The War on Islam?

                                         Google image.

Labelled as a conspiracy theory, the War on Islam has been perpetrated by a number of political and social theorists. The term can refer to any acts that involve military, economic, social, cultural harm or any discursive means to undermine sovereignty and/or authority, like creating a negative public image, swaying public opinion with propaganda or fabricating stories about individuals and events.  In particular, the term is said to have come from Islam and pertains to accusations that the west is imposing its modern secularized ideas onto the traditional Islamic way of life. However, the War on Islam is much more than an idea or a political discourse, it has led to real wars, genocides, massacres, immense poverty and human displacements.    Juxtaposed is the western point of view, whereby The War on Islam has been converted into the western declaration of a War on Terrorism. This syllogism has been used mainly to identify key Islamic insurgents such as Sayyid Qutb, Ayatollah Khomeini, Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden, all of whom are said to have raged a War of Terror on the capitalist west.  Sadly, there is little public knowledge on the history that cause these key figures to turn to terrorism.  By definition, terrorism is about inflicting terror, but it is also about having been terrorized. In order to understand these dynamics, we must go back to the source of terror that has been imposed on Islam in the past.

When we think about terrorism our minds hark back to the events of September 11^th and the attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre.    Since 9/11, hundreds of Americans and people residing inside the United States have been charged with jihadist terrorism or related crimes, or have died before being charged, but were widely reported to have engaged in jihadist terrorism. The rise of ISIS brought a surge in terrorism across the world, although there have been cases every year since 9/11 that were not so widely acknowledged.  As the years have passed and since the peak of ISIS, the group’s influence has greatly diminished and the number of terrorism cases has actually declined.[1]  What has not declined is the targeting of innocent Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorism and just want to get on with their lives.

Today, Muslims live in many parts of the world and there is a view that they should assimilate into the western culture. Those who are charged with trying to make this happen seem not to understand that Islam is very different in its social order and requirements to that of the west.  Added to this, some aspects of the western culture have found their way into the Islamic countries and caused a split between the ideas of the establishments and the new generations, this in turn has added to the tension between east and west.

The west has rejected the idea that power should rest in the hands of religious leaders, European history has already had this experience at the time of the reformation.  Islam is also having a reformation, but it is not one major event, rather the reforming of Islam has been constant.  Within its own religious context Muslims have probably been subject to more reforms that any of nation. Reform is an integral part of Islams history. The greatest of all reformers was the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The early community attempted to improve their life-world by establishing Islam, which is in effect a reform movement in its own right. This was supported by Hadith claims that in every century, God would send a leader who would renew the religion. The concepts of reform (islah) and renewal (tajdid)[2] are taken directly from the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet and both involve a return to the fundamentals of Islam.[3]  However, the idea was not to move away from the ideas of Islam, but to appropriate modern ideas within the Islamic framework.

The problem incurred from the west lies in the inception of modernism, which has its roots in nineteenth century colonialism. This caused a dramatic decline in the Islamic economies. Muslims became totally subordinate to western domination.  Europe was deeply embedded in the new sciences, which were actually not new at all they were implicitly lifted from the historical contributions made by Muslims.  The fact is, Islamic science was robust  when Europe was still in the Dark Ages. These sciences included mathematics, geometry, algebra, medicine astronomy and religious life.  Reforms gave power to women long before the west’s suffragette movement.

It is true that many Muslims cannot support the idea of a secular society and the most radical of groups such as Hisb al-Tahrir are hoping to reinstate a Caliphate and gain global dominance. Some countries have installed Islamic States and/or theocratic republics that range from the monarchy of Saudi Arabia to the religiously dominated governments of Pakistan, Iran Afghanistan, Turky, Bangladesh, Maylasia, Indonesia and Sudan, most with autocratic regimes propped up by the military. The west has played a crucial part in the birth of these regimes through years of colonialism. Yet, today, this has seen the west entering into new crusades based on the notion of turning these states into democracies. Indeed, there is an ongoing assumption that democracies are the ideal system for any country wishing to join the New World Order,  but realistically,  most democracies are plagued with self-interests, corruption and failure to serve those who vote them in.

In studies on conflict the philosopher Charles Peirce uses semiology (the theory of signs) to understand and to clarify the problems of conflict.   Peirce draws on a theory of signs to identify the dynamics of hostile engagement. Hitherto, I shall apply Charles Peirce’s theory of signs to simplify and re-frame the Western and Middle Eastern problem.

First let us look at some of the characters already mentioned in their historical context. Sayyid Qutb was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamic organization founded in Egypt by the Islamic scholar Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Sheikh Hassan Ahmed Abdel Rahman Muhammed al-Banna was an Egyptian schoolteacher and imam, and one of the most influential Islamic revivalists.[4]  He published his treatise “On Jihad” in the late 1930s and it “became a required part of the Muslim Brothers’ curriculum.” [5] The main translation can be found in Wendell’s 1977 collection, Five Tracts of Hasan Al-Banna (1906-1949).[6] Al-Banna’s writings marked a dramatic shift in Islamic intellectual thought by presenting a modern Islamic ideology.  He designated the Qur’an to be the only acceptable guide to life and he promulgated the total Islamization of the state, the economy, and society. He declared that establishing a just society required development of institutions and progressive taxation, and elaborated an Islamic fiscal theory where zakat (taxes) would be reserved for social expenditure in order to reduce inequality.  Al-Banna strongly criticized Western materialism, consumption and rigorous competitiveness.   He condemned British imperialism, and the traditionalism of the Egyptian ulema (a body of Muslim scholars who are said to have specialist knowledge of Islamic sacred law and theology). Al-Banna’s ideas appealed to Egyptian and pan-Arab patriotism, but he rejected Arab nationalism and regarded all Muslims as members of a single community.[7]

Al-Banna’s work and that of his contemporary Sayyid Qutb need to be viewed in the context of an Arab Middle Eastern struggle for independence. The rule of Ottoman Albanian commander Muhammad Ali established a dynasty in 1805 that went on to reign until 1953. It was informally part of the Ottoman Empire.  In 1859-69 the Suez Canal was built, but it and other infrastructure projects ruined the economy of Egypt and lead to a gradual occupation by the British. In 1882 the British troops defeated the Egyptian army and took complete control of country. Egypt then became a British protectorate in 1914 at the start of the First World War. During the war Britain mustered its forces to guard the Suez Canal against invasion. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) was a British Empire military formation, formed to accomplish that role, It was established on 10 March 1916 under the command of General Archibald Murray from the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and the Force in Egypt (1914–15), at the beginning of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign.[8] Fierce battles ensued before the defeat of the German and Turkish forces further crippling the Egyptian economy and the peoples’ spirit. After the 1914 Egyptian independence was restored, but the British influence remained strong until the 1950s. Importantly, at this time there were many changes occurring in Britain and the United States and Qutb believed the western influence was having an impact on the Egyptian monarchy. Sayyid Qutb visited America to see what was happening and what he witnessed disturbed him.  What he saw was America’s materialist and violent society, obsessed with sexual pleasures. Qutb spent two years pursing studies in educational administration.   Over two years, he worked and studied at Wilson Teachers’ College in Washington, D.C.   He visited the major cities of the United States and spent time in Europe.

America had a profound influence on Qutb’s thoughts and  he wrote about it.  Qutb noted with disapproval the openly displayed sexuality of American women:  He showed how the American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity. “She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs – and she shows all this and does not hide it”. ^[9] He also commented on the American taste in arts and disapproved of them.

Before visiting America Qutb had enjoyed the western classics, but the realities of a changing western world were too much for him. On his return to Egypt, Qutb published “The America that I Have Seen”, where he became explicitly critical of things he had observed, materialism, individual freedoms, the economic system, racism, divorce, sports such as boxing and the interaction between men and women. He also objected to the strong support the United States gave to the new State of Israel. ^[10]

On the 29th August 1966, Sayyid Qutb, was executed for his role in an alleged plot to overthrow the government of President Nasser, but he has remained a hero to those Muslims America refers to as Jihadists and he is said to be the father of Islamic fundamentalism. He is believed to have been the inspiration behind the fight in Syria and the massacres in European cities. His book, known in English either as Milestones or Signposts, is described as being to militant Islam what Das Kapital was to communism or Mein Kampf was to Nazism. It has certainly influenced generations of Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.[11] However, author James Nolan, who writes about Qutb in his book What They Saw in America, says the Egyptian struck him as an unlikely candidate to be an Islamic terrorist. He was educated, a consumer of classical music, an intellectual.[12]  In Nolan’s book the story of Qubt is one of an existential crisis. while trying to determine whether he was going to be a true Muslim or if he was going to give way to what he called jahiliyyah—a departure from true Islam,’ Nolan explains. “This was tested one night in his cabin on a ship when a woman came to his door  semi-naked.  She asks if she can spend the night with him.

“True to his resolutions, he says no and he shuts the door. Then he hears her collapse outside the door in a drunken state”. Qutb sees this as an example of him keeping to his determination to stay true and not get into western sexual mores. This was believed to have radicalized Qutb.  Nolan goes on to suggest there were already seeds of discontent due to the Egyptian complacency with British colonization.

