MarcGopin.com

Gaza

She sits in a room that is dark. There are no lights, there is no gas or oil. There is no heat, there is no electricity. Those were rare luxuries even before the bombs fell because she is in prison. A place of blockades cut off from the rest of the world for over a year. But now there is no heat at all, and it is freezing cold at night. And, more importantly, she must keep all the windows open for if not they will all shatter from the vibrations of buildings exploding nearby and the glass will explode onto her children.

So she huddles with her children under ten blankets. The children cannot drink milk nor find any meat because she cannot afford these luxuries. She was brought up by a Sufi sheikh, and she was taught so many times that hate is not a part of one’s vocabulary.

That is what her father tells me in his East Jerusalem home, with riot troops down the street waiting for action, where he thinks of how he can get his daughter some food, and how he can get food for everyone there, as he has done since the blockade. He wonders aloud to me, “We are human beings….The rockets against Israel, they are terrible. I understand. 18 people died in three years. Terrible. But 300 people in a few hours? A thousand people wounded? They are not targeting civilians? What does this mean, I do not understand. They are human beings. I do not want to hate, but we are human beings. I love all people, how can I distinguish between those who died from rockets and those who died from bombs in Gaza? We are one family.”

I look at the father and I listen, as I always have, but I cannot stay in his presence. The words are too piercing, too haunting. His daughter’s shadow is too strong. Night is falling, the troops may enter Gaza at any moment and maybe East Jerusalem will burst from the anger of a thousand cousins glued to the TV going mad with hurt. But we insist they be quiet. Like asking Jews in Queens to be quiet when their cousins and brothers and daughters in Brooklyn are being killed and living in hell.

Gaza is a total of about thirty miles, twice the size of Washington DC. It houses about a million and a half people, twice the population of Washington, DC. They are all related by family to Palestinians everywhere. At least 100 tons of explosives have dropped on these thirty miles. I will not begin to discuss with the father that Israel is sending in tons of food at the same time, and tons of medical supplies. He would not understand. I could explain that the nightmare scenario for Israeli strategy is a collapse of all life in Gaza so that they then will be burdened with administering the place. And that is why they are sending supplies. But he would not understand. I try to hope in my heart that Olmert and others are also giving these supplies because they earnestly want to attack Hamas for years of rockets, not the population. But then I cannot understand the years of blockade which only harmed the population and made them side with Hamas.

I try and try and I do not understand the logic of this and previous wars. They are about smashing things and smashing people. It is the final straw of the Bush years and the neoconservative nightmare. It is the nightmare that I have watched overtake significant portions of my own community. It is the nightmare of addiction to violent, brutal punishment as a way to make the world and its people be the way you want them to be. It is worse than criminality because it comes with a sincere delusion of moral righteousness. Someday, after negotiations are well underway and the bombs have been silenced, after there are reliable tables of bargaining set up for Iran, for Syria, for Palestine, after sane leaders in the United States once again join the universe of rational, interest-seeking states, their people will look back and ask themselves how they could have been so barbaric.

We find repeatedly everywhere that abuse is a poverty of alternatives, that people hit their spouses and children because they feel they have no alternative, that there is no other way to quell their anger or get what they want and need, or when they have simply inherited this habit as the only way to live. And right after they hit and permanently do damage they wonder why they hit. Because they only got hatred in return, the last thing they wanted and needed from family. I could try to explain these things to the father but he would not understand. He is too distracted. His eyes betray him, as they look far away into the distance, seeking a glimpse of his daughter who he loves as life itself.

David Grossman, author of "The Yellow Wind"

Note how David Grossman, the celebrated Israeli novelist is dealing with the psychology of Israel’s leadership in order to persuade them to hold back. This is a good example of intervention in conflicts where the logic of war has been unleashed and is spinning out of control.

