Muslim Countries

Were Not Pluralistic

To the Editor:

You naively report Mazin Qumsiyeh’s suggestion that Israelis and Palestinians “should live together in a pluralistic society, as they did hundreds of years ago, in peace.”

For hundreds of years, Jews and Christians lived as minority groups in Muslim countries.  According to the shaaria, or Islamic law, Jews and Christians were forbidden from entering prestigious trades, from bearing arms, and from defending themselves if attacked by a Muslim.  Jews and Christians were frequently forced to convert to Islam on penalty of death, while any Muslim who chose to become a Christian or a Jew was put to death. The testimony of Jews and Christians was not admitted in Islamic courts, so it was not surprising that over time the number of Jews and Christians in Qumsiyeh’s peaceful society dwindled steadily, while those who remained became very poor. They also had to acknowledge their inferiority to Muslims by bowing, stepping aside so that Muslims could pass, and so forth. In Iran up to the present day in old-fashioned villages, whenever it rained the Jews were forced to remain indoors since Muslims believed that rain splashing off a Jew will contaminate a Muslim. It was common for Muslim boys to remind Jews and Christians of their inferiority by spitting and throwing stones at them. The Christians were not allowed to complain or to defend themselves.

Things looked up for both Jews and Christians in Islamic countries when those countries became European colonies, because the European governments enforced equal rights for all. But since independence things have gotten much, much worse. Almost all of the three million Christians who lived in Turkey 100 years ago were murdered (over a million Armenians in a horrific genocide) or driven from their homes at bayonet point (over a million Orthodox Christians.) Most of the Christians who once lived in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq have been forced to emigrate. There and elsewhere the dwindling Christian communities of the Middle East are subjected to legal discrimination and intermittent physical attacks.

 Since 1948 over 900,000 Jews have been driven out of their homes in Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and other Muslim countries. They were robbed of all of their possessions and many were killed — which encouraged the others to flee. Most of Jews went to the new nation of Israel. They arrived as penniless refugees. And they built a beautiful, prosperous democracy.

The Palestinians were also given the chance to build a country of their own. Instead they have spent the last 56 years attempting to drive the Jews into the sea. Mazin Qumsiyeh’s organization, Al Awda, celebrates those who murder Jews with suicide bombs as holy martyrs.

There are 26 Arab Muslim nations. And one Jewish nation. Mazin Qumsiyeh has called the idea that the Jews are entitled to have a nation of their own a “disease.” He is notorious anti-Semite and the leader of an organization, Al Awda, that supports terrorism and calls for the destruction of the Jewish State. Newtown should be ashamed of having invited such a man into its schools and you should be ashamed for publishing his disingenuous talk in his paper without more thoroughly exploring who this man is and what he stands for.

Diana Appelbaum

Newton, Mass.                                                             December 3, 2004