How the Left covered up Muslim anti-Semitism in California.
The big Jewish Groups are silent
On Friday July 21st, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis calling for the extermination of the Jews. He quoted an infamous Islamic Hadith which claims that Judgement Day won’t come around until the Muslims hunt down and exterminate the Jews.
“Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews,” he prayed. “Annihilate them down to the very last one,” he added.
Next Friday, after the video went viral, the Imam appeared at a press conference to apologize to the filthy Jews. “I said things that were hurtful to Jews.”
The whole thing was sanctified by Rabbi Seth Castleman, a former Buddhist monk married to the Rev. Elizabeth Griswold, the pastor of Parkside Community Church. Castleman leads Buddhist meditation sessions at his current house of worship. When bacon was dumped on the Islamic Center, Castleman appeared and declared that, “Attacks such as this one are a strike against all of us.”
“Look, the Old and New Testaments have horrible things in them,” Castleman had opined in response to the imam’s anti-Semitic rant. “You can always find horrible things.”
The Islamic Center of Davis had tried to claim that the Imam’s rant had been taken out of context. “If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended,” it offered.
“It’s unfair when I have spoken about nonviolence, and here is some two minutes. My record is very clear, I have always been against violence,” Imam Shahin told the Washington Post.
At the press conference, he conceded that his words might have encouraged violent acts. The farce finally came to an end with a halting apology delivered from a written statement in broken English.
Then he committed to fighting for “social justice” and against “hate speech and violence”.
Imam Shahin’s apology was preceded by an address from a senior minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church who denounced “the language that we hear coming from the highest office in our country.”
When an Imam spews hate at Jews, the left will go right back to attacking President Trump.
The diverse clergy and community leaders at the event were more than happy to give Shahin a pass. And Shahin blamed the whole thing on his “emotions”. It went without saying that a Christian leader calling for Muslim genocide would not have been allowed to use his overwrought “feelings” as an excuse.
While the media had rushed to cover the Islamic Center of Davis’ bacon scandal, the same outlets had far less interest in the Center’s anti-Semitism problem. At first the story could only be found in Jewish and conservative outlets. When the media was finally forced to cover the viral video, it made excuses.
MEMRI, the monitoring organization that found, translated and uploaded the video, was smeared. Since Shahin’s remarks had been translated, challenging the translation was the easiest way to shoot the messenger. The Islamic Center accused MEMRI of having mistranslated “destroy” as “annihilate”.
And it attacked MEMRI for not having featured the ”countless lectures and sermons he has given regarding treating all people, especially non-Muslims, with kindness.”
Why indeed didn’t MEMRI highlight all the lectures in which he didn’t call for genocide?
The Muslim Public Affairs Council put out a statement complaining that, “Groups like MEMRI exacerbate political divisions on the Middle East conflict rather than aim to reconcile differences.” And who better to bring us together than MPAC whose boss had accused Israel of being behind the 9/11 attacks.
Salam al-Marayati had also defended Hamas and Hezbollah. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, the JTAbuilt its story around the MPAC press release without bothering to quote anyone from MEMRI.
The Washington Post tried bringing in its own translator, who accused MEMRI of Islamophobia, and tried to claim that the Imam had only been referring to those Jews involved in the fighting in Jerusalem. Whether this was limited to the Israeli authorities or the millions of Jews in Israel was left open to interpretation. There have been plenty of Islamist fatwas authorizing the extermination of Israeli Jews.
Sheikh Rashid Ghannouchi, of Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda, had stated, “There are no civilians in Israel. The population—males, females and children—are the army reserve soldiers, and thus can be killed.”
Ghannouchi had been hosted by MPAC. The Islamist group had called him, “One of the most important figures in modern Islamic political thought and theory.”
The Washington Post had run an interview with Ghannouchi and stories and editorials in the paper had repeatedly praised him and his movement. One article describes him as “visionary”.
Genocide is visionary indeed.
All the quibbling over the exact translation misses the point. The real horror of Shahin’s rant wasn’t his reference to the “filth of the Jews”. It was the Hadith of the rock and the tree.
The genocidal Hadith is widely quoted by Muslim preachers. Hamas invoked it in its covenant. There was nothing unusual about Shahin’s rant.
That’s the horrifying part.
“The hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. A Jew will hide behind a rock or a tree, and the rock or tree will call upon the Muslim: ‘O Muslim, O slave of Allah! There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!’
That’s the Hadith that Shahin referenced.
“Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah,” he quotes.
But then he begins offering his own elaboration on what Muslims should do about it.
To Shahin, the genocidal text represents a call for Muslim unity that transcends national differences. “They will not say: Oh Egyptian, oh Palestinian, oh Jordanian, oh Syrian, oh Afghan, oh Pakistani.”
Nor does the massacre have to be limited to Israel. “The Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews. We don’t say if it is in Palestine or another place,” he conjectures.
So much for the Washington Post’s attempt at limiting the scope of his genocide to Israel.
There was nothing new about Shahin’s message. It’s a call for Muslims to unify and kill the Jews.
“Let us play a part in this. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds,” Shahin prays.
What does he mean by “deeds”?
“The last thing I would do is intentionally hurt anyone,” Shahin insisted in his apology. His denunciations of violence however ring rather hollow. Not when he quoted a genocidal Hadith which calls for hunting down and killing the Jews. And not necessarily just in Israel, but potentially everywhere.
Some time ago, David Horowitz called on Islamic organizations to repudiate the Hadith in the Declaration Against Genocide. Not a single Muslim group, including MPAC, agreed to do it.
73% of Muslims in ’67 Israel agree with it.
That’s what is at stake in Jerusalem and in Davis and everywhere else. It comes down to genocide.
The left is eager to talk about anti-Semitism on the right, but unwilling to discuss it on the left. Muslims are supposed to be part of one great coalition. It’s a coalition in which Seth Castleman signs on for Muslim migrants and Islamic groups show up for interfaith events. And then Imam Shahin spoiled it.
The apology lets everyone on the left go back to pretending that there isn’t a problem. But there is a problem. And it’s not going anywhere. It’s only getting worse.
The left has whitewashed and justified Muslim attacks on Jewish synagogues. It justifies and defends violence against Jews. Shahin’s murderous sermon was inconvenient, but quickly swept under the rug.
After all the spin and excuses, Imam Shahin never disavowed the genocidal Hadith. Instead he apologized for the hurt feelings. The mosque apologized to anyone who was offended.
But the feelings aren’t the point. The killing is.
Long before the State of Israel was reborn, the Six Day War or the latest terrorist tantrum, an ancient Islamic text ordered Muslims to wipe out the Jews to bring on Judgement Day.
Muslim anti-Semitic violence is not a momentary reaction to metal detectors. Just as Imam Shahin’s sermon was not an emotional slip. It’s the violent bigotry of over a thousand years.
It’s in Davis. And it’s in America. And it must be addressed.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.
***
Shirly Leweis comments:
The four biggest Jewish groups are the main problem. If they spoke up, instead of covering up………..Instead, they are treating the two kill-Jews imams like they treat Students for “Justice” in Palestine allowing campus anti-Semitism to spin out of control. The “Phony Four” Jewish organizations must be exposed.
Jewish Federation, ADL, AJC, URJ/RAC should be demanding both genocidal imams are fired, cleansing of their mosques of all anti-Semitic material, etc. See ZOA’s article on the issue (I can send you.) They should be shouting from the roof tops in the same way.
So far have not heard at all from J Fed, AJC and URJ/RAC about the genocidal imams. Maby they issued press releases, nothing on their home pages that I could see.
ADL issued a wimpy press release at start, now wants to rehibilitate Davis imam.
Seth Brysk, Bay Area ADL head, is the one working to rehibilitate Davis imam. Scour ADL home page, and google Jonathan Greeblatt tweets and ADL tweets and you won’t find anything. If you want initial ADL’s press release, or/or the article from Arutz Sheva announcing Davis Imam’s apology that has ADL’s statement about how they will work with Davis imam to help him be better leader, I can send you.The most ‘successful” part of the coverup comes from the most high profile Jewish organizations, the Phony Four listed above. Why? Because if the Phony Four were kicking up a storm about Muslim anti-Semitism in USA the issue would be addressed. This being quiet about the two genocidal imams is exactly how they have handled anti-Semitism on campus. This is why it has spun out of control.