 When Qutb went back to Egypt, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and helped in the overthrow of the monarchy. Later, under the government of the secular nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser, he was thrown in jail for his extremist activities.

At 3:00am on 29 August 1966, Sayyid Qutb was hanged in Egypt for his part in a conspiracy to assassinate Nasser, though Nolan says the trial was really based on his book.

Al Qaeda and Islamic activists have been very much influenced by Qutb’s writings and his life.   Nolan states, .’I think we need to understand him. You don’t have to agree with him to understand him.’[13]

 

In this last and final part of this study, Al-Banna wraps up his essay by addressing contemporary arguments against the obligation for violent jihad.  In a passage that could have been written by any online jihadi today, Al-Banna dismisses the “greater” vs” lesser” jihad argument.  In a fascinating reversal of tactics, it’s Brotherhood members themselves who use the “greater vs lesser” argument to deflect criticism from non-Muslims. [14]

Al-Banna’s teachings spread far beyond Egypt, influencing today various Islamist movements from charitable organizations to political parties. The English-language political neologism of “War on Islam” was coined in Islamist discourse in the 1990s and popularized as a conspiracy theory only after 2001.^[12] Jonathan Schanzer has argued that the historical Muslim indifference to the West turned to “alarmed dislike” with the beginning of Western military superiority in the 17th century. This is  when Europe was coming into its own intellectually and scientifically.  There was fierce competition between beliefs with Islam being perceived as threatening to both the monarchy and the Christian hierarchy. However, with the end of the era of Western colonialism, rage against non-Muslims and the governments of Muslim-majority countries stemmed, not from alleged non-Muslim aggression and enmity, but allegedly from frustration over the unrelenting encroachment from Western culture.   This encroachment has never ceased.  ^[13]

[1] https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/terrorism-in-america/terrorism-cases-2001-today

[2] Ibid p 90

[3] Qur’an 7. 170;  11. 117; 28.19.

[4] Making Sense of Jihad. https://web.archive.org/web/20090902105703/http://www.makingsenseofjihad.com/albannas_on_jihad/

[5] Iibid.

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8]

[9]“‘Qutb: Between Terror And Tragedy’ by Hisham Sabrin”. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 17 June 2006. quoting Hourani, A. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798–1939. Cambridge University Press, 1962. and Mitchell, Richard S. The Society of The Muslim Brotherhood. Oxford University Press, 1969.

[10]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb#Two_years_in_the_United_States

[11] https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/how-living-in-america-changed-islamic-fundamentalist-sayyid-qutb/7800676

[12] Ibid

[13] James Nolan What They Saw in America,  Williams College, Massachusetts. Publisher: Cambridge University Press; Online publication date: April 2016; Print publication year: 2016​ …

 

 

The shocking take-over of Afghanistan by the Taliban reverberated around the world. The main question was what would this mean for women? Afghan women have a prior history of being invisible.  Just as they were beginning to acquire some rights and freedoms, they are again plunged into the abyss. I watched them on the evening news, night after night, saddened by the outcome. Hiding behind the compulsory chador or niqab the women are hardly figures of exuberance, more like ghosts from a terrible past. It got me to thinking, how long will it take before these women are allowed to become visible again.

It was not so long ago that western women were invisible, it happened differently. Our bodies were exposed, but our personalities were crushed under the weight of patriarchy.  It reminded me of a 1960s song that conveyed a similar message in relation to suburban life. In the song our homes were described as little boxes. As women were locked into those suburban boxes.  The notion resonates with bodies being locked into the yards of black or blue cloth, the chador, niqab or burqa.  Women like dolls are wrapped up and packaged.    How do they work, half-blinded by the blackness?

We, the western women have shared much in common with our Muslim sisters, but they may not know it.  We were not invisible in body, but we were demolished in spirit and soul.   We were the domestics, cleaning, cooking and looking after children without pay or reward.  This is not the same as house-keeping or mothering, real  caring and nurturing are innate.  What I am speaking of is domestic slavery and exploitation, we were like robot dolls.. This view of women was recounted in another 1960s song by the popular Cliff Richard, the words described the situation perfectly, “Got myself a cryin’, talkin’, sleepin’, walkin’, livin’ doll”, the second verse speaks directly to the nature of imprisonment. “I’m gonna lock her up in a trunk so no big hunk can steal her away from me”. No loving or honouring was included in these lyrics,  just rank possession of the sublime object.

The story of invisibility is not unique to the Muslim women who must hide behind the veil. All women were veiled.  However, today’s Muslim women remind us of where we have come from.   My generation of women experienced a form on invisibility that obscured the person, but made the body available.  It was called the swinging sixties, the time of the sexual revolution and the discovery of the contraceptive pill. As women, we were made more available than ever before in history.  Men took full advantage of the new science and sexually used and abused us against our will.   All repressions on sexuality appeared to be lifted and people called it liberation… Liberation for whom?  Any woman who did not comply with the new demands was labelled frigid or a misfit. We were covered in a veil, but the veil was like an icy mist that would come and go over the landscape.

In the west attractive women were not physically invisible, to the contrary any attractive young woman would be encouraged to use her attractiveness to get ahead in the world.  At the time I was a junior in the film industry, how to get a quick promotion was easy, but not all of us wished to comply. With this in mind, many were locked out of their employment and left to fend for themselves.   Smart women did well, they found their voice.  A lot of women   complied, but for many it backfired, because as soon as they reached any kind of maturity, say age 20, they were no longer needed, there was a new cohort of pretty young girls to replace them on the casting couch.

Jump ten years and Muslims were immigrating into Europe and bringing their values with them. Some young western girls found honourable young men and turned their faith to Islam.   Muslim women appeared to have more protection and Muslim men had more respect, but we never got to know the full story.   By the 1970s feminism was rife in the western world, but Islamic women did not participate and we did not invite them. They seemed too entrenched in patriarchy.

Feminism did not reach the Middle East until much later, it had a difficult birth and a tedious evolution. The oppression and possession of Muslim women was different and it was not truly made visible until after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.  Prior to the Revolution Iranian women had enjoyed a lot of western style freedoms, but beneath the surface there was an insidious regime exploiting the workers and stealing the spoils.  The old Shar was very accommodating to western influences. In the 1930s, the Shar had banned the veil and ordered police to remove women’s headscarves.  Iran was central to the west’s attack on Islam, but we failed to see what was happening. The west appeared to be offering freedom, but what it was really pushing was colonization.

After the revolution, Iran’s new leader the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini decreed that all women had to wear the veil and the Islamic dress code was not just back in fashion it became mandatory.   All women regardless of religion or nationality were required to wear the hijab. Notably, the revolution came about, not through culture or religion, but due to oil,  Iran had barrels of it and America wanted it.  However, America’s presence in Iran would come to an end.  The Americans and the British had a long history of attempting to take possession of Iranian oil, but finally they capitulated. The Iranians hated America and subsequently they were sympathetic to the most extreme interpretations of Islamic Law.

In 1979 protesters outside the US embassy voiced their anger towards the US.  Revolutionary students took dozens of US embassy staff hostage while thousands of anti-US demonstrators surrounded government buildings and filled the streets with chants and protests. After the revolution women were largely confined to the home and wearing the burqa outside of the home became compulsory. A quarter of a century later women had become used to the code of dress and they were demanding the authorities maintain their compulsory laws regarding the wearing of the hijab.  Following the western occupation, the burqa and hijab made them feel protected.

It is commonly accepted that in order to change the society, you must first embed the changes into the culture and it takes roughly twenty-five years for any change to occur. Looking back, we cannot separate the events of the Iranian revolution from those of the US and British occupation.   It was the circumstances of oppression from the west that led to the establishment of an Islamic state that would be equally, if not more oppressive.

There are no strict rules regarding the full veil in the Qur’an and many Muslim women reserve the right to choose which parts of the body they wish to cover and how they will be covered. The liberal view is that women should be free to choose the cover that suits them.

Prior to the Taliban’s invasion in 2021 women were exercising many freedoms, in dress, education and the ability to hold important positions as well as being able to voice their opinions. Yet sadly, within days of the Taliban take-over women were back to wearing the burqa, chador or niqab.  This dramatic change sets an unfortunate precedent for the reigniting  of  womens’ oppression, not just in Afghanistan, but anywhere in the region.   Muslims are far more united under the umbrella of Islam than they are under the state and dress is a key religious signifier in the unity of the  Ummah, especially in times of insecurity.

During the festival of the hajj, the most important festival in the Islamic year, the men wear two pieces of white cloth and the women wear the burqa, chador or niqab and they are usually dressed in black. It conjures up medieval visions of the dark and the light, metaphors once used for the good and the bad in Christendom.  The woman was always perceived as the temptress and was often dressed in black, while the man was in the colour of angels.

Personally, I do not like the full veil, but I respect those who choose to wear it. I cannot truly imagine what it is like to see the world through a piece of muslin cloth.  To me the full veil is the outward expression of male domination and it dehumanizes the female, but many Muslim do not agree with me and they have a right to their own opinion.

