SHE CONVERTED FROM JUDAISM TO ISLAM
El Conquistador
I was Margaret (Peggy) Marcus. As a small child I possessed a keen interest
in music and was particularly fond of the classical operas and symphonies
considered high culture in the West. Music was my favorite subject in school
in which I always earned the highest grades. By sheer chance, I happened to
hear Arabic music over the radio which so much pleased me that I was
determined to hear more. I would not leave my parents in peace until my
father finally took me to the Syrian section in New York City where I bought
a stack of Arabic recordings. My parents, relatives and neighbors thought
Arabic and its music dreadfully weird and so distressing to their ears that
whenever I put on my recordings, they demanded that I close all the doors
and windows in my room lest they be disturbed! After I embraced Islam in
1961, I used to sit enthralled by the hour at the mosque in New York,
listening to tape-recordings of Tilawat chanted by the celebrated Egyptian
Qari, Abdul Basit. But on Jumha Salat (Friday Prayers), the Imam did not
play the tapes. We had a special guest that day. A short, very thin and
poorly-dressed black youth, who introduced himself to us as a student from
Zanzibar, recited Surah ar-Rahman. I never heard such glorious Tilawat even
from Abdul Basit! He possessed such a voice of gold; surely Hazrat Bilal
must have sounded much like him! I was Margaret (Peggy) Marcus. As a small
child I possessed a keen interest in music and was particularly fond of the
classical operas and symphonies considered high culture in the West. Music
was my favorite subject in school in which I always earned the highest
grades. By sheer chance, I happened to hear Arabic music over the radio
which so much pleased me that I was determined to hear more. I would not
leave my parents in peace until my father finally took me to the Syrian
section in New York City where I bought a stack of Arabic recordings. My
parents, relatives and neighbors thought Arabic and its music dreadfully
weird and so distressing to their ears that whenever I put on my recordings,
they demanded that I close all the doors and windows in my room lest they be
disturbed! After I embraced Islam in 1961, I used to sit enthralled by the
hour at the mosque in New York, listening to tape-recordings of Tilawat
chanted by the celebrated Egyptian Qari, Abdul Basit. But on Jumha Salat
(Friday Prayers), the Imam did not play the tapes. We had a special guest
that day. A short, very thin and poorly-dressed black youth, who introduced
himself to us as a student from Zanzibar, recited Surah ar-Rahman. I never
heard such glorious Tilawat even from Abdul Basit! He possessed such a voice
of gold; surely Hazrat Bilal must have sounded much like him!
I traced the beginning of my interest in Islam to the age of ten. While
attending a reformed Jewish Sunday school, I became fascinated with the
historical relationship between the Jews and the Arabs. From my Jewish
textbooks, I learned that Abraham was the father of the Arabs as well as the
Jews. I read how centuries later when, in medieval Europe, Christian
persecution made their lives intolerable, the Jews were welcomed in Muslim
Spain and that it was the magnanimity of this same Arabic Islamic
civilization which stimulated Hebrew culture to reach its highest peak of
achievement.
Totally unaware of the true nature of Zionism, I naively thought that the
Jews were returning to Palestine to strengthen their close ties of kinship
in religion and culture with their Semitic cousins. Together I believed that
the Jews and the Arabs would cooperate to attain another Golden Age of
culture in the Middle East.
Despite my fascination with the study of Jewish history, I was extremely
unhappy at the Sunday school. At this time I identified myself strongly with
the Jewish people in Europe, then suffering a horrible fate under the Nazis
and I was shocked that none of my fellow classmates nor their parents took
their religion seriously. During the services at the synagogue, the children
used to read comic strips hidden in their prayer books and laugh to scorn at
the rituals. The children were so noisy and disorderly that the teachers
could not discipline them and found it very difficult to conduct the
classes.
At home the atmosphere for religious observance was scarcely more congenial.
My elder sister detested the Sunday school so much that my mother literally
had to drag her out of bed in the mornings and it never went without the
struggle of tears and hot words. Finally my parents were exhausted and let
her quit. On the Jewish High Holy Days instead of attending synagogue and
fasting on Yom Kippur, my sister and I were taken out of school to attend
family picnics and parties in fine restaurants. When my sister and I
convinced our parents how miserable we both were at the Sunday school they
joined an agnostic, humanist organization known as the Ethical Culture
Movement.
The Ethical Culture Movement was founded late in the 19th century by Felix
Alder. While studying for rabbinate, Felix Alder grew convinced that
devotion to ethical values as relative and man-made, regarding any
supernaturalism or theology as irrelevant, constituted the only religion fit
for the modern world. I attended the Ethical Culture Sunday School each week
from the age of eleven until I graduated at fifteen. Here I grew into
complete accord with the ideas of the movement and regarded all traditional,
organized religions with scorn.
When I was eighteen years old I became a member of the local Zionist youth
movement known as the Mizrachi Hatzair. But when I found out what the nature
of Zionism was, which made the hostility between Jews and Arabs
irreconcilable, I left several months later in disgust. When I was twenty
and a student at New York University, one of my elective courses was
entitled Judaism in Islam. My professor, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Katsh, the head
of the department of Hebrew Studies there, spared no efforts to convince his
students--all Jews, many of whom aspired to become rabbis--that Islam was
derived from Judaism. Our textbook, written by him, took each verse from the
Quran, painstakingly tracing it to its allegedly Jewish source. Although his
real aim was to prove to his students the superiority of Judaism over Islam,
he convinced me diametrically of the opposite.
I soon discovered that Zionism was merely a combination of the racist,
tribalistic aspects of Judaism. Modern secular nationalistic Zionism was
further discredited in my eyes when I learned that few, if any, of the
leaders of Zionism were observant Jews and that perhaps nowhere is Orthodox,
traditional Judaism regarded with such intense contempt as in Israel. When I
found nearly all important Jewish leaders in America supporters for Zionism,
who felt not the slightest twinge of conscience because of the terrible
injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian Arabs, I could no longer consider
myself a Jew at heart.
