Burning the Koran and the Talmud in Florida

Michael Hoffman | www.RevisionistHistory.org

Few acts could be more counter-productive than book-burning.

Though medieval Catholics are stigmatized for burning the Babylonian Talmud, the burning of the New Testament in the Israeli state is almost never mentioned.

The Talmud is a book that actually calls for the burning of Christian books. This is a startling and obscure fact. Because Michael Hoffman has dug it up, Internet critics of Zionism and the ADL will not tell their readers about it in their e-mailings lest they publicize Hoffman's research. Better that their readers are kept ignorant. No wonder we're losing.

"Rev." Terry Jones has agreed to burn the Koran and the Talmud in Florida next month. Islamic Prof. Akbar Ahmed comments on this state of affairs (see below). I do not endorse Ahmed's column.  Prof. Ahmed (see below) obviously knows nothing about the Talmud. He equates it with "Abrahamic faith," which is just too obtuse for words. On the other hand, his article demonstrates that Muslims throughout the world are shaking with rage at the thought of what Jones is going to do. Newt Gingrich calls NY mosque Muslims "Nazis." Someone is stoking the fires of the clash of civilizations. Someone wants to see nuclear war between the East and the West. Cui bono? Ask Jerusalem.

Prof. Ahmed imagines that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were ecumenical liberals. Early in his career Washington was a Freemason. In old age he let his membership lapse. During Rev. Morse's campaign against the Illuminati, Washington distanced himself from the occult. Nonetheless his early remarks to American Judaics about them being the "stock of Abraham" were absurd.

Jefferson was never a Freemason and despised Judaism and the Talmud, but he was too astute to persecute or suppress their theology or their unholy book. He understood that persecution and suppression are rabbinic traits. He didn't want to become like a rabbi in order to interdict rabbinic religion.

I have written extensively about Freemasonry in Early America in Revisionist History Newsletter no. 36 (http://revisionisthistorystore.blogspot.com/2010/03/hoffmans-revisionist-store-newsletters.html), and about Jefferson and the Talmud in my book, Judaism Discovered (pp. 88-93).

Toleration has its limits. Our nation's toleration of pornography, particularly on the Internet where it is accessed by children, is an abominable crime. We also tolerate foreign wars in our name paid with our tax dollars.

Barack Obama is viewed by Republican and Tea Party "Christian anti-Muslims" as far more hideous a president than George W. Bush. But Obama did not blow up the Twin Towers and building 7 of the World Trade Center in New York. Bush did. There is no comparison.

I can see how advocates of "Might is Right," such as pagans, atheists, Zionists and Talmudists would want to insult, hound and persecute all Muslims and burn their books.

I cannot seek how "Christian" Palin and "Christian" Gingrich can do so in the name of the God-man who said "Do good to those who persecute you." He gave no mandate for persecuting others. (Whenever I write this I get piles of mail from Catholics and Calvinists patiently explaining how Christ did indeed advocate the murder of His enemies. Please spare me. I have already read a vast amount of the literature of Catholic and Calvinist persecution advocacy. When the economy improves I will be able to finish writing my book on freedom of conscience and will gladly entertain criticism of my thesis after it is published).

For now I will say, if Christians are to be a light unto the world, including the Muslim and rabbinic world, let us expose their books and dispute and debate with them without resort to deliberate insults calculated to make a war-like people attack our troops and travelers.

This playbook is calculated to stoke the fires of the Israeli-Talmudic view of the Arab as Amalek, a creature with whom so-called "Jews" and their so-called "Christian" allies are to make war without end.

Don't blame the Old Testament for this. Judaism is not Old Testament, anymore than it is Jeffersonian. The God of the Old Testament said He would blot out the name of Amalek forever. He kept His promise thousands of years ago. In God's eyes "Amalek" is a dead issue.

It is the anti-Old Testament rabbis who have revived a faux Amalek because they need an irreconcilable and perpetual enemy. This is from the Talmud and the Kabbalah, the latter covertly inspiring anti-Judaics on the Right to regard "Jews" as a serpentine alien race that cannot be converted or reconciled to God; thus, war of extermination to the death on both sides of the playbook, and the devil rides.

I don't want to fight for the Muslims, who desperately need to learn and practice New Testament and Jeffersonian values. But neither do I want to go to war against them, for the rabbis, who are the nemesis of Christ and the antithesis of Jefferson — two facts never mentioned by Avodah Zarah Sarah, Bipolar Beck or their legion of kosher conservative imitators and followers.