@ adamdalgliesh:
I’ve also read memoirs by David Horowitz, Howard Fast and Whitaker Chambers as well as another Soviet handler Chambers mentions, Elizabeth somebody.
I observed that Sascha Baron Cohen’s (he’s of LItvak descent by the way) Borat was only funny because the anti-semitism isn’t true of Kazakhstan. I think it was filmed in places it is true like Poland.
Sadly, that appears to be changing. I just read an article that says Jihadism has established a foothold there which is why even moderate Islam really can’t be trusted over time and the Muslims really have to go. In the long run, Islam must be destroyed as a movement.
@ Sebastien Zorn:Thanks, Sebastien: I will see if I can get these books through Amazon.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Thanks. I will check it out. I have read Norman Conquest, who is considered the Willian Shirer of the Soviet Union. Also Trepper wrote a memoir. He eventually made aliya
I am reading a terrific new novel by a second generation survivor of Stalin’s anti-Jewish purge, called, “The Yid”
http://www.paulgoldberg.com/the-yid.html
and I have this
Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Annals of Communism) Hardcover – May 1, 2001
by Joshua Rubenstein (Author), Vladimir P. Naumov (Author), Laura E. Wolfson (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars 3 customer reviews
https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Secret-Pogrom-Inquisition-Anti-Fascist/dp/0300084862
I heard Paul Robeson’s son on the radio years ago tell about how when the CPUSA sent Paul Robeson to the Soviet Union to investigate the sudden silence from the Jewish comrades at Howard Fast’s initiative, he deliberately covered it up. There was an article too. Let’s see if I can find it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/robesons-message-from-the-grave-1290185.html
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Sebastien: Read “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar,” by British-Jewish author Simon Sebag Montefiore, if you are still suffering from “nostalgia” for the Stalin regime. Montefiore, who is Russian-literate and has studied Soviet archives, gives a very detailed account of the regimes atrocities, including the twenty million or more people murdered, the vast number totured, forced to work as slave laborers, etc. Yes some of the peoples who were oppressed and genocided by Stalin had antisemitic traditions. That still didn’t make their mass slaughter right. And some of them, such as the Kazakhs, had no antisemitic traditions at all. I had a friend, now deceased, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, who told me how kind and generous the Kazakh neighbors were to him, his family and the other Polish Jews when the Soviet government relocated them to Kazakhstan during the war. The local Kazakh people, even though they had been starved to death during the forced collectivization not long before, now fed the Jewish refugees, supplementing the meager and inadequate rations that the Soviets gave them. Jews had lived in Kazakhstan for centuries and had never been oppressed. Even now, it is one of the few Muslim countries where Jews are not oppressed.
@ Sebastien Zorn: I am reassured by what you say about your reasons for supporting your fellow Jews in Israel. I agree with those reasons.
I am less pleased by your remarks that the Soviet Union was a “mixed bag.” And I am appalled by your statement that “I agreed with . . .the forced collectivization, and believed in getting rid of all counter-revolutionaries.” These operations resulted in the killing of over fifteen million people, the overwhelming majority of them completely innocent of any crime, and including millions of children. Are you really so heartless as to justify this? These genocides were just as evil as the Holocaust was against us.
There were certainly some antisemites among the Ukrainians,Lithuanians, Poles, etc. But not everyone belonging to these nationalities was an antisemite.And not all of the oppressed nationalities had antisemitic traditions. I have it from a personal eyewitness and Holocaust survivor that the Kazakhs, although they were by far the worst victims of Stalin’s terror (six million starved to death), were extremely kind to the Jews who were resettled in their country by Stalin during the war, even feeding them when the Stalinist authorities did not give them enough rations to survive. My friend said he owed his life to these Kazakhi people. Even today, Kazakhstan is one of the very few Muslim countries where the Jewish community isn’t bothered. If you still have any doubts about the viciousness of the Soviet regime in the Stalin era,read “Stalin, the Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, a British Jew who is fluent in Russian and reviewed extensive documents in the Soviet archives and many books by contemporary Russian scholars documenting this era in Russian history. I don’t think that any sensitive and humane person reading Mr. Sebag Montefiore’s comprehensive study could come away thinking that there was anything good about the Stalin regime. The second most vicious tyranny in the twentieth century after Hitler’s. As for your suggestion that I should be grateful that you support Israel, unlike all the other “spoiled liberal brats” in your “community,” somehow it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Why do you still consider yourself a member of such a repulsive “community?”
@ Sebastien Zorn:
@ Edgar G.:
Same here. Except what for you is alien is home for me and exploring Judaism late in life is the adventure for me because I love my people and hate my people’s enemies. It seems you and I are working inward from opposite directions to a complementary position. We are a diverse people. We must unite politically and respect and accept our differences culturally, those of us that get on board the Nationalist ship, anyway, in my book. I didn’t object to the first part of what that Jubu cleric said, it was the phony moral equivalence he drew between what most Jews do with our ancient texts and what most Muslims do with theirs.
@ adamdalgliesh:
To cut in-and out quickly- here for a moment, I have often written and said forcibly, although not very religious (but always strictly Kosher myself and family) That, because those old time Jews davened, studied, pored over Talmuds, Torahs, in dim candlelight or nonn at all, and prayed and suffered-how they suffered- that we, all of us have managed to be here today. Without them to keep our flickering light of Torah alive, there would be NO Jews today.
Which is why, although as I said, not religious, not really shomer Shabat although Kosher,(probably MY way of clinging to my Jewishness) I support Chabad strongly, The Rebbe being the most wonderful wisdom of the Age, and other religious Jewish institutions, as well as personally several families. I am PROUD that I am a Jew. O.K. just wanted to say this and… .. back out.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
At this stage of my life I no longer am interested in “Draying mein Kopf” at everything different, to satisfy my curiosity. I was for about 60 years, during which I gathered a library of about 9,000 books, of which I had to give away 2000 when I left Israel years ago. I’ve mentioned it in the site before. So now I read and get involved in what takes my fancy or in the few matters that concern me deeply, like the, survival, success and growth of the Jewish People.
If we Jews had had our own country all the time, we’d have been ruling this world with our people numbering perhaps 3-4-500 million; and the world would have been a much better place than it is today. We would have been the majority population in places of our choice, for the benefit of all humanity. Tikun Olam would never have become the prerogative of the loonie Leftists and BDS-sers and outright Anti-Semitic Jews, of whom there would always have been some in every generation.
The Roman Empire would have become Jewish and the subsequent history of the world would have been diametrically opposite to what eventuated. There would have been NO Christian Persecutions, nor perhaps any rise of Islam. Or if there was, it would have arisen with completely different tenets and “visions”.
@ adamdalgliesh:
And some of the peoples Stalin oppressed like the LIthunians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tartars were notoriously anti-semitic, were guilty of terrible massacres, rape, arson, theft against Jews in 1919, the Chelminieki massacres, allied with the Nazis. During the Soviet Era, I worked in copy shop near the Ukrainian Center and these old guys were always coming in with documents trying to keep this Ukrainian former concentration camp guard to be deported in the 80s. About 5 years ago, maybe, I played in a Ukrainian church service in Long Island which had kids Christmas play with a Jew with horns surrounded by medieval soldiers. Just google anti-semitism in any of these countries today.
This one is from last week
“sraeli soccer team attacked in Poland
After an exhibition game in Sochocin, players from Hapoel Petah Tikva attacked by local anti-Semites.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/233362
Some peoples deserve to be oppressed. I would once have said they reactionary peoples. That’s how the Left feels about us now as at various times in the past.
With anybody who feels that way.
The feeling is MUTUAL!!
@ adamdalgliesh:
And history shows that nobody is reliable in the long haul. Look at Peres, Rabin and Sharon.
Collect today’s allies today and tomorrow’s allies tomorrow. It is unlikely in the extreme that my view will change again but even if I decide, at some point, to withdraw into my own concerns — I miss Honeybee, by the way — , what I am writing now will not lose its validity. In fact, Lenin, himself, took issue with the Orwellian tendency that became the norm under Stalin of re-writing history to make former revolutionaries always reactionaries and vice-versa. Take what is valuable and ignore the source or consistency is a wise rule. Moreover, as with David Horowitz, my background gives me a unique insight into the mind of the enemy. In fact, even there, because I come from a different section of the radical left, Obama went to Columbia at the same time I did, though I didn’t know him, but I was also at the Socialist Scholars Conference he was at — albeit outside handing out fliers.
