The Most Reverend Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury Lambeth Palace London SE1 7JU
9th September 2004
Dear Archbishop,

I am writing belatedly in response to the paper you sent as a contribution to the International Sabeel Conference held in Jerusalem last April on Challenging Christian Zionism. I regret to say that Palestinian Christians attending the Sabeel Conference listened with profound disappointment to your keynote address to the Conference. Palestinian Christians had suffered much at the hand of theologies and interpretations of scripture that provided a mantle of divine legitimisation to the ideology of Zionism and the political movement that worked for their displacement from their homeland, and built a Jewish state on the basis of their exile, and oppression. One of our constant complaints of was that Christian Zionism ignores our national rights, and indeed our very existence. The creation of the state of Israel was done on our land and the ingathering of Jews from all the world came at the price of exiling and scattering our people throughout the world. All this was supported by Christian theologies that ignored or delegitimized us as a people, claiming a divine imperative based on scripture for the creation of the state of Israel. Such views generally side-stepped or totally ignored the Palestinian people on whose land the state was created. While the Jewish people were seen to hold a divinely mandated right to people hood, and even chosen ness, as well as a promise to ownership of the land, by its creator and ultimate sovereign, the Palestinian people had only individual and transient rights, at best, as ‘strangers in the midst’ of God’s people. These issues were not of passing theological or academic interest to us, but had direct tangible consequences for us of life and death, as well as of faith. It was therefore most distressing to us to hear these same views echoed your keynote address when you also asserted a theological imperative to recognize Jewish people hood which needed to be exercised in political statehood in a concrete land inhabited by others whose people hood is NOT recognized. There were several references in your lecture to the ‘neighbours’ of such a state, (presumably Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt), but none to the indigenous people of Palestine who had necessarily to be displaced and marginalized to make room for the exercise of Jewish nationhood. It was unclear where the ‘good news’ in this to the Palestinians, or indeed the Arab neighbours of the new Jewish state. To be sure, you did not give unqualified support to the Jewish state, and affirmed that it is required to act with ‘law and intelligence’ but one gets the impression that such a requirement is viewed solely from the perspective of the dominant Jews themselves, as if Palestinians have no value in and of themselves in the sight of God, and that the most they can get, is the crumbs of the state of Israel’s willingness to live up to the requirements of ‘justice and intelligence(?).

However, if Israel fails to live up to those requirements of justice and intelligence, then the tragedies , suffering, torture, and displacement suffered by them would be regrettable,- not because of what the Palestinian victims are suffering, but more for what this does to Jews- that is their failure to live up to their role as God’s people. Your lecture did not support eschatological or prophecy-driven interpretations, yet you affirmed, theologically, the need for a Jewish state as a necessary paradigm to the world of a community living ‘under God’. You even lamented that we did not have the benefit of such a living example for almost 2000 years. As you seem to see it Israel, in biblical terms, is still a gift to the community of nations. In doing so, you not only bracketed out 2000 years of history, but also the entire teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, with respect to the Kingdom of God, the removal of the barriers of distinction between Jews and Gentiles, Jesus’ emphatic separation between Church and State, (“My kingdom is not of this world”) which is the basis for the Christians’ critical attitude towards politics, states and nationalism in the modern world. The concrete challenges with which Jesus responded to those zealots who yearned for an earthly kingdom and the restoration of power to the Jews, by pointing repeatedly to His Kingdom, which is open to all and not just to the “children of Abraham, according to the flesh” are also side-stepped as we are brought back to the Old Testament covenant of tribal possession and conquest of the Land. By utilizing the “tormented meditation in Romans 9-11” and rejecting the Supersessionist or replacement approach, you appear to be left with the Old Testament model of the covenant, tempered perhaps by the requirements for justice towards the “alien in your midst” but nothing more. Unfortunately, you were not present to explain to us what happens to the indigenous population when such a model state is established on their land.
What rights, if any, would such indigenous non-Jews (Christian or Moslem) have in a professedly Jewish state? Is discrimination against them (necessary in both theory and practice if one sets out to create a Jewish state) legitimate, and divinely mandated? Is Palestinian nationalism and people hood dangerous, or even evil because it resists elimination and marginalization within the divine scheme of creating the ‘paradigm state’? Are Palestinians the Amaleks to be exterminated, or Canaanites to be simply reduced to ‘hewers of wood, and drawers of water’? Is their resistance to this scheme legitimate self-defence, or sinful rebellion against God’s plan that must be harshly repressed? Are they ( or the Christians among them) required to graciously vacate their homes, fields, shops, villages in favour of Jews to whom God is granting this land to be their home, since it is obvious that ‘ to be hospitable, you must have a home’? I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these questions with you in person, as and when you are in Palestine again, or if it is possible to visit you in London. On behalf of the indigenous Palestinian Christian community, I would urge you to give a lead in challenging the heresy of Christian Zionism which dares to justify in God’s name, an apartheid regime that will, if unchecked, lead to a Holy Land devoid of local Christians within 20 years.