Here are excerpts from David Grossman’s article from Haaretz

After its severe strike on Gaza, Israel would do well to stop, turn to Hamas’ leaders and say: Until Saturday Israel held its fire in the face of thousands of Qassams from the Gaza Strip. Now you know how harsh its response can be. So as not to add to the death and destruction we will now hold our fire unilaterally and completely for the next 48 hours. Even if you fire at Israel, we will not respond with renewed fighting. We will grit our teeth, as we did all through the recent period, and we will not be dragged into replying with force.

Moreover, we invite interested countries, neighbors near and far, to mediate between us and you to bring back the cease-fire. If you hold your fire, we will not renew ours. If you continue firing while we are practicing restraint, we will respond at the end of this 48 hours, but even then we will keep the door open to negotiations to renew the cease-fire, and even on a general and expanded agreement.

That is what Israel should do now. Is it possible, or are we too imprisoned in the familiar ceremony of war?  Until Saturday, Israel under Ehud Barak’s military leadership showed remarkable cool. It should not lose its cool in the heat of battle. We should not forget even for a moment that the people of the Gaza Strip will remain our close neighbors and that sooner or later we will want to achieve good neighborly relations with them.

We should in no way strike them so violently, even if Hamas, for years, has made life intolerably miserable for the people of southern Israel, and even if their leaders have refused every Israeli and Egyptian attempt to reach a compromise to prevent this lastest flare-up.

Therefore, stop. Hold your fire. Try for once to act against the usual response, in contrast to the lethal logic of belligerence. There will always be a chance to start firing again. War, as Barak said about two weeks ago, will not run away. International support for Israel will not be damaged, and will even grow, if we show calculated restraint and invite the international and Arab community to intervene and mediate.

It is true that Hamas will thus receive a respite with which to reorganize, but it has had long years to do so, and two more days will not really make a difference. And such a calculated lull might change the way Hamas responds to the situation. The response could even give it an honorable way out of the trap it has set for itself.

And one more, unavoidable thought: Had we adopted this attitude in July 2006, after Hezbollah abducted the soldiers, had we had stopped then, after our first response, and declared we were holding our fire for a day or two to mediate and calm things down, the reality today might be entirely different.

This is also a lesson the government should learn from that war. In fact, it might be the most important lesson.

Sderot Under Rocket Attack

This is a message from a group of Israeli Jews from Sderot, the front lines in receipt of the rocket attacks from Gaza who have been meeting with Gazans:

For two months, our teams from Gaza and Sderot have been documenting life as it is in their two cities: hope, anger, daily hardships, dreams. In Gaza, our characters have shown us what it means to live under siege. In Sderot, we have heard our characters tell us how their lives are haunted by kassams. All of them have told us about their desire to live inspite of everything, however different their situations might be.

It so happens that nearly at the very moment we had planned to complete our web documentary series, the truce is over. Now has come the time of weapons. Watching the videos that were produced over these two months, we are trying to imagine what our characters have to go though, what they are now thinking, what they are hoping.

At this moment, we are all worried about our friends from the Palestinian crew, about their characters, about their loved ones : « Nobody is safe here », this is what our friends in Gaza told us on Sunday December 28th during the night. On the other hand, are the kassams going to go on falling in Sderot, as though life were a Russian roulette? At this point, not a single person can be serene in this whole region.

One thing we are sure of is that beyond military and political statements, shows of force, pictures of bloodshed and war, our role is to let men, women, children be heard and seen so that we can understand how they are resisting this situation and struggling for survival. Now more than ever. How can we fulfill our mission in such circumstances? We are currently seeking means to go further. Please do not hesitate to write us, communicate with our characters and our crews. Despite the big noise of weapons, our voices can be listened to.

Gaza

From Ynet News in Israel:

Israeli aircraft dropped over 100 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip throughout Saturday as part of operation “Cast Lead” launched in response to the ongoing rocket attacks on Israel, but Gaza’s inhabitants worry that the worst is yet to come.

