The theological basis of Muslim antipathy to Israel is far more complex. For a long time, this enmity has been primarily political (Israel as an agent of European colonialism in the Arab world), or cultural (Israel as a force of Western modernity that threatens the ethical foundations of Islam), or territorial (Israel as a conqueror of Muslim lands that evicted the legitimate inhabitants from their patrimony), or humanitarian (Israel as a cause of suffering and destruction in the Muslim world). Recently, however, the theological argument has begun playing a larger role.

Muslim propaganda increasingly portrays Israelis as infidels who wrested control of dar el-Islam, sacred Muslim land. Infidel dominion over Islamic holy sites, and the threat that this dominion poses to the sanctity of these sites, inflames the religious passions of a great many Muslims. Furthermore, this portrayal places Israelis within the context of Islam’s larger historical struggle against heretics, particularly those who sought to conquer Jerusalem and the land of Israel. Foremost among these heretics were the Crusaders; just as Islam’s war against the Crusaders is remembered primarily as a religious conflict, and less as a political and ethnic one, many Muslims view the current struggle with Israel in the same way.

Another theological claim that enjoys great popularity in the Arab world, particularly among Arab intellectuals, is that the Jews are a religious sect, not a nation, and as such are not entitled to political sovereignty. This argument denies the existence of a Jewish collective entitled to equal rights in the international community, and in turn denies the very concept of a “Jewish state.” This thinking has deep roots in Islamic teachings concerning the rights of religious minorities in Muslim society, a subject addressed extensively in the scholarly literature of the last generation.¹⁰ According to these teachings, Jews living in Muslim lands are a heretical group, and should be tolerated only out of respect for their monotheistic belief. Nevertheless, they are inferior human beings, and are not entitled to full human rights. Thus while the hatred of Jews was admittedly not as deadly in the Muslim world as it was in Christian lands, the perception that the Jews were spiritually and morally flawed certainly affected their treatment by Muslims in both the medieval and modern periods.¹¹ Here the religious prejudice against Judaism was transformed into a social prejudice that denies the Jewish claim to equal rights, either within Muslim society or in the international community.

This attitude considerably strengthens the sense that an injustice was done to the Muslims who were dispossessed of lands and status by the State of Israel. While this is not exactly theology, it is nonetheless a part of Islam’s attitude towards the Jewish state. Yet while this sense of religious anger has deep roots and great emotional power, it has not historically been a central facet of Islam’s campaign against Israel. In this respect, the Six Day War in June 1967 had a dramatic impact on the Muslim negation of Israel’s existence, in that it transformed the rejection of the Jewish state’s legitimacy into a fight regarding its borders: Subsequently, the Muslim focus, as seen in the Oslo agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, was mainly on negating Israel’s conquests in that war, and not on destroying the Jewish state entirely. Like the Vatican, Muslims, too, have generally chosen to focus on the political rather than the theological aspects of their denial of Jewish sovereignty. Particularly after the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, it became a clear Muslim interest to play down the religious arguments in order to encourage an Israeli withdrawal from as much territory as possible.

All this changed in September 2000, when the Palestinian Authority launched a war against Israel. Once again, both the religious dispute and the overall question of Jewish sovereignty were brought to the fore, primarily in the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” of Palestinian refugees into Israel. As a result, while some still believe that peace initiatives will generate enough momentum to ensure that Arabs accept the idea of a Jewish state, others view Arab acquiescence as a purely tactical move, and believe it will reverse itself the moment an opportunity to destroy the Jewish state arises. The “return” of millions of Palestinian refugees would be just such an opportunity.

