TO (ANA) ASIF

Submitted by Abu Nuwas (Saudi Arabia), Apr 8, 2008 at 14:14

To (Ana) Asif:

I'm glad you "laughed" at a portion of my posting. If my comments did not illuminate you, at least they provided an opportunity for joy and mirth.

Technically, you are right, of course. The Promised Land was offered to the Jews, not the Arabs. Even the Koran states this somewhere, or it's explained in a "tradition" or some such.

(By the way, I've never read the Koran…nor the Torah….nor even the Bible)…as a member of generation X, my attention span is much too short for that sort of thing).

I was unable to fully explain my statement due to time and space constraints……To give a full account of what happened (and why I said what I said) would take several pages…..but let me try:

The theory I was referring to states that what really happened at the time of the "conquests" was this:

Some Jewish tribes were expelled or were forced to leave the "Promised Land" when the Byzantines (or was it the Sassanids) overran their homelands in "Palestine" or thereabouts.

They headed due South into Northern Arabia where the Jews were not unknown. (In fact, you could find Jews all over the Arabian Peninsula in those days).

These Jews convinced Arab tribesmen that the Promised Land was promised to BOTH their peoples, since they were related racially and linguistically, a proposition which in those days was sort of an accepted fact.

(It's still a fact though not so easily accepted these days) – mostly on the basis that they both recognized Abraham as their UR-father (and so on).

now hear this: Because the Arabs had long been raiding the northern settled areas of modern day Iraq and the Levant anyway, such a proposition was not so out of kilter with what was already going on. That is to say, the Arabs and the Jews TEAMED UP TOGETHER – the one as guides, the other as fighters – to regain the "Promised Land".

And to "regain" means to "re-conquer", at least the way I understand the term.

It was only after they actually had "re-conquered" the Promised Land that they began to split up and began to quarrel to the point that eventually, these two once allies became enemies of sorts.

In fact, Islam is a product of this split (another long involved story….you'll just have to take my word for it).

(Which is why I've always blamed the Jews for causing the Islam to emerge in the first place….something, of course, which I dare not say in public lest I get stoned by both sides).

So that explains my statement a little more fully. By the way, I'm neither Jewish nor Moslem, never have been and never will be. I don't even wear an armband. I'm a rabid Roman Catholic….how else do you think I knew about one of my heroes, Dr. Illuminatus Raymond Lull??

Abu Nuwas

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