BorealFAREWELL POSTINGSA Path to Peace Between Palestinians and IsraelisJune 7, 2025 Draft One of my first memories is of a man crying. I had been playing with his son in a sandbox that afternoon. It was not a real sandbox, just a pile of sand dumped in the middle of a muddy driveway. The boy's father, who was in the gravel hauling business, came home at the end of the day—unaware that his son was still playing on the pile of sand—and drove over him. My older sister took me to my friend's house to see him one last time. I was standing in front of the open coffin admiring how good he looked in his tidy little suit and tie, his black hair combed back all slick and shiny, when the tiny coffin started rocking back and forth and a voice started to shout. I looked up and noticed a man with his hands resting on the open end of the coffin, jerking it back and forth and yelling, “Wake up! You're not dead; wake up!” (Réveilles toé! T’es pas mort; réveilles toé!) over and over again. The man was crying, with big tears running down his face. I was reminded of that memory last night as I was sitting at my favourite patio going over what I thought was the final draft of Farewell Postings while taking in the sights and sounds of Elgin Street on a Saturday evening. There were the girls and the well behaved dogs out for a walk with their owners, but it was the families that held my attention, many had to be from the Middle East. For some reason, along with the memory of my dead playmate’s crying father was that of Palestinian fathers crying over the corpses of their dead children, 10 of them following an Israeli missile strike that appears to have targeted a group of boys and girls playing foosball on a Gaza street. When I got home I took another look at the CNN video showing their lifeless bodies next to a foosball table damaged by shrapnel, and I started to cry. Israeli precision-guided munition likely killed group of children playing foosball in Gaza, weapons experts say CNN March 3, 2024 The New York Times as also reported, on a number of occasions, on what the evidence suggests is the targeted killing of children by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Whether it is rogue elements of the IDF or official policy that is the cause of all this grief, it has to stop, and we do this by stopping the killing and looking for common ground. The Arabs of Palestine could have easily overwhelmed the Jews of Palestine at any point following the Muslim conquest of the territory in 638, but they didn’t, only to find themselves at their mercy. They will not make that same mistake again. Israel must show some humility and compassion before it is too late, and that means scaling down, not up, the Zionist dream before it becomes a holocaustic nightmare and the world shrugs, leaving it to reap the whirlwind. We could start a dialogue between the Palestinians and Israelis beginning with when Muslim Arabs and Jews got along. The Jews would, as a matter of course, have to acknowledge that they made a mistake when they denied Muhammad’s prophethood; in effect, recognizing the Palestinians as equals. Discussions like those that undoubtedly took place during the drafting of the Constitution of Medina would follow with the intent of drafting an agreement to govern a two-state Federation. Had it not been for the Jews of Medina Islam would have been stillborn. The Jews of Medina joined their Arab neighbours to save Muhammad from certain death by granting him, and his followers, asylum when his Meccan kin were hot on his heels intent on killing him for preaching what they considered an intolerant and hateful message that would have anyone who did not heed that message destined to burn in Hell for an eternity. Muslims and Jews initially got along like family; after all, they both worshipped the same god and both traced their lineage to the biblical Abraham. Muhammad, under the newly created Constitution of Medina, was even granted authority to arbitrate disputes between Muslims and Jews, in part, because of his knowledge of the Torah. The Koran, apart from a brief self-serving interpretation of the life of Jesus and his mother, is very much a synthesis of Jewish beliefs and pagan traditions. Even before Muhammad’s flight to Medina, Allah was so impressed by the Jews that He gave them the Holy Land. 7:137 And We bequeathed to the people who were held to be weak the eastern and western parts of the land which we had blessed (the Holy Land); and the fairest Word of your Lord in regard to the Children of Israel was fulfilled, because of their endurance; and We destroyed the houses and towers which Pharaoh and his people were building.* It all fell apart when the Jews of Medina insisted that Muhammad could not be a prophet of Allah because God only spoke to mankind via His Chosen People. Before the breakup, Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, but that would change as mistrust and animosity developed between the two Semite people. In the following verses Allah gives His reasons for this about-face (no pun intended). 