ISLAMIC FAITH

After the ceasefire on recent violence that dominated the world’s attention in May, following evictions and attacks in the zone of the Jerusalem Al Aqsa Mosque, signs of rising tensions have flared up again: Israeli nationalists announce a coming “flag march” in Jerusalem, while Hamas leaders vow to defend holy sites. What can the watching world do, to change the face of Israeli-Palestinian permanent-seeming conflict? Reaching beyond headlines and hashtags to explore these and other questions, we bring on distinguished guests – forensic scholar and political scientist Norman Finkelstein, and his sometimes co-author, Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of the Arab studies platform Jadaliyya.com. How can a movement like DiEM25 in Europe, interpret this conflict towards real change?

DAVID GAMBLE—A common enemy unifies people. While the Yellow Vest protests have underscored the economic and financial crises of capitalism as they rally against austerity and privilege, a gasoline tax and inequities, the traumatised French population gathered en masse in unified nationalism.  They confronted the Muslim enemy, alleged radical separatism which, in some aspersions, is somehow leftist Islamo gauchisme.  What, then, is left of solidarity of the Arab working class with the general population? They have been dismissed with a word in the current rightward trend. The religious rights of Muslims need to be included. This is not limited just to Muslim students but to Arab workers who compose 3.3% of the French population.

MANSOUREH TAJIK—Questions (be they real, cynical, or rhetorical) forming in the mind of those without real familiarity with Quran and Islam might include the followings: If Islam as a religion and Quran as a Book of God have qualities that they could produce such contrary products and opposite leaderships as a wise leader like Ayatullah Khamenei and a weasel like Sultan Erdogan Junior, then what good is such religion and of what use is such Book?! Random and lottery picking could have a 50/50 chance of either of the two outcomes, too. So, why bother with God, Islam, the religion, and the Book?

These are rational questions and I am glad that some are asking them, albeit with their inner voices. The short answer to these questions is that the two are not both products of the same religion and Book. They are the products of the degree to which they stay on or astray from the Right Path as set by this religion and this Book. The Leader is an example of someone who is genuinely striving to be on the Right Path to the best of his abilities.