Re: Jews
The conflict between Muslims and Jews is contemporary. It’s often cast as an ancient one, but that’s a bit dramatic. To make a long story short, the conflict between Zionists and Palestinians took on a more cosmic dimension as it was recast in religious terms by both sides. It seems to emote well around the Muslim world as it re-hashes anti-colonialist sentiment. It’s also easy to recast this conflict in religions terms because of the conflict between the early Muslims and the Jewish tribes of Arabia.
Now, it’s important to point out that there are plenty of Jews who do not support Zionist policies with respect to their treatment of the Palestinians, and there are Muslims who think of the Palestinian conflict as a rather mild fringe conflict that’s blown out of proportion, but I’d wager these are few and far between.
Also, there is recognition of Jews as a nation, but their claims to the “holy land” carry no weight in Muslim eyes. It was a land grab, no different from any other colonial venture. Many Jews think of Israel as their historic land, and even though it was not the Arabs who had kicked them out so many thousands of years ago, that it was always rightfully theirs and that the Arabs were trespassing. It doesn’t help that many fundamentalist Christians hold the belief that Jews must be in the historic land of Israel as a precursor to the arrival of Christ.
Muslim interest in the land is two fold:
i) According to Islamic jurisprudence, once a land is in our possession it shall always remain so. I don’t know if this can be traced to primary sources of Islamic law, but that’s not the point. It can be definitely inferred from the war doctrine that evolved in Muslim empires. Double so if it is still populated by Muslims. So, I suppose, in this sense we can say that the contemporary conflict is historic, as Christians and Muslims fought over the land during the Crusader era, and it can be argued that they are still fighting over the land with the modern state of Israel on the Christian side.
ii) Al Aqsa
Solidarity for Palestinians is often a stated reason, but given their abuse by other Arabs, I think that’s a bit much, and in some sense the so-called solidarity is more driven by *ideological *attitudes formulated by i) above than actual sympathy for Palestinian Muslim suffering.
So in essence, asking for the acceptance of Israel is akin to asking Muslims to accept defeat, which is traditionally not done. So there are two options I see:
i) Perpetual war.
ii) Quid pro quo, where Israel and the Arabs find a role for the Jewish state in the Middle East. For example, Jews would be the brain trust, and the gulf arabs would be the financiers. The combination is potent.