One morning in November 1954, Professor Katsh, during his lecture, argued
with irrefutable logic that the monotheism taught by Moses (peace be upon
him) and the Divine Laws reveled to him were indispensable as the basis for
all higher ethical values. If morals were purely man-made, as the Ethical
Culture and other agnostic and atheistic philosophies taught, then they
could be changed at will, according to mere whim, convenience or
circumstance. The result would be utter chaos leading to individual and
collective ruin. Belief in the Hereafter, as the Rabbis in the Talmud
taught, argued Professor Katsh, was not mere wishful thinking but a moral
necessity. Only those, he said, who firmly believed that each of us will be
summoned by God on Judgement Day to render a complete account of our life on
earth and rewarded or punished accordingly, will possess the self-discipline
to sacrifice transitory pleasure and endure hardships and sacrifice to
attain lasting good.
It was in Professor Katsh's class that I met Zenita, the most unusual and
fascinating girl I have ever met. The first time I entered Professor Katsh's
class, as I looked around the room for an empty desk in which to sit, I
spied two empty seats, on the arm of one, three big beautifully bound
volumes of Yusuf Ali's English translation and commentary of the Holy Quran.
I sat down right there, burning with curiosity to find out to whom these
volumes belonged. Just before Rabbi Katsh's lecture was to begin, a tall,
very slim girl with pale complexion framed by thick auburn hair, sat next to
me. Her appearance was so distinctive, I thought she must be a foreign
student from Turkey, Syria or some other Near Eastern country. Most of the
other students were young men wearing the black cap of Orthodox Jewry, who
wanted to become rabbis. We two were the only girls in the class. As we were
leaving the library late that afternoon, she introduced herself to me. Born
into an Orthodox Jewish family, her parents had migrated to America from
Russia only a few years prior to the October Revolution in 1917 to escape
persecution. I noted that my new friend spoke English with the precise care
of a foreigner. She confirmed these speculations, telling me that since her
family and their friends speak only Yiddish among themselves, she did not
learn any English until after attending public school. She told me that her
name was Zenita Liebermann but recently, in an attempt to Americanize
themselves, her parents had changed their name from "Liebermann" to "Lane."
Besides being thoroughly instructed in Hebrew by her father while growing up
and also in school, she said she was now spending all her spare time
studying Arabic. However, with no previous warning, Zenita dropped out of
class and although I continued to attend all of his lectures to the
conclusion of the course, Zenita never returned. Months passed and I had
almost forgotten about Zenita when suddenly she called and begged me to meet
her at the Metropolitan Museum and go with her to look at the special
exhibition of exquisite Arabic calligraphy and ancient illuminated
manuscripts of the Quran. During our tour of the museum, Zenita told me how
she had embraced Islam with two of her Palestinian friends as witnesses.
I inquired, "Why did you decide to become a Muslim?" She then told me that
she had left Professor Katsh's class when she fell ill with a severe kidney
infection. Her condition was so critical, she told me, her mother and father
had not expected her to survive. "One afternoon while burning with fever, I
reached for my Holy Quran on the table beside by bed and began to read and
while I recited the verses, it touched me so deeply that I began to weep and
then I knew I would recover. As soon as I was strong enough to leave my bed,
I summoned two of my Muslim friends and took the oath of the "Shahadah" or
Confession of Faith."
Zenita and I would eat our meals in Syrian restaurants where I acquired a
keen taste for this tasty cooking. When we had money to spend, we would
order Couscous, roast lamb with rice or a whole soup plate of delicious
little meatballs swimming in gravy scooped up with loaves of unleavened
Arabic bread. And when we had little to spend, we would eat lentils and
rice, Arabic style, or the Egyptian national dish of black broad beans with
plenty of garlic and onions called "Ful".
While Professor Katsh was lecturing thus, I was comparing in my mind what I
had read in the Old Testament and the Talmud with what was taught in the
Quran and Hadith and finding Judaism so defective, I was converted to Islam.
Q: Were you scared that you might not be accepted by the Muslims?
A: My increasing sympathy for Islam and Islamic ideals enraged the other
Jews I knew, who regarded me as having betrayed them in the worst possible
way. They used to tell me that such a reputation could only result from
shame of my ancestral heritage and an intense hatred for my people. They
warned me that even if I tried to become a Muslim, I would never be
accepted. These fears proved totally unfounded as I have never been
stigmatized by any Muslim because of my Jewish origin. As soon as I became a
Muslim myself, I was welcomed most enthusiastically by all the Muslims as
one of them. My increasing sympathy for Islam and Islamic ideals enraged the
other Jews I knew, who regarded me as having betrayed them in the worst
possible way. They used to tell me that such a reputation could only result
from shame of my ancestral heritage and an intense hatred for my people.
They warned me that even if I tried to become a Muslim, I would never be
accepted. These fears proved totally unfounded as I have never been
stigmatized by any Muslim because of my Jewish origin. As soon as I became a
Muslim myself, I was welcomed most enthusiastically by all the Muslims as
one of them.
I did not embrace Islam out of hatred for my ancestral heritage or my
people. It was not a desire so much to reject as to fulfill. To me, it meant
a transition from parochial to a dynamic and revolutionary faith.
Q: Did your family object to your studying Islam?
A: Although I wanted to become a Muslim as far back as 1954, my family
managed to argue me out of it. I was warned that Islam would complicate my
life because it is not, like Judaism and Christianity, part of the American
scene. I was told that Islam would alienate me from my family and isolate me
from the community. At that time my faith was not sufficiently strong to
withstand these pressures. Partly as the result of this inner turmoil, I
became so ill that I had to discontinue college long before it was time for
me to graduate. For the next two years I remained at home under private
medical care, steadily growing worse. In desperation from 1957 - 1959 my
parents confined me both to private and public hospitals where I vowed that
if ever I recovered sufficiently to be discharged, I would embrace Islam.
