Maryam Jameelah, born in the US 🇺🇸 as Margret Marcus into a Jewish family ✡️, resumed Western thought in the chapter 1 of her book 📖 "Westernization and Human Welfare" (1982), mentioning Plato, Machiavelli, Newton, Darwin, Marx, Freud, etc.
Let’s read 👇
2/8
"The society of ancient Greece was the earliest in history to divorce its institutions, customs, arts and sciences from religion […] the secular heritage of Greece was adopted, cherished and perpetuated by pagan Rome."
3/8
"The Renaissance coincided with the rejection of Christianity ✝️ […] epitomized its spirit was Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1532)."
4/8
"The Protestant Reformation dealt the Church such a crippling blow, Christendom never recovered afterwards […]"
5/8
"Intoxicated by the theory advanced by Newton (1643-1727) that the entire universe was regulated by immutable mathematical laws, the protagonists of the so-called "Age of Enlightenment" taught that all beliefs contrary to human experience and observation must be discarded."
6/8
"Darwin's (1809-1882) concept of the evolution of man from lower forms of life introduced an entirely new scale of ethical values."
7/8
"Freud, not content to deny the divine origin of religion, rejected the idea that religious faith was justified on any grounds."
8/8
"Materialistic philosophy reached its climax in its chief protagonist—Karl Marx […] Schopenhauer carried materialistic philosophy to its logical conclusion."
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A controversial doctrine in Judaism, or more particularly its mystical tradition, is that Jews have a different, markedly superior soul to non-Jews.
Such idea has been endorsed by the most authoritative rabbis, including the Rebbe (an assumed model for the likes of Ben Shapiro, Netanyahu and millions of Jews).
Rabbi Hanan Balk wrote an essay on the subject in 2013, "The Soul of a Jew and the Soul of a Non-Jew".
Therein he quotes many sources.
Let’s read. 👇
2/7
The Zohar, the main source of the Kabbalah :
"The people of Israel, the Zohar states, possess a living, holy, and elevated soul (“nefesh ḥayah kadisha ila’ah”), as opposed to the other nations, who are described as akin to animals and crawling creatures, which lack this “Divine” soul and possess only an “animal” soul."
3/7
A 12th century rabbi :
"He famously states that a convert, lacking the spiritual make-up of a born Jew, cannot become a prophet."
Because of the current tensions between Türkiye 🇹🇷 and Israel 🇮🇱 there’s a lot of historical revisionism about the situation of Jews in historical Türkiye, including the Ottoman Empire.
Here I’ll post some excerpts from book 📕 "The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic" by Standford Shaw.
It dismantles many myths and highlights lesser known facts such as the Jewish support of Ottoman conquests.
It goes way beyond welcoming +200k Jews who fled Spain 🇪🇸 / Portugal 🇵🇹 and some might be surprised to learn that Mehmed 2, the conqueror of Constantinople at 21, might have been *the* most pro-Jewish premodern ruler.
It also includes testimonies from rabbis who contrasted their Ottoman life to the harsher European conditions and incited the Jews of Europe to move into the Ottoman provinces.
👇
2/10
"These Ottoman conquests marked a very substantial change for the Jews of the Middle East and Europe. They meant instant liberation, not only from subjugation, persecution, and humiliation but often from actual slavery in Christian hands. As a result, Jews contributed significantly to the Ottoman conquests."
3/10
"When the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II Fatih (The Conqueror) captured Constantinople and brought the Byzantine Empire finally to an inglorious end in 1453, his armies broke into the city through one of the Jewish quarters and with the assistance of the local Jewish population who, as at Bursa and Edirne, were overjoyed at the opportunity to throw off their Greek oppressors."
The "Dönmeh" of Türkiye are crypto-Jews, that is, ethnic Jews who outwardly profess Islam but in reality perpetuate the idea of Sabbatai Zevi, a 16th-century fake Messiah whose approach to morality was grounded in particular interpretations of the Talmud and especially the Kabbalah tradition, notably the idea of "redemption through sin" : that the Messianic era would be precipitated the *more* you'd sin, thus Sabbateans indulged in overtly sinful activities such as orgies [see my article at the end for more information on their metaphysics].
The Dönmeh have played a major role in the modernization of Türkiye, over-represented when looking at their population, e.g. as members of the Young Turks (see Mehmed Cavid, Doctor Nazım, Hasan Tahsin or Sabiha Sertel, the first Turkish female journalist); this has been detailed by Marc Baer in a major book on the question (published in 2010), even if he argues that it was a form of self-sabotage as the "cosmopolitan" Ottoman Empire was more welcoming of them than the "secular-nationalist" Turkish Republic they'd shape.
It's said that, despite assimilation (marriage with Turkish Muslims), there are still 10s of 1000s of Dönmeh, often in influential positions, even in recent times (İsmail Cem, the leftist Foreign Minister from 1997 to 2002, during his last year the controversy rising as many said that he'd succumb to the US pressure to invade Iraq due to his ethnic background).
I want to share an article written for the Jewish Chronicle in 2003, which is a profile of the group (the London-based JC is the oldest continuing Jewish newspaper.)
As the Jewish author Mordechai Beck asserts, the Dönmeh are no representatives of traditional Judaism, obviously, being the followers of a false Messiah. Still, while not (normative) Jews when it comes to *religion*, they're Jews in terms of *ethnicity* and thus a parcel of "Jewish identity politics", that can be manifested through different ideologies (*not* limited to Zionism).
2/6
He begins by talking of a bomb attack on a synagogue, and the perpetrators blamed Dönmeh for various ills of the Turkish society :
3/6
"Outwardly (...) (Dönmeh) have taken on the apperance of Muslims (...) its members are also said to engage in a range of secret rituals, said by some to include orgies and wife-swapping and rites meant to produce a messiah, a transmigration of Shabbetai Tzvi's soul."
A lot of people seem to be surprised at the "full support" shown by Indians 🇮🇳, at least its Hindu 🕉️nationalists, for Israel. 🇮🇱
Many seem to think that it all began when BJP got into power in 2014, yet in 1978 already a book unveiled such a union, "The Unholy Alliance: Indo-Israel Collaboration Against the Muslim World".
The book shows that both Hindu nationalists and secularists have favored Israel, a "full support" which has been manifested both at the level of the elit as well among the general public of the Hindus.
Let's go through some of its points.
2/11
In the foreword by an Arab scholar originally from Palestine, Ihsan Haqqi, the book begins by comparing the Zionist onslaught on Palestine to that of India in the Hyderabad State, a princely state which was the richest in India and also headed by a Muslim who financed Islamic causes.
3/11
In the introduction, the author says that both Hindus and Jews got their independence through the British and both have historically feared a united Muslim front.
A.K. Brohi [1915–1987] 🇵🇰 was one of the most influential jurists of the region, began "secular" before getting close to "Islamist" Gen. Zia (Brohi is on the right in the pic.)
In 1966, this is what he wrote on the effects of "affluence" on women/family system/society.
🧵
2/9
"It is not only the earning of money by lawful means that is the current Gospel—it is the worship of wealth itself that is the dominant duty."
3/9
"Affluence, on the other hand, destroys the moral foundations of society by making man's external possessions and goods the norm of human excellence […] the maternal instinct it the only foundation for the growth of true altruism."