It is important to note the religious overtones in the idea that Israel is an agent of Western culture seeking to subvert the religious, social, and moral values of Islam. Much of the Muslim world sees the West as a bitter rival whose material and spiritual values pose a direct threat to Islam. This explains why those Muslim countries that have adopted Western social or political arrangements constantly suffer fierce internal divisions. In such countries, however, hostility towards Israel helps to unify the ranks, and leaders seeking to introduce Western innovations sometimes encourage this hostility in order to placate Muslim extremists. It is worth noting that a familiarity with Israel does nothing to dampen this hostility: For the devout Muslim, the cafes of Tel Aviv represent not Israeli normalcy and humanity, but that same Western depravity and decadence that threaten Muslim civilization.

In short, the prevalent conception in the Islamic world is that Israel is a state of infidels who have no right to sovereignty. Even though Arab governments note with pride that the Jews who lived among them did not suffer persecution of the kind that befell their European brethren, the fact is that Jews in Arab countries lacked all rights to political autonomy and membership in the political elite. Thus, in spite of the theological differences between Islam and Christianity, historically speaking the perceived tension between Judaism and sovereignty was felt no less strongly in Islamic than in Christian countries. In the Arab world, the Jews were tolerated as long as they knew their place and recognized their inferior status.

Since the Arab world has not granted equal rights to religious, cultural, or ethnic minorities, the Muslim image of the Jew remains unchanged. At best, Jews are tolerated, but are nevertheless always suspected of wrongdoing, and are in no way considered worthy of self-determination—certainly not in a land Muslims believe to be rightfully theirs. Such a view does not distinguish between its historical, political, and religious implications; the Israeli presence in Palestine is insufferable because the Jews rebelled against their proper station.

While in colonial times, the Middle East and North Africa were a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, in the second half of the twentieth century Islamic states not only won their sovereignty, but also cleansed themselves of religious minorities. The result is that today, no Arab state has a significant Jewish population (although a few Jewish communities remain in Morocco). Christian communities in Arab countries, such as the Maronites in Lebanon, the Copts in Egypt, and the French in Algeria, are dwindling, and are often oppressed. The same holds true for Christians in cities like Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Ramallah, where Palestinian Muslims constitute a decisive majority. Fifty years ago, Christians were well represented in the Arab world; not only did they fill leadership positions, they also founded important national and social movements.¹² Today, however, there is little religious diversity in the Arab world.

Since the Jewish state was established on territory Christianity had relinquished after its defeats in the Crusades, recognizing Israel was less problematic for Christians than for Muslims. Christian churches in the Holy Land have survived for centuries under non-Christian regimes, and while they may not be theologically comfortable with Jewish sovereignty, they do not view it as an unmitigated disaster. Islam, by contrast, cannot tolerate the subjugation of “Muslim” territory to Jewish dominion. Moreover, much of the Muslim world views the establishment of Israel as a kind of Christian penance for the Holocaust, and believes that the Christian world paid for its own wrongdoing by carving a Jewish state out of Muslim lands. In the Muslim view this is a terrible injustice to Islam, and only the elimination of Jewish sovereignty can remedy it.

 

If Christians and Muslims perceive Jewish sovereignty very differently from the way most Jews do, there is an even greater disparity on the question of what kind of state Israel should be. Of the nearly two hundred independent states today, not one combines religion and state in the way Israel does. Christian and Muslim countries usually do not represent a unique religious identity; Israel is one of the only countries whose majority belongs to a religion that is dominant nowhere else. India, for example, does have a significant movement seeking to equate the state with Hinduism, yet India includes many different religious communities, and no one would call it “the Hindu state.”¹³ Iran’s identification with Shiite Islam is not entirely unlike the situation in Israel, but Iran’s principal identity is Muslim, not Shiite. Likewise, Armenia and Ethiopia are associated with a particular form of Christianity, but their main religious identity is Christian. Israelis, however, are citizens of the only Jewish state in the world. Even if the individual Israeli protests that he is ideologically committed to the rejection of his religious heritage, he will still be viewed by others as a citizen of the Jewish state. Foreigners accept that some Israelis adhere more strictly to Jewish law than others, yet the complete identification of “Israeli” with “Jew” is never in question.