2:142 The ignorant among the people (among the Jews and polytheist Arabs) will say: “What caused them (the Prophet Muhammad and the believers) to turn away from the former Qibla towards which they used to turn (Jerusalem)?” Say: “To Allah belongs the East and the West. He guides whom He wills towards the Right Path.” 2:143 And thus We have made you (the Muslim nation) a just nation, so that you may bear witness unto the rest of mankind, and that the Messenger may bear witness unto you. We did not ordain your former Qibla except that We may distinguish those who follow the Messenger from those who turn on their heels (return to disbelief). It was indeed a hard test except for those whom Allah guided. Allah would not allow your faith to be in vain. He is Clement and Merciful to mankind. 2:144 Surely, We see your face turned towards heaven (yearning for guidance through revelation). We shall turn you towards a Qibla that will please you. Turn your face then towards the Sacred Mosque (the Sacred Mosque of Mecca, the Ka’ba); and wherever you are turn your faces towards it. Those who were given the Book (the Jews and Christians) certainly know this to be the Truth from their Lord. Allah is not unaware of what they do. 2:145 Were you even to come to the People of the Book with every proof, they will not follow your Qibla, nor will you follow their Qibla. Nor will some of them follow the Qibla of the others. And were you to follow their desires after all the knowledge that came to you, surely you would be one of the evil-doers. IN PRAISE OF THE ARABS (Abbreviated from Remembering Uzza, Boreal Books) Uzza: I have talked too much. Maybe I should leave. Archie: I'm sorry; it's just that sometimes the stupidity of the Arabs just pisses me off. Uzza: ARABS ARE NOT STUPID! I am not Arab, but I know they are not stupid, just like the vast majority of Muslims, who, by the way, are not Arabs, and are also not stupid. If Muhammad had not revealed the Koran when he did, an Arab, not a Jew, would probably have discovered relativity, and long before Einstein did. Gerry: How so? Uzza: The pagans Muhammad was trying to convert had a very modern outlook on the nature of our existence. When told that it was Allah who caused them to grow old and die, and if they worshipped Him and only Him, He would bring them back to life and admit them into His Paradise, they said this was nonsense. They told anyone who would listen that there was only this life and that it was destroyed by the passage of time; what we know today as entropy. When Allah heard this, He repeated what they said in His Koran and accused them of not knowing what they were talking about. He said they were only "conjecturing"[116]. Gerry: Conjecturing correctly, as it turned out. Bob: What has the discovery of this entropy got to do with relativity? Uzza: [looking at Bob, then at Archie] And you call Arabs stupid. Entropy is all about the impact of the passage of time, which Einstein identified as the fourth dimension. Bob: Who are you calling stupid? Uzza: It was nothing. I did not mean it. [turning to Gerry] If Allah had not insisted that what we now know as entropy was nothing but conjecture, an Arab would undoubtedly have discovered relativity long before Einstein did. They were that smart! Archie: What happened? Uzza: Is it not obvious? Archie: But if I said it I could be arrested. Uzza: And I could be killed. The Koran asks us to believe with certainty in what it contains[117]. To believe with certainty in revealed truths is to abandon our ability to reason and arrive at logical conclusions. The result of this capitulation to what the pre-Islamic Arabs called nonsense was the Arabs of T. E. Lawrence. Bob: Are we talking about Lawrence of Arabia? Uzza: Yes. As much as he loved and admired the courage and perseverance of the Arabs with whom he fought against the Turks, he never understood their outlook on life. What he wrote about them in Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a sad testament to what happens to even the brightest when scriptures overwhelm the mind. “They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white…” he wrote, “a dogmatic, narrow-minded people… they only knew truth and untruth, belief and unbelief… they never compromised… their imaginations were vivid, but not creative”[118]. Gerry: But Muslims, Arabs and Persians in particular did make substantial contribution to science, astronomy and mathematics in particular? Uzza: That was mostly during the short-lived Muslim Renaissance. Bob: There was a Renaissance before the Renaissance? Uzza: Between the 8th and 10th century, when Islam was in its infancy, there emerged an Islamic school of thought largely influenced by Plato and Aristotle, whose works − and those of other Greek philosophers − were translated into Arabic[119], and which became known as Mu’tazilism or Philosophy of Rationalism, or simply Islamic Philosophy. The most emblematic philosopher of the period, al-Kindi, wrote: "We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign people. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself." Bob: WOW! Uzza: Mu'tazilites argued that the Koran should not be taken literally, and that human reason was more reliable than scriptures. Bob: WOW again! Uzza: The leaders of the believers of the time, the most noteworthy being Caliphs al-Ma'mun, Mu'tasim Billah and Wathiq, actively supported this sensible open-minded interpretation, allowing it to thrive until dogma reasserted itself with a vengeance and revelation again smothered reason. Gerry: That is really too bad. Uzza: For both you and us. Today, the man most responsible for Mu’tazilism is reviled by Islamists and al-Ghazali, the man most responsible for its demise, is celebrated as one of the greatest thinkers of all times. It is not a coincidence that most of Islam’s substantial contributions to the advancement of science were from this period when Mu’tazilism was accepted by the Caliphate as a legitimate Islamic school of thought. Gerry: That would also explain why the Muslim world, which constitutes 21 percent of the world’s population, has produced only 10 Nobel Prize laureates, with only two in the physical sciences, physics and chemistry, while the Jews who constitute about .02 percent of the world's population have taken an incredible 892, 22 percent of all Nobel prizes given out to-date. Uzza: Depressing, is it not? Bob: Not if you're Jewish. Uzza: [makes Uzza smile, if only for an instant] Not to be overlooked are the requirements of an Islamic education where priority is given to learning Arabic and attempting to memorize the Koran in its entirety; the negative impact on critical thinking is just as damaging, if not more, than the time not available to non-religious subjects, which Islamists consider very much a pre-occupation of the ignorant, as is time not spent at prayer or glorifying Allah. If excessive worship is the answer, the world may eventually owe Islam an enormous debt. Archie: I apologize. What I took for stupidity is simply, from your explanation, the result of indoctrination. But, surely, the preachers and the so-called Islamic scholars who believe in flying horses, a flat Earth and Paradise a few miles up are not praying with a full set of beads. Uzza: The imams and scholars are the smartest of the smart. I doubt very much that they believe in what you said is a fairy tale. They know that religion is not so much about belief but about control, control over people who want to believe − and that is most of us − that there is more to our existence than meets the eye. Gerry: Then you agree with Marx that religion is an opiate exploited by people who would rule over us. Archie: That would explain why the faithful tend to be immune to a slow-burning planet. They're all stoned on religion. Uzza: That is funny, what you just said Archie, but also what Gerry said, because that is almost exactly what the leaders of Mecca said to Muhammad when he told them he was sent by God to instruct them on how to behave: that he wanted to rule over them[120]. Footnotes 45:24 They say: “There is nothing but this our present life. We die and we live and we are only destroyed by time.” However, they have no certain knowledge of this; they are only conjecturing. 45:20 This (Qur’an) is an illumination for mankind, a guidance and mercy unto a people who believe with certainty. They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white… They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questioning. They only knew truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades. This people was black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes… they never compromised; they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity. They were a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellect lay fallow in curious resignation. Their imaginations were vivid, but not creative. T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom The motives of the translators [of Greek works in science and philosophy into Arabic] and their patrons, the ['Abbasid] caliphs, may have been partially practical; medical skill was in demand, and control over natural forces could bring power and success. There was also, however, a wide intellectual curiosity, such as is expressed in the words of al-Kindi (c. 801-66), the thinker with whom the history of Islamic philosophy virtually begins: We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign people. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself. A History of the Arab People, Albert Hourani, Harvard University Press 1991, p. 76 38:6 And the dignitaries among them went forth saying: “Go on and be steadfast regarding your gods. This is indeed a matter premeditated (Muhammad…. [wants] to subjugate us and rule us as his subjects, Moududi)
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