Ethics Bob

I came home from my tenth grade history class and announced, “Today we learned about the fall of Christian Constantinople to the Muslim Ottomans, and what a tragedy it was.” My father corrected me; “Not for the Jews, it wasn’t.” He went on to explain that the Ottoman Sultan, Beyazit I, in 1492 invited all the Jews of Spain, just expelled by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, to come live in peace in the Ottoman Empire, then the world’s most powerful. Thousands did, and lived peacefully and prosperously there for centuries, to this day.

Jews and Muslims have gotten on well for most of the time since the days of Mohammed, who honored Jews as “people of the book.” It’s easy today, looking at the enmity between Israel and some of her neighbors, to forget that Jewish culture thrived as never before or since in the “golden age of Jewish culture” in Muslim-ruled Spain, or that the Muslim Beyazit rescued the Jews of Spain and Portugal. Even the Jewish-Muslim conflict in the Middle East is over land, not religion.

So it’s nice to see so many Jews standing up for the rights of American Muslims to build Cordoba House, a community center with prayer area, 2-1/2 blocks from New York’s Ground Zero. NBC News reported, “Jewish Leaders Gather to Support Ground Zero Mosque.”

And Washington’s Jewish Week criticized the position of the Anti-Defamation League for not “standing up for our values — values that say not all Muslims should be blamed for the horrific, unforgivable deeds of a minority; values that say we are a welcoming, tolerant society, open to all religions, races and creeds; the very values hated by those who attacked us.”

The proposed center has also enjoyed the support of the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan, of the Shalom Center, and of Jewish elected officials such as Manhattan-based Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and most passionately of all, New York’s Jewish Mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

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Tags: 1492, Anti-Defamation League, Cordoba House, expulsion of Jews from Spain, fall of Constantinople, golden age of Jewish culture, Israel, Jerrold Nadler, Jewish Community Center of Manhattan, Jewish Leaders, Jews, Michael Bloomberg, Mohammed, mosque at Ground Zero, Muslims, Ottoman Empire, Ottomans, people of the book, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, Scott Stringer, Shalom Center, Sultan Beyazit I, Washington Jewish Week

This entry was posted on August 9, 2010 at 12:02 am and is filed under Ethics-general, Politics, Tolerance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.