Juan Cole is one of the foremost authorities/commentators on Middle East issues. In his blogpost yesterday, he demystifies this controversy stirred up by Jewish students at University of California, Irvine.
The Orange County Register reports a controversy over graduation ceremonies at the University of California Irvine, where 11 Muslim students had been planning to wear green stoles with Islamic inscriptions over their robes. One side would say "Lord, increase my knowledge." The other would have the shahadah or Muslim confession of faith: "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger." The Register reports that:
Jewish students and outside groups that have gotten involved in the controversy, such as the American Jewish Congress, say the wearing of a garment with that word implies approval of terrorism and suicide bombings. "I am offended by that," said Larry Mahler, president of the UCI chapter of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi. "What they are doing is ratifying the suicide bombing that killed innocent people."
Rumors also swirled that the inscriptions involved support for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organization, the paramilitary wing of which sponsors suicide bombings against Israeli targets as a way of fighting Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land.
I can't say how upset I am by the gross bigotry displayed by anyone in the American Jewish Congress who would attempt to associate the Muslim confession of faith with terrorism.
The shahadah or confession of faith is a universalist statement. It begins by saying "La ilaha illa Allah." "La" means "no" in Arabic. "Ilah" is god with a small "g", a deity of the sort that is worshipped in polytheistic religions like those of ancient Greece and Babylon. It is a cognate of the ancient Hebrew "eloh," which also means "god." One of the names for God in the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible is Elohim, which literally means "the Gods." Some scholars believe that the use of this plural is an echo of the process whereby a council of gods in ancient Near Eastern religion gradually become merged into a single figure, the one God.
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