The Israel-Hamas war and the religion of violence: an Ex-Muslim’s perspective
Muhammed, Quran, and Islam
On October 7th, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1195 people and wounding over 13,500 people. Since then, Israel has been on a revenge mission to annihilate Hamas- the Arab supremacist Islamic terror organization known for its intense hatred of Jews. If Muslims use Islamophobia according to their whims and fancies to play the victim card, then it is high time that our modern lexicography re-establishes the forgotten word Judeophobia.
The Muslim mindset
When the Israel-Hamas war was at its peak, people in my Islamic society used to hold special prayers for Palestine. All local mosques were reverberating with special prayers. Being an outspoken Ex-Muslim, my family couldn’t get me for those sessions, so they tried to get my attention with what they thought was a logical conversation.
Usually, in the family WhatsApp groups where middle-aged adults are active, they share all the attention-seeking photos of Palestinian suffering. I exited the groups, watching their selective morality and outbursts. But women and children are conned by these selective narratives.
‘Look how Palestinians are suffering, children are crying, and mothers are wailing, wounds all over their body… ‘ said one who is an engineer by profession.
I didn’t respond.
Then, the conspiracy theories started coming in.
‘Even Israelis say that Netanyahu is a psychopath… I think the US and Israel created Hamas. Hamas and all other Islamic terror groups are the Western propaganda to make Muslims look evil… I saw a video on WhatsApp (family group) that the October 7 bombing was Israel’s doing. Mossad did it to villainize Muslims and attack Gaza… poor Gaza… innocent Palestinians…’
At the same time, the Russia-Ukraine war was going on, so I asked, ‘What about Ukraine? Aren’t you bothered about them? Don’t you feel the pain of Ukrainians?’
Fast came the reply, ‘Zelensky is Jewish. He is the cause of the war. Jews cannot be trusted. They are all treacherous.’
Islam and Judeophobia
In the first chapter of the Quran, Al Fatiha (the opening), the seventh verse says, ‘Guide us through the path of the blessed, not of whom you are angry and not of whom who are misguided.’ (1: 7). If we go to the explanation of the Quran (Tafsir), we can see that the people who Allah is angry with are Jews, and the misguided ones are Christians. Surah al-Fatiha is also considered a prologue to the Quran.
Christians are called the misguided ones. The equation of Muslims with Christians is a topic for another in-depth article for another day. So, in a book whose prologue says that God is angry with a particular community, what are the chances that the people who follow that book’s every word would ever be at peace with the community?
Naturally, Muslims will be angry with Jews, not because Jews did anything to Muslims. In India, there are only 4000–5000 people. As an Indian who lived most of my life in India, I have never seen a Jew in my entire life there. Yet, I hated Jews when I was a Muslim. The reason is simple: Islam taught me to hate them.
Even if we avoid Surah Al-Fatiha’s explanation and argue that Jews were not named explicitly, the whole message of the Quran would certainly point to the idea that Jews are the people with whom Allah (the Islamic God) is angry. The Judeophobia of the Quran is explicit.
The second chapter of the Quran is Al-Baqarah (the heifer). In this chapter, Muhammed or Allah claims that Jews betrayed Moses by praying to a calf when he went on travel for forty days (51). Then, in the next verse, Allah says he pardoned them (52). In the 53rd verse, it is said that Moses was given scriptures (probably talking about the Torah) to guide Israelis or Jews. But, they betrayed and worshipped a calf about which Moses warned them and commanded them to desist (54). Then Israelis or Jews asked for a miracle as proof, to which Allah became angry and struck them with a thunderbolt, killing them(55). Allah revived Jews or Israelis again so that they would be appreciative (56). Then, he gave them manna (edible food that tastes like a wafer and honey) and quails, but they were unappreciative. They thought they were deceiving Allah when they were deceiving their souls (57). The events are written incoherently. The whole Quran is incoherent, and today's Islamic scholars have gone to great pains to make sense of the stories in the Quran. Can an omnipotent and omniscient God write such an incoherent book?
The Quran says that Jews and Christians are wrong about God (2:111–120). Then, in 2:122, Allah says that he favored and blessed Jews or Israelis among all the people (the blessing part can also be found in verses 40 and 46 of Baqarah). From 2:60–71, the Quran narrates how disloyal and untrustworthy Jews are, greedy for more, and then narrates the heifer story again. The Quran is full of repetitions of the same stories, talking of punishments in hell and gaslighting of Muslims. Such a repetitive and incoherent book doesn’t bode well for the omniscient and omnipotent God, Allah.
