ICAP meeting new director

meeting, publicity

FW: Ambulance UN

FW: NEW AMOS GITAI FILM COMES TO CHICAGO

Re: meeting, publicity

Hi, sorry, I'll get that article in soon! (This week)
Benjie

----- Original Message -----
From: Dr. Maria Wainer <director@...>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 13:31:39 -0500
Subject: [IsraelCouncil] meeting, publicity
To: israelcouncil@...

Dear ICAP,
1) Look forward to seeing you 5pm today for ICAP meeting with new
director candidate.
GAPP cookout is at 7pm.

2) Can someone please write an ICAP article for the upcoming
newsletter?  Review what was done last semester and current officer
positions, contact info, and plans for next semester?  I haven't heard
from Benjie and Ilan has departed so I really need a few paragraphs
from some other involved individual.  Please email it to me this week!
 Thanks!

3)See message below from Hillel Intl.  Any Israel birthday cake photos
we can send?

Dear Colleagues,

I now collecting information for the final Israel Update of this
school year. As you know, the Jewish community is vitally concerned
with our campuses and any information you can provide will be read
eagerly. Please send me any information about what has happened
regarding Israel on your campus, and how you finished up your year.
Whatever you send to me, regardless of how mundane you may think it
is, will be placed in the next Israel Update. Also, the information
will go online at http://israel.hillel.org (check out the last batch
of information now!). The deadline for getting information into the
next Israel Update will be Thursday, June 10 at 3:00 PM EST.

Also, I am collecting pictures, articles and other publicity materials
from your events. Pictures that you send me may end up in various
Hillel brochures or presentations. I am looking for both hi- and low-
resolution pictures (300 dpi is considered high res). Please scan your
pictures and send them to me. If you don't have a scanner or don't
feel comfortable using it, feel free to mail your pictures to me and I
will scan them and mail them back. Thanks a lot.

As always, I look forward to reading what is happening on your campus.

Howard Wolke

Communications Associate

Israel and Israel-Related Affairs

http://israel.hillel.org

202.449.6538

hwolke@...
 Dr. Maria Wainer
Director
Purdue Hillel
912 West State St.
West Lafayette, IN  47906
(765) 743-1293

The Real Roots of Muslim Hatred

The Real Roots of Muslim Hatred

By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 3, 2004

“Are you Muslim or Christian? We don't want to kill Muslims.” That’s what the 
Islamic terrorists reportedly told their innocent prey during a murderous 
shooting spree last Saturday in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that left at least 17 
civilians dead in the initial assault. 1 How are we to interpret such repeated 
acts of terrorism, targeting non-Muslims? Perhaps the most influential 
contemporary doyen lecturing to us about "Islamic fundamentalism" has asserted, 
in multiple writings since 1990 2, the following: fundamentalism and its 
accompanying “Muslim rage” derive exclusively from a steady decline in the 
geopolitical power of Muslim states, evidenced, most dramatically, by the 
official dissolution of the Ottoman Caliphate after World War I, and the 
creation of the State of Israel after World War II. Despite his erudition, this 
doyen appears unwilling to examine an obvious alternative explanation for the 
etiology and persistence of Muslim animus toward non-Muslims- what Muslim 
children, for generations, have been taught to think about the infidel "other," 
regardless of the geopolitical circumstances. 

E.W. Lane wrote an informative firsthand account of life in Egypt, particularly 
Cairo and Luxor, composed after several years of residence there (first in 1825-
1828, then in 1833-1835). James Aldridge in his study Cairo (1969) called 
Lane’s account “the most truthful and detailed account in English of how 
Egyptians lived and behaved.” 3 Egyptian Muslims, Lane explains, 
regarded "persons of every other faith as the children of perdition; and such, 
the Muslim is early taught to despise…I am credibly informed that children in 
Egypt are often taught at school, a regular set of curses to denounce upon the 
persons and property of Christians, Jews, and all other unbelievers in the 
religion of Mohammad.” 4 Lane, who had perfect command of Arabic and went on to 
write a colossal Arabic-English lexicon, translated the prayer below from a 
contemporary 19th century text Arabic text. It contains curses on non-
Muslims, “which the Muslim youths in many of the schools in Cairo recite, 
before they return to their homes, every day of their attendance.” 5 One 
typical curse is:

