November 1933: Arabs use Koran for political purposes

In 1933, the Palestinian Arabs wanted to pressure the British not to allow Jews to immigrate to the area. They chose to use mass demonstrations, as a follow-up to the 1929 riots. The British didn't want to see a repeat of 1929 and made such demonstrations illegal. The Arabs held them anyway, in Jerusalem and Jaffa, and there were a number of injuries that were greatly exaggerated by Arab newspapers.

Anyway, as the following article shows, a month later the Arabs used Islam as an excuse to have the demonstrations. They claimed that Britain, by making their anti-Jewish demonstrations illegal, was infringing on their religious freedom! And they were using Western standards of "freedom of religion" to push their own purely political (and, incidently, bigoted) agenda!

This is perhaps one of the first times that Arabs who despise Western ideals used those same ideals as weapons against the West.

Things have not changed much since 1933.



Cross-posted to Palestine Post-ings.