Yours in His Grace,
Jonathan Kuttab

From the book Jerusalem Today edited by Ghada Karmi with a contribution by Edward Said

The sacramental principle in Christianity means that the land is hallowed by (association). History signifies because of what it contained: geography is sanctified because of what it housed. “I will be there”, said the voice in the bush to Moses, “as whom there I will be”. The event of exodus gives the only feasible clue to the God whom exodus pledges. What happened became definitive of what had to be recognized. The actual event enabled- and warranted- a mythology about its meaning, a meaning meant to be, for all generations, a reliable disclosure of “whom they had believed”. How “all our fathers passed through the sea” became a theme of memory. Exodus had sacramentalised their status as “the people of God”, and Passover simply transacted the meaning in annual experience. Apostolic Christianity was heir to this perception of theology, only that the Cross of Jesus had become the epic theme. Jesus, in the meaning of his wounds, became for founding-Christians “the place of the Name”, where God could be known in how he had “been there” in the dimensions of the love that suffered.

This sense of things inherently hallowed the physical place where all had transpired, the Galilee of his words and ministry, the Gethsemane of his sorrows. It was a sense of things which subsumed, if it did not supersede, all other sanctifying aegis having to do with land and story. In a sense the significance of the Temple as “the place of the Name”, the expression of divine identity, passed over for Christians into the person and the work of Christ. The Pauline phrase “in Christ” came to mean a spiritual domicile in which peoplehood-in-faith became “the body of Christ” was thus ‘dis-enlandised’ (if we may invent the term) while remaining in fond and gentle love, by association, of the “where” and the “when” of the eventfulness that made it so.

Before pursuing this essential theme more fully in the first Christian mind, it may be well to reflect briefly on the centrality of the basic concept of the sacramental. Despite the word’s Latin origin, the idea has deeply Hebraic sanction, though Christian faith had its own welcome for it. The term is initially simple enough, namely that things physical embody and express things spiritual- a frown, a smile, a handshake, flowers, a kiss, an embrace. All these do not merely inform, they transact. They indicate relationship but they also effectuate it. Two realms combine. I put my sympathy into a gesture, I write my anxiety on my face.

These devices are bound to have theological counterpart. The Aaronic blessing tells of “the face of the Lord”, the prophets asked of “the arm of the Lord”. All faiths need these measures of speech. Without some inter-penetrability of the divine and the human all thought of God, even more all worship, would be null and void. Even mystic silence must return to some sort of conceivability. Christianity grasps this secret full-handedly with due, but not crippling, compunction. It is faith in incarnation where “Word is made flesh and dwells among us, full of grace and truth”. Even faiths that demure over that conception necessarily turn on some measure of divine condescension to the human, or human agency for the divine. For, otherwise, faith and love and truth would be vacuous for lack of medium and meaning.

Posted on: 2002

By Naseer Aruri

Having consolidated its control of West Jerusalem after 1948, Israel used its 1967 conquest as an opportunity to extend its jurisdiction to the Jordanian-ruled East Jerusalem, and to enlarge the boundaries yet another time to add numerous new Arab villages and neighborhoods. More than 25 percent of the area known as the West Bank was expropriated and incorporated into a newly- created greater Jerusalem. The physical barriers between East and West Jerusalem were removed.

The Moghrabi section of the Old City was totally razed with its 350 homes for more than 1500 residents, who were subsequently expelled in order to accommodate a new plaza in front of the Western Wall.

Defying U.N. resolutions the Israeli Knesset adopted three legislative acts on June 27, 28 and 29, 1967, extending Israeli law to the occupied Eastern sector of the city and enlarging the municipal boundaries of “united” Jerusalem, which had suddenly grown from 44,000 donums to 108,000 donums (approximately 29,000 acres). According to Sarah Kaminker, an Israeli town planner in the Jerusalem municipality, the new land grab constituted 70,500 donums (about 17,500 acres), which had almost doubled what had been quadrupled in 1948.  Israel managed to avoid adding about 80,000 Arabs to the population of the expanded city by not applying its amendment to the Law and Administration Ordinance to the Arab villages of Abu-Dis, Anata, Hizma, Beit Iksa, Beit Hanina, and al-Ram, as well as the Qalandia refugee camp and the neighborhood of Bethany.  To bolster the Zionist dictum of acquiring the land without the people, Israel carried out a general census of the entire newly occupied territory, including Jerusalem on July 25, 1967.

All residents who were away working, visiting relatives or touring were considered absentees and thus denied their right to reside in the City. That was also applied to the Palestinian civilians who either fledthe fighting or were persuaded to board the Israeli buses waiting to take them to the Allenby Bridge.  An estimated number of 100,000 lost their international right to belong totheir national patrimony.  The process of dispossession, displacement, dismemberment, disenfranchisement and dispersal, which was savagely applied to the Palestinians in 1948, was reenacted systematically after 1967.  For Jerusalem and its surroundings, the objective objective was to create a huge Jewish metropolis that would disrupt the territorial continuity of the West Bank, keep the Arab population to no more than a manageable 30 percent and preempt any sovereign existence for the Palestinians there.

