IslamQA: The Islamic stance toward Israel and its Jews

Assalamu alaikum! Brother, what do you think of Israel occupation of Palestine? Do you approve of the Israelite State standing on the land of the Palestinians?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

Israel was established by injustice and oppression, based on a Jewish-supremacist ideology that believes all Palestinians should ideally be made to leave all the “Israeli” lands.

However, in order to solve such situations, I believe that we must focus on the situation as it is today, rather than focusing on historical injustices. But the fact is that the Jewish-supremacist ideology remains. Israelis are not interested in peace or co-existence, but in constantly taking over Palestinian lands until they remain so long on those lands that the land becomes theirs by law and custom.

I know some Muslims feel despair at the power of Israel. It has one tenth the population of Egypt yet it has an economy the size of Egypt’s economy. It is the most economically and technologically advanced Middle Eastern country and the only one with nuclear weapons in Western Asia.

As I have said elsewhere, I have a historian’s view of history, thinking in terms of generations and centuries. The State of Israel has not existed even for a single human lifetime (80 years). My view is that the Israelis are playing with fire. Israel is a poetic disaster waiting to happen, and every Israeli injustice, oppression and expansion only makes this more likely. We do not have to refer to the Quran for this; the Torah contains enough terrifying promises against the Jews:

If you despise my laws, and contemn my judgments so as not to do those things which are appointed by me, and to make void my covenant:

I also will do these things to you. I will quickly visit you with poverty, and burning heat, which shall waste your eyes, and consume your lives. You shall sow your seed in vain, which shall be devoured by your enemies.

I will set my face against you, and you shall fall down before your enemies: and shall be made subject to them that hate you. You shall flee when no man pursueth you.

But if you will not yet for all this obey me: I will chastise you seven times more for your sins.

And I will break the pride of your stubbornness: and I will make to you the heaven above as iron, and the earth as brass.

Your labour shall be spent in vain: the ground shall not bring forth her increase: nor the trees yield their fruit.

If you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you for your sins.

And I will send in upon you the beasts of the field, to destroy you and your cattle, and make you few in number: and that your highways may be desolate.

And if even so you will not amend, but will walk contrary to me:

I also will walk contrary to you, and will strike you seven times for your sins.

And I will bring in upon you the sword that shall avenge my covenant. And when you shall flee into the cities, I will send the pestilence in the midst of you. And you shall be delivered into the hands of your enemies,

After I shall have broken the staff of your bread: so that ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and give it out by weight: and you shall eat, and shall not be filled,

But if you will not for all this hearken to me, but will walk against me

I will also go against you with opposite fury: and I will chastise you with seven plagues for your sins,

So that you shall eat the flesh of your sons and of your daughters.

I will destroy your high places, and break your idols. You shall fall among the ruins of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.

Insomuch that I will bring your cities to be a wilderness: and I will make your sanctuaries desolate: and will receive no more your sweet odours.

And I will destroy your land: and your enemies shall be astonished at it, when they shall be the inhabitants thereof.

And I will scatter you among the Gentiles: and I will draw out the sword after you. And your land shall be desert, and your cities destroyed.

Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths all the days of her desolation. When you shall be

In the enemy's land, she shall keep a sabbath, and rest in the sabbaths of her desolation: because she did not rest in your sabbaths, when you dwelt therein.

And as to them that shall remain of you I will send fear in their hearts in the countries of their enemies. The sound of a flying leaf shall terrify them: and they shall flee as it were from the sword. They shall fall, when no man pursueth them.

And they shall every one fall upon their brethren as fleeing from wars: none of you shall dare to resist your enemies.

You shall perish among the Gentiles: and an enemy's land shall consume you.

And if of them also some remain, they shall pine away in their iniquities, in the land of their enemies: and they shall be afflicted for the sins of their fathers, and their own.

Until they confess their iniquities, and the iniquities of their ancestors, whereby they have transgressed against me, and walked contrary unto me.

Therefore I also will walk against them, and bring them into their enemies' land until their uncircumcised mind be ashamed. Then shall they pray for their sins.

And I will remember my covenant, that I made with Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham. I will remember also the land:

Which when she shall be left by them, shall enjoy her sabbaths, being desolate for them. But they shall pray for their sins, because they rejected my judgments, and despised my laws.

And yet for all that when they were in the land of their enemies, I did not cast them off altogether. Neither did I so despise them that they should be quite consumed: and I should make void my covenant with them. For I am the Lord their God.

And I will remember my former covenant, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, in the sight of the Gentiles, to be their God. I am the Lord. These are the judgments, and precepts, and laws, which the Lord gave between him and the children of Israel, in mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses.

The Old Testament, Leviticus 26:15-45

The Quran repeats these promises and threats:

Moses said to his people, “Remember God’s blessings upon you, as He delivered you from the people of Pharaoh, who inflicted on you terrible suffering, slaughtering your sons while sparing your daughters. In that was a serious trial from your Lord.”

