Critical Thoughts

I am blogging about this on the occasion of “Blog About Palestine Day”, in response to the call made by Tok Mudin and reaffirming my solidarity with the Palestinian cause and Palestinians in general. Indeed, I am not alien to the issue of Islam and the Problem of Israel (here is one example on how attuned I am to the Palestinian cause) because to me, the solution is universal: to regain the dignity of a people who were expelled from their lands at the expense of others. It is a struggle reminiscent of the days when the British wanted to impose a “Malayan Union” on (then known as) Malaya at the expense of its native population. There was no such thing as an “Israel” before the An-Nakba of 1948 and certainly “Israel” have no right to exist, as they are a modern European invention consisting of people who were immigrants from Europe.

In reading about the Palestinian issue, I cannot recommend any book more highly than the late Dr. Ismail al-Faruqi’s work, Islam and the Problem of Israel. The book gives a very unique perspective into the real core of the Palestinian issue: how Zionism was the product of secular European Romanticism and how this alien and racist ideology which is in stark contrast to the values of Judaism permeated the political thought of the Jewish people; most of them are themselves either atheist or staunchly secular, but they use Judaism as an excuse for the legitimacy of their claim over all of historic Palestine. Read the first chapter.

The result of the Zionist movement and their ambitions came to a fruition in May 1948: thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee into exile because of the Jewish terrorist gangs such as Irgun and the Hagganah, and villages were looted and destroyed such as Deir Yassin. Thus, that day is until today known as An-Nakba (The Catastrophe). And indeed it is a catastrophe, to see secular Zionism reign its ugly head in the land of the Anbiya. May Allah help the Palestinians and Islam to regain control of the holy land once again, insha’allah.