To operationalize that imperative, Israel mobilized varied resources and utilized legal gimmickry that would facilitate the passing of Arab land into Jewish ownership, and then making it off limits to Arabs.  During the past 25 years, more than 33 percent, or about 16 square miles of the expanded Arab East Jerusalem areas were confiscated.  East Jerusalem, which was a mere 4.3 square miles or 4% of all of Jerusalem prior to 1967, is now 48 square miles or 63% of the newly redefined Jerusalem-expanding eleven fold.  The land confiscated from the West Bank is now part of non-negotiable Jerusalem, and is not therefore an issue for discussion until the so-called  final status negotiations. Netanyahu’s so-called “umbrela municipality” adopted on June 25, 1998 had simply formalized what is now “greater Jerusalem”.

It extended Jerusalem’s jurisdiction from a territory of 48 square miles to 72 square miles, by incorporating the illegal settlements of Givat Ze`ev to the North, Ma`ale Adumim to the East and Betar and Efrata to the South.  The new Jewish population thus added plus the  142,000 apartments built for Jews only, will accomplish Israel’s demographic balance of 70 Jewish majority and a tolerated Arab minority of less than 30%.

Such an enterprise, which flies in the face of numerous U.N. resolutions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention (1949) and even the Oslo Accords, may last 20, 30 or even 50 years; but it will not last forever.  For it is being driven by the engine of power and hegemony.

Ethnic cleansing and apartheid-style living, which have already been discredited in the world, will ultimately crash head on with the norms of universalist humanism.  How long can the Jewish ideals of tolerance and conciliation remain alienated from the Israeli political agenda?  How long can the Palestinian people remain reticent in the face of steady conquest proceeding under no-war conditions?  The future of Palestine/Israel will be more secure when all the inhabitants of that land, Muslims, Christians and Jews, can feel equal under the law and can co-exist in a society free of population quotas, by-pass roads, and discriminatory legislation-a society which can give dignity to every single human being. The widely publicized “compromise” offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David II in July, 2000 is very distant from these ideals in that it expects the Palestinian and Arab people to acquiesce in Israeli sovereignty over a city that has been unilaterally expanded twelve fold since 1967.

The Palestine Authority would be given civil control in the surrounding villages and Arab neighborhoods of East  Jerusalem. The Muslim and Christian Holy Places would be effectively under Israeli sovereignty, but The Palestinians would be offered a formula that would allow them to claim that they have control over the Holy Places. In fact, under the dying Oslo formula Arafat would be able to establish his government in the village of Abu-Dis, but it could be called Jerusalem. The uprising which began on September 28^th of this year after Israel’s General Sharon made his provocative and unwelcome visit to the Haram al-Sharif, served notice that the gap is wide not only between the Palestinians and Israel but also between the Palestinians and Mr. Arafat.

Posted on: 2000

By Khaled Nsseibeh

No doubt mirth and laughter are a part of what we are as human beings. In addition to its being a natural human tendency– universally observable– people’s sense of humor is often times culturally derived. The people of a tiny hamlet or town may have a sense of humor especially enjoyed and that is familiar to that particular town or region. Traditions and a shared historical experience may explain a great deal.

Can we say something about the sense of humor of Arab Jerusalemites?

Before addressing this question lets say something about humor in Islam: The Muslim faith encourages laughter to the extent that it is a religion that seeks to achieve human well being. On one occasion, the prophet Muhammad told an elderly woman that her likes will not go to paradise; she was obviously astounded by the Prophet’s remark… But he (peace be upon him) explained that this is so because in paradise people are forever youthful…(this is not the exact narration).

Having said that we can say that certain types of humor which encourage racism and prejudice, or which foster denigration by dint of the humanly blameless (social status, the physical and social environment, accent or cuisine of a group, gender affiliation, handicap, etc.) are Islamically discouraged. In contrast, humor which brings to focus these differences but which at the same time helps in social solidarity and compassion is Islamically encouraged.

Going back to the question: what can we say about the humor of Jerusalemites? Generally speaking it is a subdued sense of humor. A part of the reason is that Arab Jerusalemites are extremely conscious of social perception, generally reluctant to engage in boisterous kinds of laughter– especially on occasions when many people are present. It is commonplace to reproach someone who express lewdness in jokes to be reproached as “Qalil Haya” (or suffering from insufficient sense of shame).

Does that mean that Jerusalemites are incapable of vulgar humor, or that, in fact, lewd joking doesn’t exist? The fact is it exists: but when it is practiced, this writer would argue, there is sometimes an effort to conceal it or to resist it. But like any other city there is a certain amount of corruption which occurs in how people stimulate laughter, or how they go about resisting it.

