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Alternative Voices in the Islamic World

(Times of Israel) Samuel M. Edelman - Let us not forget that Israel was the one attacked on Oct. 7. Israel has been fighting back for a year. That war has now escalated to include Hizbullah, the Houthis, and Iran. The fighting has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of terrorists who started this war. It has also led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians who would be alive today if not for the hatred of those who hate Israel and Jews. They hate us so much that they were willing to sacrifice innocent Arab lives for the destruction of the one Jewish state in the world. In the Arab world, at the end of the 19th century, Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) became the founding father of Islamic Modernism, a school of thought that called for a profound reform of the dominant attitudes of Muslims to significantly narrow the gap between Islamic values and Western thought. Abduh was prepared to borrow ideas and practices from the West such as democracy, the rule of law, educational reform, free thought and research, an improved status for women, and relations with believers from other faiths. Even though Abduh at times espoused anti-Jewish sentiments, he also focused on the positive and neutral perspectives on Jews in the Quran and was a moderate on Zionism. Perhaps it was based in part on Muhammad Abduh's ideas that the leadership of the UAE and the Israelis were able to begin to craft the principles that would eventually become the basis of the Abraham Accords. The writer is former co-director of the State of California Center of Excellence for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights and Tolerance, and former executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
2024-10-13 00:00:00
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