Jews and Israelis would do well to keep in mind that not everything that is obvious to them is equally obvious to outside observers. While most Jews see Israel as a fundamentally secular political entity, they must realize that other religions do not share this point of view. From the perspective of the latter, the ingathering of the exiles and Jewish sovereignty are laden with theological meaning. For Christianity and Islam, Israel never has been and never will be a “normal” country. For them, at least, there can be no distinction between Jewish religious existence and Jewish national life.

1. For an examination of these two conflicting approaches, see Menachem Friedman, “The State of Israel as a Theological Dilemma,” in Baruch Kimmerling, ed., The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Albany: suny, 1989), pp. 165-215.

2. Aurelius Augustine, Against the Jews (Adversus Iudaeos); Eugene J. Fisher, “The Holy See and the State of Israel: The Evolution of Attitudes and Policies,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 24:2 (Spring 1987), pp. 191-197.

3. See James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), p. 248; Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century (New York: Hermon, 1966).

4. Cardinal Augustin Bea, for example, thought that “the return of Jews to their ancient homeland… held no religious significance. It was a totally political phenomenon.” Anthony J. Kenny, Catholics, Jews, and the State of Israel (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), p. 47.

5. For an updated survey of the religious positions of these messianic circles in a comprehensive historical-ideological context, see Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: Harper, 1994), pp. 250-280.

6. The main source of this belief is found in the New Testament: “And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed a hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.... After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” Revelations 7:4-10.

7. Nancy T. Ammerman, “North American Protestant Fundamentalism,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms Observed (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991), pp. 1-65.

8. An extreme example of this was the fact that the Mormon church, whose apocalyptic visions in some ways resemble the ideas of evangelism, abstained from missionary activity—which is its raison d’etre, the professed objective of every one of its believers-in order to set up a university on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. The Mormons were required to conceal every obviously Christian feature and to refrain from any activity designed to disseminate their teachings among the Jews.

9. An attempt was made along these lines in the nineteenth century when Liberia was established as the land of American blacks returning to their African homeland. There is no need to expand upon the awful results of that experiment.

10. See, for instance, Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, trans. Miriam Kochman and David Littman (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2002), pp. 58-60.

11. “The unbelievers among the People of the Book… shall burn forever in the fire of hell. They are the vilest of all creatures.” The Koran, trans. N.J. Dawood (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1971), 98:6, p. 29. For a discussion of the inferior status of Jews in Islamic lands, see Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude; Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton: Princeton, 1984), pp. 14-15, 32.

12. Thus, for instance, Edward Said was “uprooted” first and foremost because the Arab-Christian milieu in which he grew up in Jerusalem, Egypt, and Lebanon no longer exists, not because of Israel but because of the wholesale aggression of Muslim Arabism. In a review of the Hebrew translation of Out of Place: a Memoir by Said, Ronit Matlon recounts that after the Oslo agreements she spoke with an educated Arab in Gaza and asked him the meaning of Said’s opposition to the agreements. The Palestinian’s answer was that “Said’s yes is not our yes, and Said’s no is not our no.” Ha’aretz literary supplement, December 5, 2001, p. 8. There were many Christians among the Arab national leadership, including the first Israeli Arab leaders—Sliva Hamis, Toufik Toubi, and Emil Habibi. All these have disappeared. Christians were among the founders of the Palestinian national movement and the heads of its first terror organizations-George Habash and Naif Hawatmeh, for example. It can be said that some of the founders of international Arab terror, which is currently fueled by fundamentalist Muslim fanaticism, were the Christians who headed the Palestinian terror organizations in the 1960s and 1970s.

13. A few years ago, this movement sent a delegation to Israel’s National Religious Party to learn from the experience of a political party that also represents religion and seeks to mold the state in its image. I am not sure to what extent these events influenced relations between India and Israel, which have improved significantly in recent years.