Anyone who follows pro-'Palestine' Islamic propaganda will recognzie in the excerpts below the source material for the virulent antisemitism, exaggerations and misrepresentations emanating from the Palestinian National Authgority official bodies as well as activists on behalf on 'Palestine'.
They originate from Rashid Rida.
Another scholar claims "As one of the most influential advocates
of Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism, we shall argue, Riḍā’s critiques of Zionism and Jewish
expansion in Palestine were part of his anti-colonial activities against the ‘Christian’ west." Nevertheless, he notes that Rida asserted as to Jewish goals, "allegedly,
they schemed to possess Jerusalem and its neighbouring regions to establish their Kingdom
of Israel and turn it into the Temple of Solomon, against the desire of Christians and Muslims
(ʿAbduh and Riḍā [1328] 1910, V:139–140)."
He further quotes Rida "Under the title “King of the Jews, their Temple, their Messiah and the True Messiah,” Riḍā stated that the Jews arrogantly disobeyed their prophets, who regularly warned them against
God’s punishment if they abandoned His commandments (Al-Manār 30/7: 546–556)."
And Rida becomes starkly clear in this excerpt:
One of Islam’s greatest manifestations, according to Riḍā, was the confirmation of glad tidings of Jesus as a prophet of God and not his
son. In this reading, God entitled Muslims to inherit the Holy Land and to build the Al-Aqsa
Mosque in the place of the destroyed temple in order to establish the worship of God alone.
Riḍā repeated the traditional Muslim view that God placed those who believe in Jesus above
the unbelievers (Qur’an Āl ʿImrān 3:55), but that He had struck the Jews with humiliation by
making them lose their kingdom until the Day of Resurrection. The Jews, Riḍā said, would
follow the Antichrist as their assumed king fighting under his banner in the Holy Land, but
Muslims would finally achieve victory upon them and kill them, and the true Messiah would
appear and reveal the truth by destroying the Antichrist (Al-Manār 30/7: 554).
And in this:
Muslims did not persecute the Jews but treated them with justice and mercy. He observed that
the Jews started to permit each other to reside in Jerusalem around the western side of the
wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Al-Buraq), performing the rituals and sacrifices against the will
of Muslims and Christians in the world. They had strong hope to multiply their numbers to
own the Holy City and the rest of Palestine in preparation for the appearance of the Messiah
again as the King of Israel (Al-Manār 30/5: 391).
Rida also employed the term nakba already in early 1935:
A few months before Riḍā’s death, the Egyptian historian and religious scholar ʻAbd al-Wahhāb al-Najjār (1862–1941) gave a lecture at Jamʿiyyat al-Shubbān al-Muslimīn (Association of Young Muslim Men) in which he maintained that the Jewish Zionist presence in
Palestine was to be like a short “summer cloud” that would clear up soon after a great shock,
followed by the defeat of the Jews after the restoration of the kingdom of David and the
appearance of the Messiah (Al-Manār 34/8: 607–612)...After the lecture, Riḍā stood up
and disagreed with al-Najjār in his arguments. Instead of following this apocalyptic way of
thinking, Riḍā requested Arabs and Muslims to “take admonition in the Jewish Zionist nakba
(catastrophe) by means of the worldly affairs and social natural laws” (Al-Manār 34/8: 608).
By this he urged his Muslim readers not to see the Jewish success on the basis of their religious zeal but due to their work to achieve their political goals.
Rida "called upon Arab Christians and Arab Muslims, supported by other Muslims in the world, to get the benefit of uniting themselves against
the growing power of the Jews. In his own words:
The doctrine of the Jews in restoring the King of Israel by means of the Messiah is [39]
a denial of the religion of Islam and a clear rejection of Christ Jesus, Son of Mary,
may blessings and peace be upon him. It was, however, Christ with whom their
prophets had preached, but they had denied him. It was also him who warned
them against the ruin of their Temple of Solomon so that there would not remain
any stone of it."
Here are more excerpts of another researcher:A reading of Rida’s depictions of Jews as the embodiment of vices and the orchestrators of global-scale conspiracies is useful to the broader discussion on the proliferation of anti-Semitic ideas in the contemporary Arab world. Translations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have been available in Arabic since the mid-1920s, and by the late 1920s they were already incorporated as an argument against Zionism. Following the 1948 war, the Protocols proliferated as an explanation for the Arab defeat. However, Rida viewed Jews as the masters of anti-Christian and anti-Muslim conspiracies already at the turn of the century, with no experience of defeat in mind and no foundational hateful European textbook to guide him. It appears that he was acquainted, albeit not through primary sources, with French anti-Semitic expressions as well as with their refutations in France. Anti-Semitic allegations in Istanbul also did not escape him. Ironically and to a large measure, Rida’s developed anti-Semitism reads as accommodation of his original admiration of Jewish virtues with his realization that Zionism was a serious threat...
...Under the title “The Life of a Nation after Its
Death: The Zionist Association of the Jews,” Rida revised his earliest impression of
Jewish nationalism, and, always the journalist, flattered himself (without justification in
this case), for having already written about the Zionist movement in 1898, “when no
one else took notice of it.” His analysis failed to distinguish between Zionists and
Jews, and disclosed that he was unaware that the movement had won the hearts of only a
minority of Jews around the world....