Although I wanted to become a Muslim as far back as 1954, my family managed
to argue me out of it. I was warned that Islam would complicate my life
because it is not, like Judaism and Christianity, part of the American
scene. I was told that Islam would alienate me from my family and isolate me
from the community. At that time my faith was not sufficiently strong to
withstand these pressures. Partly as the result of this inner turmoil, I
became so ill that I had to discontinue college long before it was time for
me to graduate. For the next two years I remained at home under private
medical care, steadily growing worse. In desperation from 1957 - 1959 my
parents confined me both to private and public hospitals where I vowed that
if ever I recovered sufficiently to be discharged, I would embrace Islam.
After I was allowed to return home, I investigated all the opportunities for
meeting Muslims in New York City. It was my good fortune to meet some of the
finest men and women anyone could ever hope to meet. I also began to write
articles for Muslim magazines.
Q: What was the attitude of your parents and friends after you became
Muslim?
A: When I embraced Islam, my parents, relatives and their friends regarded
me almost as a fanatic, because I could think and talk of nothing else. To
them, religion is a purely private concern which at the most perhaps could
be cultivated like an amateur hobby among other hobbies. But as soon as I
read the Holy Quran, I knew that Islam was no hobby but life itself! When I
embraced Islam, my parents, relatives and their friends regarded me almost
as a fanatic, because I could think and talk of nothing else. To them,
religion is a purely private concern which at the most perhaps could be
cultivated like an amateur hobby among other hobbies. But as soon as I read
the Holy Quran, I knew that Islam was no hobby but life itself!
Q: In what ways did the Holy Quran have an impact on your life?
A: One evening I was feeling particularly exhausted and sleepless, Mother
came into my room and said she was about to go to the Larchmont Public
Library and asked me if there was any book that I wanted? I asked her to
look and see if the library had a copy of an English translation of the Holy
Quran. Just think, years of passionate interest in the Arabs and reading
every book in the library about them I could lay my hands on but until now,
I never thought to see what was in the Holy Quran! Mother returned with a
copy for me. I was so eager, I literally grabbed it from her hands and read
it the whole night. There I also found all the familiar Bible stories of my
childhood. One evening I was feeling particularly exhausted and sleepless,
Mother came into my room and said she was about to go to the Larchmont
Public Library and asked me if there was any book that I wanted? I asked her
to look and see if the library had a copy of an English translation of the
Holy Quran. Just think, years of passionate interest in the Arabs and
reading every book in the library about them I could lay my hands on but
until now, I never thought to see what was in the Holy Quran! Mother
returned with a copy for me. I was so eager, I literally grabbed it from her
hands and read it the whole night. There I also found all the familiar Bible
stories of my childhood.
In my eight years of primary school, four years of secondary school and one
year of college, I learned about English grammar and composition, French,
Spanish, Latin and Greek in current use, Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra,
European and American history, elementary science, Biology, music and
art--but I had never learned anything about God! Can you imagine I was so
ignorant of God that I wrote to my pen-friend, a Pakistani lawyer, and
confessed to him the reason why I was an atheist was because I couldn't
believe that God was really an old man with a long white beard who sat up on
His throne in Heaven. When he asked me where I had learned this outrageous
thing, I told him of the reproductions from the Sistine Chapel I had seen in
"Life" Magazine of Michelangelo's "Creation" and "Original Sin." I described
all the representations of God as an old man with a long white beard and the
numerous crucifixions of Christ I had seen with Paula at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. But in the Holy Quran, I read:
"Allah! There is no god but He,-the Living, The Self-subsisting, Supporter
of all. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the
heavens and on earth. Who is thee can intercede in His presence except as He
permiteth? He knoweth what (appeareth to His creatures as) before or after
or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He
willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He
feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High,
the Supreme (in glory)." (Quran S.2:255)
"But the Unbelievers,-their deeds are like a mirage in sandy deserts, which
the man parched with thirst mistakes for water; until when he comes up to
it, he finds Allah there, and Allah will pay him his account: and Allah is
swift in taking account. Or (the unbelievers' state) is like the depths of
darkness in a vast deep ocean, overwhelmed with billow topped by billow,
topped by (dark) clouds: depth of darkness, one above another: if a man
stretches out his hand, he can hardly see it! for any to whom Allah giveth
not light, there is no light!" (Quran S.24: 39-40)
My first thought when reading the Holy Quran - this is the only true
religion - absolutely sincere, honest, not allowing cheap compromises or
hypocrisy.
In 1959, I spent much of my leisure time reading books about Islam in the
New York Public Library. It was there I discovered four bulky volumes of an
English translation of Mishkat ul- Masabih. It was then that I learned that
a proper and detailed understanding of the Holy Quran is not possible
without some knowledge of the relevant Hadith. For how can the holy text
correctly be interpreted except by the Prophet to whom it was revealed?
Once I had studied the Mishkat, I began to accept the Holy Quran as Divine
revelation. What persuaded me that the Quran must be from God and not
composed by Muhammad (PBUH) was its satisfying and convincing answers to all
the most important questions of life which I could not find elsewhere.
As a child, I was so mortally afraid of death, particularly the thought of
my own death, that after nightmares about it, sometimes I would awaken my
parents crying in the middle of the night. When I asked them why I had to
die and what would happen to me after death, all they could say was that I
had to accept the inevitable; but that was a long way off and because
medical science was constantly advancing, perhaps I would live to be a
hundred years old! My parents, family, and all our friends rejected as
superstition any thought of the Hereafter, regarding Judgment Day, reward in
Paradise or punishment in Hell as outmoded concepts of by-gone ages. In vain
I searched all the chapters of the Old Testament for any clear and
unambiguous concept of the Hereafter. The prophets, patriarchs and sages of
the Bible all receive their rewards or punishments in this world. Typical is
the story of Job (Hazrat Ayub). God destroyed all his loved-ones, his
possessions, and afflicted him with a loathsome disease in order to test his
faith. Job plaintively laments to God why He should make a righteous man
suffer. At the end of the story, God restores all his earthly losses but
nothing is even mentioned about any possible consequences in the Hereafter.