The strikes caused widespread panic and confusion in Gaza, as black clouds of smoke rose above the territory, ruled by Hamas for the past 18 months. Some of the Israeli missiles struck in densely populated areas as children were leaving school, and women rushed into the streets frantically looking for their children. Most of those killed were security men, but civilians were among the dead.

Said Masri sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, close to a security compound, alternately slapping his face and covering his head with dust from the bombed-out building.

“My son is gone, my son is gone,” wailed Masri, 57. The shopkeeper said he sent his nine-year-old son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. “May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn,” Masri moaned.

In Gaza City’s main security compound, bodies of more than a dozen uniformed security officers lay on the ground. One survivor raised his index finger in a show of Muslim faith, uttering a prayer. The Gaza police chief was among those killed. One man, his face bloodied, sat dazed on the ground as a fire raged nearby.

I will not forget this father.

Two people I respect very much had signed offers from Hamas in their briefcases, for Gilad Schalit and a ceasefire. I realize that this is election season, and I realize that the rockets were intolerable and Israelis were sick of them, sick of impotence before them which is one feeling Israeli Jews hate above all others. I realize that Barak is best at war not peace and that this was his big chance to show his brilliance, which he did.

What is so hard to accept here is the deeply emebedded psychology of all war zones, namely the inability to see the relationship of cause and effect, of action and reaction. For the average cab driver and the average politician the conflict began with the rockets. There is no siege of millions of people in Gaza, no permanent state of prison, there is no elaborate prison and land theft in the West Bank–what could have been Palestine–there are no refugees, there was no 1948. There are the Kassams rained upon innocents in the South, and we are all them, to which we Israelis must respond.

This destines Israelis to a state of war forever unless there is a radical intervention by the rest of the world. This is the sickness of war. Anyone who knows war as well as those of who have seen its results in so many places knows the symptoms well. In this case, Israel is so rich and powerful and successful that we cannot imagine it needed advice on how to get out of its problems. But it needs help.

Israel just destroyed alot of the infrastructure that Iran bought. But that is just oil money. Has it made any friends in Gaza? Has it made allies? Does it have a future in this region? Is there any plan, any brilliant stroke of genius of command and control that Barak and Ashkenazi have to create a shock and awe of alliances throughout the region? A legion of middle class people thirsting not to burn them but do business with them? Is there any ingenious plan of coordinated incursions into the heart and soul of Islam to generate a hundred sermons across Gaza appealing for peace? No, the generals would laugh. And that is the point. The rest of the world is not laughing. In much of the world those are precisely the skills that are keeping countries together, many countries with diverse ethnic groups that used to be in conflict with each other.  They understand the scourge of extremism or terror, but they look in awe at Israel’s impotence before peace, not its strength in war. And they wonder where is the Jewish genius? Why is it only for war? And the answer is that Jews are no different than anyone else, they get locked into war just like every group with guns on the planet. And they need help.

President Assad of Syria with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in Damascus

Reporting from Jerusalem this month:

An astonishing statement from Benjamin Netanyahu. Not only does he have a plan to topple Hamas in Gaza through assassinations (as if that was not already tried and aborted by warriors more talented and experienced than he), but he also plans to proceed with diplomacy in his region by making clear to President Assad that the Golan will stay in Jewish hands:

“It should be clear to the Syrians and to the world, the Golan Heights will stay in our hands,” Netanyahu said.

This is a fascinating position. Either Mr. Netanyahu is delusional in terms of his understanding of Syria and the political realities of the moment, or he holds the Israeli right-wing voting public in contempt. My hunch is the latter, and I felt the same way about McCain’s contempt for his right wing in the United States. Everyone knew that ‘time was up’ in Iraq. The American occupation had to wind down, it was just a debate on how, when, and how fast–really trivial time lines divided Obama and McCain. It is the same regarding Syria. Netanyahu will cynically promise the right wing what it wants to hear, bombastic, nationalistic, emotional claptrap. Once Netanyahu is in office, and assuming the Syrian President sticks to his brilliantly subtle and convincing script, the onus will be on Netanyahu as to why he would not want to cut a deal with the major foe on his borders that is allied with Iran, the same foe that has provided a haven until now for Hamas.

