Abigail Radoszkowicz meets Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, an iconoclastic Italian Moslem scholar who believes the Jewish right to the Land of Israel is inscribed in the Koran

April 15, 2002 10:36 AM

Abigail Radoszkowicz meets Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, an iconoclastic Italian Moslem scholar who believes the Jewish right to the Land of Israel is inscribed in the Koran This piece suggests that in fact key parts of the Koran ignored in order to further a cause. The writer, oddly, Muslim and not Jewish/Israeli.
posted by Postroad (12 comments total)

Fascinating.

This, he says, is why he has not been the target of death threats. Nothing he says is heretical, and none can take issue - whether theologically or traditionally - with his views. Although he is, as he says, out of the current consensus, he is not totally out of the religious loop.

If we can just convince the Muslim world that there's no scriptural basis for their opposition to Jews or the West, maybe they can start focusing on their own crap. Of course, then, we'll have to help them out of their political and economic morass, but that doesn't seem like such a terrible price to pay.
posted by donkeyschlong at 11:10 AM on April 15, 2002

There is no such thing in most of the muslim world mr. donkey. We are not against Jews or the West. I am a Muslim and I work for a Jew. I eat and drink with him. I am not anti semite because I am semite myself. So are all the Arabs. Please educate yourself through some other medium than Fox and company. We are against Jewish occupation of Palestinian land and the horrible genocide the Zionist regime is committing, and the biased, unfair policies of the West. We know whats wrong with our crap, but you can not point that out and expect us to forget whats going on in Palestine while we get busy fixing our own problems.
posted by adnanbwp at 11:26 AM on April 15, 2002

Given what's going on in the world right now, Adnan, your defensiveness is just that.

And actually, if you'd ever bothered to read any of my other posts, you'd know I'm hardly an adherent of the Fox and Co. school of yellow journalism.
posted by donkeyschlong at 11:36 AM on April 15, 2002

oh so now a person makes a comment, and the other person can not even defend herself ? what do you want ?
posted by adnanbwp at 12:08 PM on April 15, 2002

Well, you're conveniently avoiding/neglecting to discuss the actual content of postroad's interesting link.
posted by donkeyschlong at 12:23 PM on April 15, 2002

Every religion will have differences of opinion-- the politicization of Palestine has less to do with the Quran than it does with dispossesion of the Palestinians.

An interesting meeting would be between the Imam of this post and the Rabbis and Jews whose reading of the holy books denies Israel's right to exist until the messiah comes to earth. Then you would have a Jewish scholar debating against the Zionist state and a Muslim scholar arguing for one. That would really flip a lot of people's wigs.
posted by cell divide at 12:45 PM on April 15, 2002

Surah 17: The Israelites, Verse 100
"Say (unto them): If ye possessed the treasures of the mercy of my Lord, ye would surely hold them back for fear of spending, for man was ever grudging."

hehe
posted by euphorb at 12:51 PM on April 15, 2002

Another Bizarro World title search.
posted by Opus Dark at 12:54 PM on April 15, 2002

First, Jerusalem Post, hardly a hotbed of Pro-Arab thought.

Second; I have never heard or read anyone interpret that Surah as Mr. Palazzi claims it to be.

This is, I believe, the standard interpretation of the accension Surah:

The disbelievers of Makkah had been admonished to take a lesson from the miserable end of the Israelites and other communities and mend their ways within the period of respite given by Allah, which was about to expire. They should, therefore, accept the invitation that was being extended by Muhammad and the Quran; otherwise they shall be annihilated and replaced by other people.

Incidentally, the Israelites, with whom Islam was going to come in direct contact in the near future at Al-Madinah have also been warned that they should learn a lesson from the chastisements that have already been inflicted on them. They were warned, "Take advantage of the Prophethood of Muhammad (Allah's peace be upon him) because that is the last opportunity which is being given to you. If even now you behave as you have been behaving, you shall meet with a painful torment."

Mr. Palazzi's interpretation is like unto the Christians who pull out-of-context bits from the Bible and claim that they have the right to beat their wifes, burn witches, take multiple wifes, etc., etc., etc.

He's the Jerry Fallwell of Islam.
posted by dejah420 at 4:58 PM on April 15, 2002

He's the Jerry Fallwell of Islam.

So in Islam, you're a kook for promoting peace and harmony? Is that what you're saying?
posted by donkeyschlong at 5:35 PM on April 15, 2002

Here is a critique of Palazzi's work--and while he finds fault with some of whsat has been said he also finds much truth and gives his interpretation...well worth looking at, esp. since the ending is so upbeat.

critique of Palazzi's views
posted by Postroad at 6:12 PM on April 15, 2002

The Palestinians are a fairly secular people, and Palestinian families are not likely to resort to Qur'anic exegesis to discover what rights they possess to the land they and their forebears inhabited for so many centuries.

Of course, the amazing thing is that the viability of Israel's policies have depended heavily on the U.S., and the U.S. complacence with the pro-Israel lobby has boiled down to belief in the Biblical, God-given right of Jews to inhabit the Land of Israel (there are about a zillion public opinion surveys indicating that this is the factor foremost in the U.S. public's mind when it comes to the Palestinian Question).

Fancying myself no scholar but a fairly close reader of the Torah, I am familiar enough with the God of Ethnic Cleansing who promises to his people that he will exterminate Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites. These days, this God enjoys great devotion, deepened by the paranoia to which Sharon addresses himself with his rants about "the destruction of the Jewish people." Yet somehow I've come away with the idea that Judaism also means ethical ideals incompatible with the ingrained love of ethnic cleansing that characterizes the entire history of the modern State of Israel. Though it's a fringe view, I don't think the Jewish People persist or vanish based on whether the residents of a kibbutz in Israel get to continue merrily working land whose previous occupants were forcibly removed. All lives are worth saving, but the idea at stake here is not.
posted by Zurishaddai at 9:38 PM on April 15, 2002