“I seek refuge with God from Satan the accursed. In the name of God, the 
Compassionate, the Merciful. O God, aid El-Islam, and exalt the word of truth, 
and the faith, by the preservation of thy servant and the son of thy servant, 
the Sultan of the two continents (Europe and Asia), and the Khakan (Emperor or 
monarch) of the two seas [the Mediterranean and Black Seas], the Sultan, son of 
the Sultan (Mahmood) Khan (the reigning Sultan when this prayer was composed). 
O God, assist him, and assist his armies, and all the forces of the Muslims: O 
Lord of the beings of the whole world. O God, destroy the infidels and 
polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion. O God, make their 
children orphans, and defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip, and 
give them and their families, and their households and their women and their 
children and their relations by marriage and their brothers and their friends 
and their possessions and their race and their wealth and their lands as booty 
to the Muslims: O Lord of the beings of the whole world.”6 (Emphasis added.)

Not surprisingly then, Lane describes how the Jews, for example, were “often…
jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the 
right hand of a Muslim…(The Jews) scarcely dare ever to utter a word of abuse 
when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has 
been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering 
disrespectful words against the Qur’an or the Prophet. It is common to hear an 
Arab abuse his jaded ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious 
epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.” 7

Over five decades later, in Tunis, 1888, the following personal account reveals 
further evidence of the visceral abhorrence and hostility inculcated in Muslim 
children, specifically, toward non-Muslims: “(The Jew) can be seen to bow down 
with his whole body to a Muslim child and permit him the traditional privilege 
of striking him in the face, a gesture that can prove of the gravest 
consequence. Indeed, the present writer has received such blows. In such 
matters the offenders act with complete impunity, for this has been the custom 
from time immemorial.” 8 (Emphasis added.)

Mary Boyce, Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies and a pre-eminent scholar of 
Zoroastrianism, spent a 12-month sabbatical in 1963-64 living in the 
Zoroastrian community of Iran (mostly in Sharifabad, on the northern Yazdi 
plain). During a lecture series given at Oxford in 1975, 9 she noted how the 
Iranian ancestors of the Zoroastrians had a devoted working relationship (i.e., 
herding livestock) with dogs when they lived a nomadic existence on the Asian 
steppes. This sustained contact evolved over generations such that dogs 
became “a part in (Zoroastrian) religious beliefs and practices…which in due 
course became a part of the heritage of Zoroastrianism.” 10 Boyce then provided 
an historical overview of the deliberate, wanton cruelty of Muslims and their 
children towards dogs in Iran, including a personal eyewitness account: 

In Sharifabad the dogs distinguished clearly between Moslem and Zoroastrian, 
and were prepared to go…full of hope, into a crowded Zoroastrian assembly, or 
to fall asleep trustfully in a Zoroastrian lane, but would flee as before Satan 
from a group of Moslem boys…The evidence points…to Moslem hostility to these 
animals having been deliberately fostered in the first place in Iran, as a 
point of opposition to the old (pre-Islamic jihad conquest) faith (i.e., 
Zoroastrianism) there. Certainly in the Yazdi area…Moslems found a double 
satisfaction in tormenting dogs, since they were thereby both afflicting an 
unclean creature and causing distress to the infidel who cherished him. There 
are grim…stories from the time (i.e., into the latter half of the 19th century) 
when the annual poll-tax (jizya) was exacted, of the tax gatherer tying a 
Zoroastrian and a dog together, and flogging both alternately until the money 
was somehow forthcoming, or death released them. I myself was spared any worse 
sight than that of a young Moslem girl…standing over a litter of two-week old 
puppies, and suddenly kicking one as hard as she could with her shod foot. The 
puppy screamed with pain, but at my angry intervention she merely said 
blankly, ‘But it’s unclean.’ In Sharifabad I was told by distressed Zoroastrian 
children of worse things: a litter of puppies cut to pieces with a spade-edge, 
and a dog’s head laid open with the same implement; and occasionally the air 
was made hideous with the cries of some tormented animal. Such wanton cruelties 
on the Moslems’ part added not a little to the tension between the communities. 
11

