Monday, March 24, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
Christian supersessionism is a well studied phenomenon. Islamic supersessionism is not nearly as popular a topic, but a little thought shows that it is foundational.My theory is that all the major strains of today's antisemitism - Muslim/Arab, progressive, and others I plan to examine - point back to updated twists of Christian supersessionism. In short, all major antisemitic groups feel that they are the rightful heirs to the Jewish people, but the actual reality and continued success of the Jews is not just an obstacle to their success but a personal challenge to their worldview. This dissonance causes hate.
Muslims venerate, above all, their prophets. Their major prophets are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon and Jesus, leading up to Mohammed who is the last prophet.
It is clear that the bulk of Islamic prophets are Jews or are prominent figures in the Jewish Torah.
The Quran is filled with stories and teachings that come from the Jewish Scripture as well as midrashim and Talmud. Like Christianity, it admits that the Torah is a sacred text. But instead of grappling with how to reconcile Torah laws with Islam, it declares that the Torah text has been corrupted from the original divine message and the Quran is the only uncorrupted divine guide available today. Only the laws and stories written in the Quran are trustworthy, everything else is wrong.
The Quran considers all the previous prophets to be Muslim, not Jews. Surah 3:67 says, “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was one inclining toward truth, a Muslim [submitting to Allah]. And he was not of the polytheists.” Surah 2:140 says, “Do you say that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Descendants were Jews or Christians? Say, ‘Are you more knowing or is Allah?’”
Whether the prophets were formally considered Muslim in the religious sense, the Quran is taking them out of any other religious category and claiming them as their own.
Later on, the literal replacement of Jews with Muslims is made clear. Surah 3:110 says, “You [Muslims] are the best nation produced for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in Allah. If only the People of the Scripture had believed, it would have been better for them…” The theology says that Jews were favored by Allah, but they broke their covenant and therefore they lost their exalted status - and now the Muslim nation ('umma) are the ones who gained Allah's favor.
This is pure supersessionism. But it not only applied to Jewish people but to physical space as well.
Places holy to Jews are considered to have always been Muslim - and exclusively so. Solomon's Temple is claimed by Islam to have been a Muslim place of worship, and the site of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was claimed to be the Al Aqsa ("furthest") Mosque by Quranic interpreters years before the physical structure itself was built.
In fact, every single Jewish holy place is considered by Islam to be theirs. The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron was converted to a mosque around 637 CE. Under Muslim rule, Jews were no longer allowed to visit the "Ibrahimi Mosque."
Similarly, tombs ascribed to other major Jewish figures are also claimed by Muslims as their own, exclusive, places of worship. Not only the Al Aqsa Mount was considered Muslim but the surrounding area including the Western Wall. Other sites considered to be the burial places of Jewish prophets and prominent figures were claimed as Muslim shrines.
To be sure, Islam was also supersessionist to Christianity as well, claiming Jesus as its prophet (not divine) and repurposing churches.
Muslims made sure that Jews and Christians were constantly reminded of their loss of exalted status, labeling them "dhimmis" and enacting laws to show Muslim superiority over them. Jews were subservient and accepted the humiliating dhimmi laws, paying a jizya tax for the privilege of not being attacked. Like in Christian Europe, Jews in Muslim lands were treated largely with contempt commensurate with the status of a no-longer Chosen People.
This remained the status quo for well over a thousand years. In some places Jews were treated somewhat better and in others markedly worse, but their status as a despised class never changed. Islam teaches that Jews are breakers of covenants and killers of prophets, themes that are found daily in today's Arab and Muslim media.
As mentioned, the rebirth of Israel was a theological earthquake to Christian supersessionists whose scripture assures them that Jews would disappear and for whom the Holocaust was regarded as a fulfilment of the prediction in Hebrews of that prophecy. It was no less momentous for Muslim supersessionists, which ties Allah's previous favor of the Children of Israel with their owning the land of Israel, believing that their loss of the land was a consequence of their loss of favor. Having Jews back in a controlling role in Israel was not supposed to ever happen in Quranic thought.