@ adamdalgliesh:
No, actually. The anti-semitic attacks here that I experienced were a wave that surged and actually passed a while ago. They simply made me aware.
I’m not really worried for myself. America, for the most part, is safe for us. But, it’s not a refuge for all Jews as Israel is. Obama actually suspended visas from Israel during the Gaza war.
No, what I am expressing is empathy for my Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel and around the world. If there is another Shoah, it will be in Israel. Another 6 million.
I am just giving the reasons why I care.
It won’t come as a big surprise to you that most of the Jews I know, who are secular liberals or leftists, don’t care much, if it all. Many if not are more worried about islamofauxbia.
And, the Soviet Union was a mixed bag. I don’t want to get into it. But, I didn’t believe a lot of that at the time, or I regarded it as abberations and excesses, or I regarded it as enemies within the regime doing reactionary things, or I agreed with it, like the forced collectivization, and believed in getting rid of all counter-revolutionaries.
In high school, my Modern China course main text book was Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow and we learned about what a peaceful and ultra-democratic revolution the Cultural Revolution Was. Ha. There were many heroic Jewish Communists who fought the Nazis and got shafted like Leon Trepper, founder of the Red Orchestra and the Jewish anti-Fascist Committee, who were my heros. And, I also was anti-religion except as a personal thing. I”ve evolved, but I have nostalgia.
I am a rare ally in a community that, for the most part, is nothing of the kind and unlike all these other spoiled liberal brats over here who also can’t comprehend why I care at all, I want nothing for myself. Except for an occasional laugh. Don’t bite my hand.
@ Sebastien Zorn: I notice that nearly everything you have to say about the reasons for your support for Israel is all about Sebastien Zorn, and not about the Jews. It was only when anti-Semitism came too close to home in Brooklyn and you were personally experienced that you became a supporter of Israel. When one’s political posture is dependent solely on one’s perceived self-interest, one’s support cannot be relied upon. You say that you(and Herzl) would assimilate if you could. But you have in fact successfully assimilated (so did Herzl). You also say that you are only concerned with the physical survival of Jews, not with their spiritual survivalasJews. I doubt very much if your life is endangered here here in the U.S., even though of course there is still some anti-Semitism here. Your personal motives for supporting Israel don’t seem strong enough to sustain your support over the long haul. Only belief in Judaism and the special mission and destiny of the Jewish people can sustain this support in the long run.
@ Sebastien Zorn: As for the supposed benevolence of the East German regime toward the Jews: polls have shown that anti-Semitic views are even more prevalent among “Essies” (former residents of East Germany) than among “Wessies” (former residents of West Germany). A disproportionate number of neo-Nazi activists are also from the East. This is probably because of the relentless “anti-Zionist” propaganda waged by the Communist regime for several decades. Even if the propaganda didn’t target “Jews” by name, of course everyone knew that “Zionists” were Jews. You also should learn about the complicity of the East German regime in the infamous Munich Massacre in 1973. The regime allowed the Palestinian terrorists to prepare their attack in East Berlin, and they remained in constant radio contact with the East German police throughout their “operation.”
@ Sebastien Zorn: Yes, the Soviets did save the life of some Jews during, and after World War II. But they also killed many Jews. It’s hard to know exactly how many, but of the half million or so people who were shot by Stalin’s secret police, a disproportionate number were Jews. There were also large numbers of Jews among those imprisoned in Soviet concentration camps as suspected dissidents, and many of them must have died there. The Soviet’s denied more than 37% of Jews of citizenship because they classified them as “bourgeois.” These Jews were denied ration cards, without which it was impossible to buy food or the other necessities of life. It is not clear how these Jews survived, or even if they did survive. The Soviets classified all rabbis, Hebrew school teachers, and anyone connected with Judaism in any way as “bourgeois,” even if as was often the case they were very poor. The Soviets also heavily purged the secular Jewish community, and executed or imprisoned nearly all the leaders of these secular Jewish organizations, including the Communist ones and the ones that had spearheaded the resistance against the Germans during World War II. The Jewish population of the Soviet union has been in steady decline ever since the Bolshevik Revolution. Assimilation (people of mixed parentage could report themselves as having their non-Jewish parents’ nationality), emigration, and of course the Nazi occupation accounted for much of this, but I don’t think it accounted for all of it.
Edgar G. Said:
Was a great place to stop but I can’t let this go anymore than I can let it go when people make a connection between individual Jews who happen to misbehave and Judaism, even if they then say, oh, but coincidentally, you know, having already poisoned the water — it’s different with Jihadists, they are doing what their scriptures tell them to.
If you ever try to pass yourself off at as a Buddhist — instead of just admitting that you are interested in learning about it (there are stories like that in Jewish history of people who passed themselves off as Jews and tried to influence others only to fail such tests which is one good reason to be careful of conversions to whatever sect) to a real Buddhist whose meditation circle you want to join, such as a Zen practitioner, the first thing they may ask you is what are the five training precepts, which is the Buddhist Ten Commandments. It is the basic Buddhist ethical code. If you don’t believe in it, at least in principle, you are not a Buddhist.
This is for lay people. For monks, it’s much stricter.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/budethics.htm
. I undertake the training rule to abstain from killing.
2. I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking what is not given.
3. I undertake the training rule to avoid sexual misconduct.
4. I undertake the training rule to abstain from false speech.
5. I undertake the training rule to abstain from fermented drink that causes heedlessness.
The Buddha was born in the 6th Century BCE, began teaching at age 40 and died at age 80.
@ Edgar G.:
Changing the subject, I just encountered a marvelous and relevant — not to Buddhism but to all the disgraceful give-backs from the Temple Mount to Oslo to the Temple Mount and all the ones in between — sentence in episode three of a Kdrama I am watching on Amazon Instant Videos’ Dramafever instant:
https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Stranger-Me-Episode-1/dp/B06XH78ZLC
They should put it on the wall of the Knesset, engrave it on their foreheads.
.
Edgar G. Said:
What on earth have you been reading?
Read this short summary:
@ Sebastien Zorn:
The Russians may have saved more Jews than Schindler, (well of course they did, the scale was so different), but not because they were Jews, but because they were bodies needed to fight the Nazis.
My late Father G-D Bless Him was deaf in one ear all his life because of a botched ear-drum piercing in 1894, at 7 years old; done so that the Russians wouldn’t take him away for the army.
I’m sure you know that they used to grab young kids at age about 10, Jews from 8-up and take them away to put in barracks and train for the Army. They were in for 25 years,
Naturally when their service was over they didn’t even know they were Jews, and could never find their way back to their families. So in THIS way the Russians, -apart from all their other horrors inflicted on the Jews -before the Revolution destroyed far more Jews than anyone but Hitler, likely even more in aggregate..
There was a sort of miracle with Ben Gurion, who was one of these kids. He remembered who he was, and where he was from, and found his way back to his family…..
@ Edgar G.:
@ Sebastien Zorn:
NOT ME…..!! Sorry.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Sorry I just can’t sit through the “Clarifying”. But I’m learning something. My reading has never indicated that Buddhism was “founded”, but merely grew from the attitude actions and possibly teachings of a certain person, and and eventually a few gathered acolytes. By coincidence the people I bought a walled 2 house property from some time ago, was a Buddhist, which surprised me, (unthinkingly expecting them all to be Asian), and cheated and lied as hard as he could. About the most dishonest person I’ve ever met, and as sanctimonious as any unctuous sinner could be.
I am not criticizing Buddhism by relating this, just the coincidence, otherwise I’ve had no dealings with any other than some Indian friends from College many years ago.. By birth and accent he was a Scotsman, Mc something or other.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Oh I have plenty more, as a sort of 1st generation Irishman, who are all skilled at reverse compliments. We often practiced on one another when young and sharp. It was called the art of “repartee”, I think, and naturally, never complimentary, although sometimes “head scratching”.
OK, that’s enough on this topic. I have no doubt that Ted is on the edge of getting mad. I can almost feel his breath on the back of my metaphorical, or should I say, “virtual?” neck. Back to the news of the day and “How about those Mets?” or whoever.
