Israel Matzav

Islamic historian: Muslims will never make peace with Israel

You can bet that the mainstream media will ignore this one (although surprisingly YNet has picked it up).

Hebrew University Islamic History Professor Moshe Sharon (no relation to Ariel Sharon) told the annual counterterrorism conference in Herzliya today that Muslims will never make peace with Israel. He was focusing principally on Iran, which he described as "dead serious" about obtaining nuclear weapons and bringing about the end of days, but he put it in terms of Muslims and Islamic doctrine, and not just in terms of Iran:

The veteran expert on Islam says that Western officials fail to grasp that the Arab and Islamic world truly see Israel’s establishment as a “reversal of history” and are therefore unable to ever accept peaceful relations with it. From Moslems’ perspective, “Islamic territory was taken away from Islam by Jews. You know by now that this can never be accepted, not even one meter. So everyone who thinks Tel Aviv is safe is making a grave mistake. Territory, which at one time was dominated by Islamic rule, now has become non-Moslem. Non-Moslems are independent of Islamic rule and Jews have created their own independent state. It is anathema. Worse, Israel, a non-Moslem state, is ruling over Moslems. It is unthinkable that non-Moslems should rule over Moslems.” [Think about what this means for parts of Europe like the Andalusia region in Spain that fell under Muslim rule at one time.... CiJ]

Sharon dismissed various peace treaties signed by Moslem and Arab officials over the years as "pieces of paper, parts of tactics and strategies…with no meaning."

Turning to Iran, Sharon said:

“They truly believe that the Shiite messiah, the twelfth Imam (also known as the Mahdi), is here, and that he will reveal himself…What moves the Iranian government and leadership today is first and foremost the wish to bring about the twelfth Imam."

Addressing the theological doctrine of how exactly the 12th Imam will be revealed, Sharon explained: "How will they bring him? Through an apocalypse. He (the Mahdi) needs a war. He cannot come into this world without an Armageddon. He wants an Armageddon. The earlier we understand this the better. Ahmadinejad wants nuclear weapons for this!"

Sharon even has a lesson for those western politicians who insist that Islam is a 'religion of peace' (listen up W!):

Sharon has in the past insisted that the Western world was engaging in great folly by differentiating between radical and peaceful Islam. “All of a sudden we see that the greatest interpreters of Islam are politicians in the Western world,” he wrote. “They know better than all the speakers in the mosques, all those who deliver terrible sermons against anything that is either Christian or Jewish. These Western politicians know that there is good Islam and bad Islam. They know even how to differentiate between the two, except that none of them know how to read a word of Arabic.”

And for those who compare Islam to Orthodox Judaism or - l'havdil - to fundamentalist Christianity, Sharon has a rude awakening:

“The difference between Judaism, Christianity and Islam is as follows: Judaism speaks about national salvation - namely that at the end of the story, when the world becomes a better place, Israel will be in its own land, ruled by its own king and serving G-d. Christianity speaks about the idea that every single person in the world can be saved from his sins, while Islam speaks about ruling the world. I can quote here in Arabic, but there is no point in quoting Arabic, so let me quote a verse in English: ‘Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions.’

Time to wake up, world!

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:45 PM