We should not shy away from beauty and there are many beautiful head coverings.  Today,  veils still play a significant role in many religions, including Orthodox Judaism and Catholicism as well as in Islam with all three religions having had their roots in climates where head coverings are conducive to the environment.   We must take into account the context. Islam began as a small religious community in Medina in the Arabian Peninsula.  It was established by the prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632 CE) and it gradually spread across the Middle East to Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, then to Central Asia, and parts of Europe.   In these times women did not wear the burqa, the covering was a veil or scarf as was the tradition long before the inception of Islam. It is only recently that some Islamic states, such as Iran, Afghanistan and more, have begun to require all women to wear the full veil.   There are issues of freedom here and there are significant health issues as well. The body needs some exposure to light and the sun,  without it vitamin deficiency will occur and the body will not be allowed to breathe.

As a general rule Islam does not require women to wear the full covering, but many choose to.  We need to understand this and we need to ensure that the woman knows that if she chooses not to wear the full covering, she is not failing in her religion or in respect. Islam allows for the freedom to choose.

In the end, it is modesty that holds the key to the female’s  choices and some will wear clothing that completely covers the body from neck to toe, but which is not traditionally Muslim.  In addition, many western women will dress in a manner where there is nothing to distinguish the western women from the Muslim woman. Long gowns go in and out of fashion as do head scarves.  Today, on the western streets many young girls will wear modern dress, often jeans or pants and simply cover their head with a scarf. Many of the clothes are tight fitting and would be frowned upon by the older generation.  Also, today, many western people are converting to Islam and this is bound to have a significant impact on Islamic law, jurisprudence and the way Muslims dress.

Across the world men have been telling women how to dress since antiquity. The struggle over what women wear has been well established in history. During colonization many authorities attempted to stop Muslim women from wearing traditional dress.  In Islam there is no one size fits all. In some parts of Islam, if men wear silk and gold, it is considered to be haram as these two things are meant only for women. In other parts men will wear brighter colours or just pastels.  In many respects women are idolized by Muslim men and this can be manifest in the promulgation of extreme controls. Guidelines differ, many Muslim men are happy to allow women to travel alone, use jewellery, perfumes and makeup, while others are not.

For women it is not easy being a Muslim. At the intersections of all traditional practices, we find misogyny, oppression and brutality.  In addition, Islamophobia makes being a Muslim woman very difficult in western society. There is a lot of ignorance and even more arrogance  that impacts on the Muslim community.   Women need to feel confident and they need to feel safe and they should be permitted to dress accordingly.

 

Free Palestine.

Dr Chris James.

The following disturbing post appeared on my Face Book feed recently. It describes a random attack on a small Palestinian village named Mufaqara, a village in the South Hebron Hills.

A day later a picture of a 3 year old child was posted on my feed in relation to the attack.  The child was stretched out on a hospital bed fighting for his life after a Jewish settler had hit him in the head with a stone.  It is beyond belief that anyone would want to harm a small child in this way, but the frenzy of violence has no compassion for victims despite their age.   This story brings home the ongoing devastation suffered by the Palestinian people and I am sure it will touch the hearts of all who are humane in their beliefs and caring in heart and soul. As for me I just cried while reading it. In silence, we are all responsible for these actions and we must collectively speak out against this inhumanity regardless of race, religion or creed.

The attack happened on the Jewish Holy Day of Simchat Torah. This is how the Jewish settlers celebrated their Holy Day. The description comes from an Israeli who was there, his name is Yuval Abraham and it was translated by Riva Hocherman and posted by my Facebook friend Sol Salbe. This is what Yuval Abraham said:

“There’s an insane rampage happening now at Mufaqara, a Palestinian village in the south Hebron Hills. About sixty masked men with clubs, sticks, guns, rocks. There’s never been anything like this here. It’s like a small army. Dozens of settlers. I’m writing this quickly, because they’re still here, in the trees. This is one of the most frightening things I’ve ever seen.

First a group of twenty masked men showed up and attacked a shepherd. Three of his sheep, they slit their throats right in front of him. He ran away with his two children, six and seven years old. The rest of his flock was slaughtered. Basil Adraa saw it and I’m here with him now. He took some pictures. There are also videos, which we’ll upload when we can.

Then a few dozen more masked men joined in, all with clubs, the villagers said. They overran the village and began to hurl rocks at the houses. They hacked at the water pipes with machetes and knives, one house after another. The terrified families fled their homes, went to the wadi. A horrific sight, hard to describe: there’s no car left that they haven’t smashed to pieces.

Then the settlers went inside the houses, into the living rooms, the kitchens. They started wrecking them with clubs and hammers. Quite a few of the villagers were injured. One was hit in the head, another in the stomach. A three-year-old boy, Muhammad, was hit in the head with a rock and was rushed to hospital, where he is now. He has a cracked skull, internal bleeding, and will probably have surgery tomorrow. There’s a smear of blood on the floor in his house. He was at home when the men attacked. His grandfather is here with us now, consumed by fear and also injured.

Soldiers were standing behind the attackers the whole time and did nothing to stop them. They fired huge amounts of gas as well as stun grenades at the Palestinians. In situations like this, the soldiers almost always back up the settlers. It’s simple: if Palestinians defend themselves and stand up to their attackers, throw stones at the men invading their village, the soldiers shoot at them. This is how one guy from Kosra, Muhammad Hassan, was murdered a few months ago, in a similar attack by settlers in the Nablus area, who broke into his home with hammers.

I can hardly hear now because of the booming. The gas destroys your throat and the soldiers shooting are terrifying. Meanwhile the settlers’ rocks are flying over your head. And this is all really happening, right in the village, right by Palestinian homes. I didn’t know what to do except shout, don’t shoot! don’t shoot!

Quite a few people are injured, some are still getting treated. There were so many masked men that they could lift up cars and roll them down the wadi–really. One settler fired at a Palestinian who was in his home and threw stones. Didn’t hit him. The bullets are still on the floor. Sorry, this is disjointed.

The media is blind to what is going’s on here in the West Bank. In the south Hebron hills alone, seven new outposts have gone up in the past year, so-called “sheep farms”. There’s a network of insanely violent outposts all over the West Bank—about forty of them built in the last five years.

The state gives the farms thousands of dunams of land expropriated from Palestinians, and the Israeli settlers use deliberate, blatant violence to terrorize them. There’s a network of several hundred settlers who operate the farms, many of them moving from farm to farm. They break hands and stab animals, all so that the Palestinians will leave. I’ve seen dozens of incidents like this just this year. They’re very organized, with WhatsApp groups. Every day they graze their sheep somewhere else to take over the maximum amount of land. Before the holiday, they called their people to come to the farms to volunteer. I think it’s related, but don’t know for sure. On a holiday, with people all together, the timing is no accident.

This isn’t a bunch of extremists. No. It’s the state, it’s official policy, for which Benny Gantz is responsible. Just like the masked men, the government is pushing for expulsion from whole areas. The village of Mufaqara is unrecognized, one of dozens, and the army comes back here again and again to demolish the houses. Even though it’s been here for generations, the residents are not allowed to build so that they’ll leave.

And so today, on Simchat Torah, eighty men got together, came out from their farms and outposts, and simply destroyed a village so that the people would leave, or just from pure racism, or I don’t know what. It will happen again and again if they don’t stop it. And our country is cynical, yawning in the face of violence, they don’t see the connections, they’re blind to the fact that our army really does rule over another people, that the Palestinians have no rights, that we have created a system of masters and slaves. Wake up—come see for yourselves. Learn what’s happening in this country, especially my generation—see what military occupation looks like, what supremacy look like. I’m tired of the complacency, the racism, the fact that no one cares.”

No words can be added to describe this dreadful incident, one of many.  It is beholden on every Jew across the world to condemn this behaviour.  It is beholden on every other  international citizen to condemn Israel and to invoke embargoes on this rampant discrimination and cruelty.  This is not the Jewish way. This was not the purpose in the minds of many ordinary Jews who just wanted to assist their fellow citizens in settlement. In history Jews and Muslims have lived together in harmony with few disruptions.

The Palestinian people are experiencing a slow post World War genocide that has been carefully calculated along with a New World Order and it includes Muslims against Muslims. This has been instigated and facilitated by western governments for their own interests.

There is no half way in this struggle. The Palestinian people have a right to live in peace on what is their land.  The world collectively must do more to stop this war-mongering slaughter. It is not just a threat to Palestinians, it is a threat to global peace and security.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two things have prompted me to reassert my animals rights campaign, the first is the calving season in Victoria.  I am forced to listen to the painful cries of mother cows as their babies are snatched from them for a miserable life of milking.  The second is the Islamic festival of Eid, which sees animals slaughtered as sacrifice. The word Eid means breaking the fast and there are two main fasts a year in Islam.  Animal sacrifice is the most barbaric of practices, it makes me sick to just think about it.  Nowhere in the Qur’an does it say animals should be sacrificed in this barbaric way.  It has become a matter of tradition and it should be outlawed.  In many European countries now the practice is coming up against cruelty to animals laws. This needs to happen everywhere… And soon.