Edgar G. Said:
Awesome. Thank you, so much, Edgar. One of my hobbies is collecting back handed compliments; I think their study is indispensible to a truly portable kind of psychological warfare. Please keep them coming. All the best. S.
Have to clarify. Historically, the paralled is Buddhism which was founded at the time that the Temple was being rebuilt at the end of the Babylonia Exile around 520 BCe, (and to Jainism) is to Hinduism, which is thousand of years old, as early Christianity was to Judaism, using the same framework, stories and vocbulary, but assigning different or variable meanings to use them as didactic story-telling devices, Buddha instructs the Gods, etc. Mahayana Buddhism, is to Therevada — or Hinayana, the derogatory Mahayana Term for Therevada which is the last surviving school of Hinayana or “small vehicle” Buddhism, but they have no other term — as all the later Schisms from Catholicism and Orthodox to all of the various Protestant sects. Vajrayana or tantric Buddhism, which includes Tibetan and Japanese Shingon is basically a Mahayana cross between elements of Therevadan, Mahayana and Tantric yoga which comes out of Hinduism, really Brahminism, best compared to those Reform Jews who incorporate strict observance or my maternal grandfather whose brand of conservative Judaism was strict enough for his Orthodox Shochet — ordained at Volozhin — father who he shared a two family house with when my mother was growing up in Williamsburg and Crown Heights in the 20s and 30s.
Though there remain differences.
To be fair,Jewishly observant Jubus also use metaphor to reinterpret meanings. But, the we’ve always done that. The Muslims can’t
@ adamdalgliesh:
But, you are right, genuine Buddhism is pacifist and universalist. Leftism used to be univeralist and only supported national liberation struggles as a means to that end. In fact, Lenin instructed Communists in the Metropolitan Center to support separation and in the colonized outreaches, union.
I am conflicted. I admit it. But, my love and loyalty to the Jewish People, my people, outweighs any inner torment or bad karma that may come from being nationalistic and warlike.
I can’t reconcile it.
Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar are going through the same thing. The genocide the Muslims committed against them is almost unparalleled prior to the 20th century.
“Turk-Mongol raids[edit]
“…The image, in the chapter on India in Hutchison’s Story of the Nations edited by James Meston, depicts the Turkish general Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji’s massacre of Buddhist monks in Bihar. Khaliji destroyed the Nalanda and Vikramshila universities during his raids across North Indian plains, massacring many Buddhist and Brahmin scholars.[45]
The Muslim conquest of the Indian subcontinent was the first great iconoclastic invasion into South Asia.[46] The Persian traveller Al Biruni’s memoirs suggest Buddhism had vanished from Ghazni (Afghanistan) and medieval Punjab region (northern Pakistan) by early 11th century.[47] By the end of twelfth century, Buddhism had further disappeared,[1][48] with the destruction of monasteries and stupas in medieval north-west and western India (now Pakistan and north India).[49]
The Chach Nama records many instances of conversion of stupas to mosques such as at Nerun.[50]
In the Gangetic plains, Orissa, north-east and the southern regions of India, Buddhism survived through the early centuries of the 2nd millennium CE.[42] According to William Johnston, hundreds of Buddhist monasteries and shrines were destroyed, Buddhist texts were burnt by the Muslim armies, monks and nuns killed during the 12th and 13th centuries in the Gangetic plains region.[5] The Islamic invasion plundered wealth and destroyed Buddhist images:[4]
From 986 CE, the Muslim Turks started raiding northwest India from Afghanistan, plundering western India early in the eleventh century. Force conversions to Islam were made, and Buddhist images smashed, due to the Islamic dislike of idolarty. Indeed in India, the Islamic term for an ‘idol’ became ‘budd’.
—?Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism[4]
The north-west parts of South Asia fell to Islamic control, and the consequent take over of land holdings of Buddhist monasteries removed one source of necessary support for the Buddhists, while the economic upheaval and new taxes on laity sapped the laity support of Buddhist monks.[42]
In the north-western parts of medieval India, the Himalayan regions, as well regions bordering central Asia, Buddhism once facilitated trade relations, states Lars Fogelin. With the Islamic invasion and expansion, and central Asians adopting Islam, the trade route-derived financial support sources and the economic foundations of Buddhist monasteries declined, on which the survival and growth of Buddhism was based.[42][51] The arrival of Islam removed the royal patronage to the monastic tradition of Buddhism, and the replacement of Buddhists in long-distance trade by the Muslims eroded the related sources of patronage.[49][51]
Islamic conquest and rule[edit]
Ruins of Vikramashila
Muslim forces attacked the north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent many times.[52] Many places were destroyed and renamed. For example, Udantpur’s monasteries were destroyed in 1197 by Mohammed-bin-Bakhtiyar and the town was renamed.[53] Taranatha in his History of Buddhism in India (dpal dus kyi ‘khor lo’i chos bskor gyi byung khungs nyer mkho) of 1608,[54] gives an account of the last few centuries of Buddhism, mainly in Eastern India. Mahayana Buddhism reached its zenith during the Pala dynasty period, a dynasty that ended with the Islamic invasion of the Gangetic plains.[3]
Vikramashila was destroyed by the forces of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji around 1200.[55] Many Buddhist monks fled to Nepal, Tibet, and South India to avoid the consequences of war.[56] Tibetan pilgrim Chöjepal had to flee advancing Muslim troops multiple times, as they were sacking Buddhist sites.[57]
A major empire to support Buddhism, the Pala dynasty, fell in the 12th century, and Muslim invaders destroyed monasteries and monuments.[1] According to Randall Collins, Buddhism was already declining in India by the 12th century, but with the pillage by Muslim invaders it nearly became extinct in India in the 1200s.[58] In the 13th century, states Craig Lockard, Buddhist monks in India escaped to Tibet to escape Islamic persecution;[59] while the monks in western India, states Peter Harvey, escaped persecution by moving to south Indian Hindu kingdoms that were able to resist the Muslim power.[60]
Brief Muslim accounts and the one eye-witness account of Dharmasmavim in wake of the conquest during the 1230s talk about abandoned viharas being used as camps by the Turukshahs.[61] Later historical traditions such as Taranathas are mixed with legendary materials and summarised as “the Turukshah conquered the whole of Magadha and destroyed many monasteries and did much damage at Nalanda, such that many monks fled abroad” thereby bringing about a demise of Buddhism with their destruction of the Viharas.[61]…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Buddhism_in_India
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan were Buddhist.
“Afghanistan[edit]
Main article: Buddhas of Bamiyan
The Muslim Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, tried to use heavy artillery to destroy the statues. Another attempt to destroy the Bamiyan statues was made by the 18th century Persian king Nader Afshar, directing cannon fire at them.[48]
The enormous statues, the male Salsal (“light shines through the universe”) and the (smaller) female Shamama (“Queen Mother”),[49] as they were called by the locals, did not fail to fire the imagination of Islamic writers in centuries past. The larger statue reappears as the malevolent giant Salsal in medieval Turkish tales.[50]
Afghan Muslim King Abdur Rahman Khan destroyed its face during a military campaign against the Shia Hazara rebellion.[51] A Frenchman named Dureau had pictured it in 1847.[52]
The Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed by the fundamentalist Islamist Taliban regime in 2001 in defiance of worldwide condemnation. The statues were blown up and fired upon by rockets and gunfire.
