| Egyptian newspaper upset that Jews don't believe story of Mohammed's "night journey" noreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 24 Feb 05:55 AM Next week is the | |  |
Next week is the Muslim holiday of Isra and Minaj, which marks the date that Mohammed was said to have gone on his "Night Journey" to heaven and visit the "farthest mosque" with a winged steed. This mosque was later claimed to be in Jerusalem.
Egyptian newspaper Al Masry al-Youm describes a forum at Al Azhar about this story, attempting to answer any skeptics about whether Mohammed really did fly to heaven on his winged steed and then to Jerusalem. Dr. Abbas Shoman, the former Undersecretary of Al-Azhar, said that of course Allah can perform remarkable miracles. He went on to say that questioning the miracle of the Night Journey and Al-Miraj is not new, but it is something that the Jews have been doing to break the connection between the Mosque in Mecca and Al-Aqsa Mosque, by claiming that the Night Journey was not to Jerusalem. He then says that these Jews and other skeptics spread those lies to destroy Islam and he tells young Muslims to trust their scholars, and not to pay attention to those misleading cries under the pretext of freedom of opinion.
Well, for once, some of the claims about Jews are true. Sorry to say, we don't believe that Mohammed flew in one night from Mecca to Jerusalem. In fact, the Quran doesn't identify the location of the "farthest" mosque, and the Al Aqsa mosque (which means "farthest") was built decades after Mohammed died. There was no building of any sort on the Temple Mount while Mohammed...Read More |
From Ian: Daniel Gordis: "Surplus Jews" no longer Eighty years ago this week, on February 24, 1942, nineteen-year-old David Stoliar was alive, alone, floating on a piece of wood in the middle of the Black Sea, surrounded by corpses, yelling all night into the dark so that he would not fall asleep and freeze to death. He was in the Black Sea, surrounded by death, because he was a "surplus Jew," as the British put it unabashedly. We'll come back to David Stoliar. Last week, the Israeli government was cooperating with relief groups to prepare for the possible evacuation to Israel of some of the 100,000 Jews in Ukraine, should the anticipated war make that necessary. Officials apparently do not expect to need a massive airlift, but they're preparing for all eventualities, some said. Twenty-one years ago, as many of us vividly recall, Israel airlifted 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel on massive El Al jumbo jets. It was for the same reason. Ethiopian Jews, as far as Israel was concerned, were not "surplus." Neither are the Ukrainian Jews. And sure enough, this morning's Israeli press announced that they had begun arriving. Dozens of olim from Ukraine arrived in Israel on Sunday as the threat of war grew ever ominous. According to the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption, 75 immigrants arrived on an initial flight and another 22 were expected the same day. Said Immigrant Absorption Minister Pnina Tamano...Read More |
Avraham David Moses was murdered on the eve of what is considered to be the happiest month in the Jewish calendar, Rosh Chodesh Adar. In the secular calendar, it was March 6, 2008, and Rivkah Moriah and her former husband David were preparing for a class to be given that evening by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Yeshivat Har Etzion. As the couple gathered source materials for the lecture, Rivkah received the first text message: "Attack in Mercaz HaRav, three moderately injured." We are used to these moments, here in Israel. Most of the time, our loved ones were nowhere near the scene of the attack, had left there hours before, or had just left and were only a block away and could hear the explosion and see the smoke. So we have learned not to get too excited when we hear of an attack on the news. We have learned to stay calm, to phone loved ones, and touch base. That's what happens most of the time. But that was not what happened to Rivkah Moriah and her son Avraham David. There was an attack, she tried to reach both Avraham David and his study partner, and all of her calls went unanswered. Her calls went unanswered because her 16-year-old son and firstborn was murdered while studying Torah in a seminary study hall. Along with his study partner, Segev. \*\*\* When I heard, I thought about running into Rivkah at the grocery store, just three years earlier. Her cart had been filled with ingredients to make lasagna for a crowd. She was preparing...Read More |
Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. Sun Tzu, The Art of War As I write, there are Russian tanks in Donbas. Does that mean that we are on the verge of a new European war, as US President Biden suggests? I doubt it. I believe that Vladimir Putin is a student of Sun Tzu. He knows that Ukrainian leaders know that they can't stand against Russia without outside help, that most of Europe can't fight, and the few countries that can – won't. He knows that he has been storing up foreign currency and working to make Russia more self-sufficient for several years to insulate Russia from the financial weapons that will be deployed against her. Above all he knows that America, divided, exhausted, fragile, neurotic, and led by an old man far out of his depth, does not have the will to act strongly enough to stop him. I date the beginning of the collapse of the US as a world power to 9/11. American political and cultural elites all bought into the idea that this was not a skirmish in the struggle between Islamic and Christian civilizations that...Read More |
From Ian: The Killing Fields of Ukraine As Russian troops threaten Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin denies the very existence of the Ukrainian people, it is worth remembering the tragedy that took place between November 1918 and March 1921, when Russian and Bolshevik armies invaded the independent Ukrainian state that had been established in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution. All civilians, whether they identified as Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews, or none of the above, became victims of that conflict, commonly referred to as a "civil war." But the 3 million Jews who lived in the region—about 12% of the overall population—suffered a distinct fate. Between 1918 and 1921, over 1,000 anti-Jewish riots and military actions—both of which were commonly referred to as pogroms—were documented in about 500 different locales throughout what is now Ukraine. This was not the first wave of pogroms in the area, but its scope eclipsed previous bouts of violence in terms of the range of participants, the number of victims, and the depths of barbarity. Ukrainian peasants, Polish townsfolk, and Russian soldiers robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, stealing property they believed rightfully belonged to them. Armed militants, with the acquiescence and support of large segments of the population, tore out Jewish men's beards, ripped apart Torah scrolls, raped Jewish...Read More |
The far-left, anti-Israel +972 Magazine has jumped on the "apartheid" train, and in so doing they unwittingly describe what is really behind the coordinated attack on the legitimacy of the Jewish state: First, we believe it should be recognized as an essential fact that, through decades of colonial expansion, Israel has effectively erased the Green Line and consolidated a single regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In doing so, consecutive Israeli governments have made it crystal clear that the state seeks to uphold permanent domination over Palestinians — whether through military rule in Hebron, unequal citizenship in Jaffa, siege in Gaza, or forced exile in Ein al-Hilweh. To better reflect these facts, we have changed the standard language we use to describe the regime in Israel-Palestine. When +972 was founded, the word "occupation" sufficed for many. Today, as a result of both developments on the ground and the tireless activism of Palestinians and allies, the word "apartheid" has become a more apt description of the system of separation and supremacism that exists between the river and the sea. This term does not negate the framings of "occupation" or "colonialism" — both of which we also use on the site — but rather is intended to help establish a baseline from which readers, journalists, and other observers can understand the present realities.
Of course...Read More |
To the West, Arabs love to say that Jews were welcomed and treated well under their benevolent rule.
In Arabic, things are somewhat different.
A Boston based organization named Diarna describes itself: Diarna (דיארנא ديارنا "Our homes" in Judeo-Arabic): The Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life is working to digitally preserve the physical remnants of Jewish history throughout the region. We are in a race against time to capture site data and record place-based oral histories before even the memories of these communities are lost. Diarna pioneers the synthesis of digital mapping technology, traditional scholarship, and field research, as well as a trove of multimedia documentation. All of these combine to lend a virtual presence and guarantee untrammeled access to Jewish historical sites lest they be forgotten or erased. Jordanian news site Al Ghad warns about the dangers of Jews wanting to catalog and map their heritage in the Muslim world - the very heritage that Arabs claim to be so proud of. For the fourteenth year in a row, the "Diarna" project silently continues to work on the penetration of the Jewish presence in the Middle East and Arab societies, especially to legitimize the...Read More |
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