There is a growing vegan movement for Muslims happening across the world and hopefully this will bring about changes.

                                        Palestinian flag.  Google.

                                        Israeli Flag. Google.

A few years ago, I held an exhibition of my paintings at a Jewish Arts Centre in Melbourne. The exhibition was based on an important historical and theological concept in Judaism named Tikkun Olam (Heal the World). During the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, I was reminded of the two fundamental teachings in Judaism that most Jews today still adhere to without question. On the one hand, Tikkun Olam, or the obligation to heal the world and on the other the State of Israel, or the designated Jewish homeland. These two critical imperatives dominate Jewish life, but they are also buried in a complex mythology which raises obvious contradictions. How does one heal the world while at the same time a war is being raged against people who disagree with the Jewish interpretation of history?

More than 2000 years lapsed between the Jewish Diaspora and the re-birthing of Israel. There were very few Jews left in the homeland after the mass exodus, but they suddenly arrived in droves in 1948 and in a slow trickle before then. This has led to numerous questions about the role of the Jewish State in modern global politics and whether there has been a deliberate attempt to eliminate the Palestinian population or to assimilate them into one bilateral territory. Israel would not have survived without the backing of the United States, whose leaders saw a strategic advantage in having an ally sitting between east and west. At the end of the Second World War, the establishment of Israel was viewed as a solution for Jews who were homeless following the horrors of the Holocaust, it was also of strategic importance.  Israel has moved ahead exponentially since then and has claimed significantly more territory, while Palestinians have been constantly driven into poverty, oppression and persecution. It begs the question: Was partition a genuine attempt to house desperate and suffering Jews? Or was there another agenda before that?

Undoubtedly, Jewish history is modelled on trauma, but instead of looking retrospectively to deal with the internal pain, many have turned it outwards and created a nationalist and eschatological explanation for decades of conflict and Human Rights abuses. Throughout history Jews have suffered for their beliefs, but they have also brought immeasurable suffering upon themselves. In 1948 the nation that once was Palestine was partitioned, which resulted in the creation of the Jewish State of Israel, but sadly, Israel is not a land of emancipation, but one of exclusivity, insecurity and wars. Israel is a small fortress surrounded by hostile enemies. Is this the Jewish dream or the reality of a horrible nightmare?

The Conflicts.

Two main conflicts took place in 1947 and 1948, the Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and the Arab–Israeli conflict in 1948, but the story that gave rise to these conflicts is much older.

Well before partition a nationalist state for the Jews was already in the planning. The Mandate on Palestine and the conflicts between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish Zionists are well documented, but the events that took place before partition and leading up to the conflict are less known. There was seemingly a plot to eliminate Palestine well before partition. The plot was hatched with the establishment of modern Zionism in Eastern Europe.

Modern Zionism emerged in the context of modern Antisemitism in the late 19th century. It started in Central and Eastern Europe as a nationalist revival movement and as a reaction to the rise in Antisemitism. It was also a response to the Haskalah, or the Jewish Enlightenment. The Jewish Enlightenment was not a lot different to similar movements around the western world. Modern industrialisation had driven many rural people off the land and into cities and factories. Feudalism was being dismantled and a capitalist system was replacing it. Workers received a wage, but it was a poor reward for mass slavery. Importantly, at an intellectual level, the old superstitions and beliefs were being replaced with scientific explanations.

The Haskalah means wisdom and the new knowledge and wisdom among Jews was to be expressed in a burgeoning intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe who called themselves Zionists.

Zionism differed from other forms of Enlightenment in that it held on to the old traditions, but it also followed the Enlightenment methodology that led to a vast wave of imperialism, territorial expansion and colonialism. During the 1770s to about 1881 Zionism was an ideological worldview that had its roots in Jewish nationalism. This followed the rise of nationalism in England, France, parts of Eastern Europe and the United States. With many nations in the grip of a new nationalism the Zionist movement felt to challenge the Ottoman Empire and lay claim to Palestine as the national home of the Jewish people. The target was the whole of Palestine and the displacement of the Arabic population.

The Promised Land.

According to the Bible and Judaism, Eretz Israel was promised to the Jews by God. Based on this promise, in 1854, an American businessman named Judah Touro bequeathed money to fund Jewish residential settlements in Palestine. The executor of the Will was Sir Moses Montefiore (1784 -1885). Montefiore was a British financier, banker, philanthropist and a Sheriff of London. Montefiore was from a rich Italian-Jewish family and he used his wealth to promote economic development among Jewish communities in the Levant, but he is best known for his contribution to education and the Montefiore schools. He founded the Mishkenot Sha’ananim in 1860, a Jewish residential settlement and almshouse outside of the old walled city of Jerusalem; the first settlement outside Jerusalem’s walled city. As President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Montefiore carried a lot of influence with the British consul in Damascus. The consul Charles Henry Churchill (1841–42) is viewed as pivotal to the development of the new Zionism. ¹ Many of the Montefiore funds were used for transporting Jews to Palestine.

In 1812, Moses Montefiore married Judith Cohen (1784–1862). Judith’s sister married Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777–1836) and Montefiore’s firm acted as stockbrokers for the Rothschild’s family business. The two brothers-in-law became business partners. They invested in major projects like gas and insurance. In 1824 Montefiore was among the founding consortium of the Alliance Life Assurance Company (which later merged with Sun Insurance to form Sun Alliance ²

Pogroms.

Between 1881-1884 a mass persecution of Jews took place in the Russian Empire (the pogroms). In 1882, a group of Hovevei Zion members founded Rishon LeZion, the first Zionist settlement in the Land of Israel. It was led by philanthropist Isaac Leib Goldberg. The Zionists got around the political obstacles by registering as a charity. In 1890 The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Eretz Israel came into existence. It was later known as the Odessa Committee. The Odessa Committee was dedicated to the practical aspects in establishing agricultural settlements. One of the major donors was the tea merchant, Kalonimus Wolf Wissotzky (1884-18850, who founded the largest tea company in Russia, Wissotzky Tea. Wissotzky financed agricultural colonies in Palestine. ³

Theodor Herzl

Zionism as an organised movement is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, as we have noted, the history of Zionism began earlier and is related to the pogroms. The Hovevei Zion, or the Lovers of Zion, were responsible for the creation of 20 new Jewish cities in Palestine between 1870 and 1897. ⁴ In 1850, Palestine had about 350,000 inhabitants. Roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% were Jews. ⁵ Upon the outbreak of World War I, political Zionism reasserted itself, and its leadership passed to Russian Jews living in England. Two such Zionists, Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, were instrumental in obtaining the Balfour Declaration from Great Britain’s Jews. The failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the wave of pogroms and repressions that followed caused growing numbers of Russian Jewish youth to emigrate to Palestine as pioneer settlers. By 1914 there were about 90,000 Jews in Palestine; 13,000 settlers lived in 43 Jewish agricultural settlements, many of them supported by the French Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild. The Hovevei Zion, are now considered the forerunners of modern Zionism.

Since the creation of Israel, the country has grown stronger and the importance of the Zionist movement as an organisation has split into factions.

It was the Zionists who had laid the foundations for Arab suppression. It was a deliberate attempt to eliminate the Palestinians and steal back the land. In Jewish circles, Zionism is not talked about in these terms. There are Jews who oppose Zionism, but there are also those who make no division between being a Jew and being a Zionist.

The success of Zionism has meant that the percentage of the world’s Jewish population who live in Israel has steadily grown over the years and today 40% of the world’s Jews live in Israel. The second largest population of Jews reside in the US.

A political opportunity was given to Zionism when Theodor Herzl asserted assimilation as the most desirable remedy for the Jews, but he knew it would never work. He argued that Jews were forced by the external pressure of Antisemitism to form a nation. In a sense this was true, after World War ll, no one wanted a host of displaced Jews. Added to this, there was an immense nationalist push across the western world as the boundaries shifted.  A Jewish State was therefore convenient, it would have its uses.

In 1897 Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland, which drew up the Basel program of the movement, stating that “Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.”

The centre of the movement was established in Vienna, where Herzl published the official weekly Die Welt (“The World”). Zionist congresses met yearly until 1901 and then every two years. When the Ottoman government refused Herzl’s request for Palestinian autonomy, he found support in Great Britain. In 1903 the British government offered 6,000 square miles (15,500 square km) of uninhabited Uganda for settlement, but the Zionists wanted Palestine.⁶

At the death of Herzl in 1904, the leadership moved from Vienna to Cologne and then to Berlin. Prior to World War I, Zionism represented only a very small number of Jews, mostly from Russia, but led by Austrians and Germans. By 1933 Jewish immigration remained relatively slow, until the rise of Hitler in Europe. The Arabs anticipated trouble and feared that Palestine would eventually become a Jewish state so they resisted Zionism and the British government that was known to have Zionists as members. British forces struggled to maintain order in the face of a series of Arab uprisings. The strain of suppressing the Arab revolt of 1936–39, ultimately forced Britain to reassess its hold on Palestine. In hopes of keeping the peace between Jews and Palestinian Arabs and retaining Arab support against Germany and Italy in World War II, Britain placed restrictions on Jewish immigration in 1939. The new restrictions were violently opposed by Zionist groups such as the Stern Gang and Irgun Zvai Leumi, which committed acts of terrorism and assassination against the British. They also organised illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine.⁷

Following the mass extermination of Jews by Hitler many surviving Jews sought refuge in Palestine and the United States. Zionism achieved its aim of establishing a Jewish State in Palestine, but at the same time, it became an armed stronghold surrounded by hostility and it has impacted on the security of much of the western and middle eastern world.

