Introduction

2006-05-02T22:12:00.000-07:00

Hello there, welcome to my blog. Here, i write out my 2 cents worth, useless ramblings and amusements. I know my command of the language is not top notch, so to all those individuals that have a penchant for correcting grammatical mistakes i kindly invite you to head for the mountains. I DO NOT CARE IF MY ENGLISH IS ROJAK. I am a Malaysian, i speak Manglish and i am proud of it.

Otherwise, feel free to roam around my musings, bask in my demented thoughts and enlighten me on my ill-ways.

Why can't they live as one?

2006-05-02T21:18:00.000-07:00

Wacthing the news, i cannot help but ponder on the plight of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the longest and perhaps the most complicated confrontations yet resolved. Despite numerous peace efforts and intiatives by global organizations and gorvenments, the issue is still very much at large. Since the Arab-Israeli War (1948), the world watched as the bouts escalated to an all out religious war.

However, a little knwon fact that religious respect and tolerance was manifested in Islamic Jerusalem. Caliph Umar, one of Muhammad's successors, replaced the Christian Byzantines in 638, he insisted that the 3 faiths of Abraham co-exist.Even the Jews found their new Muslim rulers (yup, they did co-exist in harmony before!) far more congenial than the Byzantines. The Christians expelled the Jews and forbid the Jews to reside permanently in the city, wherelse Umar invited 70 Jewsih families for resettlement. The Byzantines left the Jewish Temple in ruins and had even begun using the Temple Mount as a garbage dump. Umar, on the account of written evidence, was horrified to see this desecration. He helped clear it with his own hands.

After the bloodbath of the crusades, when Saladin reconquered Jerusalem for Islam in 1187, the Jews (banished from the city by the crusaders) were invited back to return via mass migration and even the western Christians, who had supported the crusading atrocities were allowed back. In the 16th century, Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the magnificent permitted the Jews to make the Western Wall their official holy place and had his court architect Sinan build and oratory for them there.

So why the rejectionism that some Muslims in Jerusalem display today? In history, it has indeed proven to be tolerant in terms of faith. I suppose in the struggle for survival, the more compasionate traditions and values of the Islamic faith tend to get lost. As Muslims the world over feel that Jerusalem is slipping from their grasp, some espouse an intolerance that is far from the Koranic spirit. In an age in which religious atrocities occur in nearly all walks of faith, it would be tragic if the Muslim tradition of inclusion and respect were lost to the world.

Just my 2 cents

Introduction

Why can't they live as one?