Sorour Soroudi, an Iranian Jewish woman and academic, whose family left Iran in 
1970, published this recollection: 

"I still remember the rhyme Muslim children used to chant when they saw an 
Armenian in the streets, 'Armeni, Armeni-dog, sweeper of hell are you!' ” 12. 

A decade later, anti-infidel discrimination intensified and became state 
sanctioned policy with the ascent of the Khomeini-lead Shi’ite theocracy in 
Iran.13 Professor Eliz Sanasarian provides one particularly disturbing example 
of these policies, reflecting the hateful indoctrination of young adult 
candidates for national teacher training programs. Affirming as objective, 
factual history the hadith14 account of Muhammad’s supposed poisoning by a 
Jewish woman from ancient Khaibar, Sanasarian notes, “Even worse, the subject 
became one of the questions in the ideological test for the Teachers’ Training 
College where students were given a multiple-choice question in order to 
identify the instigator of the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad, the ‘correct’ 
answer being ‘a Jewess.’” 15

The ongoing proliferation of Saudi Arabian-sponsored educational programs rife 
with bigotry against non-Muslims has been well documented. A recent 
comprehensive report provided unambiguous examples of these hatemongering 
teaching materials, accompanied by this triumphal pronouncement from a Saudi 
royal family publication: “The cost of King Fahd’s efforts in this field has 
been astronomical, amounting to many billions of Saudi riyals. In terms of 
Islamic institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly 
financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 2,002 colleges and almost 
2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, 
North and South America, Australia, and Asia.” 16

Vilification of non-Muslims has been intrinsic to the religious education of 
Muslim children and young adults for centuries, an ignoble (and continuing) 
tradition that long antedates the modern or even pre-modern 
Muslim “fundamentalist” revival movements. We must acknowledge this reality and 
begin to think and act beyond the well-intentioned but limited constructs of 
even our most respected doyens. Perhaps it would be wise to heed the sober 
advice of this courageous madrassa dropout and secular Muslim “apostate” Ibn 
Warraq:

First, we who live in the free West and enjoy freedom of expression and 
scientific inquiry should encourage a rational look at Islam, should encourage 
Koranic criticism. Only Koranic criticism can help Muslims to look at their 
Holy Scripture in a more rational and objective way, and prevent young Muslims 
from being fanaticized by the Koran’s less tolerant verses…We can encourage 
rationality by secular education. This will mean the closing of religious 
madrassas where young children from poor families learn only the Koran by 
heart, learn the doctrine of Jihad - learn , in short, to be fanatics…My 
priority would be the wholesale rewriting of school texts, which at present 
preach intolerance of non-Muslims, particularly Jews. One hopes that education 
will encourage critical thinking and rationality. Again to encourage pluralism, 
I should like to see the glories of pre-Islamic history taught to all children. 
The banning of all religious education in state schools as is the case in 
France where there is a clear constitutional separation of state and religion 
is not realistic for the moment in Islamic countries. The best we can hope for 
is the teaching of Comparative Religion, which we hope will eventually lead to 
a lessening of fanatical fevers, as Islam is seen as but another set of beliefs 
amongst a host of faiths. 17

Until Warraq’s recommendations are heeded, we can look forward to an endless 
jihad. 