Israel is still iconic in Jewish history, philosophy and the lived experience. Zionist organisations in many countries continue to raise financial support for Israel and to encourage Jews to immigrate there. Jews have been raised to see Israel as central to their existence. Many Jews have been led to believe they are living their lives in exile and they need to relocate to the homeland.   The psychological damage of not belonging is immense and Israel has exacerbated this by not accepting many of its own people. Qualifying as a Jew is predicated on the burden of proof and it can never be neutral.

The Six Day War.

On 14 May 1948, in accordance with the UN resolution, partition enabled Israel to become a nation state for the Jewish people. Zionism had, in part, fulfilled its objectives. As a result, many Zionist institutions became government institutions and the three Zionist militias were combined to form the Israeli Defence Forces.

The 1967 the Six Day War between Israel and the Arab states marked a major turning point in the history of both Israel and of Zionism. Israeli forces captured the eastern half of Jerusalem, including the holiest of Jewish religious sites, the Western Wall of the ancient Temple. They also took over the remaining territories of pre-1948 Palestine, the West Bank (from Jordan) the Gaza Strip (from Egypt) as well as the Golan Heights (from Syria). As Israel grew stronger Arab nationalism was also growing with demands that Palestine become an Arab state and hostility continues to escalate as the wounds of 1948 are still remembered and relived.

Ethnic Cleansing.

In a book called The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine authored by the Historian Ilan Pappé and published in 2006, the writer claims that in the 1948 Palestinian war around 720,000 Palestinian Arabs out of the 900,000 who lived in the territories that became Israel, fled or were expelled from their homes. In his own words, Ilan Pappé makes the case for the paradigm of ethnic cleansing and use[s] it to replace the paradigm of the war in 1948. ⁸ Pappé argues that the forced removal of Palestinians to the Arab world was a long-time objective of the Zionist movement. We now know this to be fact.

According to Pappé, the 1948 Palestinian exodus resulted from a planned ethnic cleansing of Palestine that was implemented by the Zionist movement leaders, mainly David Ben-Gurion and the other ten members of his consultant committee. It was called Plan Dalat and it was aimed at the expulsion of 500 Arab villages.

Dalet is the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the word Dalet means door, the door stands as the opening of the house the beit. Among Orthodox Jews who read the Zohar Dalet is the awareness of one’s own power and the power to achieve success, but that power also depends on Divine aid. The Jewish Talmud describes a story where one man is carrying a heavy object and another man comes to help him by placing his hands under the object, but in reality, the help is just an appearance, the first man is still carrying the weight.⁹ The weight of war and oppression has been carried by the Zionists and this is still the case today. It is true to say that the Palestinians launch rockets across the border and that they are a cause of great annoyance, but these are not high-powered weapons we are talking about, they a backyard experiments which are no match for Israel’s defence system. Palestine has no army, it has no tanks or sophisticated weapons, no fighter jets or battleships. The border skirmishes consist of children, teenagers and a few adults throwing rocks at Israeli personnel. In retaliation Israeli soldiers shoot to maim or kill.

In 2021 where are we now? Israel pounded Gaza with bombs and heavy artillery for 11 days where at least 243 people, including more than 100 women and children, were killed. According to its health ministry, Israel has said it killed 225 militants.

Israel has always claimed its 1967 land conquests were not planned. According to Haaretz, Declassified Documents Reveal Otherwise.¹⁰

• 1Adler, Joseph (1997). Restoring the Jews to their homeland: nineteen centuries in the quest for Zion. J. Aronson. pp. 150–6. ISBN1-56821-978-4. Retrieved 19 January 2011.
• Wolf, Lucien (1919). “Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question with texts of protocols, treaty stipulations and other public acts and official documents”. The Jewish Historical Society of England.[permanent dead link]
• Levine, Menachem. “Sir Moses Montefiore – A Brief History”. Aish. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
• 2“Records of Sun Fire Office”. UK National Archives. Retrieved 19 April 2020. and wikipedia Moses Montefore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore Retrieved 2^nd June 2021.

3Pioneers of Zionism: Hess, Pinsker, Rülf, Julius H. Schoeps

4 Penslar, Derek Jonathan (1991). Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918. Indiana University Press. pp. 20–. ISBN 0-253-34290-2. Hovevei Zion, the name attached to an informal network of Jewish nationalist societies that sprang up in the wake of the 1881 pogroms and which was officially constituted in 1884

5 Scholch, Alexander (November 1985). “The Demographic Development of Palestine, 1850-1882”. International Journal of Middle East Studies. Cambridge University Press. 17 (4): 485–505. doi:10.1017/S0020743800029445. JSTOR 163415.

6https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism

7Ibid

• 8 Ilan Pappé (2006). Preface xxvii The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Oxford.

9Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh. 1990 Dalet in the Hebrew Letters: Channels of Creative Consciousness. Jerusalem Gal Einai Publictions p66

10Haaretz 4^th June 2021. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-said-67-land-conquests-weren-t-planned-declassified-documents-say-otherwise-1.9873297?fbclid=IwAR1LvPodYwJwIXo2aMQrpiPhna8b_zKn2eI1zFqaT5FEPDSMY80k-pT9Gx4 Retrieved 4^th June 2021.

 

 

 

 

                                             Gaza 2021.    ABC News.

 

 

 

 

Hamas:  AFP Getty images.

While the Zionists have stepped up their aggression, Hamas has not relinquished its past.  Note the narrative of the Hamas Charter:

“Ye are the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind: ye command that which is just, and ye forbid that which is unjust, and ye believe in Allah. And if they who have received the scriptures had believed, it had surely been the better for them: there are believers among them, but the greater part of them are transgressors. They shall not hurt you, unless with a slight hurt; and if they fight against you, they shall turn their backs to you, and they shall not be helped. They are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a treaty with Allah, and a treaty with men; and they draw on themselves indignation from Allah, and they are afflicted with poverty. This they suffer, because they disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew the prophets unjustly; this, because they were rebellious, and transgressed.” (Al-Imran – verses 109-111). To read the rest go to http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

The  name Hamas is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, originating as it did in 1987 after the beginning of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It originally had a dual purpose of carrying out an armed struggle against Israel – led by its military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades – and delivering social welfare programmes.  Since 2005, it became political and entered the  contest for government  and become the first Islamist group in the Arab world to win an election through the ballot box.

Deadly clashes between Fatah and Hamas erupted in Gaza in June 2007, after which Hamas set up a rival government, leaving Fatah and the PA running parts of the West Bank not under Israeli control.

Israel held Hamas responsible for all attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip, and has carried out three major military campaigns in Gaza – Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, and Operation Protective Edge in July 2014.

The offensives were preceded by escalations in cross-border fighting, with scores of rocket attacks from Gaza, and air strikes against it by Israel.

Hamas emerged from the 2008 and 2012 conflicts militarily degraded but with renewed support among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank for having confronted Israel and survived.

The group nevertheless continued to struggle under the joint blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt, and became increasingly isolated after falling out with regional powers in the wake of the Arab Spring. The overthrow in July 2013 of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a key ally, was a further blow.

In April 2014, Hamas agreed a reconciliation deal with Fatah that led to the formation of a national unity government, but it has never been fully implemented.

Hamas came to prominence after the first intifada as the main Palestinian opponent of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Despite numerous Israeli operations against it and clampdowns by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas found it had an effective power of veto over the process by launching suicide attacks.

Image copyright AP Image caption Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli missile strike in March 2004

In February and March 1996, it carried out several suicide bus bombings, killing nearly 60 Israelis, in retaliation for the assassination in December 1995 of Hamas bomb maker Yahya Ayyash.

The bombings were widely blamed for turning Israelis off the peace process and bringing Benjamin Netanyahu – a staunch opponent of the Oslo accords – to power.

In the post-Oslo world, most particularly following the failure of US President Bill Clinton’s Camp David summit in 2000 and the second intifada which followed shortly thereafter, Hamas gained power and influence as Israel clamped down on the Palestinian Authority, which it accused of sponsoring deadly attacks.

Hamas organized clinics and schools, which served Palestinians who felt let down by the corrupt and inefficient Palestinian Authority, dominated by the Fatah faction.

Many Palestinians cheered the wave of Hamas suicide attacks in the first years of the second intifada.

They saw “martyrdom” operations as avenging their own losses and Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank, wanted by Palestinians as part of their own state.

After the death of Fatah leader Yasser Arafat in 2004, the Palestinian Authority was taken over by Mahmoud Abbas.