...Apparently confusing, at least in part, Herzl
(whose name was not mentioned in the entire article) with the British-Jewish author and
Zionist leader Israel Zangwill (1864 – 1926), Rida wrote that Zangwill had recently
negotiated the purchase of Jerusalem as well as predicted a massive Jewish return to
Palestine and the transformation of the land by the people of Israel into a shining
lighthouse in all fields – social, political, judicial, cultural, and agricultural. Rida went
as far as positing that Zangwill was wrong in reprimanding the rich Jews for not
donating to Zionism...
In 1903, Rida addressed the Jews again...He wrote that no people in the world demonstrated such communal unity and ethnic solidarity as the People of Israel (Sha‘b Isra’il); however, he added that the Jews tended to divert the resources of the nations among which they lived to their own benefit, and harmed themselves by their excessive egotism. This, he argued, was the reason for the persecution of the Jews and their expulsion by all the peoples and nations. Hinting at Jewish ungratefulness, he concluded that while they could find a safe haven only in the Ottoman Empire, they now sought to gain independence and renew their sovereignty in Palestine...
...On January 1908, following a long period of silence, Rida addressed Zionism again, although indirectly. In a Quran exegesis, he disputed the Jewish hope for a Messiah who would renew Jewish sovereignty. He also suggested that the Jews’ dispersion throughout the world, their lack of expertise in warfare and agriculture, and their focus on professions that required little effort, like charging interest-based loans, were impediments that would prevent the realization of their dream of renewed sovereignty. The weakness of the Jews, he argued, was a punishment from God for their infidelity. Only two years later, Rida changed his mind about the potential of Zionism...In December 1910, he presented the Zionist danger in even graver terms: should the Jews realize their plan to take over alAqsa, they would expel the Muslims and the Christians from the Holy Land...
...[In 1914 he wrote] that if
Zionist ambitions were ever realized, they would not allow a single Muslim or Christian
to remain in Palestine, as they believed that it belonged to the Israelites alone.
Furthermore, the Promised Land that the Zionists sought to conquer was not what
Muslims defined as Palestine; rather, according to Jewish scriptures and conventions,
Palestine stretched to Syria and the Euphrates. Rida based his warning of the prospect of
ethnic cleansing on the argument that in the book of Deuteronomy God ordered the Jews
not to spare a single soul upon entering the land...
...in an appendix to a
Quranic exegesis from 1924, he cautioned that the “Arabs of Palestine,” who were
confronted by “two of the world’s strongest nations [the British and the Jews],” could
only be saved if they united with the rest of the Arab peoples and tribes to defend
Palestine as well as the holy shrines in Mecca and Medina. Yet the underlying objective
of this warning – in itself exceptional for his writing during the early 1920s – was not
to call for action, but to denounce Sharif Hussein and his family and praise the Sa‘uds.
Rida portrayed Hussein’s family as supporters of those who were seeking to implement
the “satanic plan” to deprive the Palestinians of their land, i.e., the British and the
Zionists. He cautioned the Palestinians against cooperating with the Sharifian family,
explaining that while they could boast a distinguished lineage (as descendents of the
Prophet Muhammad), they lacked knowledge and honesty...
...until mid-1920...he noted, in an objective manner, that the Jews considered Palestine as their
sacred, ancestral land, but neither debated that claim nor insisted that Palestine was a
Muslim land that must never be conceded to the Jews as such. That changed in 1924, but
in a way that was far from affirming that Muslims were the rightful owners of the land or
would eventually have the upper hand against the Zionists. In a Quranic exegesis, Rida
suggested in an almost even-handed manner that God had promised the land to both the
Israelite sons of Abraham and to the Arab sons of Abraham, who had also been
promised additional lands. The promises were kept for both Israelites and Arabs when they acted righteously, but when they sinned they were punished and the land was taken
from them...
...Already in October 1928, only days after the tensions over the
Wailing Wall began, Rida portrayed events in Palestine as a struggle between Judaism
and Islam, as well as between Britain and Islam. In this struggle, the British were
assisting the Jews as part of Britains’s “ambitious” and uncharacteristically illconceived plan to subordinate the Arab nation and impose British rule on the Arabian
Peninsula and the three holiest shrines – in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. In this
struggle, the ultimate goal of the Jews was the destruction of al-Aqsa, the third holiest
shrine in Islam, and its replacement with a new Jewish temple...
...Rida elaborated [in December 1929] on
the prophecies of a Muslim victory over the Jews, reiterating that those were more
reliable than the Jewish prophets’ prophecies of Jewish victory. He mentioned the
prophecy that the Jews would give fanatic loyalty to the Dajal, a false Messiah, fight
against Muslims and Christians in Palestine and other lands, and be defeated, as well as
the Prophet’s words, narrated by ‘Abdullah b. ‘Umar: “I heard Allah’s Messenger
saying, ‘The Jews will fight with you, and you will be given victory over them so that a
stone will say, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me, kill him!’”...Zionism, he argued, was a striking example of
Western moral corruption, because in Palestine the English had done something they
had not done anywhere else: they had created a new people based on the ingathering of a
rabble from all corners of the earth, allowing the rabble to usurp the land of another
people and to exploit and discriminate against the population in a historically
unprecedented way. Thus, for the first time, in late 1929, the Jews were denied in
Rida’s journal not only a right to Palestine, but also the right to be considered a nation.
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