Although I did find the Hereafter mentioned in the New Testament, compared
with that of the Holy Quran, it is vague and ambiguous. I found no answer to
the question of death in Orthodox Judaism, for the Talmud preaches that even
the worst life is better than death. My parents' philosophy was that one
must avoid contemplating the thought of death and just enjoy as best one
can, the pleasures life has to offer at the moment. According to them, the
purpose of life is enjoyment and pleasure achieved through self-expression
of one's talents, the love of family, the congenial company of friends
combined with the comfortable living and indulgence in the variety of
amusements that affluent America makes available in such abundance. They
deliberately cultivated this superficial approach to life as if it were the
guarantee for their continued happiness and good-fortune. Through bitter
experience I discovered that self-indulgence leads only to misery and that
nothing great or even worthwhile is ever accomplished without struggle
through adversity and self-sacrifice. From my earliest childhood, I have
always wanted to accomplish important and significant things. Above all
else, before my death I wanted the assurance that I have not wasted life in
sinful deeds or worthless pursuits. All my life I have been intensely
serious-minded. I have always detested the frivolity which is the dominant
characteristic of contemporary culture. My father once disturbed me with his
unsettling conviction that there is nothing of permanent value and because
everything in this modern age accept the present trends inevitable and
adjust ourselves to them. I, however, was thirsty to attain something that
would endure forever. It was from the Holy Quran where I learned that this
aspiration was possible. No good deed for the sake of seeking the pleasure
of God is ever wasted or lost. Even if the person concerned never achieves
any worldly recognition, his reward is certain in the Hereafter. Conversely,
the Quran tells us that those who are guided by no moral considerations
other than expediency or social conformity and crave the freedom to do as
they please, no matter how much worldly success and prosperity they attain
or how keenly they are able to relish the short span of their earthly life,
will be doomed as the losers on Judgement Day. Islam teaches us that in
order to devote our exclusive attention to fulfilling our duties to God and
to our fellow-beings, we must abandon all vain and useless activities which
distract us from this end. These teachings of the Holy Quran, made even more
explicit by Hadith, were thoroughly compatible with my temperament.
Q: What is your opinion of the Arabs after you became a Muslim?
A: As the years passed, the realization gradually dawned upon me that it was
not the Arabs who made Islam great but rather Islam had made the Arabs
great. Were it not for the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the Arabs would be
an obscure people today. And were it not for the Holy Quran, the Arabic
language would be equally insignificant, if not extinct. As the years
passed, the realization gradually dawned upon me that it was not the Arabs
who made Islam great but rather Islam had made the Arabs great. Were it not
for the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the Arabs would be an obscure people
today. And were it not for the Holy Quran, the Arabic language would be
equally insignificant, if not extinct.
Q: Did you see any similarities between Judaism and Islam?
A: The kinship between Judaism and Islam is even stronger than Islam and
Christianity. Both Judaism and Islam share in common the same uncompromising
monotheism, the crucial importance of strict obedience to Divine Law as
proof of our submission to and love of the Creator, the rejection of the
priesthood, celibacy and monasticism and the striking similarity of the
Hebrew and Arabic language. The kinship between Judaism and Islam is even
stronger than Islam and Christianity. Both Judaism and Islam share in common
the same uncompromising monotheism, the crucial importance of strict
obedience to Divine Law as proof of our submission to and love of the
Creator, the rejection of the priesthood, celibacy and monasticism and the
striking similarity of the Hebrew and Arabic language.
In Judaism, religion is so confused with nationalism, one can scarcely
distinguish between the two. The name "Judaism" is derived from Judah-a
tribe. A Jew is a member of the tribe of Judah. Even the name of this
religion connotes no universal spiritual message. A Jew is not a Jew by
virtue of his belief in the unity of God, but merely because he happened to
be born of Jewish parentage. Should he become an outspoken atheist, he is no
less "Jewish" in the eyes of his fellow Jews.
Such a thorough corruption with nationalism has spiritually impoverished
this religion in all its aspects. God is not the God of all mankind but the
God of Israel. The scriptures are not God's revelation to the entire human
race but primarily a Jewish history book. David and Solomon (peace be upon
them) are not full-fledged prophets of God but merely Jewish kings. With the
single exception of Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement), the holidays
and festivals celebrated by Jews, such as Hanukkah, Purim and Pesach, are of
far greater national than religious significance.
Q: Have you ever had the opportunity to talk about Islam to the other Jews?
A: There is one particular incident which really stands out in my mind when
I had the opportunity to discuss Islam with a Jewish gentleman. Dr.
Shoreibah, of the Islamic Center in New York, introduced me to a very
special guest. After one Jumha Salat, I went into his office to ask him some
questions about Islam but before I could even greet him with "Assalamu
Alaikum", I was completely astonished and surprised to see seated before him
an ultra-orthodox Chassidic Jew, complete with earlocks, broad-brimmed black
hat, long black silken caftan and a full flowing beard. Under his arm was a
copy of the Yiddish newspaper, "The Daily Forward". He told us that his name
was Samuel Kostelwitz and that he worked in New York City as a diamond
cutter. Most of his family, he said, lived in the Chassidic community of
Williamsburg in Brooklyn, but he also had many relatives and friends in
Israel. Born in a small Rumanian town, he had fled from the Nazi terror with
his parents to America just prior to the outbreak of the second world-war. I
asked him what had brought him to the mosque? He told us that he had been
stricken with intolerable grief ever since his mother died 5 years ago. He
had tried to find solace and consolation for his grief in the synagogue but
could not when he discovered that many of the Jews, even in the
ultra-orthodox community of Williamsburg, were shameless hypocrites. His
recent trip to Israel had left him more bitterly disillusioned than ever. He
was shocked by the irreligiousness he found in Israel and he told us that
nearly all the young sabras or native-born Israelis are militant atheists.