He viewed Hamas rocket fire as counter-productive, inflicting relatively little damage on Israel but provoking a harsh response by the Israeli military.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Fifteen people died in this 2001 Haifa suicide attack, one of 30 claimed by Hamas that year

When Hamas scored a landslide victory in 2006, the stage was set for a bitter power-struggle with Fatah.

Hamas resisted all efforts to get it to sign up to previous Palestinian agreements with Israel, as well as to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and to renounce violence.

Hamas’s charter defines historic Palestine – including present-day Israel – as Islamic land and it rules out any permanent peace with the Jewish state.

The charter also repeatedly makes attacks on Jews as a people, drawing charges that the movement is anti-Semitic.

Hamas has, however, offered a 10-year truce in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967: the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

It insists though that millions of Palestinian refugees stemming from the 1948 war must be allowed to return to homes in what became Israel – a move that would threaten Israel’s very existence.

Over the years Hamas has lost many members in Israeli assassinations and security sweeps:

• Sheikh Yassin was killed in a missile attack in March 2004
• Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi emerged as Hamas leader in Gaza before he too was assassinated in April 2004
• Other prominent Hamas officials killed by the Israelis include Qassam Brigades leader Salah Shehada in July 2002; Ismail Abu Shanab in August 2003; Said Siyam in January 2009; and Qassam Brigades commander Ahmed Jabari in November 2012

After the death of Sheikh Yassin, Khaled Meshaal became the group’s political leader in exile. He was succeeded by Gaza-based Ismail Haniya in May 2017.

Hamas’s decision to stand in elections in 2006 was a major departure for the movement.

The new government was subjected to tough economic and diplomatic sanctions by Israel and its allies in the West.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Israeli offensives have reduced but not destroyed the capacity of Gaza’s militants to launch rocket attacks

After Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza in 2007, Israel tightened its blockade on the territory, and rocket-fire and Israeli counter-raids continued.

In December that year, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead – a 22-day offensive aimed, Israel said, at halting rocket attacks from Gaza. More than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.

Israel cited the same reason for Pillar of Defence in 2012- which began with an air strike that killed Ahmed Jabari, the Qassam Brigades commander. Some 170 Palestinians – mostly civilians – and six Israelis died in the eight-day conflict.

Palestinian sources say Hamas largely tried to maintain calm after the conflict ended, with the Qassam Brigades not joining in the rocket attacks on Israel.

But Hamas also did not move to halt the rocket fire altogether, apparently because it was concerned that Palestinians would see it as less committed to fighting Israel than rival militant groups, particularly Islamic Jihad.

Rocket fire increased in mid-June 2014 when Israel arrested many Hamas members across the West Bank while searching for three murdered Israeli teenagers.

Then on 7 July, Hamas claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Israel for the first time since 2012, and Hamas and Israel became embroiled in the most intensive fighting for months.

The fighting ended after 50 days with a ceasefire. At least 2,189 Palestinians were killed, including more than 1,486 civilians, according to the UN. On the Israeli side, 67 soldiers were killed along with the six civilians.

References

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13331522

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13331522

Image by the author of the review.

Should a review of the Hadith be accepted by someone who is not a Muslim?  We all have a right our opinions and good journalism means being impartial.  So how should we read the following review?

 

The Hadith:  Review of Bias in Warner’s

The Hadith.

(I have retained the original spelling).

Dr Chris James

Abstract.

Discrimination against Muslims in the west has always existed, but since 9/11 it has become intensive. This paper is a response to the growing bias towards Muslims. In particular it addresses, what I view as an offensive post 9/11 work, titled “The Hadith: The Traditions of Mohammed by Bill Warner, PhD.” In my opinion, the work by Bill Warner, calls into question, what is a fair critique of modern-day Islam, what is permissible as credible academic literature and what constitutes bigotry and Islamophobia.   I am a scholar of religions with  a particular interest in Islam, its future and what it means for humanity in general. I present this review because the aforesaid work and its interpretation of the Hadith, is in my view, lacking,  misleading,  and unhelpful to the analysis and progress of philosophical studies and debate, but unfortunately it is not the only example, just the one I choose to focus on here. Post 9/11, Muslims are experiencing an unwarranted social and political backlash. Many Muslims were killed in the terrorist attacks on the US World Trade Centre in 2001 and the majority of Muslims condemned the violence. Nonetheless, Muslims are still perceived as threatening and unwelcome in many quarters of the western world. The problem appears to be, not so much one of race, but religious doctrine. From time to time all religions come under scrutiny, but in this respect, Islam stands alone from all other forms of religious examination because the scrutiny is relentless. Warner’s work is a typical example of this relentless scrutiny and it needs to be challenged.

Introduction.

This paper is in response to a book titled The Hadith: The Traditions of Mohammed, by Bill Warner, PhD. Bill Warner established the Centre for the Study of Political Islam (CPSI), an acclaimed educational organization, which states it provides “factual knowledge about political Islam”¹ A short biography of Dr Warner gives the reader an overview of “a life-long interest in religions, including Islam, and their effects on history and civilization.” Warner’s aim, according to his biography, is to make the “Islamic political doctrine, which he says, impacts non-Muslims, available to the average person.”² Warner’s work is based largely on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) whereby he uses statistical methods to identify, what he calls “dualism” and “submission” as the foundational principles of the Islamic doctrine.³ However, Warner’s interpretation of these criterion is significantly incomplete and in my view, biased.

The Hadith is one of a series of books included in Warner’s “Self-Study Course on Political Islam”. The course is taught in two levels, the first A taste of Islam, which is based on four books, The Sira Law for Non-Muslims, The Hadith, The Koran and The Sharia. The second level also contains four books, Persuasion, Slavery, Women, and Christians and Jews. I have limited my critic to The Hadith.

Objectives.

I am always dubious when an outsider steps up and produces a critical treatise on something s/he has not had first-hand experience in. Academic critique of works is a crucial component in scholarship, but balance and context are also important. The Hadith as prescribed by Warner, “is a condensed version of the Islamic Hadith Collections,” but in my opinion, it is deliberately negative and presents Islam as an archaic system of superstition, oppression, violence and persecution. I am not a Muslim, but I am a scholar of Hebrew and Islamic studies and in my reasoning, I would suggest that Warner’s work is extremely offensive to anyone who identifies as Muslim. Literary critique and political polemic are not the same thing. I have respect for the right to critique religious and political texts, but fair academic critique should not be weighted solely on the side of disparaging statements that are devoid of contextualization and a cross fertilization of scholarly interpretations. Further, Warner’s post 9/11 work is not the only example of discrimination and angst against Muslims or their supporters. There are in my opinion, two levels of global attack against Muslims, one is in the prevalent dismissal of bias and hate speech, the other is to ignore the wars, persecutions, hardships and attempted genocides that have been an integral part of world history and our modern society. Warner’s examples of the Hadith texts are replete with unexplained violence. Wars were carried out against Muslims in the time of Muhammad (PBUH) and his followers and they are still being carried out against Muslim populations today. Some Muslims have reserved the right to fight back, but this is not an act of advocating or condoning violence, but one of survival. We must face the realities; the world is divided and when one side bullies the other side it will strive to retaliate and mediation is a delicate process.

If we adhere to the universal right to freedom of religion then it is important to call out any limits imposed upon that freedom, be they individual or en-mass. Just a peripheral glance at the statistics on social bifurcation, pain and displacement of the worlds’ peoples’ today, the vast majority who are suffering are Muslims. In my opinion Warner’s book incites further hostility and suffering, it does nothing to close the gap.

Dedication.

Warner’s book dedication is to the “millions of victims of jihad over the past 1,400 years.”⁴ If we were to relocate this dedication to Two World Wars alone, fought largely in the west, we would be remembering the warriors on all sides as heroes, not victims, albeit there are no winners in wars. Importantly, the word’s “jihad” and “victims” put together carry a very heavy payload, they form part of a common and very selective vocabulary aimed at targeting one particular group and labelling them the enemy of western civilization. Muslims are not the enemy of the west. Governments trade with them, share their achievements and celebrate mutual international agreements. Many Muslim migrants make a huge contribution to public life and the western economies. Why then are they so alienated?

Warner’s note to his readers, tells us that after the attack on the World Trade Centre Towers in 2001, “no one knew the doctrine of Islam”, he therefore devoted his life “to educating the world about its political doctrine.” The very nature of this goal draws concern. To devote one’s life to targeting and exposing a particular group of difference is, in my view, far from helpful or indeed, healthy. Warner goes on to say his work “contains objective knowledge, not opinion.”⁵ Perhaps the word “selective” would be more appropriate. The quotations marked for his volume are extremely selective and misleading. In the following paragraph Warner tells his readers, “the common dismissal of Islamic doctrine is that moderate Muslims do not follow it. He states, “the book is not about Muslims, moderate or extreme, but about Islamic political doctrine and history.” Warner, then pushes back against this statement by saying, “You will only get a personal point of view when you ask a Muslim about Islam. And what kind of Muslim do you ask, a moderate Muslim or a jihadist? Both moderate and jihads all submit to the Sunnah of Mohammed and the Koran.”⁶ The statement speaks for itself, all Muslims are tarnished with the same brush, there is no individualism and no Muslim is worthy of consideration.