Allah made a covenant with Jews (2:83) and gave Moses the scripture with a succession of prophets sent to Israelis to guide them. Still, they grew arrogant and killed the prophets (2:87). So Allah cursed them for their ingratitude (2:88). The calf story is told again from 2:92-95 to claim that Jews are ungrateful and their faith is wretched. Allah asks them to wish for death if they are sincere (gaslighting). Jews and Christians are misguided because Abraham was a monotheist, not an idolator, and his religion is the only true religion (2:135, 140). The story of Jewish treachery is again narrated in verse 2:246, saying that they refused to go to war for Allah when they promised otherwise.
In the fourth chapter, Al-Nisa (the women), Jews are called slanderers of the true religion (Islam) because of which Allah cursed them (4:46). Jews were forbidden from good things by Allah because of their wrongdoings, including deterring many from Allah’s path (4:160). Jews are called liars (5: 41). Muslims should not ally with Jews (5: 51). The greatest enemies of Muslims are Jews and polytheists (5: 82). The toxic Judeophobia narrative does not stop there. Quran is the reason why Judeophobia is in vogue in Islamic circles. Every Muslim who says they follow the Quran will have hatred of Jews in their hearts.
A search beyond
So, why does Allah hate Jews so much? The answer lies in Prophet Muhammad’s history. There is a fact that Muslims have tried to destroy, but it still protrudes like a thorn in their worldview that they ignore. A Jewish woman poisoned Prophet Muhammed after the Muslim conquest of Khaibar- a Jewish settlement. The conquest was as violent and brutal as any and killed many. Muhammad killed and beheaded the Jewish leaders, rendering many women and children widows and orphans. Muslims plundered and looted Khaibar.
In Swahih (authentic) Hadith, it is said that after the war, one of the women invited Muhammad to her house and served roasted lamb shoulders, which was his favorite. He started eating it. But soon, he realized it was poisoned and commanded others not to eat. Some died.
Muhammad asked his Sahaba (followers) to bring the Jewish woman, and he asked her why she had poisoned him. She said that Muslims killed her son and husband in their war, making her a widow and an orphan. She wanted to check whether Muhammed was a true prophet by poisoning. God will inform him of the poisoning if he is the true prophet. Otherwise, he will consume it. Although Muhammad survived the assassination attempt, it was still late. He consumed a small part of the deadly poison, enough to make him a victim of chronic poisoning, finally killing him after four years.
Although Muslims deny that Muhammed consumed any part of the poisoned lamb and claim that he was informed of the poisoning by Allah soon after it was brought to him, the fact remains that he was in a great deal of pain after the event, often complaining to his wife, Aisha. In Swahih Hadith, He was also known to jibber-jabber and lost his judgment. He was petulant, asking to feed others with medicines like him, and ordered the Muslims to follow the 18-year-old Usama bin Zaid after his death, which the Sahaba denied.
The opposition that the Jews showed against Muhammad’s scam of a new religion during his lifetime and the poisoning that resulted in his death are some of the prime reasons why the Quran, which he authored, has so much Jewish hatred in it.
The current context
Recently, I moved from India to Sweden to seek employment. When searching for suitable accommodation for me and my wife, I stumbled upon a less costly one and contacted the landlord. He was a young guy in his early thirties and welcomed us to his house.
After viewing his house and discussing the formalities of the rental agreement, he asked politely if I had any problem with him moving to Israel. I was surprised. I said it was his personal life and I had no right to comment. He smiled and said that he was Jewish, and due to the war in the Middle East, he wanted to be open about everything. I told him that I am a human being, unfortunate to be born in an Islamic society. The Islamic identity of my name is forced on me, and it was not something I chose. I also told him that I left Islam three years back.
After we came back to our temporary settlement, I wondered whether any Muslim would ever rent out his or her house to a Jew, even if there were no war. My mind said,
‘No’
When I told my wife about these things, she told me to write about them, and this article rose from that thought. Currently, there is still a sit-in protest going on in front of Gothenburg University that has posters reprimanding the Swedish government and the West for supporting Israel with basic necessities in their times of need. There are woke youngsters, including women and LGBTQIA+, parading with the Palestinian flag.