After the 1948 and the 1967 catastrophes it is arguable that the Jerusalem Arab community (inside and outside Palestine) became more exposed to influences transmitted through newer social environments, through avenues of the media and education which were not present in earlier times.

No doubt, Israeli occupation and culture also had an influence on the styles of humor of Jerusalemites. In effect, humor is evoked oftentimes by both the painful as well as the sweet, by enemies as well as friends, by what is indigenous to a social group and what is extraneous.

Sometimes, absence or availability of money is a source for humor, when wealth is referred to: “Fulan Zangil” (a word of ostensibly Turkish origin) may mean: so and so is rich. By contrast, the remark “Fulan mfaliss” may mean he is penniless1. The adjective “mfaliss”, may mean “without fils”– the first syllable of which is “mafi” (without), and the second syllable “fils” is a monetary unit.

Perhaps for Jerusalemites the moral example may be the Egyptians: they maintain their mirth and sense of humor under the most difficult or under the easiest of circumstances. Oftentimes, that may add up to laughing hearts that get warmer over time.

Do the Turks have a sense of humor? To the extent that a Turk is a man, and to the extent that humor is a human trait we can deduce that the Turks have a sense of humor. To observe Turkish humor directly knowing Jerusalemites may be a helpful thread.

End Note

1- This is the common meaning of the word mfaliss, however, the literal meaning of the word indicates the opposite and that is a person has fils or money.

Mr. Khaled Nusseibeh is a translator and writer. He currently manages the Ubada Center for Writing and Translation Services in Amman. Born in Amman in 1961, he obtained his BA and MA from Columbia and Princeton Universities, respectively. Mr. Nusseibeh, who originates from Jerusalem, specialized in Near Eastern Studies with a focus on Islamic thought and studies.

Posted on: 1999

By Khaled Nusseibeh

Islam and Muslim civilization have been criticized by many detractors. The anti-Islamic polemic has addressed many themes. One such theme is the question of the dealing of Islamic societies with protected people (Dhimmis), or the “People of the Book”: Christians and Jews.

In all fairness, some of these critics, or students of Muslim civilization have often mentioned the tolerance of the Muslim religion towards Ahl Al-Kitab– or People of the Book: the people of the Torah and the Evangel. In fact, in comparison with other civilizations Muslim civilization embodies tolerance of an unequalled extent.

The issue of the view of Islam of Christianity and Judaism, or of Jews and Christians is too broad to be dealt with in a short article. Relevant to say here is that Dhimmis’ freedom of religious practice, rights to property, to life, to honor were generally defended by the Islamic caliphate and by Islamic governments. In fact, the law of Islam defends those rights.

Even under circumstances of a military conquest of territory by Muslims the rights of the non-Muslims were generally safeguarded: In the sense that freedom of religious belief was not infringed (although people were encouraged to become Muslim, and hence, an integral part of the Muslim nation), women and children were not murdered, private property was generally safeguarded.

When we speak about Israeli occupation of Arab territory and honest comparison between historical Muslim treatment of Jews and Israeli treatment of Arabs is perhaps never evoked. Quite objectively, the record of the Israeli governments over fifty years has been dismal: land is routinely expropriated, economic warfare has oftentimes been perpetrated with viciousness, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remained in Palestine have been arrested over the years– sometimes tortured and killed– not to mention the denial of the right to return for perhaps more than half of the Palestinian people– multitudes of whom continue to live in camps of refuge in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.

This writer recently attended a lecture delivered by a Jordanian official describing his impressions of east Jerusalem at the premises of the Jerusalem Forum in Amman: in a nutshell, the situation for the Arab quarter of the city is dismal. Compared with the western part of the city the municipal services are vastly inferior, the economic circumstances are recessionary, there is an absence of intellectual and political leadership, and Arab property is shrinking.

In effect, the Arab quarter of Jerusalem that is so talked about in the press and by politicians has been ghettoized. Even Islam’s holy Aqsa Mosque is being continually threatened by elements that wish to inflict damage to it– through the construction of underground tunnels or through periodic attacks on its premises by extremist elements.

On a final note: it is best for those that criticize Islam on the issue of “protected people” and who are at the same time supporters of and apologists for Israeli occupation to refrain.

Intellectual and moral honesty may be better served in the process.

Say, “O you people of the book, come to a just word between you and us, that we worship none but God, and that we associate naught with him, and that we take not one another for Lords apart from God.“ But if they turn away, then say, “Be it witnessed that we are Muslims.” (Holy Qur’an, 3:64)

Mr. Khaled Nusseibeh is a translator and writer. He currently manages the Ubada Center for Writing and Translation Services in Amman. Born in Amman in 1961, he obtained his BA and MA from Columbia and Princeton Universities, respectively. Mr. Nusseibeh, who originates from Jerusalem, specialized in Near Eastern Studies with a focus on Islamic thought and studies.