There is not a Biblical or classical text in history that is free of some kind of violence or innuendo. The one most important piece of information missing from the debate is that the Qur’an contains both the Hebrew Torah and the Christian New Testament. Hitherto, if one is a portrait of violence then all must be viewed from this perspective. However, the measure of attack against the Jewish or Christian Scriptures is in no way measurable at the level of that against the Qur’an and other relevant Islamic discourses.

The Texts.

Dr Maurice Bucaille in his work The Bible, the Qur’an and Science (1987) tells us that Muhammad’s own attitude (PBUH) towards the Qur’an was quite different than that of his personal sayings because the Qur’an constituted the teaching of Allah and was proclaimed by him as a Divine Revelation.

Over a period of twenty years the words were classified with what had to be written down and what had to be learned by heart to become part of the liturgy of prayers. The Hadiths, according to Bucaille, are in essence an account of the Prophet’s deeds and personal reflections, but he left it to others to find an example in them for their own behaviour and to make them public however they liked: he did not give any instructions.⁷ We can deduce from this that only a very limited number of the Hadiths may be considered as the Prophet Muhammad’s thoughts (PBUH). The Hadith then is dealing with the thoughts of men of his time, hence when compared to the Qur’an there are profound and anticipated differences, both in context and theological articulation. The differences serve to highlight the extraordinary chasm between the Revelation given to the Prophet (PBUH) and the lives of those upon whom the knowledge was bestowed.

According to Islamic tradition, the Qur’an is regarded as the literal word of God as recited to Muhammad (PBUH) through the archangel Gabriel and according to tradition Muhammad (PBUH) recited what the archangel Gabriel revealed to him for his companions to memorize and write down. Muslims believe that the wording of the Qur’anic text available today corresponds exactly to that given to Muhammad in the years 610–632,.⁸

However, language changes over time. The early Arabic script transcribed 28 consonants, of which only 6 can be readily distinguished, the remaining 22 having formal similarities which means that what specific consonant is intended can only be determined by context. It was only with the introduction of Arabic diacritics some centuries later, that an authorized vocalization of the text, and how it was to be read, was established and became canonical. ⁹ Prior to this period, there is evidence that the text could be read in different ways, with different meanings. We know this from the work of Al-Tabari who wrote history, theology and Qur’anic commentary. He prefaces his early commentary on the Qur’an showing that the precise way to read the verses of the sacred text was not fixed, even in the day of the Prophet (PBUH). As the story goes, two men disputing a verse in the text asked Ubay ibn Ka’b to mediate, and he disagreed with them, coming up with a third reading. To resolve the question, the three went to Muhammad who then asked the first man to read out the verse, and announced it was correct. Then the second man was asked to read the verse. He made the same response when the second alternative reading was delivered. He then asked Ubay to provide his own recital, and, on hearing the third version, Muhammad also pronounced it, ‘correct!’ Noting Ubay’s perplexity and inner thoughts, Muhammad then told him, “Pray to God for protection from the accursed Satan”.¹⁰ Clearly, according to the Prophet (PBUH) the text was never definitively absolute.

The Doctrine.

The Qur’an does not stand alone as the doctrine of Islam. Complimentary information of a legislative nature was sought in relation to the Revelation. These came from an oral tradition. Those who undertook the task were faced with what Bucaille calls very “taxing…accounts of past events.” They nevertheless aimed for accuracy and this is illustrated by the fact that in all of the Prophet’s sayings (PBUH), “the most venerable collections always bear the name of those responsible for the account.” This included an examination of those who first collected the information from members of the Prophet’s family (PBUT) or his companions.¹¹ A number of the Prophet’s words (PBUH) appeared under the name of Hadith, the word means “utterances”, but the Hadiths also covered details of the Prophet’s deeds. The first collections, made after the Prophet’s death (PBUH) were said to be fairly restrained and two hundred years elapsed for more words were recorded, so we might question the accuracy of the statements and attributions. Bucaille tells us that the statements by Al Bukhari are the most reliable, but they are still vulnerable to interpretation. Bucaille warns against translations that are inaccurate or contain untruths, or, to put it differently, those “which are more interpretation than translation.”¹² Bucaille informs us that on occasions the Hadiths have had such considerable change that there is no sense in which they contain the real meaning. Indeed, he compares some of the versions with the inaccuracies contained in the Christian Gospels, which are known to be somewhat inaccurate.¹³ In more recent years a bilingual Arabic/English edition of the Hadiths has been issued by Doctor Muhammed Muhsin Khan of the university of Medina, which promises fewer errors.¹⁴

Bucaille has explored the Hadiths just to see how the Prophet (PBUH) expressed himself outside the context of the Revelation, while being aware that the texts were originally from an oral tradition. His focus was on issues of science as quoted in the Qur’an. What Bucaille found was that the Hadiths already set out in sections of the Qur’an and modern science were highly accurate. These are the only Hadiths he was concerned with. However, he tells us that “Hadiths which have as their subject interpretation of certain verses of the Qur’an sometimes lead to commentaries which are hardly acceptable today”¹⁵ and many Muslims recognize this, but by the same token, the errors provide a weapon for any opponents.

Bucaille provides the following example of literary embellishment.

(Sura 36, verse 36) dealing with the Sun, “which runs its course to a settled place”.

Here is the interpretation given of it in a Hadith: At sunset, the sun…prostrates itself underneath the Throne, and takes permission to rise again, and it is permitted and then (a time will come when) it will be about to prostrate itself…it will ask permission to go on its course…it will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the West…(Sahih al Bukhari).

The original text (The Book of the Beginning of Creation.Vol lV p 283, part 54 chapter lV number 241 is, according to Bucaille, obscure and difficult to translate. Nonetheless, Bucaille says, “this passage nevertheless contains an allegory, which implies the notion of a course the Sun runs in relation to the earth: science has shown the contrary to be the case. Bucaille then tells us that the authenticity of this Hadith is doubtful.¹⁶ Hence, differentiating between the Qur’an and the Hadiths is essential, specifically for good scholarship.

Bucaille goes on to question other Hadiths that have been given poetic licence. The Qur’an does not give any advice on remedial arts, barring one exception (Sura 16 verse 69) comments on the possibility of using honey as a therapeutic aid. On the other hand, the Hadiths devote a great deal of attention to medicine. According to Bucaille there is a Hadith that certain kinds of date may be used against the effects of magic.¹⁷

Conflicting Groups.

In the years that followed the Prophet’s death (PBUH) texts were to be recorded with two groups of teachings. Emphasis needs to be put upon the disparity between these two groups of texts. In the years that were to follow the Prophet’s death (PBUH) the first gathering of Hadiths was created 40 years after Hegira, (the shift from Mecca to Medina), while the first collection of Qur’anic texts had been made beforehand under the guidance of Calif Abu Bakr. There are some differences that have never been settled.

Bucaille concludes his investigations by asserting that while the Qur’an appears commonplace, concealing data that science was later to bring to light, certain statements in the Hadiths, which allude to absolute agreement with the ideas of the times, are also opinions that are out of step with science today. Bucaille suggests, “they have slipped into an aggregate of statements concerning Islamic doctrine and legislation, whose authenticity is unquestionably acknowledged, but not in line with Muhammad’s (PBUH) own views.”¹⁸

Bucaille concludes, that the truth of the Hadiths, from a religious point of view is beyond question, but when they deal with earthly affairs, they can be called into question. Bucaille tells us that one Hadith gives an account of the Prophet (PBUH), which should be noted first hand: “When I command you to do something related to religion do obey and if I command you do something according to your own opinion (do remember this) I am a human being.”

Dualities.

There is no doubt that many of the Hadiths contradict the Qur’an and Warner’s work gives its impetus to the most negative of literal readings. He writes:

“The Hadiths include brutality by Mohammed and the Muslims. Mohammed ordered that some thieves have their hands and feet removed, hot nails put in their eyes and that they be left to die of thirst lying on sharp rocks in the hot sun.”¹⁹

One cannot deny a history of brutality in the regions. It is not a history that is unique to the Middle East. Notwithstanding, who might we blame? It is a philosophical question that has little relevance to today’s reading of Islam. The world has changed and most devotees of religion are seeking unity.

Many Muslims note the unreliability of some Hadiths and they focus on the Qur’an, but this is dismissed by Warner as an excuse and he suggests that the Qur’an does not offer enough information on how to practice Islam. In fact, Warner claims, “if you throw out the Hadiths, you can’t practice Islam.”

Segregation.

Warner puts a strong impetus on the word Kafir to distinguish the Muslim from the Other. In today’s climate the word Kafir is deeply offensive. As part of the ancient Qur’anic discourse, the term typifies all things that are unacceptable and offensive to God. The most fundamental sense of kufr in the Qur’an is “ingratitude”, the wilful refusal to acknowledge or appreciate the benefits that God bestows on humankind, including clear signs and Revealed Scriptures. ²⁰ Kufr is an Arabic term which marks a person as an infidel, a pagan, or someone who rejects Allah, a nonbeliever. The meaning of the word today is politically painful and often used as a demarcation between black and white people.

