Garbanzo Toons

Dumb Jews, Smart Muslims

A group of Muslims published a fascinating editorial in The Jewish Week News. It was in response to the delusional position Rabbi Eric Yoffie has taken with regard to Islamofascists. He stated his position in a speech he gave at the 44th annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. Yoffie and his supporters refuse to believe that these nice Muslim fellows can support terrorism. After all, they don't look terrorist. However,

Another charming individual connected to ISNA, according to AIM columnist Gossett, is Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi was invited to speak at an ISNA conference, although he is known for having created "the theological justification for suicide bombing", an oxymoron if ever there was one. His justification, which appears on the Hamas website, is titled "Hamas Operations Are Jihad and Those Who [Carry It Out And] Are Killed Are Considered Martyrs." Which is really all one needs to know about the good sheikh.

I wonder if Rabbi Yoffie would be willing to share the ISNA stage with Sheikh Al-Qaradawi in the interest of dialogue and mutual understanding. After all, in his speech Yoffie opened with,

My organization is currently discussing with your leadership a joint dialogue and education program that we hope to launch in the very near future, involving our congregations and your mosques. This project is a matter of the utmost importance to my Movement and to me personally, and I would like to share with you why that is so.

He then goes on to offer the usual arguments based on moral equivalence of violence in all religions and acceptance of the tiny minority of extremist hijacking a religion myth. His most groveling quote was,

The dialogue will not be one way, of course. You will teach us about Islam and we will teach you about Judaism. We will help you to overcome stereotyping of Muslims, and you will help us to overcome stereotyping of Jews. We are especially worried now about anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Anti-Semitism is not native to Islamic tradition, but a virulent form of it is found today in a number of Islamic societies, and we urgently require your assistance in mobilizing Muslims here and abroad to delegitimize and combat it. A measure of our success will be our ability, each of us, to discuss and confront extremism in our midst. As a Jew I know that our sacred texts, including the Hebrew Bible, are filled with contradictory propositions, and these include passages that appear to promote violence and thus offend our ethical sensibilities. Such texts are to be found in all religions, including Christianity and Islam.

I was wondering if he truly was that deluded, and then I found this site from a like minded deluded Jew, the kind that would have been first in line with his family in Nazi Germany to get onto the boxcars . . . in the interest of peace, of course.

I found it instructive in his speech where he discusses a mutual propensity to violence among extremists in both religions.

Huh? With Jews like this on their side, the Islamists will be able to make short work of Israel, Jews, and Western Civilization. I'm guessing the Jews who promote these blind to reality positions, consider themselves liberals and progressives before they consider themselves Jews. Anyone who puts their Judaism or any religion above their politics must be a fanatic extremist. Julia Gorin referred to them as Dumb Jews.

Fortunately there are a group of people who are publicly challenging Rabbie Yoffie's position and his choice to speak to the Islamist front group, the ISNA. Strangely enough, as I stated long ago, at the beginning of this post, they are Muslims. They seem to be those elusive "moderate Muslim" that has, so far, eluded capture and study.

As adherents of moderate religious and intellectual trends within the Islamic global community, the signatories of this column view with dismay a report in The Washington Post of Dec. 16, 2007, on a “partnership” between the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). This new alliance was announced by the URJ’s president, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, at his organization’s biennial convention in San Diego.
We do not presume to judge the political or theological outlook of Rabbi Yoffie or his organization, except with regard to his and their comments about Islam. We, however, know the Muslim community, worldwide and in North America, and we do not recognize or otherwise support ISNA as a legitimate representative of mainstream Islamic

and

It appears that Rabbi Yoffie believes dialogue is possible with extremists. We do not agree. We believe that dialogue between mainstream Muslims, Jews, and Christians is necessary, but that the defeat of Islamist extremists is necessary for such interfaith efforts to succeed. We do not support “dialogue” with Islamist and other apologists for violence, or proponents of restrictions on freedom under the pretext of religion.
We also disagree with Rabbi Yoffie’s statement, “There exists in [the Jewish] community a profound ignorance about Islam, along with a real desire to learn about what moves and motivates Muslims today. We must respond to this desire with serious programs of education.”
If Rabbi Yoffie believes that Jews are ignorant about Islam, he should be recognized as speaking only for himself.
In reality, we and other Muslims recognize the contribution of numerous Jewish scholars to the understanding of Islam by Westerners.

Yes, there's more. And it's well worth reading.

Will Rabbie Yoffie read it? Will he and his followers accept it for what it is, an honest statement trying to correct Liberal Judaism's refusal to face an unpleasant reality. After all, these Muslims don't get funding from the Saudis, the don't pal around with officials of CAIR, so they're don't have the visibility the Islamist front groups, or Trojan Horses have. If it comes to that, they will be murdered like the rest of us. Perhaps Yoffie and the kapos at Tikun Olam lump the writers in with their Jewish extremist counterparts, you know, those bomb-throwing rabble-rousers like Dennis Prager and Daniel Pipes? Or maybe Yoffie will compare them to evangelical Christians. As Julia Gorin reports,

Yoffie, for his part, called conservative Christian activists "'zealots' who claim a 'monopoly on G-d' while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler's."

So a prominent Jew legitimizes a Muslim organization that is a tool of the Jihad, condemns conservative Christians who have allied themselves with Jews and Israel, and is in turn challenged by Muslims who know the score.

As the man said, "The Universe is not only stranger than you imagine, it's stranger than you can imagine."

Labels: Dumb Jews, ISNA, Julia Gorin, Muslims, Rabbi Yoffie

posted by Harry @ 8:57 PM