| Plight of
Iraqi Jews merits urgent attention
Among Iraq’s myriad other problems, the country’s tiny
Jewish community is living in fear. The anarchy engendered by
the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime has robbed all Iraqis
of whatever sense of security they had previously, and the
Jews’ infinitesimal numbers make them especially vulnerable.
This state of affairs is unacceptable, and it is not for the
US-led occupation authorities to remedy it. It is for Iraqis
themselves to disprove notions of Muslim intolerance by
treating the Jews among them as what they are: citizens of
Iraq who happen to practice a minority faith.
Primary
moral responsibility for the welfare of Iraqi Jewry rests with
the influential figures who lead the country’s majority
Islamic communities and nascent political parties. By both
word and deed they should leave no doubt in the minds of their
followers and supporters that their Jewish compatriots deserve
the same rights and responsibilities as anyone else. Friction
is inevitable in even homogeneous societies, so the many
religions present in Iraq figure to result in disputes of all
sorts. The way to resolve them in a manner that serves the
national interest is to stress the importance of coexistence
over rivalry and refer disagreements to objective adjudication
rather than communal pride. The protection of Judaism and
those who practice it should be an immediate priority because
the last 50 years demonstrate vividly the extent to which the
Zionist lobby in Washington and elsewhere is willing to profit
from and even to help foment mistreatment of Jews
in any form in order to further its extremist agenda.
In
no way would such a policy be a break with Islamic history.
Wherever and whenever Muslim civilizations have experienced
“golden ages,” the common denominator has been an emphasis on
justice that served to protect minorities and therefore to
help them contribute to the greater good. No objective reading
of Islam can fail to acknowledge the respect it accords to all
human life, the high regard with which it views freedom from
fear, the care with which it recognizes the right to privacy,
and the importance it attaches to the inviolability of
property.
Ensuring that Jews have access to the same
liberties as any other Iraqis is not to do them a favor: It is
simply to acknowledge their entitlement to equal treatment.
That the vast majority of them have left cannot alter the fact
that Iraq is their home. Their forebears were there a
millennium before the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, who
thought enough of Jews to have married at least one of them.
Jews in Iraq should not today have to beg for what has
long been theirs because some other Jews have recently wronged
Muslims elsewhere. Nor should Iraqi Muslims require either
“lessons” or exhortations from their foreign occupiers in how
to get along with minority communities. The Islamic world was
a safe haven for Jews when Christendom was expelling some and
burning other at the stake.
Iraq faces numerous challenges
in the months and years ahead, and its chances of surmounting
them can only be enhanced by ensuring the active participation
of all of its citizens. Apart from hastening the day when the
country can fulfill its considerable economic potential, the
affirmation of tolerance as a founding principle will also
send a clear signal to the international community that the
new Iraq is ready to resume its rightful place.
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