Posted on: 1999

By Khaled Nusseibeh

The Muslim historian Al-Mas’udi wrote: The wise have said: a sign of the fidelity of a human being and his adherence to pledges is his yearning for his brethren as well as his yearning for his homelands. And one of the signs of maturity is a person’s longing for the place of birth… And another person said: God developed the countries of the earth through (human) love for the homelands, and so, a sign of benevolence… is love for the place of birth.

People through an innate instinct have a sense of belonging to a homeland. This belonging is nurtured through experiencing life on the soil of a city or a village or a homeland. Building life through toil, supporting a family and shouldering a responsibility in honoring a homeland cements a sense of belonging. Faith in God and righteousness make belonging to a homeland a more noble sentiment, a truer feeling; corruption, conversely, alongside other factors, may diminish a human being’s sense of belonging.

Many, many Palestinians– and indeed many human beings– have experienced uprootment and displacement from a homeland. For many human beings that chose settling in another homeland the choice was voluntary. For many Palestinians Zionist seizures of their land, their farms and cities, their orchards and ancestral dwellings faced them with forced deprivation of their ancestral land.

The present writer is an example of multitudes of Palestinians who know of their entitlement to Palestine, or to the city of Jerusalem– but who also recognize that their uprootment was an affliction that sometimes visits people on their journey in life. In effect, visiting one’s homeland is presently possible as a tourist: similar, for example, to a citizen of Japan acquiring the right to visit Russia after getting a visa from the embassy of Russia in Tokyo.

But disinheritance does not mean the cancellation of a right or a group of rights; nor does dispossession have the effect of legitimizing usurpation; nor does force have the impact of redefining a structure of rights and obligations related to rights to dwelling, property, secure life, freedom from oppression, entitlement to worship in Allah’s sacred sanctuary– i.e. the Aqsa Mosque of Jerusalem.

It is arguable that in each instance of human dispute over protected or violated human life, honor, property– it is morally and rationally possible to distinguish between justice and injustice, between righteous conduct and oppression, between lawlessness and respect for people’s rights and obligations. It is also arguable that by virtue of preponderance or inferior power the stronger have been able to dictate the resolution of a dispute: but the dictation of the stronger or the protests of the weaker do not necessarily constitute what is just. Civilized conduct attempts to defend what is right in addition to affirming power and force.

The beginning of the article speaks of integrity as related to love and yearning for homeland: Palestinians who derive their sense of belonging from faith in God almighty will build their homeland even in dispersal and will struggle to return– and will also honor, build and defend their homeland of migration.

Mr. Khaled Nusseibeh is a translator and writer. He currently manages the Ubada Center for Writing and Translation Services in Amman. Born in Amman in 1961, he obtained his BA and MA from Columbia and Princeton Universities, respectively. Mr. Nusseibeh, who originates from Jerusalem, specialized in Near Eastern Studies with a focus on Islamic thought and studies.

Posted on: 1999

By Khaled Nusseibeh 

When history meshes with multi ethnic venture Jerusalem’s legacy tells an amazing story; and when compassion rests in a crucible of philanthropy with enduring benefit the story of Suleiman The Magnificent’s Russian spouse’s endowment is evoked.

It is a well known fact that the Ottoman Caliphate governed wide expanses of territory spanning Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Parts of Eastern Europe, the Arabian Peninsula as well as parts of North Africa. The magnificent world and venture of the Ottomans endured for about seven centuries. From the sixteenth century until the First World War the city of Jerusalem was within the political patrimony of the Ottoman Islamic Caliphate.

Suleiman The Magnificent’s Russian wife, “Roxilana” made a charitable endowment in the year 1551 which would feed the needy and the seekers of knowledge in Jerusalem for several centuries. The mentioned endowment’s name is “Takiyat Khaski Sultan”. Various properties in various parts of Palestine became a Waqf (Inalienable Endowment) in order to provide continual financing for the Takiyat Khaski Sultan.

In practical terms, the income from these endowments would be used to maintain the “Takiyat Khaski Sultan”. But what did this “Takiya” actually entail? Or, rather, how can we go about describing it?

This Takiya has two ovens, a place for ritual ablution (mutawada’) made of stone, a kitchen, over and above a room housing a tomb. The tomb is said to be that of a Sheikh Sa’d Eddin Rasafi.

The father of the present writer related that the Takiyat Khaski Sultan continued to distribute food to the poor in Jerusalem up until the 20th century. He further relates that some of the food distributed was a form of cooked wheat.

But why would the Russian wife of Suleiman The Magnificent (or Suleiman al-Qanuni as the Ottoman Caliph is known to Arabs and Muslims) make such an endowment? Probably out of a piously motivated action of charity. Moreover, many persons of wealth and influence are keen on communicating an image of benevolence and social compassion. That Roxilana’s charitable action was in Jerusalem is indicative of her piety as well as the stature of Jerusalem in the hearts of the elite of the Ottoman Caliphate.