When he saw large herds of swine on one of the kibbutzim (collective farms)
he visited, he could only exclaim in horror: "Pigs in a Jewish state! I
never thought that was possible until I came here! Then when I witnessed the
brutal treatment meted out to innocent Arabs in Israel, I know then that
there is no difference between the Israelis and the Nazis. Never, never in
the name of God, could I justify such terrible crimes!" Then he turned to
Dr. Shoreibah and told him that he wanted to become a Muslim but before he
took the irrevocable steps to formal conversion, he needed to have more
knowledge about Islam. He said that he had purchased from Orientalia
Bookshop, some books on Arabic grammar and was trying to teach himself
Arabic. He apologized to us for his broken English: Yiddish was his native
tongue and Hebrew, his second language. Among themselves, his family and
friends spoke only Yiddish. Since his reading knowledge of English was
extremely poor, he had no access to good Islamic literature. However, with
the aid of an English dictionary, he painfully read "Introduction to Islam"
by Muhammad Hamidullah of Paris and praised this as the best book he had
ever read. In the presence of Dr. Shoreibah, I spent another hour with Mr.
Kostelwitz, comparing the Bible stories of the patriarchs and prophets with
their counterparts in the Holy Quran. I pointed out the inconsistencies and
interpolations of the Bible, illustrating my point with Noah's alleged
drunkenness, accusing David of adultery and Solomon of idolatry (Allah
Forbid) and how the Holy Quran raises all these patriarchs to the status of
genuine prophets of God and absolves them from all these crimes. I also
pointed out why it was Ismail and not Isaac who God commanded Abraham to
offer as sacrifice. In the Bible, God tells Abraham: "Take thine son, thine
only son whom thou lovest and offer him up to Me as burnt offering." Now
Ismail was born 13 years before Isaac but the Jewish biblical commentators
explain that away be belittling Ismail's mother, Hagar, as only a concubine
and not Abraham's real wife so they say Isaac was the only legitimate son.
Islamic traditions, however, raise Hagar to the status of a full-fledged
wife equal in every respect to Sarah. Mr. Kostelwitz expressed his deepest
gratitude to me for spending so much time, explaining those truths to him.
To express this gratitude, he insisted on inviting Dr. Shoreibah and me to
lunch at the Kosher Jewish delicatessen where he always goes to eat his
lunch. Mr. Kostelwitz told us that he wished more than anything else to
embrace Islam but he feared he could not withstand the persecution he would
have to face from his family and friends. I told him to pray to God for help
and strength and he promised that he would. When he left us, I felt
privileged to have spoken with such a gentle and kind person. There is one
particular incident which really stands out in my mind when I had the
opportunity to discuss Islam with a Jewish gentleman. Dr. Shoreibah, of the
Islamic Center in New York, introduced me to a very special guest. After one
Jumha Salat, I went into his office to ask him some questions about Islam
but before I could even greet him with "Assalamu Alaikum", I was completely
astonished and surprised to see seated before him an ultra-orthodox
Chassidic Jew, complete with earlocks, broad-brimmed black hat, long black
silken caftan and a full flowing beard. Under his arm was a copy of the
Yiddish newspaper, "The Daily Forward". He told us that his name was Samuel
Kostelwitz and that he worked in New York City as a diamond cutter. Most of
his family, he said, lived in the Chassidic community of Williamsburg in
Brooklyn, but he also had many relatives and friends in Israel. Born in a
small Rumanian town, he had fled from the Nazi terror with his parents to
America just prior to the outbreak of the second world-war. I asked him what
had brought him to the mosque? He told us that he had been stricken with
intolerable grief ever since his mother died 5 years ago. He had tried to
find solace and consolation for his grief in the synagogue but could not
when he discovered that many of the Jews, even in the ultra-orthodox
community of Williamsburg, were shameless hypocrites. His recent trip to
Israel had left him more bitterly disillusioned than ever. He was shocked by
the irreligiousness he found in Israel and he told us that nearly all the
young sabras or native-born Israelis are militant atheists. When he saw
large herds of swine on one of the kibbutzim (collective farms) he visited,
he could only exclaim in horror: "Pigs in a Jewish state! I never thought
that was possible until I came here! Then when I witnessed the brutal
treatment meted out to innocent Arabs in Israel, I know then that there is
no difference between the Israelis and the Nazis. Never, never in the name
of God, could I justify such terrible crimes!" Then he turned to Dr.
Shoreibah and told him that he wanted to become a Muslim but before he took
the irrevocable steps to formal conversion, he needed to have more knowledge
about Islam. He said that he had purchased from Orientalia Bookshop, some
books on Arabic grammar and was trying to teach himself Arabic. He
apologized to us for his broken English: Yiddish was his native tongue and
Hebrew, his second language. Among themselves, his family and friends spoke
only Yiddish. Since his reading knowledge of English was extremely poor, he
had no access to good Islamic literature. However, with the aid of an
English dictionary, he painfully read "Introduction to Islam" by Muhammad
Hamidullah of Paris and praised this as the best book he had ever read. In
the presence of Dr. Shoreibah, I spent another hour with Mr. Kostelwitz,
comparing the Bible stories of the patriarchs and prophets with their
counterparts in the Holy Quran. I pointed out the inconsistencies and
interpolations of the Bible, illustrating my point with Noah's alleged
drunkenness, accusing David of adultery and Solomon of idolatry (Allah
Forbid) and how the Holy Quran raises all these patriarchs to the status of
genuine prophets of God and absolves them from all these crimes. I also
pointed out why it was Ismail and not Isaac who God commanded Abraham to
offer as sacrifice. In the Bible, God tells Abraham: "Take thine son, thine
only son whom thou lovest and offer him up to Me as burnt offering." Now
Ismail was born 13 years before Isaac but the Jewish biblical commentators
explain that away be belittling Ismail's mother, Hagar, as only a concubine
and not Abraham's real wife so they say Isaac was the only legitimate son.
Islamic traditions, however, raise Hagar to the status of a full-fledged
wife equal in every respect to Sarah. Mr. Kostelwitz expressed his deepest
gratitude to me for spending so much time, explaining those truths to him.