Excavators at the Buddhist site of Mes Aynak have been denounced as “promoting Buddhism” and threatened by the Taliban and many of the Afghan excavators who are working for purely financial reasons don’t feel any connection to the Buddhist artifacts.[53]
Pakistan[edit]
Swat Valley in Pakistan has many Buddhist carvings, stupas and Jehanabad contains a Seated Buddha statue.[54] Kushan era Buddhist stupas and status in Swat valley were demolished by the Taliban and after two attempts by the Taliban, the Jehanabad Buddha’s face was dynamited.[55][56][57] Only the Bamiyan Buddhas were larger than the carved giant Buddha status in Swat near Mangalore which the Taliban attacked.[58] The government did nothing to safeguard the statue after the initial attempt at destroying the Buddha, which did not cause permanent harm, and when the second attack took place on the statue the feet, shoulders, and face were demolished.[59] Islamists such as the Taliban and looters destroyed much of Pakistan’s Buddhist artifacts left over from the Buddhist Gandhara civilization especially in Swat Valley.[60] The Taliban deliberately targeted Gandhara Buddhist relics for destruction.[61] The Christian Archbishop of Lahore Lawrence John Saldanha wrote a letter to Pakistan’s government denouncing the Taliban activities in Swat Valley including their destruction of Buddha statues and their attacks on Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus.[62] Gandhara Buddhist artifacts were illegally looted by smugglers.[63] A rehabilitation attempt on the Buddha was made by Luca Olivieri from Italy.[64] A group of Italians helped repair the Buddha.[65]
Bangladesh[edit]
See also: Persecution of indigenous peoples in Bangladesh, 2012 Ramu violence, and Freedom of religion in Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, the persecution of the indigenous tribes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts such as the Chakma, Marma, Tripura and others who are mainly Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, and Animists, has been described as genocidal.[66][67][68][69][70] The Chittagong Hill Tracts are located bordering India, Myanmar and the Bay of Bengal, and is the home to 500,000 indigenous people. The perpetrators of are the Bangladeshi military and the Bengali Muslim settlers, who together have burned down Buddhist and Hindu temples, killed many Chakmas, and carried out a policy of gang-rape against the indigenous people. There are also accusations of Chakmas being forced to convert to Islam, many of them children who have been abducted for this purpose. The conflict started soon after Bangladeshi independence in 1972 when the Constitution imposed Bengali as the sole official language, Islam as the state religion – with no cultural or linguistic rights to minority populations. Subsequently, the government encouraged and sponsored massive settlement by Bangladeshis in region, which changed the demographics from 98 percent indigenous in 1971 to fifty percent by 2000. The government allocated a full third of the Bangladeshi military to the region to support the settlers, sparking a protracted guerilla war between Hill tribes and the military.[67] During this conflict which officially ended in 1997, and in the subsequent period, a large number of human rights violations against the indigenous peoples have been reported, with violence against indigenous women being particularly extreme.[71][72]
During the 2012 Ramu violence a 25,000-strong mob set fire to at least five temples and dozens of homes throughout the town and surrounding villages after seeing the picture, which they claimed was posted by Uttam Barua, a local Buddhist man, AFP reported.[73]
Bengali settlers and soldiers have raped native Jumma (Chakma) women “with impunity” with the Bangladeshi security forces doing little to protect the Jummas and instead assisting the rapists and settlers.[74] The settlers are Muslims.[75] The Karuna Bihar Buddhist temple was attacked by Bengali settlers.[76]
India[edit]
See also: Decline of Buddhism in India
Various personages involved in the revival of Buddhism in India such as Anagarika Dharmapala and The Mahabodhi Movement of the 1890s as well as Dr. B. R. Ambedkar hold the Muslim Rule in India responsible for the decay of Buddhism in India.[77][78][79][80][81]
In 1193, Qutb-ud-din Aybak, a Turkish commander, seized control of Delhi, leaving defenseless the northeastern territories that were the heart of Buddhist India. The Mahabodhi Temple was almost completely destroyed by the invading Muslim forces.[78] One of Qutb-ud-Din’s generals, Ikhtiar Uddin Muhammad Bin Bakhtiyar Khilji, invaded Magadha and destroyed the Buddhist shrines at Nalanda.[82] The Buddhism of Magadha underwent a significant decline under Khilji.[78]
In 1200 Muhammad Khilji, one of Qutb-ud-Din’s generals destroyed monasteries fortified by the Sena armies, such as the one at Vikramshila. Many monuments of ancient Indian civilization were destroyed by the invading armies, including Buddhist sanctuaries[83] near Benares. Buddhist monks who escaped the massacre fled to Nepal, Tibet and South India.[84]
According to the Isdhoo (Laamu Atoll), monks from monasteries of the southern atoll of Haddhunmathi were brought to Malé and beheaded.[84][not in citation given]
Timur destroyed Buddhist establishments and raided areas in which Buddhism had flourished.[85][86]
Mughal rule also contributed to the decline of Buddhism. They are reported to have destroyed many Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines alike or converted many sacred Hindu places into Muslim shrines and mosques.[87] Mughal rulers like Aurangzeb destroyed Buddhist temples and monasteries and replaced them with mosques.[88]
The Ladakh Buddhist Association has said: “There is a deliberate and organised design to convert Kargil’s Buddhists to Islam. In the last four years, about 50 girls and married women with children were taken and converted from village Wakha alone. If this continues unchecked, we fear that Buddhists will be wiped out from Kargil in the next two decades or so. Anyone objecting to such allurement and conversions is harassed.”[89][90]
Will Durant states, “The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within. The Hindus had allowed their strength to be wasted in internal division and war; they had adopted religions like Buddhism and Jainism, which unnerved them for the tasks of life; they had failed to organize their forces for the protection of their frontiers and capitals, their wealth and their freedom, from the hordes of Scythians, Huns, Afghans and Turks hovering about India’s boundaries and waiting for national weakness to let them in. For four hundred years (600-1000 A.D.) India invited conquest and at last it came.”[91]
Maldives[edit]
Main articles: Buddhism in the Maldives and National Museum (Maldives)
The destruction of the Buddhist artifacts by Islamists took place on the day in which Mohamed Nasheed was toppled as President in a coup.[92]
Buddhist antiquities were obliterated by Islamist radicals in the National Museum.[93] The Museum was stormed by Islamists who destroyed the Buddhist artifacts.[94][95]
The non Muslim artifacts of Buddhist provenance were specifically singled out by the attackers.[96] The destruction was caught on camera.[97]
Most of Maldive’s Buddhist physical history was obliterated.[98]
Hindu artifacts were also targeted for obliteration and the actions have been compared to the attacks on the Buddhas by the Taliban.[99][100][101]
February 7, 2012 was the date of the anti-Buddhist attack by the Islamists.[102]
Myanmar[edit]
The violence and long lasting tension was reignited on the 28th of May 2012. It was reported that daughter of U Hla Tin, of Thabyechaung Village named Ma Thida Htwe aged 27 was raped then killed by three Muslim men. These men were later arrested.[103][104][105] On March 20, 2013, at about 9AM U Khin Maung Win and Daw Aye Aye Naing came to the Muslim-owned New Weint Sein gold shop to sell their gold comb. The Bangali-Muslim shop-owner and her elder sister slapped the Rakhine Buddhist couple. The Rohingya Muslim husband of the shop-owner Htun Htun Oo (a) Ar-shid and his employee Nyi Nyi came in and started hitting U Khin Maung Win with timber 2×4 pieces. They both were yelling out that the Rakhine Buddhist couple and their children were trying to rob their gold shop. As their Muslim relatives from other Rohingya gold shops nearby joined the attack the bystanders started shouting at them to stop such and then called the police.[106]
On the same day, a Buddhist monk from Hanzar village of One-dwin township had come into the Meiktila town as a passenger on a motorbike and they were unknowingly riding through the Da-hart-tan Muslim ward the biggest Muslim quarters in Meiktila. Already-agitated Muslims saw him and chased the motorbike and managed to strike him from behind with a sword and he fell to the ground from his pillion-riding position on the motorbike. He had a long deep gash on back of his head just above his left ear. Muslim mobs forcefully took off his robe and dragged the direly-wounded Buddhist monk into the nearby Myo-ma mosque. Once inside the mosque they poured acid and petrol over the wounded Buddhist monk and burned him alive.[107] Burmese-Buddhist workers, Selayang in Malaysia were killed by Bengali-Muslims On May 30, 2013[108]
Thailand[edit]
See also: South Thailand insurgency
Primarily Buddhist Thailand has been involved in a fight with Muslim insurgents in the South. Buddhists have been beheaded[109] and clergy and teachers are frequently threatened with death.[110] Shootings of Buddhists are quite frequent in the South,[111][112] as are bombings,[113][114] and attacks on religious establishments.[115]
Xinjiang[edit]
Main articles: Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang and Kingdom of Khotan
The historical area of what is modern day Xinjiang consisted of the distinct areas of the Tarim Basin and Dzungaria, and was originally populated by Indo-European Tocharian and Iranic Saka peoples who practiced the Buddhist religion. The area was subjected to Turkification and Islamification at the hands of invading Turkic Muslims.
