The Jew-hatred that has so greatly intensified in the Arab and Islamic worlds has led to a great increase in the dehumanizing language used by Islamic spiritual leaders against the Jews. Whether it's the Yasser Arafat-controlled kadi in Jerusalem, or the haters in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the message blares out from the minarets over and over again. The master teachers of the Islamic world blare out that Jews are pigs and apes and they must be destroyed. Along with the evil of this anti-Semitism, perhaps the major point of it is the free world's relative silence about this kind of genocidal incitement.
But there is another more minor point that Jews, perhaps out of consideration and desire not to insult, have been reticent about. And that is that the vast Islamic world of one billion souls contributes close to zero to the scientific and technical progress of mankind, while in contrast, the less than three-tenths of one percent of mankind that is Jewish contributes very, very considerably to that progress.
In fact, over the past one hundred years the Jews, a miniscule portion of mankind, have been close to fifteen percent of the Nobel Prize winners in the sciences. But that figure says nothing about the innumerable great Jewish figures whose contributions to world culture have so enriched and illuminated Mankind in every possible field of creative human endeavor.
Were the Jews to be so stupid and so inhumane and so insulting, they might say to their fellow human beings who happen to have been raised in a culture that has been standing still for a thousand years, " Who are the apes and pigs?" But Jewish leaders and thinkers have been extremely responsible, primarily because one fundamental article of Jewish faith is that all human beings are creatures created in the image of God. And that it is forbidden to gratuitously insult and injure others. And that given time and circumstance, these very same people who are now so lost in close-minded hatred can become once again a significant factor in the development of human culture and civilization.
The real bottom line is then not to be calling others apes and pigs, and not to be insulting others, but, as fellow human beings, seeking to find a way to help solve the many difficult problems humanity faces today so as to be able to build a better future for all of us. How this can happen, what kind of transformation is required in the Arab and Islamic worlds is well understood by those Arab scholars who recently took their own leaders to task for the lack of democratic freedom, the oppression of women, the general ignorance of their societies.
As for the Jews, our only real answer is to continue building our own society in Israel while contributing as much as we are able to the well-being of mankind as a whole. And perhaps then, many, many years from now, we will come to that kind of Messianic Age the Rambam (Maimonides) talked about, one in which all peoples live in respect and honor toward each other, in true peace and human dignity.
But there is another more minor point that Jews, perhaps out of consideration and desire not to insult, have been reticent about. And that is that the vast Islamic world of one billion souls contributes close to zero to the scientific and technical progress of mankind, while in contrast, the less than three-tenths of one percent of mankind that is Jewish contributes very, very considerably to that progress.
In fact, over the past one hundred years the Jews, a miniscule portion of mankind, have been close to fifteen percent of the Nobel Prize winners in the sciences. But that figure says nothing about the innumerable great Jewish figures whose contributions to world culture have so enriched and illuminated Mankind in every possible field of creative human endeavor.
Were the Jews to be so stupid and so inhumane and so insulting, they might say to their fellow human beings who happen to have been raised in a culture that has been standing still for a thousand years, " Who are the apes and pigs?" But Jewish leaders and thinkers have been extremely responsible, primarily because one fundamental article of Jewish faith is that all human beings are creatures created in the image of God. And that it is forbidden to gratuitously insult and injure others. And that given time and circumstance, these very same people who are now so lost in close-minded hatred can become once again a significant factor in the development of human culture and civilization.
The real bottom line is then not to be calling others apes and pigs, and not to be insulting others, but, as fellow human beings, seeking to find a way to help solve the many difficult problems humanity faces today so as to be able to build a better future for all of us. How this can happen, what kind of transformation is required in the Arab and Islamic worlds is well understood by those Arab scholars who recently took their own leaders to task for the lack of democratic freedom, the oppression of women, the general ignorance of their societies.
As for the Jews, our only real answer is to continue building our own society in Israel while contributing as much as we are able to the well-being of mankind as a whole. And perhaps then, many, many years from now, we will come to that kind of Messianic Age the Rambam (Maimonides) talked about, one in which all peoples live in respect and honor toward each other, in true peace and human dignity.