Al-sadaqa al-jariya is one of three things that benefit a Muslim after he parts with life. This is what the Prophet Muhammad taught. What is al-sadaqa al-jariya? It is an act of charity whose benefits continue after a person passes away. Many, many Muslims have made vast amounts of charitable contributions over 14 centuries out of a belief in the divine reward of al-Sadaqa al-jariya: e.g. water fountains for pedestrians, contributing to educational projects and places of heath care…etc.

In an age when ethnic warfare and racial discrimination continues to menace the stability of world civilization the story of Roxilana’s endowment is a memory of hope and endearment.

References:
Nijm, Raif. 1st ed. 1983. Kunuz Al-Quds. A Publication of Al-Al-bait Foundation.

Mr. Khaled Nusseibeh is a translator and writer. He currently manages the Ubada Center for Writing and Translation Services in Amman. Born in Amman in 1961, he obtained his BA and MA from Columbia and Princeton Universities, respectively. Mr. Nusseibeh, who originates from Jerusalem, specialized in Near Eastern Studies with a focus on Islamic thought and studies.

Posted on: 1999

By Khaled Nusseibeh

Eternity may be understood through many avenues and at many levels. The primary avenue of understanding it is the permanence of life after death and resurrection; by extension, the ephemeral, temporary moment of life is an obvious fact.

The temporary nature of life is oftentimes difficult to accept. The unwise have challenged life’s fading moment through celebrating only this life, and through suppressing its underlying meaning and reality.

Many in life’s history have appreciated life with its joyous occasions– success, birth, health, material well-being, and betrothal. Those have lived their earthly moment– but have also struggled to remind themselves of life’s fading moment, in addition to their yearning for the abode of paradise and for liberation from hellfire.

According to Islam, the road to salvation has, since the dawn of human habitation on earth, been doctrinally and ethically identical: surrender to the One God our Creator, to his messengers, belief in the hereafter, and performance of righteous deeds and avoidance of corruption.

The Unity of God– and his exclusive entitlement to be worshipped– has been a belief communicated through God’s Covenant with our collective ancestor Adam, and his descendants, and through divine revelations to the peoples and tribes of mankind: e.g. the Torah, the Evangel and the Holy Koran, revealed to Moses, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad respectively. (Peace be upon them).

It is no secret that many, in human history, until present times, have not been believers. There are common threads in the phenomenon of unbelief too many to enumerate here: but one of them is a denial of the significance of life’s temporary moment, coupled with an irrational denial of God’s Capability to resurrect the dead on the Day of Judgement. That the denial of the possibility of resurrection is an irrationality is because it limits– through an intellectual fiction– God’s Attribute of Omnipotence (i.e. that God is Almighty and that he is Capable of all things). It is an irrationality, moreover, because all of us can witness the miracle of life in the birth of each baby, in the growth of each tree…; and yet, through observing the seemingly ordinary birth of life many exclude the possibility that the God who created life in the first place is capable of creating the same life again. To deny this is to express a limited observation of life as occurring once. But to say that life occurs once is simply false: the proofs of Revelation and reason support this.

The argument may be made, furthermore, that one of the primary sources of human folly and oppression is denial of resurrection and Divine accounting, over and above clinging to the illusion of permanence in this life; sometimes, this has been the folly of individuals– at others, it has been the folly of elites of empires, ruling dynasties, fiefdoms– and, also, the folly of very modern secular states (e.g. Communist, Nazi or liberal states). Hitler believed that Berlin would be the Third Reich’s capital for 1,000 years; Communists were convinced that Socialism is where the direction of history is; the liberal intellectual Fukuyama claimed that liberalism is the final ideological and political event of human history.

Jerusalem very much embodies the notion of the heavenly kingdom and life after death; and yet, it has been characterized by some Zionist politicians as “Israel’s” eternal capital. It is, sometimes more appropriate to withhold comment when claims to political eternity are made! History’s simplest lessons would have to be ignored in the process.

Human vision is maintained– and the moral content of political conduct is enhanced– when people have the ability to affirm life’s and power’s temporary moment. To affirm God’s unchanging reality and to believe in the hereafter is critically important in the human quest to avoid what is painful or disastrous. To learn, to build, to struggle, to toil are facts of life: to do so with faith, with a commitment to justice, and with an awareness of God’s purpose in life is to avoid rolling the dice of uncertainty and self inflicted injury. Truly Allah is All-Merciful and absolutely just.

Mr. Khaled Nusseibeh is a translator and writer. He currently manages the Ubada Center for Writing and Translation Services in Amman. Born in Amman in 1961, he obtained his BA and MA from Columbia and Princeton Universities, respectively. Mr. Nusseibeh, who originates from Jerusalem, specialized in Near Eastern Studies with a focus on Islamic thought and studies.

