From Al Jazeera:
On the Gregorian calendar (so named after Pope Gregory XIII) this September, two of the holiest Jewish and Islamic high holidays coincide. On September 10, Jews around the world began their high holidays by commemorating Rosh Hashana which continues for 10 days until September 19, Yom Kippur. It is on that day that Muslims in general, and Shia in particular, commemorate the sacred day of Tasu’a and then a day later – Ashoura – the 9th and 10th of the Islamic month of Muharram respectively.
Both the Jewish and Islamic calendars are lunar while the Gregorian calendar on which they are being cast is solar. The lunar calendar is 11 days shorter than the solar and for that reason, though stable on their own respective calendars, Jewish and Islamic holidays appear to “roam” aimlessly on the Christian calendar.
With the major difference that the Jewish calendar adds “leap months” to keep holidays in the proper seasons and Islam doesn’t.
Both Jewish and Muslim observers have noticed this proximity between Yom Kippur and Ashoura. On the occasion of the two holidays coinciding in 2016, Rabbi Allen S Maller noted how “both holy days occur on the 10th day of the month, Muharram for Muslims and Tishri for Jews.”
The similarities, correspondences and affinities of such aspects of Islam and Judaism are only strange or bizarre to those who have fallen into the trap of falsely projecting the Zionist colonial adventurism in Palestine backwards onto history and positing an entrenched hostility between Jews and Muslims.
Like Christianity, Islam is deeply influenced by Judaism and has an even stronger proximity to its theological monotheism. This is not a matter of opinion or ideological position. It is a matter of historical fact.
Um, yes, as one of those Zionists I have mentioned the way that Islam has co-opted Jewish traditions, laws and holy places many, many times.
The infamous statement of former US president Barack Obama that “The Middle East is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia,” is typical of the ahistorical gibberish that manufactures hostility between Islam and Judaism, and perforce between Jews and Muslims. By making such declarations, Obama projects his own criminal role in prolonging the Palestinian suffering under Zionist occupation to some distant past that never was.
Islamic antipathy to Jews and Judaism indeed goes back since the dawn of Islam, as the cries of “Khaybar” that happen today show quite well.
Zionism is the condition of Jewish alienation from Judaism, precisely in the way militant Islamism is the condition of self-alienation for Muslims.
I love how Al Jazeera finds Muslims to explain the truth about Judaism to its readers.
Muslim antisemitism predates Zionism, both on the personal and theological levels. This article is what is revisionist.
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