To express this gratitude, he insisted on inviting Dr. Shoreibah and me to
lunch at the Kosher Jewish delicatessen where he always goes to eat his
lunch. Mr. Kostelwitz told us that he wished more than anything else to
embrace Islam but he feared he could not withstand the persecution he would
have to face from his family and friends. I told him to pray to God for help
and strength and he promised that he would. When he left us, I felt
privileged to have spoken with such a gentle and kind person.
Q: What Impact did Islam have on your life ?
A: In Islam, my quest for absolute values was satisfied. In Islam I found
all that was true, good and beautiful and that which gives meaning and
direction to human life (and death); while in other religions, the Truth is
deformed, distorted, restricted and fragmentary. If any one chooses to ask
me how I came to know this, I can only reply my personal life experience was
sufficient to convince me. My adherence to the Islamic faith is thus a calm,
cool but very intense conviction. I have, I believe, always been a Muslim at
heart by temperament, even before I knew there was such a thing as Islam. My
conversion was mainly a formality, involving no radical change in my heart
at all but rather only making official what I had been thinking and yearning
for many years. In Islam, my quest for absolute values was satisfied. In
Islam I found all that was true, good and beautiful and that which gives
meaning and direction to human life (and death); while in other religions,
the Truth is deformed, distorted, restricted and fragmentary. If any one
chooses to ask me how I came to know this, I can only reply my personal life
experience was sufficient to convince me. My adherence to the Islamic faith
is thus a calm, cool but very intense conviction. I have, I believe, always
been a Muslim at heart by temperament, even before I knew there was such a
thing as Islam. My conversion was mainly a formality, involving no radical
change in my heart at all but rather only making official what I had been
thinking and yearning for many years.
Amos
news:ydDQe.10655$7F....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
< extirpated >
>
> My conversion was mainly a formality, involving no radical
> change in my heart at all but rather only making official what I had been
> thinking and yearning for many years.
>
>
And then what happened to the poor benighted woman? Did one of Al Zarqawi's
henchmen shoot her in the back of the head like they did Margaret Hassan?
Look here mate! It is absolutely impossible to make anyone in their right
mind believe that there is anything attractive or desirable about the muslim
faith. It is an absolutely ghastly business, like communism, only intended
to keep people (especially women) in a position of subservience. The sooner
the world gets rid of it the better.
Amos
--
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
El Paredon
muslims in the world than there are all breeds of Christians and jews
all lumped together. Margaret Hassan had only one enemy: US TROOPS! She
lived in Iraq for 24 years without anybody doing her harm!
drda...@yahoo.com
El Conquistador wrote:
> I was Margaret (Peggy) Marcus. As a small child I possessed a keen interest
setting: Afghanistan
One day Margaret met a nice Moslem man named achmed. After a brief
courtship, they married. Achmed took the elated bride back to his hut.
As Margaret opened the door, she was perplexed to see another women
preparing goat stew in the kitchen. Margaret exclaimed, oh Achmed, I
was not aware that you had a cook, how wonderful. Achmed then angrily
pronounced, she is not the cook you stupid buffoon, she is my other
wife. Achmed then barked "now go out to the market and pick up some
goat feed and some rice". Margaret carefully put on her burqua and
went out to the market. After hauling the 20LB bag of goat feed 30
miles back home, she was understandably quite exhausted. She pushed
open the door and dragged the bag in to the hut. As she looked up, she
saw Achmed glaring at her with a horrified expression on his face.
Margaret asked, what is wrong? Achmed barked, did you go out in the
market looking that way? Margaret, utterly baffled, answered "Yes -
what do you mean". Achmed exclaimed "do you realized how much cornea I
can see, not to mention at least 2 or 3 eye lashes". Margaret
explained that it was very hot and she was sweating and her burqua may
have slipped slightly. Achmed was completely infuriated and humiliated
by the thought that other men may have seen his wife's eyelashes and
possibly even her eyebrow. Achmed threw his wife to the floor and
kicked her as hard as he could in the ribs. Achmed dragged his wife to
the tribal religious court where she was found guilty of lewdness in
public and subsequently executed by stoning.
drda...@yahoo.com
Amos
news:1125333644.3...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I am proud to be a MUSLIM. In your face arsehole! There are far more
> muslims in the world than there are all breeds of Christians and jews
> all lumped together.
Not true, there are about as many Roman Catholics as there are muslims, not
counting other Christian denominations. There must be far more Christians
if you lump them all together.
But since when has the number of followers said anything about the veracity
of a religion?
If the Zoroastrians had the truth (and who says they haven't?), the fact
that there are only a few thousand of them left would not make any
difference.
And most ancestors of present day muslims were converted against their will
anyway, so I don't think their numbers matter very much. And anyone wishing
to leave the faith has to take massive retributions into account. Otherwise
they might all make a run for it, especially the poor long-suffering women.
> Margaret Hassan had only one enemy: US TROOPS! She
> lived in Iraq for 24 years without anybody doing her harm!
And then the Americans arrived and your coreligionists decided someone had
to pay the price. I see! And the brave fighters of islam decided on Ms
Hassan who had never done anything but good. Divinely inspired, I must say!
Don't you realise what this says about your religion. Jesus Christ said: you
shall know a tree by its fruit. And this is the fruit your religion bears!
"In your face arsehole!" is not precisely the kind of utterance I associate
with civilised behaviour either.
Schöne Grüße,
z
I like (some) Arabic music and (some) Arabic food too, but I have to
say the Koran never cured my kidney stones, and I wouldn't exactly
expect it to.
Amos
news:1125335862.8...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> That was part 2 of alex's story
>
Characterized by a far greater degree of verisimilitude than part 1.
Servus,
Amos
news:1125342265....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
From A. to Z.:
Even if it did do that, it would still not be equivalent to a licence to
kill innocent people.
A.