And when your Lord proclaimed: “If you give thanks, I will grant you increase; but if you are ungrateful, My punishment is severe.”

And Moses said, “Even if you are ungrateful, together with everyone on earth—God is in no need, Worthy of Praise.”

The Quran, verses 14:6-8.

The Quran also says:

And We conveyed to the Children of Israel in the Scripture: You will commit evil on earth twice, and you will rise to a great height.

When the first of the two promises came true, We sent against you servants of Ours, possessing great might, and they ransacked your homes. It was a promise fulfilled.

Then We gave you back your turn against them, and supplied you with wealth and children, and made you more numerous.

If you work righteousness, you work righteousness for yourselves; and if you commit evil, you do so against yourselves. Then, when the second promise comes true, they will make your faces filled with sorrow, and enter the Temple as they entered it the first time, and utterly destroy all that falls into their power.

Perhaps your Lord will have mercy on you. But if you revert, We will revert. We have made Hell a prison for the disbelievers.

The Quran, verses 17:4-8.

So the Jews, whether they like it or not, are caught in a Biblical story. The State of Israel is simply the latest “chapter” of this story–and it is not the final chapter. And all the Biblical and Quranic signs are that a terrible fate awaits them.

Among the People of the Book is he, who, if you entrust him with a heap of gold, he will give it back to you. And among them is he, who, if you entrust him with a single coin, he will not give it back to you, unless you keep after him. That is because they say, “We are under no obligation towards the gentiles [non-Jews].” They tell lies about God, and they know it.

Indeed, whoever fulfills his commitments and maintains piety—God loves the pious.

Those who exchange the covenant of God, and their vows, for a small price, will have no share in the Hereafter, and God will not speak to them, nor will He look at them on the Day of Resurrection, nor will He purify them. They will have a painful punishment.

The Quran, verses 3:75-77.

So while the suffering of the Palestinians is very real and is something that I worry about, from my historian’s perspective I consider Israel a house of cards; built on the most precarious foundations. Every injustice they do toward the Palestinians is yet another call to God/Yahweh/Allah to make His threats come true.

God is patient and He is not in a hurry:

Have they not journeyed in the land, and had minds to reason with, or ears to listen with? It is not the eyes that go blind, but it is the hearts, within the chests, that go blind.

And they ask you to hasten the punishment. But God never breaks His promise: and a day with your Lord is like a thousand years of your count.

How many a town have I reprieved, although it was unjust? Then I seized it. To Me is the destination.

The Quran, verses 22:46-48.

From God’s perspective, the State of Israel has only existed for about an hour and 42 minutes. God is waiting until the ideal moment for His poetic justice to be expressed.

So for me as a Muslim, Israel is nothing to worry about it. God is in charge of history and He has a plan for it. What is cause for worry for me actually is the fate of the Jews of Israel; a very real tragedy is waiting to happen to them because of their own deeds and choices. I do not like to see any human suffer, and the suffering they inflict on the Palestinians will be returned to the Jews in a most horrible way some time in the future.

I wish that the Jews would follow the Torah and humbly submit to God and fear His promises. If they did this, they would start to treat the Palestinians as their equals and fellow humans rather than as animals to be scared away.

My view is that not a single Palestinian’s right will be lost; every child’s sorrow at a tree cut down, every old woman’s sorrow at the loss of her sons and daughters to Israeli injustice, will be written down and repaid.

To me the Israelis are like children playing with fire and challenging their God to do His worst to them. All we need to do is wait and see what God does. Our task is to be patient and to not let Israeli injustices make us unjust as they are; we must conduct ourselves with the best manners.

And let not the hatred of people who barred you from the Sacred Mosque incite you to aggression. And cooperate with one another in virtuous conduct and conscience, and do not cooperate with one another in sin and hostility. And fear God. God is severe in punishment.

The Quran, from verse 5:2.

While some Muslims believe that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem is Muslim “unity” and political and military might, I reject this Islamist ideology. Our task is to do the best with whatever God has given us. We can support things like the BDS movement, we can work to expose Israeli crimes, and Muslim individuals in the West can work to become politicians so that they can defend the rights of the Palestinians just as Jewish politicians in the West do their utmost to defend the rights and interests of the Israelis. But the final solution will not come from some Islamist leader. It will come organically from God.

We are not powerless. In fact we have all the power we need because to God belongs all power, and God is our Lord and the Lord of the Jews. The power that will solve the problem will be God’s power and we can never predict how this power will show itself. Our task, and the task of the Palestinians, is to prove to God that we live according to the ideals of morality and that we are more deserving of His help and support than the Israelis are. And then, waiting patiently, we will see His judgment one of these days.

The Israeli-Palestinian problem will not be solved with violence, domination, schemes and hurried political plans. It will solve itself naturally, through God’s management of history.