Now, of course, the right wing could be counting on Netanyahu to utilize endless negotiations to fool the Arabs again–talk, talk, talk about peace with Syria but with no intention of cutting a deal. But Assad is in a much stronger position than the Palestinians and is already prepared for that tactic. He will not provide cover for this old, imperial strategy. If Assad continues to sound all the right chords then more and more of the West will side with him against Netanyahu, and Israel will become increasingly isolated in the Age of Obama, even if the White House does not openly confront Netanyahu. Staging an incident, provoking Syria in some way, counting on the Syrians to over-react, is not working lately either.

Furthermore, political parties in Lebanon across the spectrum are visiting Syria, boundaries and ambassadors are being discussed. Odd as it may seem, Syria is about to take the moral high ground as a regional force for change, yes, for peace, and there is not a thing that the right wing in Israel can do about it.  But there is not a single party at the center of Israel’s politics as of now that is telling the public the whole truth of what could happen, namely a major exchange of land for peace, for strategic realignments in the region.

The one hope of the right wing, powerful elements of the IDF, and the settlers is keeping a conflict going with Hamas–and making it ugly–thus preventing progress toward a comprehensive settlement; this  would make it difficult for Assad to officially make peace with Israel. In fact, today that hope may be realized. 80 rockets have fallen on Israel and the IDF has received permission to attack Gaza. But what the public does not know is how many officials have received clear messages that Hamas wants to make a comprehensive deal with Israel. I met one who said he even had an agreement signed in his briefcase, staring at me with exhausted despair in his eyes. Of course, the deal would involve stopping the complete siege of Gaza and accepting Hamas’ victory at the polls. Very tough thing for Westerners, accepting democracy’s results. The Israeli Jewish public has been made as unprepared for the political realities of Palestine, as much as the Palestinian refugee community has been made unprepared for the political realities of Israel.

More manipulation and obfuscation is what we can expect from Netanyahu if he forms the government, unless he simply turns on his right wing, but analysts I have talked to here aver that he has far too small a base to pull a “Nixon goes to China” on the right.

I hope the new team in Washington is prepared for Netanyahu should he form a government. It is going to get very tricky, and he is prepared to use the so-called pro-Israel lobby and the Orthodox Jewish community to the hilt as an emotional lever against the White House. But one thing he cannot do this time is play Republicans and Democrats off against each other. The majority is clear.

All of this would be interesting from a geopolitical and strategic point of view were it not for the daily suffering and misery of average people, the innocents who will keep dying, starving, despairing.

The soul of these two peoples is assaulted by religious nationalistic distortions, by despair, by extremism, by corruption, by the strangulation of dreams. It is assaulted by ten years of neglect by outside governments to intervene here in a forceful and constructive way. The outside world here is simply behaving as the warden of a prison of occupation and corruption, corruption actually on both sides. You can feel it everywhere. Thus, as interesting as the twists and turns and the rise and fall of politicians may be in this election period, there is something dying here beyond the actual victims of war. It is the soul of Palestine and the soul of Israel.

But there is always a flicker of light in this strange, holy land, a light that one should especially notice on Christmas Day and on Hanukkah, the holidays of light. On the same trip I have seen more young people joining and creating more alternatives to violence. There are no less than three new Palestinian organizations working on nonviolent leadership, in addition to Israeli organizations developing nonviolent leadership such as the Jerusalem Communities Network.

It is always important to remember the basic insight that what appears weak is strong and what appears strong is weak, and that those who appear to lead actually follow and those who appear to follow actually lead. The politicians follow slavishly what they think the people want, and different politicians divide up based on which constituencies they follow.