Buddhist Uyghur migration into the Tarim Basin[edit]
The discovery of the Tarim mummies has created a stir in the Turkic-speaking Uighur population of the region, who claim the area has always belonged to their culture, while it was not until the 10th century when the Uighurs are said by scholars to have moved to the region from Central Asia.[116] American Sinologist Victor H. Mair claims that “the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucasoid, or Europoid” with “east Asian migrants arriving in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin around 3,000 years ago”, while Mair also notes that it was not until 842 that the Uighur peoples settled in the area.[117]
Protected by the Taklamakan Desert from steppe nomads, elements of Tocharian culture survived until the 7th century, when the arrival of Turkic immigrants from the collapsing Uyghur Khaganate of modern-day Mongolia began to absorb the Tocharians to form the modern-day Uyghur ethnic group.[117]
Professor James A. Millward described the original Uyghurs as physically Mongoloid, giving as an example the images in Bezeklik at temple 9 of the Uyghur patrons, until they began to mix with the Tarim Basin’s original eastern Iranian inhabitants.[118]
The modern Uyghurs are now a mixed hybrid of Mongoloid and Caucasian.[119][120][121]
Turkic-Islamic Kara-Khanid conquest of Iranic Saka Buddhist Khotan[edit]
The Islamic attacks and conquest of the Buddhist cities east of Kashgar was started by the Turkic Karakhanid Satok Bughra Khan who in 966 converted to Islam and many tales emerged about the Karakhanid ruling family’s war against the Buddhists, Satok Bughra Khan’s nephew or grandson Ali Arslan was slain by the Buddhists during the war. Buddhism lost territory to Islam during the Karakhanid reign around the Kashgar area.[122] A long war ensued between Islamic Kashgar and Buddhist Khotan which eventually ended in the conquest of Khotan by Kashgar.[123]
Iranic Saka peoples originally inhabited Yarkand and Kashgar in ancient times. The Buddhist Iranic Saka Kingdom of Khotan was the only city-state that was not conquered yet by the Turkic Uyghur (Buddhist) and the Turkic Qarakhanid (Muslim) states and its ruling family used Indian names and the population were devout Buddhists. The Buddhist entitites of Dunhuang and Khotan had a tight-knit partnership, with intermarriage between Dunhuang and Khotan’s rulers and Dunhuang’s Mogao grottos and Buddhist temples being funded and sponsored by the Khotan royals, whose likenesses were drawn in the Mogao grottoes.[124] The rulers of Khotan were aware of the menace they faced since they arranged for the Mogao grottoes to paint a growing number of divine figures along with themselves. Halfway in the 20th century Khotan came under attack by the Qarakhanid ruler Musa, and in what proved to be a pivotal moment in the Turkification and Islamification of the Tarim Basin, the Karakhanid leader Yusuf Qadir Khan conquered Khotan around 1006.[124]
The Ta?kirah is a genre of literature written about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr. Written sometime in the period from 1700-1849, the Eastern Turkic language (modern Uyghur) Ta?kirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams provides an account of the Muslim Karakhanid war against the Khotanese Buddhists, containing a story about Imams, from Mada’in city (possibly in modern-day Iraq) came 4 Imams who travelled to help the Islamic conquest of Khotan, Yarkand, and Kashgar by Yusuf Qadir Khan, the Qarakhanid leader.[125] Accounts of the battles waged by the invading Muslims upon the indigenous Buddhists takes up most of the Ta?kirah with descriptions such as “blood flows like the Oxus”, “heads litter the battlefield like stones” being used to describe the murderous battles over the years until the “infidels” were defeated and driven towards Khotan by Yusuf Qadir Khan and the four Imams, but the Imams were assassinated by the Buddhists prior to the last Muslim victory so Yusuf Qadir Khan assigned Khizr Baba, who was born in Khotan but whose mother originated from western Turkestan’s Mawarannahr, to take care of the shrine of the 4 Imams at their tomb and after Yusuf Qadir Khan’s conquest of new land in Altishahr towards the east, he adopted the title “King of the East and China”.[126] Due to the Imams deaths in battle and burial in Khotan, Altishahr, despite their foreign origins, they are viewed as local saints by the current Muslim population in the region.[127]
Muslim works such as ?ud?d al-??lam contained anti-Buddhist rhetoric and polemic against Buddhist Khotan,[128] aimed at “dehumanizing” the Khotanese Buddhists, and the Muslims Kara-Khanids conquered Khotan just 26 years following the completion of ?ud?d al-??lam.[128]
Muslims gouged the eyes of Buddhist murals along Silk Road caves and Kashgari recorded in his Turkic dictionary an anti-Buddhist poem/folk song.[129]
Satuq Bughra Khan and his son directed endeavors to proselytize Islam among the Turks and engage in military conquests.[130] The Islamic conquest of Khotan led to alarm in the east and Dunhuang’s Cave 17, which contained Khotanese literary works, was closed shut possibly after its caretakers heard that Khotan’s Buddhist buildings were razed by the Muslims, the Buddhist religion had suddenly ceased to exist in Khotan.[131]
In 1006, the Muslim Kara-Khanid ruler Yusuf Kadir (Qadir) Khan of Kashgar conquered Khotan, ending Khotan’s existence as an independent state. The war was described as a Muslim Jihad (holy war) by the Japanese Professor Takao Moriyasu. The Karakhanid Turkic Muslim writer Mahmud al-Kashgari recorded a short Turkic language poem about the conquest:
English translation:
We came down on them like a flood,
We went out among their cities,
We tore down the idol-temples,
We shat on the Buddha’s head!
[128][129][131][132][verification needed][133][134]
Alternate English translation:
We came down on them like a flood
We went out upon their cities
We tore down the idol temples
We shit upon the idols’ heads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Buddhists“
@ Edgar G.:
You might find this book interesting:
@ Edgar G.:
I used a lit cigarette once on a muggers arm in the 90s. Didn’t phase him. Must have been on drugs.
To get to the question of the heading about the imam who screams ‘Kill the Jews”…..
Well the thing to do is to divert his attention away from the Jews but still allow him to scream…………a Good Swift, VERY Hard Kick In The Testicles -with steel toed boots. Practical.
He’s young enough for it to matter to him…a lot. !! As Jackie Mason once said when asked for a contribution of money to fight fires, he ridiculed it and came back with, what’s the use of money, it burns up, I’ll sent them 100 gallons of water. THAT’LL fight fires. Right to the point, and I follow his example. As Lieut-Gen Braxton Bragg said…to win battles “you get there first with the most men…”. Practical…you see…
@ adamdalgliesh:
Actually, I said it has no god and keelie said is monotheistic. I was so thrilled to find a like-minded spirit, I didn’t have the heart to correct him. Hinduism is monotheistic but you don’t have to believe in the religion to believe in the efficacy of mantra therapy because it’s the sounds themselves not what they mean that matter. Therevadist Buddhism is non-theistic. It departs from Judaism the way Christianity departs from Judaism using the same stories and imagery but imparting radically opposite meanings. Dharma means struggle in Hinduism but teaching in Buddhism. Buddhism, like it’s contemporaryu Jainism is pacifist. HInduism wasn’t at the time but later incorporated elements of Buddhism into itself. It’s very much an umbrella religion that is comfortable with conflicting approaches since they are all gnosis oriented.
Mayahana Buddhism has the equivalent of Saints or Divine beings but none have a creator god. They represent forces in the mind echoed in Nature. It’s complete apples and oranges to Judaism.
It’s not that the Buddha denied divinity, he just said it was irrelevant to our tasks as human beings.
The biggest difference is that they are cyclical not linear. There is no creation. Universes and Worlds continually come into and go out of existence.
This book really embodied the spiritual culture I grew up in the 70s
The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism Paperback – September 14, 2010
by Fritjof Capra (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels-Mysticism/dp/1590308352
For an explanation of God and Buddhism see this authoritative Therevadan Site. Therevadan Buddhism is the Equivalent of Orthodox Judaism. Mayahana is the equivalent of all the rest.
The author, the late Nyanaponika Thera co-founded the Bodhi Leaves Society in the early 20th century in Ceylon now Sri Lanka, The Buddhist Publication Society. He and his student Nyanitaloka Thera (Thera means brother as in monk) were interned by the British during WW2. They were German Jews
The flag of india, the Wheel of the Dharma, was the Buddhist flag designed by the American Buddhist missionary to Ceylon, Colonel Alcott in the 19th century. The transcendalist poets were his milieu. Madame Blavatsky had a famous debate with Marx. Ghandi got civil disobedience from Thoreau who got it from Buddha which is also where Jesus almost certainly got it.
