, in
due course, give a new perspective
to Israeli-Egyptian relations. These
have been shaped by the peace treaty at the
Camp David summit of September 1978,
which followed in the wake of late Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat’s “pilgrimage” to
Jerusalem in September 1977 – key moments
for relations between the Arab world and the
state of Israel.
The peaceful resolution to the conflict
between Israel and Egypt, which has lasted
more than 30 years, has been an important
landmark in the political and diplomatic architecture of the Middle East and has been
remarkably robust during various conflicts
over Iraq and the ongoing stand-off between
the Palestinians and Israelis.
In both Jerusalem and Washington, they
will be watching closely and assessing what
political and diplomatic arrangement will
emerge in the post-Mubarak scenario. Given
Egypt’s military and political standing in the
Arab world, its future direction has wide impli-
cations for all Arab relations with Israel. It is
a significant place in the development of
Islamic thought and ideas, with Al-Azhar, the
oldest Islamic seat of learning, religio-political
movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood
and a significant line of lay Muslims thinkers,
such as Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and
Muhammad Sa’id al-Asmawi.
Egypt has also produced major contributions to understanding Islam’s relations with
Judaism, from Qu’ranic exegesis to political
and religious thought. Muhammad Sa’id alAsmawi, a leading Egyptian jurist, created a
minor religious earthquake with his treatise
on political Islam (al-Islam al-Siyasi) which
suggested that the modern Islamist movement
might have lineage to Jewish traces in the
Islamic tradition, thus making a political critique by connecting political and activist
currents of one with the religious “other”.
It was the great Egyptian Dominican
scholar, George Anawati, who brought this
significant text to a wider audience when he
published it in French. It has become gradually
clearer that, from within Islamic culture, the
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reworking of traditional religious thought to
address modern issues also carries the seeds
of a modern Islamic thinking concerning
Judaism in a Zionist and post-colonial era.
Israel has a wide range of relations with
the Muslim world, although these are subject
to the changing political climate, such as the
long-standing relations between Israel and
Turkey. These have come under intense strain
over the Israeli military actions towards Gaza
and the commando mission against a Turkish
vessel seeking to disturb the Israeli blockade.
Reflecting upon this modern relationship
between Israel and its neighbours, the
Egyptian-Jewish writer, Jacqueline Kahanoff
(1917-1979), stated boldly that the drama of
Jewish existence was not taking place in the
context of the Western Christian world, a
“post-Christian Judaism”, but in the context
of the Middle-Eastern Muslim world, “postIslamic Judaism”, as she called it. In her
opinion, many Jews failed to recognise that
the rebirth of Israel had shaken the Islamic
world to its foundations, and so new means
had to be created to challenge that world, and
create a connection with it through an open
debate on its tradition.
The dispute between Israelis/Jews and their
neighbours had generally been conducted in
terms of Western national and ideological
concepts that were unsuited to the mentality
of dialogue with the Arab world and Muslims.
Arab-Jews’ encounter with a powerful Zionist
Hebrew culture had been a profound shock.
Kahanoff suggested that a solution might
be found if the Israelis brought the discussion
back to the conceptual framework of the
region. For her, this Mediterranean option
offered a more wide-ranging Israeli identity,
one with cultural mobility, a connection with
tradition, multiple voices and sustained intellectual and linguistic exchange.
Relations between the Arab world and the
Jews have a long history. Prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, some 900,000
Jews lived across the Middle East, but a near
exodus took place after establishment of the
new nation. Today, sizeable Jewish communities are to be found in Iran, Morocco and
Turkey, at the geographical margins of the
Arab-Israeli conflict. In Egypt itself, the Jewish
community, which numbered some 75,00080,000 in 1948 at the time of the Suez/Sinai
War and had dropped to 55,000 by 1956, is
now numbered just in the hundreds.
The disappearance of the Jewish presence
across much of the Middle East region after
three millennia was a traumatic historical
event. The Middle East was denuded of a significant cultural and religious force, as with
the loss of millions of Christians during the
whole of the twentieth century and now into
the twenty-first. A consequence is the intensifying of the region’s Muslim character, but
also making “difference” an intra-Muslim,
rather than an inter-religious, question.
With Jews accounting for some 15 million
people and Muslims some 1.6 billion, the relationship between them is unlike ChristianMuslim engagement, which is global. Together
the latter two religions account for well over
half of the world’s population. Instead, much
of the modern narrative between Judaism
and Islam has been centred on the Middle
East and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The encounter between Jews and Muslims
is, of course, as old as Islam itself. Judaism
should be considered the primary religious
“other” for Islam, not Christianity. Islam is
marked by its encounter with Judaism, with
the early orientation (qibla) of prayer for
Muslims being towards Jerusalem. Ritual
and law, the character of a distinctive
monotheistic belief, the creation of a nonJewish/non-Christian identity of Abraham,
are crafted in this context.
Islam sees itself as the restoration of what
Judaism and Christianity would or should
have been, had they not become corrupted
A Jewish boy eats sweets in Jerusalem's
Old City, with the Dome of the Rock in
the background.
Photo: Reuters/ Baz Ratner
especially with regard to their Scriptures. This
doctrine has supported a concept of Islam as
abrogating both Judaism and Christianity.
The creation of the state of Israel in May
1948, the traumatic defeat of the Arab armies
in their first war against Israel and the mass
flight and expulsion of Palestinians constituted
a watershed in Palestinian and Arab history,
generally known as al-Nakba or “The
Catastrophe”. The growing involvement of
Islamic authors and movements who gave a
distinctly Islamic tinge to the emerging narrative and the Arab defeat in the June war of
1967 brought about more changes in the
regional political map – the Israeli conquest
of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank including
Jerusalem and the Temple Mount with the
al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
While scholars have noted Muslim presentations of Christianity by writers from the
Arab Mediterranean becoming more sympathetic since the Second World War, the
presentations of Judaism have become more
hostile. Yet there are a number of Arab intellectuals and political activists, mainly
Palestinian, who have begun to discuss publicly
the Holocaust as a fact relevant to both Jewish
and Arab-Palestinian history and identity, and
equally a number of Israeli and Jewish groups
who see the Nakba as part of the ongoing
history of the Muslim-Jewish encounter.
After years of tensions between Israel and
the Arab and Muslim world, influenced by
conflict between Hezbollah in Lebanon and
an emerging nuclear Iran, what will the
changes in Egypt bring? They might just open
up cultural and religious space that would
allow for a different type of politics.
■ Anthony O’Mahony is reader in theology
and the history of Christianity at Heythrop
College, University of London.
(This is the third in our series on the Middle
East crisis. Turn to page 10 for the fourth.)
THE ALTAR IS EMPTY!
Priests and parish leaders discuss the problem of priestless communities.
A picture book has become available
which makes it easier to discuss the
complicated question of the shortage of
priests. Its large graphics (see sample at
the left), and discussion questions lead
to the realization that we will eventually
overcome the shortage of priests if
we begin today by community building
and by a solid training of local leaders.
Whether or not our altar remains empty,
lies also in our own hands.
Every Community Its Own
Ordained Leaders
Author: Bishop F. Lobinger
Title:
USD 7.95 plus postage
Price:
ISBN 978-971-0511-27-3
Available either via your local bookshop,
or directly from Claretian Publications
[email protected]
19 February 2011
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