Here is the most important point. The Palestinian people had no choice other than Hamas because their leadership was corrupt top to bottom, no doubt in large part due to the outrages of exile and occupation. This is a fact completely ignored by Western policies. But facts are facts. When new ideas and new generations emerge that provide uncorrupted leadership that is also nonviolent then they will eschew Hamas.

I see developing here, and many other parts of the world, a determined new face of Islam, a face of Islam that was always there but buried by powerful patriarchies. It is a face of nonviolence, and it will emerge over time because it is its only face that trully seeks justice and compassion for all people. This at its heart is the most consistent dream of the Koran. But it has enemies everywhere. No one in power wants this face, and all the major powers of the world, especially in this region, have used Islam for their own purposes.

I have been privileged each time I come to be hosted by Jerusalem Peacemakers, and especially Sheikh Bukhari and Eliyahu McClean. All the people that they gather together are teaching me about a very different face of the Holy Land. And therein lies hope.

Sheikh Bukhari and Eliyahu McClean

This from Roi Ben Yehuda, written for marcgopin.com

Dear Professor Gopin,

I am reading about the Jerusalem Initiative in your book Holy War, Holy Peace, and I was reminded of a gem I once found researching for a paper on the impact that the black plague (1348-1351) had on the Jews. It comes from the pen of Ibn Batutta, the 14th century Muslim scholar and traveler.

In his book, entitled “Ibn Battuta Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354″, the author provides an account of the Middle East during the plague. For those of us interested in the “Black Death”, Ibn Batutta’s account is a precious primary source. But there is one passage that really blew my mind. After documenting all the horrible destruction of the plague, Ibn Battuta describes how the community (i.e. Muslims, Christians, and Jews) responded to the disaster.

He writes:

“I saw a remarkable instance of the veneration in which the Damascenes hold this mosque during the great pestilence, on my return journey through Damascus in the latter part of July 1348. The viceroy Arghun Shah ordered a crier to proclaim through Damascus that all the people should fast for three days….So the people fasted for three successive days, the last of which was a Thursday, they then assembled in the great Mosque, amirs, sharifs, qadis, theologians, and all the other classes of the people, until the place was filled to overflowing, and there they spent Thursday night in prayer and litanies.

After the dawn prayer next morning they all went out together on foot, holding Korans in their hands, and the amirs barefooted. The procession was joined by the entire population of the town, men and women, small and large; the Jews came with their Book of the Law and the Christians with their Gospel, all of them with their women and children. The whole concourse, weeping and supplicating and seeking the favor of God through His Books and His Prophets, made their way to the Mosque of the Footprints, and there they remained in supplication and invocation until near midday. They then returned to the city and held the Friday service, and God lightened their affliction; for the numbers of deaths in a single day at Damascus did not attain two thousand, while in Cairo and the Old Cairo it reached the figure of twenty-four thousand a day.”

Ibn Batutta’s account is an arresting example of Jews, Muslims, and Christians engaged in public prayer together. While in general, the plague tended to exacerbate divisions and tensions that were already inherit in the structure of the society, we have here an extraordinary example of the plague bringing different people together. It seems that faced with a common and universal problem, a shared understanding of both its origin and solution, the citizens of Damascus sought to collectively elevate their suffering.

It is worth noting that the interfaith prayer takes place inside a mosque! And the latter is not just any mosque, in an example of inter-mythic architecture, Ibn Batutta tells us that it is the Mosque of the footprint of Musa (Moses).

The event in question gets additional significance when we compare it to what was happening to the Jews in Christendom during the time of the plague – as you recall, under Christian rule the Jews were being blamed and persecuted for precipitating the Black Death by poisoning the wells. Historians estimate that hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed as a result.