Buddhism and the God-idea
by
Nyanaponika Thera
© 2004. BuddhaNet edition © 1996.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/godidea.html
By the way, I’m learning something, I didn’t think think that Buddhism was a religion at all, as I recall reading several learned treatises on this matter. The conclusion was that it was the following of a certain way of life, but un-organised, and not actually a religion.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Well that’s an amazing story…..All the same It looks to me as if your brains, of which you’ve displayed much, “went to your head”, in a manner of speaking. To cut to the important matter, if you’re ever again attacked because of your”ethnic” appearance, use your middle and forefingers….GO FOR THE EYES…HARD. I’ve never done it although I was often attacked, because being very aggressive, I could use my fists pretty well, But the eyes….. I recommend it.
@ adamdalgliesh:
And I only care about our group survival because I care about our physical survival. If assimilating out were an option, the Spanish, German, Soviet, and Austro-Hungarian Jews would have done so, including me and Herzl. But, they won’t ever let us. So we better take a stand. So, I only support Judaism to the extent that it promotes Jewish Nationalism, which is all I care about.
@ adamdalgliesh:
You don’t have to tell me about the evils of
the Soviet regime, but you know, the Jews who fled to the Soviet Zone during the Partition of Poland, lived and they defeated Nazi Germany. So, guess what, for that time period, I don’t care.
The film industry of the GDR (E. Germany) was takling the Shoah long before Hollywood.
“The Murderers Among us” DEFA 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murderers_Among_Us
“Naked Among Wolves DEFA 1963
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Among_Wolves_(1963_film)
The Bielsky Brigade fought with the Red Army
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielski_partisans
They saved more Jews than Schindler.
That’s why even when I disagree with him I will not tolerate slander or abuse of Kushner — and I’m a former tenant rights activist who hates landlords and real estate barons — because he is a third generation Bielsky partisan.
That’s Jewish Royalty to me, the highest, and I demand the respect to which it is due.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Or, they will try to find a way to come back at least half way. It only matters to me because we can’t have conflicted loyalties in the light of the Law of Return.
Politics aside, I am true to my upbringing which is anti-organized and mainstream religion, and pro-spirituality as personalized self-help. As an individual, to paraphrase Marx, I reserve the right to be and a Hindu in the morning, a Taoist in the Afternoon, Buddhist in the evening and and a Jew at night. I respect your right to be different and raise your children accordingly. My spirituality doesn’t require validation from a community, it comes from within.
But, politics is something else, and in the MIddle East, politics takes the form of religion.
@ Sebastien Zorn: Sebastien, the fact is that Buddhism is a different religion than Judaism. As I said earlier, I have great respect for Buddhism. Their emphasis on meditation and silence are extremely positive features. We Jews never know when to shut up, which is a bad thing. And we never slow down enough to experience any sort of peace. Be that as it may, Judaism is not Buddhism. One has to make a choice between different religious faiths. Buddhism contains some elements that are incompatible with Judaism, such as polytheism and bowing to cultured images (most of them of Buddha). Your defense of Buddhism is contradictory, since at one point you say that that it is highly monotheistic, while elsewhere you say that Buddhism has no God. Both cannot be true.
The biggest problem with trying to be a Jew, a New Ager and a Buddhist all at the same time, however, is that your children and grandchildren are unlikely to remain Jews and will probably intermarry with non-Jewish spouses who will not convert to Judaism. This mean a very substantial loss of “members” of the Jewish people and a catastrophic decline in our population, which in fact is happening right now. Young people know that one has to choose between faiths, even if we oldsters don’t. And usually they make the easiest choice, which is certainly not Judaism.
Ad for your embrace of leftism in the 1970s, that is a much worse choice of faiths. While Buddhism is a good religion as far as it goes, leftism is a false and evil creed. God forbid that any Jew become a leftist, since leftism is not only innately antisemitic but rejects all civilized ethical values. See what I have to say about the Soviet regime below.
I have a much clearer idea of where you are coming from Sebastien. But some of your views still disappoint me. I am troubled by your rejection of belief in God and of Judaism as a religious faith. The Jewish people have only survived for three thousand years because of their faith in God, his Teaching (Torah) and their observance of the religious commandments (mitzvoth), Without this faith and the religious observances connected with it, Judaism would have died out long ago. In the present conflict, the Arabs faith in God (even though their notions of God are twisted) is their most powerful weapon. In a conflict that has already gone on for a hundred years, and may well go on for another hundred, our only hope is to have even more faith in our God than they have in theirs. Only faith in God has sustained Jews through centuries of violence and persecution. We can’t afford to abandon it now.
Equally troubling is your statement that you were a leftist and would still be one if Stalin were not an antisemite. Stalin was certainly an anti-Semite, but this may have been the least of his crimes. He condemned millions of Ukrainian peasants to death by famine. by confiscating all of their crops to sell on foreign markets, leaving the peasants nothing to eat. He forced twelve million Kazakh nomadic pastoralists onto “collective farms,” where they were provided with no food, tools, seeds, or instructions in how to farm, which they had never done. Six million starved to death. Millions of other people, including whole nationalities suspected of disloyalty during World War II, were deported to Siberia, again without food or any means of supporting themselves. Millions of these people died. Millions of people were arrested on fake charges and brutally exploited and underfed as slave laborers. At least half of them died of hunger, exhaustion, overwork and unsanitary conditions. Millions of people were brutally tortured by Stalin’s secret police. Several hundred thousand innocent people (many of them Jews) were shot because they were suspected (in most cases falsely) of being opposed to Stalin. And while most Soviet citizens were poorly fed and housed, Stalin and his entourage led a life of luxury, consuming huge quantities of food and liquor every day in endless feasting. Huge quantities of food for him and his entourage had to be thrown out unused while millions starved. While very few families even had an apartment to themselves, Stalin had over thirty luxurious dachas (villas) and palaces that he reserved for his exclusive personal use. That was more than any tsar ever had.
I am ashamed that so many Jewish people supported this evil regime and the phone ideology it peddled to disguise its actual character.
@ keelie:
And I wrote those jokes.
@ keelie:
So there’s two of us. Awesome. And thank you for piping up.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Buddhism and its mother religion, Hinduism (aka – the Vedic religion) are far more intensely monotheistic than Judaism.
To a person who has never never troubled to study, or even better, practice either of them, it would seem like a chaotic conglommeration of idols and pictures, but this is not the case.
I too am a practitioner of a certain aspect of the above religions, and I find no conflict between this and being a Jew. I merely worship that One God that’s always (well… occasionally) mentioned by my fellow Jews, in an entirely different manner.
@ adamdalgliesh:
However, it’s clear you didn’t read the link to the wikipedia article. There are Jews who believe in both and practice both. Buddhism has no God. And Jews have been redefining Judaism and cherry picking among the commandments since the beginning.
My support for religious zionism is political. I support a Greater Israel minus Arabs, Muslims, except for a handful of allies, and death penalty for terrorists, including inciters and funders.
Politics. That’s what I care about here. Unfortunately, it takes the form of religion, of necessity, here. It’s a litmus test for loyalty, at the present time.
@ adamdalgliesh:
I didn’t evade, my initial comment — it was long, and I talked all about myself, was deleted. In a nutshell, I am of Jewish Descent on both sides, I have Orthodox rabbis, cantors, and shochets in my family tree on both sides but my parents turned their back on Judaism so I didn’t have a Jewish upbringing. My father was a secular agnostic and my mother an eclectic New Age spiritual seeker when I was growing up. I had no religious indocrination but I took meditation, yoga and martial arts classes. I only visited my observant relatives for a night of Passover once a while by myself.
Jews are a people and a religion. Frankly, except for recent convents, we are a race. Though it was mostly irrelevant to me when I was growing up — except for the nightmares, my father was a 2nd Gen Shoah survivor — it became inescapable when I came under frequent attack, out of the blue, by total strangers, as a Jew, in the last 30 years.
I used to be a Leftist who felt privately that I was fighting the same forces that murdered my grand-parents (and great-grandparents).