'BURN QURAN DAY' AN OUTRAGE TO MUSLIMS 

By Akbar Ahmed | CNN | Aug. 20, 2010

Editor's note: Akbar Ahmed is Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington and the author of "Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam" (Brookings Press 2010).

(CNN) -- In less than a month, Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida plans to host "Burn a Quran Day" to mark the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The pastor, author of the book "Islam is of the Devil," is using the burning to urge American Christians to "stand up" to what he describes as a monolithic Muslim threat. A Facebook page for the event has accrued thousands of "likes" and Jones has said people have been mailing him Qurans to burn.

As a Muslim scholar, an adherent of one of the Abrahamic faiths -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- and as someone committed to interfaith understanding, I urge Jones to cancel this event. Not only are the actions of Jones contrary to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, but they are also against the ideals of the American Founding Fathers.

The planned burning has already caused alarm in the Muslim world, with the pre-eminent Sunni university, Al-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, condemning it as "stirring up hate and discrimination."

At a recent dinner in Washington, a host for one of Pakistan's top TV channels confided in me that he "didn't dare" report the story because if he did, "not a single American would be safe in Pakistan." He and the cameraman were quivering with anger as they asked me to explain why Americans hated Islam.

I tried my best to explain this was not the case, but Jones' burning will have great symbolic significance to a Muslim world already feeling under attack by the United States. It will cause undue harm to U.S. relations with the Muslim world and particularly the war effort. Gen. David Petraeus, the head of American forces in Afghanistan, has repeatedly expressed the need for winning the "hearts and minds" of local people by treating them with dignity and respect. When Afghans see that their holy book is being burned, it will cause riots and attacks that will put U.S. troops further at risk. There will be similar riots and attacks in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. It will inflame the entire Muslim world and fuel acts of terrorism.

It could also inflame anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, especially in the context of the anger over the proposed Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan. Many American Muslims will feel as if they are second-class citizens and it could push some angry young men toward violence.

On my recent fieldwork trip to 100 mosques in 75 American cities with a team of American researchers for the book "Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam," we documented that many mosques had been attacked, sometimes bombed. In May, not far from Jones' church in Gainesville, a pipe bomb exploded in a mosque in Jacksonville.

As objectionable as the prospect of Jones' Quran burning is, it may not cease with the holy book of the Muslims. I have always maintained that this kind of vitriolic hatred of one religion is a descent on a slippery slope, as no one can say who will be next. I was not surprised, therefore, when I heard Jones recently agree, when asked to do so in an internet podcast interview, to burn "a couple of copies of the Talmud" too.

Not only does the burning of holy texts reflect the darkest days of medieval Europe and Nazi Germany, but it is hard to think of anything more un-American, by the definition of the Founding Fathers themselves.

George Washington welcomed the Jews to America as the "stock of Abraham" while John Adams showed the utmost respect for Islam, naming the Prophet Mohammed as one of the greatest truth seekers in history. Benjamin Franklin called him a model of compassion.

The Founding Fathers read and honored the same Quran that Jones is now seeking to burn. Thomas Jefferson kept the same Quranin his personal collection and it informed his decision to host the first presidential iftaar during Ramadan.

The Founding Fathers were also inspired by Christian thinkers like John Locke, who declared that the true Christian's duty was to "practice charity, meekness, and good-will in general toward all mankind, even to those that are not Christians."

I consulted many distinguished Abrahamic friends for this article, all concerned with the drift toward intolerance exemplified by Jones' threat, who were happy to endorse this article's content and language.

They include the Episcopal bishop of Washington, the Right Rev. John Chane; Senior Rabbi Bruce Lustig of the Washington Hebrew Congregation; Imam Mohamed Magid, executive director of the ADAMS Center in Northern Virginia; Pastor Dr. Robert Norris of Palm Beach, Florida's, Royal Poinciana Chapel and member of the Presbytery of Tropical Florida; the Rev. Carol Flett of the Washington National Cathedral, the Rev. Dr. Clark Lobenstine of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington; Sister Maureen Fiedler, Sister of Loretto and host of Interfaith Voices, and too many others to name.

At the core of the Abrahamic faiths, these esteemed figures represent the need to show compassion and understanding of others. By threatening to burn the holy books of two of these faiths, the Quran and the Talmud, Jones is violating the basic tenants of all the Abrahamic faiths and doing something that is unacceptable by any standard of religion. As an adherent of one of these faiths, Islam, and one who respects the other faiths, I implore Jones as a Christian and an American to cancel his burning event, follow the true teachings of Jesus by loving his neighbor, and engage in respectful dialogue instead.

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