Beyond that and much more catastrophic for Muslims was the psychological devastation at losing a war to the weak, despised, dhimmi Jews. The profound shame at the loss of the land magnified the theological challenge. It was not only how could the Jews win - it was how could the brave, strong Muslims lose?
All the more so was the shame in 1967, where Israel took over effective control of the Temple Mount, allowed Jews to pray at the Kotel, reopened the Tomb of the Patriarchs to Jews and gave Jews religious freedoms that they never had under Muslim rule.
Honor and shame is the prism through which all Palestinian and Arab actions must be viewed. Jewish military might is by itself a terrible pill for Islamic supersessionists to swallow. The sword is part of their self-image, and losing to Jews who were doctors and farmers is a psychic pain whose only solution is to take the land away again,
Politically, perhaps a way can be found for peace. But psychologically and theologically, that seems impossible. Neither the shame nor the supersessionism can be accepted.
Meanwhile, Israel keeps getting stronger and more successful, mocking the Quran's claims that Jews are forever marginalized and are out of favor with Allah. Israel normalizing relations with Arab nations like the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco add more insult to injury. For a faith that attributes everything to Allah, seeing Allah give victories to the hated Jews causes painful dissonance.
In fact, Muslims have been trying to scratch back the Jewish victories and source of their shame in any way they can think of. They have been squatting on lands controlled by Israel, they tell international bodies that they have the right to flood Israel with descendants of 1948 refugees, they openly cheer every terror attack.
For centuries, Muslims accepted that Rachel's Tomb was indeed a Jewish holy place. Then, in the 1990s, Muslims created a new story that the site was really the ancient Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque, making a religious claim on the Jewish site. They are rewriting history for the cause of replacing Jewish spaces with Muslim spaces.
For Muslims, the existence of Jews isn't what makes them irrationally angry. It is Jewish success. From the dawn of modern Zionism, with the first indication that Jews are trying to live outside of the dhimmi paradigm, through 1948 and 1967and the Abraham accords, Jewish success has been a psychic pain for Islamist supersessionists and Arab supremacists. That success - a strong, independent Jewish state on what they consider Muslim lands - is what fuels today's crazed Muslim antisemitism.
This is why they embrace the discredited Khazar myth, that today's Jews are not really Jews but European converts. It is not enough for Islamic supremacists to claim that Jews no longer have Allah's favor; they need to say that the Jews aren't really Jews at all, which is the only way they can imagine being defeated by them. Fake Jews will run away and go home to Europe or America.
For this reason, religious Jews are a special challenge to Muslim supersessionists and cause the most vitriolic hate.
In general, the Muslims of the region look upon themselves as patient, taking the long view. The main way that Arab supremacists rationalize their military losses is by remembering that the Crusaders controlled Jerusalem but ultimately lost it again - holding onto the hope that the Jewish control of Israel is a temporary aberration. Most of all, they look down at Israeli Jews as being secular Westerners who have no staying power; privileged people who will flee at the first sign of trouble; Europeans with no true emotional ties to the land. This myth comforts them.
Religious Jews upset them to no end.
They know that the religious Jews have been around longer than Islam has. They know that these Jews do have a long-standing attachment to the land and an institutional memory that dwarfs that of Muslims. As much as Muslim media insults Israeli leaders and the IDF, they go ballistic at stories of "fanatic Jewish settlers" who peacefully visit the Temple Mount. The supersessionists think that the secular Israelis will run away with the first rocket, but they know the religious Jews will not.
Just as with Christians in the Middle Ages who could not stomach committed Jews following the laws that they said were too onerous for ordinary people, today's Muslims hate the idea of a people with a stronger historic and emotional connection to the land - people who they know would fight to the death for Eretz Yisrael. These are the people who have not broken Allah's covenant - the ones who did not turn into apes and pigs for violating the Sabbath.
The practicing Jews who live in Israel, with their increasing power in Israeli society, causes the most pain, the biggest challenge to Islamic supersessionism - and the most hate.
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
 |
Buy