Nick
"El Conquistador" <ser...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:ydDQe.10655$7F....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
>
> interest in music and was particularly fond of the classical operas and
> symphonies considered high culture in the West. Music was my favorite
> subject in school in which I always earned the highest grades. By sheer
> chance, I happened to hear Arabic music over the radio which so much
> pleased me that I was
etc etc
What are you talking about?
You have copied this straight from
http://dawah.faithweb.com/convert/mjameelah.htm where the actual lady that I
referred to was being interviewed.
Ollie
El Conquistador
"Amos" <amomph...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3nh3mvF...@individual.net...
> "El Paredon" <ser...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> news:1125333644.3...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> I am proud to be a MUSLIM. In your face arsehole! There are far more
>> muslims in the world than there are all breeds of Christians and jews
>> all lumped together.
>
> Not true, there are about as many Roman Catholics as there are muslims,
> not
> counting other Christian denominations.
I do not give two hoots and a whistle for your murderous religion which
justifies killing 70,000 women and children in Iraq! Mine is a religion of
peace, which has been portrayed by Jews otherwise. Since you have probably
never known a muslim in your rotten life, nor visited a muslim country you
are stupid and without knowledge on the subject matter!
El Conquistador
NO RELIGION HAS KILLED MORE INNOCENT PEOPLE THAN CHRISTIANITY DID!
Sheldon Liberman
Christianity killed nobody. People killed other people in its name.
El Conquistador
"Sheldon Liberman" <she...@liberman.com> wrote in message
news:1125353816.2...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
Christians. Christians murdered half a million other Christians in
Constantinople in 13th century, also. To say nothiong about the Crusades
which took lives of 5 million of muslims and jews!
Nick
"El Conquistador" <ser...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:3sLQe.16032$N1....@bignews4.bellsouth.net...
Please see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1603178.stm "The
Roots of Jihad".
Ollie
Nick
See this http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/byzantium/ for Byzantian studies on
the Internet.
5m sounds rather a lot, given that, I gather, the Black Death killed about a
third of the people in Europe.
There is this course on The Crusades at the Univ of North Florida.
http://www.unf.edu/classes/crusades/
University of North Florida/Paul Halsall/Spring 2005
HIS3124 0032 / HIS5934 AE 072
The Course
The crusades to the Holy Land lasted from 1095 until 1291, but the crusading
movement came to encompass a much wider array of military expeditions --
against Jews, Spanish Muslims, European heretics, Baltic pagans, and
eventually Native Americans. We will study the deep roots of the crusading
movement in Western Christian society; the ways in which the crusades
brought three world cultures (The West, Byzantium, Islam) into contact and
confrontation; the type of cultural interaction that took place, and the
continued vitality of the crusading idea in the expansion of Western Europe.
We will investigate different perspectives on the crusades in contemporary
sources: Western Christian sources on the motives and experiences of the
crusaders; Jewish responses to Crusader atrocities; Byzantine reactions to
the influx of Westerners; and Muslim explanations of the events. In addition
to texts from period, we will delve into crusader art, architecture,
literature, and music.
This course will treat writing itself as a thinking process as each student
works on a final paper project. We will use the World Wide Web to access
primary sources in translation as well as some spectacular visual resources,
and email as a medium for discussion outside of class.
Goals
HIS 3124 The Crusades is a 3000 level History course. It is focused on a
study of the development of Crusading as a particularly well-documented
phenomenon of medieval history with a clear modern resonance. Students
should learn how to weigh both original source material and modern
scholarship in determining their own understanding of the period. To this
end the development and execution of an writing projects are central to the
course.
HIS 5934 AE 071 is a 5000 graduate level section of the course. The
development and execution of an individual research project of sufficient
originality to justify conference presentation is the goal of this course.
(Although such a paper need not be submitted to a conference, such
submissions will be encouraged.)
Required Books
Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The Crusades: A Short History, New Haven & London:
Yale University Press, 1987.
A leading overview by perhaps the dominant voice in modern Crusade
historiography. He is a historian who believes that an account of the
crusades needs to cover the expeditions within western Europe as well as the
eastern campaigns.
Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
A major collective work in which many of the leading modern scholars on the
crusades contribute synthetic articles on their specialty.
Gabrieli, Francesco. Arab Historians of the Crusades. Translated by E. J.
Costello. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
Gunther, von Pairis, ca. 1150-ca. 1210. Hystoria Constantinopolitana.
English. as The Capture of Constantinople: The Hystoria Constantinopolitana
of Gunther of Pairis. Edited and translated by Alfred J. Andrea.
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1997.
Recommended Books
Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades: the Baltic and the Catholic
Frontier, 1100-1525. London: 1980. 2nd ed., New York: Penguin, 1998.
Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ed. The Atlas of the Crusades, New York & Oxford,
Facts on File, Inc., 1990.
This is highly recommended. It is now out of print, but can sometimes be
found online and you should buy it if you can.
Crusades Bibliography
A very extensive thematic Crusades Bibliography of books and articles on the
crusades is available as part of this class site.
Primary Sources and More on the World Wide Web
Many of the primary source readings for each class are on the World Wide
Web. If you are reading the online version of this syllabus all you need do
is to select [often by "clicking"] the texts in question, which are listed
under each class. You can then read on screen, or print out the document.
The primary source "textbook" is
Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Crusades
http://www.unf.edu/classes/crusades/ (i.e. this web page)
Films and Music
There are some spectacularly bad movies, and a few very good ones, about the
crusades. Links are to the Internet Movie Database]
The Crusades (1935)
US, Historical/Drama, 123 mins (B/W). Director: Cecil B. DeMille; Cast
includes: Loretta Young (Berengaria), Henry Wilcoxon (Richard), Ian Keith
(Saladin)
Cecil B. De Mille's effort memorable not only for its conflation of all
crusades into one big mess but most especially Loretta Young as Berengaria
spending a brief vacation in Saladin's harem, and for C. Aubrey Smith as
"The Hermit", tied to a stake on the Saracens' parapet, arms outstretched,
crying "In this sign, you will conquer!!" The critic Pauline Kael noted that
"DeMille willfully garbled every single character and incident." It is one
of the major sources of misinformation about the crusades.
