Zionism: "a religiosity that deems the slaughter of children a good deed"

On the one hand there are the Western countries that continue to support Israel despite the barbaric massacres it conducts in Gaza, disregarding every human value, feeling and principle; on the other hand there are the masses, again in the streets of the capitals or other cities of Western countries, protesting both Israel and their own rulers' policies on this. This uprising of conscience is showing itself day by day in a far livelier way than in Islamic countries.

Again, on the one hand there are the Jews who support the genocidal aggression of Zionist Israel, which targets babies in their cradles with great pleasure, even with a pious fervor; on the other hand there are Jews who revolt in the name of Judaism because they see this aggression as a violation of the most fundamental values of their religion.

And on the other hand there is Netanyahu, who bombs the enemy's women and children, killing them by tearing them to pieces, and hospitals, schools, houses of worship, without distinguishing between civilian and armed, by referring to his religious legends. And he is not alone in this outlook. Zionist Jews, who grow ever more fervent as they shed blood, are determined to shed more blood and to uproot the Palestinians wholesale, down to their babies in their cradles. And they claim that their religion tells them this.

At this point, how right is it to debate what their religion actually tells them? If we debate this, could we know their religion better than they do and teach them?

Without doubt, when it comes to religion there will always be people who understand and interpret it very differently. It is not always possible to decide what a religion is by looking at the text. What matters is how that religion was understood by people at a particular time and in a particular context and what kind of action that understanding led to. Today there are those who understand Judaism this way and those who understand it that way. Just as it was when the Qur'an was first revealed. It is worth recalling that the Qur'an does not make generalizations especially about peoples, and even when it speaks of their wrongdoings it opens a heading of "the good ones among them" and remembers them with goodness.

Now the Jewish violence to which both Muslims and all humanity are exposed perhaps does not represent all Jews, but evidently it finds a reference for itself in religion. And are not the Christians who support them doing the same, again with reference to their own religion? If we sent a few of our historicist theologians to them, could they convince them that all the religious texts and commands of Judaism or Christianity are in fact historical and do not command killing people today?

Our Prophet was telling the Jews and Christians of his time that the religion they understood no longer had anything to do with Judaism or Christianity, that they had badly misunderstood it. There are quite strong emphases in the Holy Qur'an on how they made unrecognizable a divine principle entrusted to them. Of course we Muslims today think that the Jews and Christians before us have either distorted or misunderstood the religion that came to them, Islam in essence, which preaches Tawhid, that is, not being servants to servants, and which enjoins compassion, justice, measure and respect toward people. The exalted God who sent down the Qur'an to Muslims had earlier sent the Torah and the Gospel to the Children of Israel with the same cause and content. Whatever He preached to Muslims in the Qur'an, He had preached the same to the Jews and Christians in the Torah and the Gospel. The trust given to them was not to make them privileged and superior over people, but to lead in establishing God's principles of justice, compassion and peace.

Israeli Defense Minister Gallant had said at the beginning of the war, "We are fighting animals in Gaza" (although the legendary spokesman of the Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, had also given him an answer that stuffed the unjust word back into his mouth: "yes, you jackals are fighting lions"). Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, for his part, with "non-Jews are in the category of animals," put forth what is in fact a typical expression of a Jewish interpretation. We had seen before that even the famous philosopher of ethics Emmanuel Levinas could not escape this sense of racist superiority with deep roots in Jewish theology. In his interview that we published in issue 20 of Tezkire Magazine (in 2000), the unfathomable indifference he displayed when asked how he would adapt all this ethical understanding toward the Other to the Palestinians subjected to the Sabra and Shatila massacres drew attention. This indifference was not very different from Rabbi Yosef's approach of regarding non-Jews as animals.

Our esteemed psychiatrist-philosopher Prof. Dr. Erol Göka, in a post on social media, referring to these approaches of Gallant and Yosef, says: "The merciless genocide in Palestine has revealed that: the most important theological problem in the world we live in is the belief of some Jewish politicians and clerics that they have the right to determine who is and is not to be counted as human. If it is truly so, where they get this right and why they so believe must be uncovered, and humanity must be enlightened."

Despite the Torah's commands such as "you shall not kill, you shall not lie, you shall not steal, you shall not take interest, you shall not commit adultery," what is it that drives them to kill more than everyone, to lie more than everyone, to trade in interest more than everyone, and moreover to do all this with a pious motivation? The Holy Qur'an in fact gives the answer to this very clearly: "This is because they say: we have no responsibility toward the gentiles" (Al Imran, 75). The gentiles, that is, the non-Jews. There is no ethical responsibility toward them. Crimes committed against them are not counted as crimes. The ten commandments are valid only for law among the Jews themselves. Without doubt, by doing so they have badly distorted and violated the ten commandments, and thus have slandered God.

But what we need to see here is that, especially in the West, among both Jews and Christians, there are also people who will never be drawn to such distorted interpretations of Judaism and Christianity that look kindly on crimes against humanity and massacres of children and civilians.

We also see that in the squares they give voice to this oppression more strongly than even in some Muslim countries. The stance of President Erdoğan, who on returning from Riyadh told journalists "we will not allow this to turn into a Crusader-Crescent war," is both a quite healthy stance against this generalizing approach and a very apt warning about the gravity of such a possibility.

Even though those who do this are truly acting with Crusader feelings and motivations.