Posted on: 1999

By Khaled Nusseibeh

There are moments in the annals of human history when nations face, sometimes willfully– at others under compulsion– the bitter burdens of conflict. Each nation, in the ebb and flow of historical movement, has had a taste of both triumph as well as defeat. At each moment of such conflict individuals and states have grappled with the imperatives of an ethic of conduct, or have at other times been, to grave consequence, oblivious to the importance of a moral premise for behavior in times of war.

The modern world has, in this closing century of the second millenium, been profoundly shaken by the brutalities of modern warfare, the extent of which brutality and suffering has been unmatched in the preceding millennia of human civilization. The two world wars, the camps of incarceration of the Stalinist Soviet Union, Nazi Germany– and the multiple conflicts of this century have visited on both innocent and culpable life a heavy toll of suffering and death; likewise, the unfolding conflicts in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Balkans have entailed a saga of oppression, the unethical targeting of innocents, the expropriation of legitimately acquired wealth and substantial abuses of human rights.

When children are targets of war, when the honor of women and men is a weapon in the arsenal of foes of dimmed moral vision, when the rights of civilian populations under military occupation are violated men and women of sense must pose the question: is there a code that can prevent human descent into the code of the jungle under conditions of conflict? Or have those participating in current conflicts forgotten the lessons of previous wars, or can’t they be awakened to a code of conduct, adherence to which, may be disaster preventive for future generations?

To speak in simple terms: there are ground rules for peaceful co-existence between states which may be enhanced when basic and politically tolerable restraint is shown by politicians and military personnel of all ranks in times of conflict. In other words, ethnic cleansing, attempting to starve a portion of a civilian population as a weapon of battle, rape of women, destruction of vital food crops, violence against children, plunder of the private property of a population under occupation, and degrading treatment of prisoners of war, all contribute to writing the following chapter of human conflict and suffering.

Islam has an ethic of conflict which is both humane, reasonable, and merciful to protagonists in a conflict: Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq, the first Caliph of Islam, captured an important part of this ethic in these words which he addressed to his troops in A.D. seventh century:

“O people, be alerted to ten matters, so learn them from me; do not betray.., do not cheat, do not defile dead corpses, do not kill a small child, or an aged man, nor a woman, do not cut or burn trees of palm, do not cut a fruit bearing tree, do not slaughter a sheep or a cow or a camel except for your nourishment; and you will encounter people who are dwellers of cloisters (i.e. monks and priests) so do not harm them…” (Quoted from: Mawsu’t Al-‘Alam Al-Islami/’Umar Al-Armuti, pp.205)

All of the preceding, in my view is relevant to the issue of Jerusalem which the One God of humanity has sanctified and blessed as the land of peace, holiness, and human surrender to Heaven. Such blessing is anchored in human striving to accept the races of earth, to build monuments of equity and tolerance, to defend what is inviolable in God’s Law, to water the plant of human glorification of God Almighty through deeds which do justice to an orphan, which support a righteous struggle to prevent the bulldozing of a home, which spread knowledge that is useful to people in their livelihoods– but which also helps people in their struggles for salvation in the hereafter.

It is very often a paradox that perpetrators of injustice and its victims are sometimes driven, through the blinding influence of power, or the sense of grievance at victimization– to unethical methods and views of struggle. In a word, any struggle that is injurious to Religion, property, inviolable life, the dignity of people, the integrity of the family is reprehensible– under circumstances of both military preponderance or under conditions of occupation; Muslims and people of goodwill will continue mourning the occupation of the Holy City of Jerusalem and will hopefully, continue to reform themselves and to strive that it is restored to righteous and tolerant sovereignty.

Mr. Khaled Nusseibeh is a translator and writer. He currently manages the Ubada Center for Writing and Translation Services in Amman. Born in Amman in 1961, he obtained his BA and MA from Columbia and Princeton Universities, respectively. Mr. Nusseibeh, who originates from Jerusalem, specialized in Near Eastern Studies with a focus on Islamic thought and studies.

Posted on: 1999

By Khaled Nusseibeh

To state that life is oftentimes wrapped in painful paradoxes would not be saying something new or extraordinary. The elegant and graceful handwriting and prose of Iss’af Nashashibi– about whom this article speaks– stand in paradoxical contrast to the turbulent and sometimes difficult circumstances to which the people of Jerusalem and Palestine, and to which Iss’af Nashashibi himself was subject.

If his handwritten and remarkably seasoned prose show elegant, adept self-expression to extend the metaphor, the people of Palestine showed great resilience in the face of the challenge to survive the threats of dispossession, dismemberment, Diaspora and the unrelenting distortion of a legacy by Zionist forces and ideology.

If we accept that Nashashibi’s year of birth was 1882 (and this writer has seen contradictory accounts about his year of birth) then we would be speaking about the year in which the forces of the British government occupied Egypt during the reign of Khedive Isma’il. The year of his death is, by contrast, without doubt 1948.