Of course this text is also important in light of the fraught relationships between the children of Abraham today. What a text like this shows us is that the inimical relationship between Jews and Arabs is not built in into the DNA of the cultures or the religions. Rather, we see that our traditions are much more plastic than we give them credit for. Moreover, with this historical precedent in mind, one can see that it is not impossible for religion to be leading the way towards unity and peace. After all, the true meaning of the word religion, derived from the Latin ligare, is to bind and connect us together. And in that sense of the word, and that sense only, we can say that the Middle east can use a little more religion.
All the best,

Roi Ben-Yehuda

Mosque of the Footprints in Damascus

A Nepalese newspaper picked up the blog on Mumbai from December 10, which was published also as an oped by Common Ground News Service.

Demonstration in Mumbai

The Future of Israel?

Population analysis says much more than either war or peace slogans. The anger Israeli Jews feel about Kassams and suicide bombs could possibly explain the level of brutality of the Occupation, but it cannot explain the population explosion of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

The population growth among West Bank settlers was three times higher than that of the rest of Israel during the past 12 years, according to a report by the Ariel College Center of Samaria.

The statistical annual report shows that the Jewish population in the West Bank more than doubled during that time, with a growth of 107 percent. The report also shows that the settler population has surged from 130,000 in 2005 to 270,000 by the end of 2007.

Meanwhile, the entire population of Israel grew by 29 percent over the same period.
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This population trend has continued over the past three years, with the West Bank settler population growing by 5 percent annually, compared to a 1.7 percentage growth in the entire country.

The crime rate is much higher too which says something about who is moving to the settlements and their values, sad to say.

What does this say about the future? Hard to say, but the prospects are not good. Some smart experts feel that a two state solution is all but impossible now. The right wing and those who are anti-democratic are far more aggressive right now than others, and we may be in for a very bad few years, between Israeli behavior and Hamas’ political/military stance. On the other hand, if Syria comes into serious peace talks and Iran is engaged by the United States then Hamas may feel compelled to move closer to a negotiating position with Fatah and Israel itself. But none of this guarantees that the mainstream of Jewish Israel will finally decide to acknowledge past wrongs and engage Palestinians on an equal footing. And I dont think that the United States government is capable of generating that paradigm shift for Zionists, Israeli and American Jews. If America sets the stage for a much  more Arab environment it will still be a moment of truth for the future of Israeli Jewish and Zionist entity. The prospects of a peaceful settlement of Zionist Jewish identity in its confrontation with the rest of the world are bleak right now. But if the United States and the Arab world make the option for peace more and more compelling it will at least force the Zionist Jewish community and the state of Israel itself to fully confronted its identity, its future identity. Time will tell.

Ironically the Palestinians may eventually get everything they dreamed of, all of Palestine back. The Zionist dream is corroding every day, its main adherents becoming more extreme, more desperate, and more alienated from the rest of the world. This is the opposite of what occurred leading up to 1948 when the whole world, except the Arab world, embraced the Zioinist dream.

As a scholar of Jewish religion I do not believe that Israel’s identity as a Jewish state will be popular among the world’s Jews forever. Not if it entails a permanent civil war with its non-Jewish citizens and subjects. Eventually more and more Jews there and around the world will be comfortable with the old yishuv, a Jewish presence in the ancient homeland of Jews that shares a state with non-Jews, who also have ancient roots on the land. And what name it goes by will be determined later. History is a ruthless refiner of dreams.

A New Age

I was impressed by Bill Ayers’ recent public disclosure. His anguished re-reading of the Vietnam Era, his desperate attempt to stop a war that killed millions of Vietnamese people and 60,000 Americans, his remorse over some of the more extreme efforts he made, and his explanation of the principled violent and illegal stands that he took, all suggest a person of conscience and subtlety. I would not have done what he did in those buildings, and I would not demonize a military or country that way his group did, but only because of what I now know about the poison of demonization. In fact the radical right demonized and scapegoated Ayers in order to destroy the candidacy of Barack Obama. Demonization is a problematic domestic political form of terrorism that must resisted. I am both relieved by who is and horrified by what was done to him by this campaign.

I am also still amazed at what was done also to the word “Arab”, a proud term of identity for over 300 million human beings and the word “Muslim”, a proud identity for over a billion people.

