By Fadel Al Mheiri
ABU DHABI, U.E. — “Some of my ancestors before the Spanish Inquisition were Jewish and probably some of them were Arabs, since my family comes from Andalusia.” This is a Spanish girl I came upon during my study at an university in Florida. Spain was once Andalusia during the middle ages, where advancements in medicine, astronomy, philosophy, poetry, mathematics are made during this time. While Europe was in its Dark Ages and Jews were reviled there, Muslims in Spain during the same period worked side by side with Jews in developing literature, science and art. These advancements were not only made by Muslims, but Jews as well. The golden age of Islam in Andalusia is considered the benchmark of peaceful relations of Jews, Muslims and Christians – all living together under Muslim Iberia, Al-Andalus.
So what happened? I don’t dismiss the fact that the Jews long thrived in Muslim ruled lands. In an unfortunate time when Jews and Muslims have expended half a century in mutual fear and killing, the fact is that a strip of peace can be created in the heart of global terror. We can fight for generations, but there comes a point when we realize we have to sit together and talk. There is a history that once existed in old Spain, and that is something to be proud of, and it’s much more positive than the one in Europe for a time.
I read once that “Islam can be considered Judaism 2.0.” This statement can also be seen in the context of Islamic sources and traditions that see Islam as a continuation of the Abrahamic message of one true god. The prophets of God are Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. If one person has faith in these four then we have to trust all the books — the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. Then the Muslim is complete. If anything is missing, it’s not perfect.” Surely, there is much in each religious tradition that is common – as each invites man to submit himself to the creator, create a ‘just society’ and live in peace.
When we rise in the morning and listen to the radio or read the newspaper, we are confronted with the same sad news; violence, crime, wars, and terrorism. I cannot recall a single day without a report of something terrible happening somewhere. Why do we hear so much about ‘anti-semitism’ in parts of the Muslim world and ‘Islamophobia’ among some Jews? No honest-to-goodness Muslim would want to destroy equally honest-to-goodness Jews. Religious tradition in Islam invokes the idea of the ‘people of the book’, meaning Christians, Jews and Muslims, who are supposed to be connected through Abraham, the father of the monotheistic tradition. Nevertheless, there is nothing in the Qur’an or the Hadith that explicitly forbids interactions or friendship with Jewish people. For sure, there have been historical instances where Muslim tradition has treated Jews harshly. But these instances should be seen in a historic context, and should be evaluated for what they are – instances arising from the conflict of ideologies, political or religious, when people fight each other for petty ends, losing sight of the basic humanity that binds us all together as a single human family.
The world is becoming smaller and smaller – and more and more interdependent – as a result of rapid technological advances making the task of dialogue seem easy with anything happening anywhere around the world will be immediately brought to the attention of people even in remote areas. But, it can also be a double edged sword. We cannot forget the other side of the coin: that Jews and Muslims also ignore each other and sometimes avoid each other. As a historian, I have always distrusted revisionist history, since it soon turns out that most of it is written either for ideological purposes or to advance the personal interests of the revisionist historians. It is in this sense that I would like to suggest a new way of making peace with dialogue, with other religions, with Jews, with anyone who thinks of me as a human, before being a Muslim. It is imperative and vitally important that we know each other. Knowledge, dialogue and understanding are important. But dialogue is a necessity and not a choice. That is a great step forward and that is what must be fostered, patiently, step-by-step, just like we once did back in Andalusia.
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Fadel Al Mheiri (www.tentpic.com) is an Emirati filmmaker and author of the historical novel, Kingdom of Peacocks – Mists of Time, the first of a trilogy about the Portuguese invasion of an imaginary kingdom in the Persian Gulf in the early 1500s. He graduated from the American University of Sharjah. He founded his own film production company, Tent Pictures Productions, in 2013 at the Abu Dhabi Media free zone Twofour54.