We need those signs of hope these days....
From the Desk of Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
MAS Freedom Civil and Human Rights Director
WASHINGTON, D.C. (MASNET) March 7, 2008 - On March 6, 2008, the world
received news of yet another tragedy in the ongoing conflict between
the Palestinians and Israelis. In an apparent act of revenge, armed
Palestinians infiltrated a Rabbinical school in Jerusalem and attacked
a group of teenage Jewish students, leaving eight of them dead. They
were not combatants, and the act did not take place in self-defense or
in the heat of combat.
Most of the world, especially in Israel, was stunned and horrified by
the killings. But in Gaza, at least according to news reports, people
were jubilant in their celebration of the deaths.
Should Muslims in the United States also feel a sense of joy and
vindication? No. We must recognize the attack for what it was: an act
of murder. And we must now ask ourselves the difficult question of how
we, as activists in support of the people of Gaza and Palestine, can
go forward in the wake of an act of senseless brutality that could
threaten to derail some significant support for the cause of ending
the occupation and respecting the human rights of the people in Gaza
and the West Bank.
Sadly, acts of deliberate murder are hardly rare in the context of
this part of the world. I remember, a few years ago, the act of murder
in a mosque in the West Bank that left nearly 30 Muslim worshippers
murdered by a fanatic named Baruch Goldstein. The Muslim world, and
most people of conscience, were enraged. Yet some extremists in Israel
not only celebrated the killings, but actually made Goldstein (who was
killed after the attack), a cult hero among some ultra-Zionists.
But murder, by whomever, is simply a crime against humanity and
against the Almighty. And the killing of Jewish students in Jerusalem
was exactly that kind of abomination.
The pursuit of liberation is a human response to oppression, and one
that is common to all oppressed people, in all periods of history. But
there is a moral and practical, distinction between legitimate
political struggle on one hand, and acts of criminal revenge on the
other.
As Muslims, we believe that struggle against oppression, and
self-defense, are not only legitimate, but also required. The killing
of innocent people, on the other hand, is morally repugnant-and Haram.
I hope that the Palestinian leadership, and especially Hamas, will
recognize that the celebration of these murders will only serve to
further isolate them, and make it more difficult for them to claim
some moral high-ground in the eyes of world opinion. I also hope that
they will consider that activists throughout the world, who support
the rights of the people of Gaza, must now labor under yet another
burden of suspicion, and even outright rejection, by opponents who are
all too anxious to equate the Palestinian cause with savagery and
terrorism. Further, it obliterates, in the consciousness of many, the
nonviolent responses to the occupation that would ultimately be more
effective as instruments of liberation vs. sensational and
counter-productive acts of killing and mayhem.
As I have said in a previous essay, it's long past time to end the
violence, and the killing, in Israel and Palestine. We mourn the
deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, especially in Gaza.
But now, we should also mourn the killing of the Jewish students in
Jerusalem, and call for the respect for human life as a core value for
both sides of this conflict. I, as a Muslim in America, offer my
condolences to the families and communities of the young people who
were killed in this act of violence.
The struggle for freedom has no room for the murder of innocent
people. It is not acceptable in the modern world.
An eye-for-an-eye, as Dr. King reminded us, will simply make both
Palestinians and Israelis blind.