Both 1882 and 1948 were years of great consequence for Egypt, Britain, Palestine, and the Arab World. In a sense, 1882 fortified the presence of British imperialism in the Middle East through the political and economic subjection of Egypt.

And, 1948 was the year of Arab political and military defeat and the establishment of the Zionist entity on the soil of Palestine– as it was, likewise, the year of Palestinian exodus and colossal loss of territorial and human rights.

Unfortunately, British influence in Egypt and mandated tutelage over Palestine both catalyzed and oversaw the fruition of the Zionist project of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Equally, the Zionist project was a harbinger of great suffering and instability for the Arab region– let alone the world at large– as well as a sordid saga of oppression, abuse of power, a systematic violation of the rightful entitlement of the Palestinian people to live in security on their ancestral soil, on their orchards, and in their villages and cities.

Ironically, Zionism was and is still viewed by some who are politically and culturally influential in the West as a strategic asset when in fact it has and continues to undermine trust and goodwill in relations between the East and West.

Iss’af Nashashibi, scholar, teacher, man of letters, publicist and poet is the son of Uthman ibn Salman Nashashibi who was a Jerusalemite noted for his learning and private wealth– in addition to being a member of a leading Jerusalem Muslim, Arab family.

Iss’af’s early years had to do with a socially and religiously conservative upbringing within the framework of the Ottoman system of Sunni Caliphal rule of which Palestine– and especially Jerusalem– were a vital part. The great ancestor of the Nashashibis was Amir Nasser Eddin who was appointed by the Mameluke King Jukmuk to a leading position in the administration of Palestine and its places of worship. After his tenure expired he decided to move from Egypt and settle in Jerusalem from which time onwards the family enjoyed continuous habitation in the Holy City.

It is interesting to note that the name Nashashibi derives from “Nashab” which means arrow or spear: essentially, Nashashibi may mean those who produce arrows. Far from being a producer of arrows Iss’af hurled many a lance at tendencies in modern Arab culture which sought to supersede traditional matrices of thinking, of belles lettres, of styles of classical Arabic expression of which he was a staunch defender; in a cultural sense he was deeply conservative.

That by no means implies an oblivion on his part to trends in modern civilization, whose selective adoption he may have advocated as a means to overcome tendencies of backwardness and decline evident in the material and cultural performance of the Arab nation: the progressing march of Zionist colonialism and, Arab and Islamic disunity were perhaps important stimulators of a realization that progress was critically important in the task to overcome these enormous challenges.

Having acquired a conventional “Kuttab” (small classroom gathering) education in his early years in Jerusalem in the sciences of religion, language, and mathematics, he traveled to the great city of Beirut and studied in a Missionary school where he acquired some knowledge of French and Western Culture, in addition to continuing his study of the Arabic language and literature under the supervision of Abdullah Bustani, Muhyi addin Khayyat and Mustapha Ghalayani. By the end of World War I he taught Arabic at Al-Salahiya and Al-Rashidiya schools.

Nashashibi wrote prolifically on such subjects as politics, language, grammar, and poetry, though he was more skilled as an essayist than as a poet. In 1935 he published a work about Islam titled “Al Islam Al Sahih” or “The Correct Islam” in which he attempted to give an interpretation of the Muslim creed in its pure form.

Nashashibi wrote this book after much research and during a decade when some of the finest literary figures (for example, Muhammad Heikal, Abbas Al-Aqqad, Taha Hussein) were showing increased focus on Islamic themes in their writings.

The year of his death (1948) in Cairo was also a year of grief for the Arab and Muslim worlds because it ushered in a time of political turbulence, Palestinian dispersal and considerable dispossession for the people of Palestine. His funeral, which the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, attended, evoked the condolences of leading figures in Egyptian society including the Muslim luminary Imam Hassan Al-Banna, King Farouk, Nuqrashi Pasha– in addition to many in the arena of culture who paid tribute to a remarkable man who lived and struggled defending the integrity of Arab culture and the survival of Palestine as a land with a people, a history and a future.

It may be of symbolic significance that Nashashibi passed away in the land inhabited by his ancestors because of circumstances beyond his control: his ancestors, several centuries ago, were inhabitants of Egypt.

Equally symbolic, perhaps, is that funeral prayers were held at the “Sharkass” Mosque (or Circassian Mosque): the Circassians were the dominant group in the Mameluke State which appointed Nasser eddin Nashashibi– the family’s ancestor, perhaps five centuries earlier, as Nathir Al-Haramayn in Palestine, or the Inspector at the two holy places.

Mr. Khaled Nusseibeh is a translator and writer. He currently manages the Ubada Center for Writing and Translation Services in Amman. Born in Amman in 1961, he obtained his BA and MA from Columbia and Princeton Universities, respectively. Mr. Nusseibeh, who originates from Jerusalem, specialized in Near Eastern Studies with a focus on Islamic thought and studies.