Ayers concludes:

Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let’s hope they never will again. And let’s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue.

The real domestic terrorism that we must combat in every country, and inside our souls, every day is the demonization of others. The best antidote is the sacralization of others, no matter how awful their current views may be to us. That is the only way to shift the mind and heart toward the constructive and the pragmatic and the  hopeful.

Protests by an Anti-Terror Muslim Group in India

Millions of Muslims across India have decided to temper or even cancel festivities on their most cherished week of holy yearly celebrations, the Eid, in protest of crimes committed in the name of Islam by the criminals who murdered so many in Mumbai.

They wore black ribbons, carried placards of peace, sent out emails and SMSes reiterating harmony, and put up banners saluting those who died in the 26/11 terrorist attack. From Chennai’s Thousand Lights Mosque to Delhi’s Jama Masjid, from Khwaza Banda Nawaz dargah in Gulbarga, to the mosques of Mumbai – Bakr-Eid celebrations were subdued, in a symbolic declaration of Muslim protest against terrorism.

“At every dargah, prayers were said for the grieving families in Mumbai. In Ajmer Sharief, Kaliyar Sharief (Uttarakhand) and Barabanki’s Deva Sharief, the community came together burying their differences to focus on one thing: communal harmony. By showing our unity, we have spoilt the terrorists’ Bakr-Eid,” said Qari Mohd Miya Mazhari, editor, Secular Qayadat.

The festival of sacrifice also became a platform of protest both for celebrities as well as ordinary citizens.

In Mumbai, cerebral star Aamir Khan wore a black band on his arm. So did ‘Jab We Met’ director Imtiaz Ali, lyricist Javed Akhtar and his actor-director son, Farhan Akhtar. A news agency reported that other Bollywood biggies such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan too preferred to stay away from the festivities.

Some Muslims even avoided festival purchases such as new clothes. The trustee of Mumbai’s Khar Jama Masjid, Zafar Iqbal, sent 500 emails and 250 SMSes reaffirming Islam’s peaceful tenets.

This is an act of solidarity with the victims, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, and Christian alike. And this despite the fact that the prejudice and structural injustice that Indian Muslims experience is widespread and systemic. I have always sensed from my readings and studies that Indian Islam, the religion of one of the largest Muslim communities in the world, has always articulated a deeply ethical form of Islam. It historically has been a model to the world of a minority community asserting its identity and simultaneously arguing for a strongly nonviolent ethic of religiosity.

Why does the world ignore millions of good simple people when they stand up for nonviolence but keep everyone riveted when 10-20 criminals hijack a city? More importantly why is the hijacking a ‘Muslim event’ but not the peaceful protests and statements of solidarity with Hindu victims of millions of people? We cannot have a deep understanding of the problems facing humanity if this prejudice against peaceful expressions of religion goes on in the media. I know that ‘if it bleeds it leads in the media’, but the lack of attention to the majority who are peaceful is creating at least as much bleeding as the acts of terrorism.

The three Abrahamic religions share a story of Abraham saving his son from sacrifice, and this Muslim holiday celebrates the survival of this son. I say what I am about to say in protest against the haters in our midst: I am grateful that Abraham saved this son so that a great culture, civilization and religion could be born, a culture and civilization of the Arab and Muslim world. And I refuse to join the haters in my midst who look at these sad brainwashed criminals of the Mumbai attack and say ‘they are the flower of Islam’. They are no more the flower of Islam than Timothy Mcveigh and his Christian Identity Movement, or the Ku Klux Klan and their burning Christian crosses, are the flower of Christianity, nor the rampaging settler youth with their Jewish earlocks flowing in the wind are the flower of the Torah. They are the stain on the Torah scroll. Crime is crime, and we must honor the millions of Indian Muslims today who are surrendering their holiday spirit in solidarity with the innocent. What a wonderful model and challenge to the rest of humanity.

Indian Muslim Protests Against Terror