Christian Arabs and Israel

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Dec 30, 2009 at 11:47

Aymenn wrote

>Therefore, the true source of this anti-Zionism has always been Islamic theology.

Good point. This very well could be true. But like anything in Islam and islamic theology you will find the A but not the A and the only Allahu A3lam in just about any subject that the Qur'an deals with.

In the case of the Jews you have the usual Quranic diatribes but you also you find the likes of Q2:47 that the Jews are Allah's favorite nation. And yes the Muslim Ulama early on viewed the so called al-Isra'ilyyat with great suspicion. Nontheless there is no doubt that jews under islam faired much better than those that resided in Christian Europe and my explantion is that as long as the Jews acted as dhimmis and paid al-jizya then everything was fine for them. The jews also provided much needed brain power be it in medicine or other services that the Muslim rulers needed. Now enter Israel as a nation: Muslims will find enough in the Qur'an to create what you called anti-Zionism which I susepct would not have existed if israel was not created in 1948

> All this said, I agree that amongst Palestinian Christians the main source of anti-Zionism has always been a form of Palestinian nationalism.

Well this might be true and i suspect that the fact that many Palestinian Christians also lost their homes and why would they like anyone that took their homes away?

But how do you explain the very much anti-Zionism that you will find among Christian Arabs in places like Egypt and Lebanon? I understand that during th civil war in Lebanon Basheer Jumayyil, the president of Lebanon at that time, (he is the one that coined the word dhimmitude) met with Menachem Begin in secret and he left very disappointed and I stand corrected here but he felt that Christian Arabs have nothing in common with Israel and that israel cannot be trusted as a friend or an ally and he quoted the old Arabic saying: ana wa akhuya 3ala ibn 3ami wa ana wa ibn 3ami 3ala al-ghareeb or in other words the PLO and Muslims might be his adversaries but he has much more in common with them and knows how to deal with them and Israel is al-ghareeb

Another case which is very surpirsing: Most Copts in Egypt and outside Egypt that have no like for israel. I was even surpised to watch Father Zakaria Botros who is no friend of islam. Just listen to his attacks on Israel and "the barbarity of israel" following the Gaza attack and his review of the 1973 war.

My only explanation here is that the al-nakba al-falastiniyya was also felt by not just by Muslims in the Middle East but also by Christian Arabs.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".