It became clear that the Palestinians with the Left’ s support were trying to finish the job the Nazis started.
Politically, I support religious zionism in Israel and am opposed to non-Orthodox conversion, even though it’s not a religion I share (or was even brought up in).
For me it’s about Jewish racial solidarity. Call me a racist. See if I care.
But, if the secularists ever wise up – I’m not holding my breath — I will support them.
I am a Jew by race. Halachically, too. But, I don’t really care. I used to be a Communist. If Stalin hadn’t turned out to be an anti-semite and had kept up his support of Israel, I’d still be one.
@ Sebastien Zorn: These hokey-jokey responses evade the issue. We Jews usually resort to irrelevant humor when asked questions we are too afraid to answer, or when we know there is no good answer.
But, I will concede that I am a lousy Buddhist. I want the enemies of the Jewish people dead.
It ate my comment. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Buddhist
For me the turning points were the Crown Heights Pogrom, my discover of Palestinian Media Watch right before the Arabs launched the 2000 Oslo terror war in response to being offered 98 percent of everything they were asked for, my establishing contact with my mother’s first cousin in Shomron, and learning that his grandson was a teacher in Brooklyn who was stabbed, and being personally singled out for attacks and abuse as a Jew starting mainly in the 90s and bigtime during Bush.
@ adamdalgliesh:
By the way, you know Buddhism has a much stricter diet (not really, this is a joke) than Judaism. Judaism bans shelfish, Buddhism bans shelfish desire. Japanese Buddhists stand and chant “Namu Amida Butsu” to Amida Buddha and Jews have the Amidah, the oldest standing prayer. The first month, the month of Pesach, of the Jewish calendar is Nissan, which is followed by the monts of Honda, Lexus, Mitsubishi, Suzuki and Mitsubishi (Do you suppose Moses drove standard or automatic?) The reason sashimi and lox look so much alike is their common point of origin. Lox comes from Murrays and Sashimi comes from Ollies which is only 2 doors down. As you travel south the lines converge until they come together at on the same shelf at Zabar’s Deli (right before the egg salad.) That’s the American Jewish contribution — like the Ashkenazic “tablecloth” to the Sephardic “table” – In Russia, we had “steppes”. Here we have “shelves”.
We now know what “manna” was. In can be explained in the same way that Moses writing an account that ends after his death can be explained. Time Travel. If Moses could go forward than Manna could be transported back. What is the perfect food, the ambrosia that nourishes and soothes all cares? Could only have been one thing.
Reddiwip
Progress.
@ adamdalgliesh:
And my only living relatives outside the United States, not counting a couple of Americans living abroad, are in Israel. Shomron region of Samaria to be exact. My mother’s first cousin made Aliya around the time of the Six Day War and he has many children, grandchildren and step children and grandchildren. He was an electrical engineer who worked on the earliest generations of pilot-less airplanes. During the Yom Kippur War, there were no casualties among Israeli pilots because they flew those pilot-less planes first until Egyptians exhausted their ammunition.
As my father always used to say proudly whenever Jews did something great.
“Clever these Chinese.”
For me it’s not about culture, or religion or lifestyle, I never travel and I like Kdramas and classical music.
It’s about solidarity.
We American Jews were good with that in 1948. Lousy during the Shoah. Lousy under Obama and now Trump.
I’m a contrarian. Live with it.
@ adamdalgliesh:
I am an ethnic Jew from an eclectic “New Age Background” with an emphasis on healing, yoga, meditation and Eastern mysticism from my Litvak-American Jewish mother and and a rationalist secular agnostic background from my 2nd Gen Shoah survivor and rescuer father.
I used to visit my great uncles on both sides for one night of passover when I was growing up but otherwise Judaism but otherwise had a completely secular upbringing except for yoga and meditation classes and some reading. I had a medical circumcision, no bris, no Hebrew School. \
Being Jewish meant Jewish humor, a couple of foods and the Shoah.
It was so irrelevant to me, that when I became a radical Leftist in the late 70s, I became pro-Palestinian simply because everybody else was.
I usually, didn’t bother mentioning I was Jewish. People usually didn’t ask.
Starting in a small way in the 80s and a big way in the 90s, anti-semitism made a big comeback in NY, from the Crown Heights Pogrom to all the times I got harassed and attacked, which I later came to realize was on account of anti-semitism.
The real turning points for me were the White-washing of the Crown Heights Pogrom and the acquittal (twice!) of the ring leader of the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum in 1993, ironically, the year of Oslo — my accidental discovery of Palestinian Media Watch, where I heard the Palestinian Arabs speaking truthfully in Arabic for the first time — with English subtitles – not this human rights, democracy nonsense complete with blood libels posing as statistics and human interest stories.
“Imagine you leave your house one day, and there are tanks pointing their guns at you….” followed a few months later by the blood Oslo terror war that began in 2000 when Barak and Clinton offered Arafat 98 percent of everything he had said he wanted, and he responded by walking out and beginning the mass murder. Idiot liberals here kept blaming it on Sharon for visiting the Temple Mount with a lot of troops protecting him.
I am a racial Jew. I know we’re a people, not a race, blah, blah, blah.
Yes, and no. That only applied to recent converts.
If you look Jewish and you get bullied by total strangers on account of it all the time. It became more open in the Bush years, though sometimes they attacked me as an American – right, in a bar/restaurant full of Americans they had no issue with.
“Never Again.” That’s it. That’ s my issue. There are two kinds of anti-semites. Especially eliminationist anti-semites. The good ones. And the ones who are still breathing. At a minimum, Israel must be the one place in the world where they, physically, are unable to get within striking distance.
My father, who escaped a forced labor camp in Czechoslavakia, walked to Budapest and joined the Hungarian Zionist Youth who were protecting Jews hiding in basements from the Soviet bombing with badly faced ids from the Arrow Cross whe o were shooting Jews by the thousands
and his first cousin who survived Auschwitz (and her new husband who had been a Wallenberg rescuer who escaped three times from Ukrainian labor camp for Hungarian Jews and walked to Budapest)
were the only surviving members of my extended family in Europe. Grandparents, Great-grandparents, Great Uncles and Aunts, cousins. All murdered. My mother’s family brought each other over from Lithuania over the course of the entire 19th century, they saw the writing on the wall. 95 percent of the Jews of LIthuania were murdered by the Germans and LIthuanians.
Religion has nothing to do with it.
Bergson’s Hebrew Committe for National Liberation couldn’t get the Joint Chiefs of Staff to recommend to FDR that he threaten the Germans with Chemical warfare if they didn’t stop gassing the Jews, the way he did with Japan over China, and Germany over Soviet Troops because we didn’t have a state.
Well, now we do. And I politically block with the religious Zionist movement as long as they are the ones defending the country and Jewish rights.
“I can vouch for there being a type of Zionist who doesn’t care what kind of society our “state” will have; I’m that person. If I were to know that the only way to a state was via socialism, or even that this would hasten it by a generation, I’d welcome it. More than that: give me a religiously Orthodox state in which I would be forced to eat gefilte fish all day long (but only if there were no other way) and I’ll take it.” Jabotinsky
http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/warrior-of-zion/
Though, I like Gefilte Fish. Especially with red and white horse radish. Right out of the jar.
This “Rabbi” Seth Cattleman is an example of why Israel should make no concessions to the non-Orthodox sectarians and “liberal” Jewish organizations over the Wall and Conversion Bill controversies. First let the sectarians and the “liberal” American Jewish organizations connected with them support Israel. Then and only then should Israel consider their demands.
By the way, Sebastian–how can you be both a Buddhist and a Jew? I have the deepest respect for Buddhism–a wonderful religion in many respects. But after all, its polytheistic, and involves image worship. Surely one has to choose one’s religion. It is not possible to believe in two different religions with two quite different belief systems. Elijah, centuries ago, pointed out to the Israelites that they must choose between The God of Israel and other gods.
This hadith is also article 7 of the Hamas Covenant. When you tell liberals who want to normalize relations with Hamas this, they don’t care. They are so arrogant and condescending, that they don’t believe that what “third world” people say matters. Only their objective place in history.
Note that today, “liberal” means leftist. it didn’t always, but it does now.
The Hamas Covenant
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
Jews need to organize a BDS on the Phony 4.
Greenblatt makes around $700K.