The term Kufr is used in different ways in the Quran, with the most fundamental sense being ungrateful or thankless towards Allah. Its opposite is īmān or faith. ²¹ Kafir can be used interchangeably with mushrik, a polytheist. Sometimes overlapping Qur’anic terms for wrong doers are ẓallām (villain, oppressor) and fāsiq (sinner, fornicator).²² Historically, while Islamic scholars agreed that a polytheist/mushrik is a kafir, they sometimes disagreed on the propriety of applying the term to Muslims who committed a grave sin or to the People of the Book. The term has a history of disparity not acceptance.

The Qur’an distinguishes between mushrikun and People of the Book, reserving the former term for idol worshippers. Some classical thinkers view the Christian doctrine to be a form of shirk. In modern times, kafir is used to describe self-professed Muslims, particularly by members of Islamist movements.²³ The term is indeed, historical and loaded with separatism and alienation, but this is no reason to continue its use. By implication Warner suggests that Islam is religiously divisive, which in the modern context has no basis since there is more religious unity across beliefs today than ever before. Added to this, Islam is the most open and hospital of all the religions requiring only a belief in Allah as the only one God and the most merciful. Compared to other religions conversion is simple, welcoming and without complex learning or ceremony. It demands that the person be ethical.

Warner implies there are different sets of ethics, one for the Muslim and another for the Kafir. “One set tells how to treat the Muslim and the second that describes how to treat the Kafir” and they are, in Warner’s opinion, not equal.²⁴ This is clearly out of step with the more modern liberalised Muslim beliefs. Warner also puts the focus on Jihad. Warner states, “The suffering caused by jihad, slavery, dhimmitude (non-Muslims), and the killing of apostates is all based upon the duality.”²⁵ According to Pew’s statistics the number of people who leave Islam in the US is about equal to the numbers who join. Further, there is no record of killing those who leave.²⁶

Unification.

There should be no quarrel between Islam and the other Book Religions. The Qur’an mentions many of the people who are previously mentioned in the Bible. The Islamic view of Revelation is that it is one of three Testaments, the First was the Jews, the Second was the Christians, the Third and final one is Islam. The Testament of Islam is one for our times because as most scholars agree, the world is in a period of crisis. Stories related in the Qur’an usually focus more on the spiritual significance of events rather than the details. The stories are generally comparable, but there are differences between Testaments. One of the most profound differences is the Islamic view of Jesus and the crucifixion. The Qur’an maintains that Jesus was not crucified and did not die on the cross. Jesus was a teacher and prophet, he may well have been killed, but he was not crucified. This is only to reiterate what many have been thinking.

Conclusion.

It is often said that the Qur’an is not a book of science, but a book of signs and while the many discourses on science in the Qur’an have been found to be correct, the work is most definitively a tool for changing human behaviour towards a disciplined existence. Warner claims his work uses the scientific method, but in my view, it is neither neutral, nor has it progressed beyond theory. A distinction must be made between a scientific theory and fact. Theory is intended to explain the not already known details which must be tried and tested to gain the facts. Modern science must also be current and purposeful. The only purpose I could find in Warner’s work was to describe a Muslim culture in such a manner that it might elevate the culture of the imperial west and make it sacrosanct.

The Qur’an has been tried and tested over the centuries and it has served to produce harmonious communities across the globe. There is an inner peace to be had away from the politics and worldly competition and skirmishes. The main focus of the Qur’an is not war or hostility it is an opportunity for peace and prayer, that can only be brought about by honour, respect and self-discipline. With this in mind, I find Warner’s interpretation of the Hadith misleading and mischievous. The Qur’an encourages every Muslim to follow Muhammad’s example (PBUH). Warner’s work covers a vast range of topics, but none are presented as peaceful or liberating, while Islam is predicated on a spiritual liberation in this world and the next.

 

References.

1Bill Warner 2010. The Hadith, The Traditions of Mohammed. UK Centre for the Study of Political Islam www.cspipublishing.com

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid

4Ibid p iii

5Ibid pv

6Please note I have retained Warner’s spelling which differs from my own.

7Maurice Bucaille. 1987 The Bible, the Qur’an and Science. The Holy Scriptures examined in Light of Modern Knowledge. Paris Seghers p264.

8 John Esposito, Islam the Straight Path, Extended Edition, p.19-20 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Quran

9Christoph Luxenberg 2007 The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran. Verlag Hans Schiler, p.31.

10Christoph Luxenberg, 2007 p.36

11Maurice Bucaille. 1987 The Bible, the Qur’an and Science. The Holy Scriptures examined in Light of Modern Knowledge. Paris Seghers p260.

12Ibid.

13Ibid.p260

14Ibid.p260

15Ibid p261

16Ibid 261.

17Ibid 263.

18Ibid

19Bill Warner 2010. The Hadith, The Traditions of Mohammed. UK Centre for the Study of Political Islam p12. www.cspipublishing.com

20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafir and Adams, Charles; Reinhart, A. Kevin. “Kufr”. Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Retrieved 16 April 2021.

21Ibid.

22Ibid.

23Emmanuel M. Ekwo Racism and Terrorism: Aftermath of 9/11 Author House 2010 page 143

24Bill Warner2010. The Hadith, The Traditions of Mohammed. UK Centre for the Study of Political Islam p12. www.cspipublishing.com

25Ibid.

26https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/26/the-share-of-americans-who-leave-islam-is-offset-by-those-who-become-muslim/

 

 

                                                       Image from NASA

The Qur’an tells us that Allah the Almighty created the sun which is a sign that indicates the Power and the Mercy of Allah. Allah says in Surah 24 Al-Nur (The light): Allah alternates the night and the day. Indeed, in that is a lesson for those who have vision.¹

The Qur’an has disclosed information about many scientific aspects including the planetary motions of sun, earth and moon. It has been reported that between the eighth and twelfth centuries AD, when development in science was restricted in the Christian world, a large number of studies and discoveries were made at Islamic universities. It was said that the Calif’s library at Cordoba contained 400,000 volumes and Greek, Indian and Persian sciences were taught.² The scientific considerations that appear in the Qur’an are highly accurate in nature and in line with today’s modern science.

Accordingly, in Islam, whether everything in this universe is observable or not, it is under the writ and guidance of Allah (Subhanahu wa ta’ala (SWT)), which translates as “Glory to Him, the Exalted” As the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be Upon Him (PBUH)), said literally or philosophically… that Sun goes (i.e. travels) till it prostrates Itself underneath the Throne and takes the permission to rise again, and it is permitted and then (a time will come when) it will be about to prostrate itself but its prostration will not be accepted, and it will ask permission to go on its course but it will not be permitted, but it will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the west).³

When the Earth’s magnetic poles shift, North to South, it is said that the East would be the West and thus the sun would rise in the West. The process of the pole shift is called a geomagnetic reversal or a change in a planet’s magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged (not to be confused with geographic north and geographic south). The Earth’s magnetic field has alternated between periods ( These periods are called chrons) of normal polarity in which the predominant direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse polarity, in which it was the opposite. In recent years, hypotheses have advanced toward linking reversals to mass extinctions. The end of superchrons have caused vigorous convection leading to widespread volcanism, and the subsequent airborne ash caused long periods of darkness, leading to extinctions. As the Earth’s magnetic field would also be much weaker during such reversals, high-energy particles trapped in the Van Allen radiation belt could be liberated and able to bombard the Earth, which would be exposed to radiation infiltration without the existing strong magnetic field to protect it. Detailed calculations confirm that if the Earth’s dipole field disappeared entirely (leaving the quadrupole and higher components), most of the atmosphere would become accessible to high-energy particles, and cosmic ray collisions would produce secondary radiation in the atmosphere of beryllium-10 or chlorine-36. This would be fatal to life on earth, and potentially it would destroy most life forms in what could be considered the final hours.⁴ Scientists therefore claim that the geomagnetic reversals could be cataclysmic leading to the extinction of life. In simple language this could be explained through the prediction of the rising sun in the West, as described in Islam. It has been suggested that the flipping of the Earth’s poles together with a drop in the solar activity 42,000 years ago could have generated an apocalyptic environment that may have caused the extinction of the megafauna and the end of Neanderthals. ⁵

The Earth’s magnetic field acts as a protective shield against damaging cosmic radiation, but when the poles switch, as has occurred many times in the past, the protective shield weakens dramatically and leaves the planet exposed to high energy particles.

One temporary flip of the poles, known as the Laschamps excursion, happened 42,000 years ago and lasted for about 1,000 years. Previous work found little evidence that the event had a profound impact on the planet, possibly because the focus had not been on the period during which the poles were actually shifting. Now scientists say the flip, together with a period of low solar activity, could have been behind a vast array of climatic and environmental phenomena with dramatic ramifications. According to Prof Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales and co-author of a study, “it probably would have seemed like the end of days”.⁶