Perhaps they don’t know that the kind of freedom and living standards that they enjoy is never possible in an Islamic society because Islam denigrates LGBTQIA+ and treats women as second-grade citizens. Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan, the Iranian theocracy, and the Saudi Arabian Monarchy are prime examples of how Islam treats people of other religions, women, and LGBTQIA+. Most Muslims secretly adore Hitler’s holocaust and they will justify the rulers of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
As for their support of Israel, I stand with Sweden’s stand of supporting both Israel and Gaza with basic amenities. In this war, what Israel is doing is a fight for survival. Similar to the Arab and Muslim right to Mecca and Medina, the Jews have a right to the Aqsa. Similar to the Arab’s right to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Middle East, Jews have a right to their homeland, Israel, where they have been continuously persecuted throughout history by various groups. After the advent of Islam, Jews have constantly been persecuted throughout the Arab world, and they fled to multiple parts of the world. Jews have always been at the receiving end of the spectrum when Arabs/Muslims were heralding in their violent glory. In 1948, with their hard work and determination, they won against the Arab world’s tyranny and finally had their motherland. However, the Arab world (KSA, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon) because of their pride continued the war till 1949. In 1949, an agreement was reached when the Arabs took control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Jews took control of other areas of Israel.
Indeed, the war was not bloodless, and Muslims were killed. But, considering the amount of persecution and cruelty suffered by Jews and Israelis, the sufferings of Muslims of today's Israel are little. The onus was on the Arab world to supply aid, accept refugees, and integrate them into the larger Muslim society of the surrounding affluent countries such as KSA, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, etc. Instead, the Palestinians were treated as untouchables and shunned from the surrounding countries. Countries like Iran, Turkey, and Qatar, instead of integrating the Palestinians with themselves, funded terror organizations such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas, explicitly. Even KSA and the other so-called ‘neutral’ Arab countries implicitly supported Hamas’s terrorist endeavors. Through the Quran and Hadith, they taught hatred, war, and violence instead of love, peace, and prosperity to the Palestinian youngsters, fueling Islamic terrorism in their minds. The result was Islamic terrorism. Since coming to power in 2007, Hamas has ruled over the Gaza Strip, trying to destroy Israel and kill Jews instead of working for the welfare of the resident Muslims who voted them to power. The current war saw Hamas using the Gazan people including women and children as human shields so that they could do photo-ops, claiming that Israel is targeting innocent lives; with this Hamas aims to win the war on optics.
Hezbollah, another Islamic terror organization, has joined the war with Israel. But Israel has managed to overcome all the obstacles thrown at them by the Islamic world and almost wiped out Hamas and Hezbollah with their legendary war tactics.
Even after all the hatred, Israel never treated the resident Muslims as slaves or outcastes; they were also treated as free citizens, but tensions did exist. Jews don’t hate Muslims because the holy book of Judaism-Torah came way before the advent of Islam. They started fearing and hating Muslims because of Islam’s explicit hate and violence toward Jews. And Muslims won’t stop hating Jews until and unless they accept that the Quran is not the word of God but the rant of a demagogue called Muhammed.
Conclusion
Islam is a religion of violence because its history is marred by bloodshed. Muhammed was a tribal Arab supremacist chieftain who used Islam to fulfill his desires during his lifetime. After his death, the Sahaba used it to unite the Arabs and quench their bloodlust. The conquests made the Arabs wealthy, and their reign of terror continued till Europe rose as the power center of the Modern world. The culture of Islam teaches Muslims a false sense of their perpetual superiority, whose power is always inferior to their expectations. The superiority complex of the Muslims, added to their biased worldview based on medieval scriptures, has resulted in their perpetual decadence. Their frustrations manifested in the form of religious terrorism.
The humility that Jews have developed due to centuries of oppression and their mindset to be flexible about their religion has made them succeed in many spheres of human progress. On many fronts, while Arab Muslims are not able to digest the Jewish progress, Non-Arab Muslims are perplexed by it. Both of them are drooling over a period of mass bloodshed and violent conquests perpetrated by Islam as the golden age while they call out Israel for violence. In the dogmatic worldview of Islam, while Arab Muslims are frustrated by their fall from the blood-filled glory of their past, Non-Arab Muslims are doomed between their Arab supremacist religion and their own inferior identity.