ENDNOTES:

1. Reuters, “Gunmen hunted "infidel" Westerners” 

 Sun May 30, 2004 06:30 AM ET, 
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?
type=topNews&storyID=520188&section=news

2. i.e., Bernard Lewis, for example, in 1990 
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm 
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage2.htm; November/December 
1998 “License to Kill: Usama bin Ladin's Declaration of Jihad”, Foreign 
Affairs; 

2002  http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/01/lewis.htm;    

2003 http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/05/lewis.htm

3. Quoted by J.M. White, in his introduction to, Lane, E.W. An Account of the 
Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, New York, 1973, p. v.

4. Lane, E.W. Modern Egyptians, p. 276.

5. Lane, E.W. Modern Egyptians, p. 575.

6 Lane, E.W. Modern Egyptians, p. 575.

7. Lane, E.W. Modern Egyptians, pp. 554-555.

8. Fellah. “The Situation of the Jews in Tunis, September 1888.”, Ha-Asif (The 
Harvest) [Hebrew] 6 (Warsaw, 1889), English translation in, Bat Ye’or, The 
Dhimmi- Jews and Christians Under Islam, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 
1985, p. 376.

9. Boyce, Mary. A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (based on the Ratanbai 
Katrak lectures, 1975), 1977, Oxford. 

10. Boyce, M. A Persian Stronghold, p. 139. 

11 Boyce, M. A Persian Stronghold, pp. 141-142.

12  Soroudi, Sorour. “The Concept of Jewish Impurity and its Reflection in 
Persian and Judeo-Persian Traditions” Irano-Judaica 1994, Vol. III, p. 155 
(footnote 33):

13 See Tabandeh, Sultanhussein. A Muslim Commentary on the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, translated by F.J. Goulding, London, 1970, pp. 17-
19. Tabandeh was a Sufi Shi’ite ideologue whose writings had a profound 
influence on Ayatollah Khomeini’s discriminatory policies towards non-Muslims 
in Iran, as discussed in Sanasarian, Eliz. Religious Minorities in Iran, 
Cambridge, 2000, pp. 24-27. 

14 Sahih Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 47, Number 786: Narrated Anas bin Malik: “A 
Jewess brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who ate from it. She 
was brought to the Prophet and he was asked, ‘Shall we kill her?’ He 
said, ‘No.’ I continued to see the effect of the poison on the palate of the 
mouth of Allah's Apostle.” 

15 Sanasarian, E. Religious Minorities in Iran, p. 111.

16 Stalinsky, Steven. “Preliminary Overview. - Saudi Arabia's Education System: 
Curriculum, Spreading Saudi Education to the World and the Official Saudi 
Position on Education Policy,” Middle East Media Research Institute, December 
20, 2002.

17 Warraq, Ibn. “A True Islamic Reformation,” FrontPageMagazine.com, May 19, 
2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown 
University Medical School, and occasional contributor to Frontpage Magazine. He 
is the editor of a forthcoming essay collection entitled, "The Legacy of 
Jihad". 

re: NEW AMOS GITAI FILM COMES TO CHICAGO

Hiya all, back home now.  Egypt rocked!

So...the Gitai movie sounds good.  Anyone wanna go up to see it?  Can drive if 
needed:)

Peace,
Dara
--

-- 
"You only live once......except for Shirley MacLaine" - Alan King

Re: re: NEW AMOS GITAI FILM COMES TO CHICAGO

On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 23:14 -0500, Dara Hill Fishberg wrote:
> Hiya all, back home now.  Egypt rocked!
> 
> So...the Gitai movie sounds good.  Anyone wanna go up to see it?  Can drive if 
> needed:)
> 
> Peace,
> Dara

I would like to go too.  Anyone else?

	John

Re: re: NEW AMOS GITAI FILM COMES TO CHICAGO

It sounds interesting, but I'm afraid none of those times works for me. 
I guess I'll just try to catch it on video.

Dara Hill Fishberg wrote:

>Hiya all, back home now.  Egypt rocked!
>
>So...the Gitai movie sounds good.  Anyone wanna go up to see it?  Can drive if 
>needed:)
>
>Peace,
>Dara
>  
>

AMOS GITAI FILM