MPAC Thinks Jews Should Be Grateful To Islam

MPAC-UK peddles an Orwellian version of islam in order to deceive dumbed-down western useful idiots. Among the fairy tales and illusions repeated in the article are that islam doesn't repress, it liberates, antisemitism is incompatible with islam, and that Jews were treated wonderfully under islamic rule until the advent of evil Zionism, the hijab is not a symbol of repression and islamic women are free and happy. This is how I would have liked to respond if they would publish my comment:

...The Ummah is a tolerant arrangement that unites Muslims everywhere around the world as brothers and sisters, and this arrangement also includes those that are non-Muslim in the Islamic nation, whether they are Christian, Jew or of any other faith and happen to reside in the surroundings of a Muslim community; they are also considered part of the Ummah...

So long as those Christians, Jews and others pay the jizya, which was essentially protection money as is done by the mafia, otherwise they must convert or be killed.

Islam does not oppress, it liberates

Just over a hundred years ago in England in 1850, women were finally allowed the right to own property. In 1857, divorce became accessible by the formation of the court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. Muslim women have had these rights for fourteen hundred years.

Anyone wishing to understand Islam must first separate the religion from the cultural norms and style of a society. A woman who is forbidden to drive in Riyadh will happily drive abroad, knowing her country’s law has no relation to Islam. There are girls who are prohibited from gaining an education in Afghanistan but this has nothing to do with Islam either.

Muslim Women may not be equal in the manner defined by Western feminists, but we have had rights a long time before they had theirs. We did not need to protest for our rights, they were given to us freely. Islam does not oppress me, it liberates me.

Women do not have the right in islamic countries to get a divorce or to their children. It always amuses me how muslim propagandists will claim the repression of women in places such as Saudi Arabia where women are property or Afghanistan where girls are prohibited from an education, has nothing to do with islam, but rather a cultural issue. Yet the brutal repression and subjugation of women is so broad and commonplace throughout the islamic world.

Anti-Semitism is incompatible with Islam

Anti-Semitism is incompatible with Islam. After all, the last and most revered Prophet, Muhammad, peace be upon him, was a Semite. All people of all races are considered equal and must be treated with justice, regardless of their religion. Unlike Judaism which is a religion, Zionism is just a political ideology that wields oppression and injustice - Islam opposes such tyranny, but that does not make Muslims anti-Semitic....

The old canard of one can't be an antisemite since Arabs are semites. Of course it is common knowledge that the word antisemite was coined to refer exclusively to Jews. And the other canard that being anti-Zionist does not make one an antisemite. Zionism is Jewish nationalism, therefore being an anti-Zionist is to deny the Jews the right to their own homeland, something which every other ethnic group has. So that means Anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitism.

Prior to the creation of Israel, Jews and Muslims generally lived together in harmony, with Arab lands being a source of refuge for Jewish people against Christian oppression. Uri Avnery in his article 'Muhammad’s Sword’ writes: "As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age."

"When the Catholics reconquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust. Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the “People of the Book”. In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times “by the sword” to get them to abandon their faith."

This so-called "golden age" of peace and harmony under muslim rule is a complete myth. Prior to the creation of modern day Israel, Jews under muslim rule were treated abysmally. In Yemen for example, Jews were confined to degrading jobs cleaning public latrines and removing dead animals from the streets. The testimony of a dhimmi against a muslim was not accepted in court. The dhimmi was not allowed to raise his hand against his muslim masters even in self-defense. Such an act would get him the death penalty. Jews were beaten and abused in the streets. They were required to wear distinctive clothing. In many countries Jews were required to go barefoot. Required to walk to the left of muslims, forbidden to ride horses and even when riding a donkey, a Jew was required to dismount upon meeting a muslim. Jews and Christians were confined to special quarters and not allowed to enter certain streets of muslim cities, a practice which existed in Persia, Yemen and North Africa until the 19th century. The houses of dhimmis could not be taller than the houses of their muslim neighbors. Jews were subjected to pogroms and massacres by muslim mobs. Dhimmi houses of worship were ransacked, burned and demolished. It was prohibited to ring church bells and sound shofars, publicly display crosses or any other non-muslim religious symbols. Jews and Christians had to bury their dead without mourning. Dhimmi graves had to be specially marked so that a muslim would not accidentally pray over the grave of an infidel. Dhimmi cemetaries were frequently desecrated. In north Africa if Jews or Christians entered a mosque it could result in the death penalty even if they just looked into a mosque while passing by. In Yemen it was required that every orphaned Jewish child be converted to islam. Marriages between a non-muslim man and a muslim woman resulted in the death sentence. So these are just some examples of what it was really like under muslim rule for Jews and Christians.

Hijab is not a symbol of oppression; it is a symbol of one’s religion and identity. Imagine nuns, as the title states, wearing the Hijab, but yet they are never illustrated as oppressed. Why would Muslim women who decide to cover up be seen as oppressed? This is in spite of the fact that Muslim women, unlike nuns, are still able to marry and have children.

Well because muslim women are actually REQUIRED to wear the hijab or get stoned, flogged or become the victim of an "honor" killing. One CHOOSES to become a nun and are able to leave if they so choose. And of course nuns are not stoned, flogged or put to death for violating the rules of the Catholic church. You can read the rest of this tripe here. Hat tip Soccerdad.