Alexander Nevsky (1938)
Russia, War/Historical, 107, No rating B&W
Director: Sergei Eisenstein, D.I. Vassillev; Cast includes: Nikolai
Cherkassov
-The repelling of a German invasion in the 13th century. Score by Prokofiev.
One of the great movies.
The Seventh Seal, (1957)
Sweden, Drama, 96, No rating B&W. Director: Ingmar Bergman: Cast includes:
Max Von Sydow
Set in 14th-century Sweden, about a knight returning from a crusade playing
a chess game with death. The film made Bergman famous.
El Naser Salah el Dine [Saladin] (1963)
Egypt, Historical/Drama (Technicolor), 175 mins. Director Youssef Chahine.
An Arab movie about Saladin. It is not clear in the movie that Saladin was a
Kurd, not an Arab, and he is presented as a prototype of Nasser in calling
for Arab unity in order to expel the western intruders.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
UK, Historical/Comedy, 90 mins. Directors: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones; Star;
Graham Chapman.
Meant to be humorous. It is, in parts.
Recordings of music associated with the crusades will be played in class.
Here are a few of the CDs should students wish to buy them. [See
http://www.medieval.org/emfaq for track information and how to order
online.
Music of the Crusades - Songs of Love and War
The Early Music Consort of London - David Munrow, dir. 1970
London/Decca "Serenata" 430 264-2DM
Jerusalem: Vision of Peace: Songs and Plainchants of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries
Gothic Voices - Christopher Page
Hyperion 67039 1998
Tracks #9-11 are from the Mass of Easter Day in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (plainchant, c.1130).
Croisade - Musiques vocales et instrumentales
Alfons X (El Sabio), Conon de Béthune, et al.
Orchestra: Concert dans l'Oeuf, La Compagnie Medievale, et al.
Solstice - #155
On the Way to Bethlehem - Music of the Medieval Pilgrim
Ensemble Oni Wytars
Naxos 8.553132
Provence mystique: Sacred Songs of the Middle Ages
Anne Azéma et al. 1999
Erato 3984 25503
Crusader - In nomine domini
Estampie, Münchner Ensemble für frühe Musik - Michael Popp, dir.
Christophorus CHR 77 183
Chants épiques et populaires de Chypre/ Epic and Popular Songs from Cyprus
Ensemble cypriote de musique ancienne/Cypriot Early Music Ensemble --
Michaël Christodoulides 1982
Arion 64182
Montségur: La tragédie cathare
La Nef - Sylvain Bergeron
Dorian 90243
Ollie
Warhol
"El Conquistador" <ser...@bellsouth.net> a écrit dans le message de news:
WuMQe.14724$2_.1...@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
Please stop talking about Jews as victimes... IT WHERE THEM ALWAYS WATCHING
BEHIND THE CURTAINS... The Truth Behind all the Crimes story in history ....
the cheaters... they play with hidden cards.... So that they always win the
Maximum.
Sheldon Liberman
I agree that mass murder in the name of religion has been all too
common throughout our bloody history. It's not the fault of religion
per se, any more than it's the fault of Toyota if someone uses a
Corolla in a hit-and-run.
Sheldon Liberman
When was the last time you had your lithium tablet?
El Conquistador
> common throughout our bloody history. It's not the fault of religion
> per se, any more than it's the fault of Toyota if someone uses a
> Corolla in a hit-and-run.
In which case we should not blame fundamentalists for spreading hate. Right?
z
Oy.
Nick
Warhol wrote:
> "El Conquistador" <ser...@bellsouth.net> a écrit dans le message de news:
> WuMQe.14724$2_.1...@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
> Please stop talking about Jews as victimes... IT WHERE THEM ALWAYS
> WATCHING
> BEHIND THE CURTAINS... The Truth Behind all the Crimes story in history
> ....
> the cheaters... they play with hidden cards.... So that they always win
> the
> Maximum.
When was the last time you had your lithium tablet?
Comment:
It is clear that whilst not very understandable Warhol is writing from a
French-speaking country because "a écrit dans le message de news" is French.
So I think that some allowance should be made for that.
Ollie
Nick
>
>
> I agree that mass murder in the name of religion has been all too
> common throughout our bloody history. It's not the fault of religion
> per se, any more than it's the fault of Toyota if someone uses a
> Corolla in a hit-and-run.
>
Well, yes up to a point, Lord Copper. But if, say arms manufacturers are
supplying arms to both sides in a war, then they should have some
culpability.
And if guns are sold to all and sundry then it is not surprising if a lot of
people get killed by them.
It might not be the fault of the car, which is clearly an inanimate object,
as is the gun, but Toyota is a corporation which is run by people who carry
out advertising, make decisions etc.
Ollie
El Conquistador
"Nick" <tulse0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:df0tot$6j9$1...@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
>
> "Sheldon Liberman" <she...@liberman.com> wrote in message
> news:1125363379....@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>
>> I agree that mass murder in the name of religion has been all too
>> common throughout our bloody history. It's not the fault of religion
>> per se, any more than it's the fault of Toyota if someone uses a
>> Corolla in a hit-and-run.
>>
>
> Well, yes up to a point, Lord Copper. But if, say arms manufacturers are
> supplying arms to both sides in a war, then they should have some
> culpability.
If they supply or manufacture arms for killing people, they should go to the
ovens, period!
Sheldon Liberman
Interesting spin. What does it have to do with religion?
Sheldon Liberman
Ah...so you're saying Islam ordains the spreat of hatred at its basic
level?
fla...@verizon.net
Check his posting history befor shooting your mouth off.
Ben Cramer
<fla...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:x49Re.26040$FL1.24126@trnddc09...
Stop shooting your mouth off. Period.
Sheldon Liberman
You think allowances should be made anti-Semites on the grounds that
its merely a translation issue? Does Belleview know of your
dissappearance?
Sheldon Liberman
As opposed to arms for...what?...shooing people away?