“Fjordman” – the nom de guerre of ex-pat Norwegian counter jihadist, Peder Jensen, sent us a report by NRK about the Saturday night rally, February 21, 2015, organized by a 17 year old Norwegian Muslim girl, Hajrah Arshad. 1,300 people formed a Ring of Peace around the Oslo synagogue organized by Miss Arshad. Miss Arshad said:
Most of us Muslims stand up for Jews’ rights. I hope that other communities do like us and fight against radicalization. It is unfair to be set up against the wall for everything a Muslim terrorist does. We are not here today to say we are sorry on behalf of the Muslims that attacked people in Copenhagen. What we do here is to show everyone we stand with you. We feel the same fears as you, and we will bear the brunt together with you.
Rabbi Michael Melchior of the Oslo Synagogue was reported by NRK to have “told the masses outside his synagogue about his trip to the funeral of the man killed outside the synagogue in Copenhagen last weekend.”
Afterwards, I sat with the grieving parents. I told them about the initiative of young Muslims here in Oslo, and the father of Dan Uzan embraced me and began to cry.
He said to me “You must say to the young Muslims in Norway that they have given me hope. They have given me a reason to continue living. Maybe it was a meaning to my son’s death. Maybe it gives reason to life for the future.”
This message goes to the entire world, it is not just here in Norway, it is a universal message.
Ervin Kohn, a leader at the Oslo synagogue, spoke about this significant outpouring of support by Norwegian Muslims:
We must work against fear. It is much easier to work against fear when we are together. It is very nice that we are so many here today
Why has this “Peace Ring” gained so much attention? Because it is unique. I think we once again can say “Look to Norway” after what has happened here tonight. This event fills me with hope. Youngsters take back the power to define what a Muslim is. They will not let the extremists polarize society. We will continue this fight together.
There were strong appeals and rabbi shouted “Allahu akbar” – God is great – under his appeal.
It was great to see. Muslims and Jews have the same ancestor. We have the same God. It is more that gathers us than separates us.
Fjordman noted in his email exchange:
Kohn is also deputy director of the state-sponsored Norwegian Center against Racism, which has made combating Islamophobia a major priority.
Watch this You Tube interview with Korn.
Rabbi Melchior and Kohn exhibited myopia by their remarks. As we will see they are not alone among our co-religionists.
They didn’t heed the warnings by ancient Jewish Sage, Moses Maimonides, the Rambam, in his Epistle to the Jews of Yemen in 1172 C.E. about Islam and the Prophet Mohammed:
“After him [the biblical Esau] arose the Madman [ha-meshugga the Prophet Mohammed] who emulated his precursor since he paved the way for him. But he added the further objective of procuring rule and submission, and he invented his well known religion.”
“Remember, my co-religionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins, G-d has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us […] Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase and hate us as much as they. Therefore when David, of blessed memory, inspired by the holy spirit, envisaged the future tribulations of Israel, he bewailed and lamented their lot only in the Kingdom of Ishmael, and prayed in their behalf, for their deliverance, as is implied in the verse, “Woe is me that I sojourn with Meschech that I dwell beside the tents of Kedar.” (Psalms 120:5).
In October 2010 we sent an open letter published in The Iconoclast about a previous act of Jewish myopia by Chancellor Arnold Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan concerning the institution’s sponsorship of interfaith programs with Muslim Brotherhood front group, Islamic Society of North America. We noted the Rambam’s letter and his flight from Muslim Spain, Al Andaluz:
Maimonides fled his native Cordoba during the era of the fanatic Berber Almohads who stormed across the Straits of Gibraltar to take over Al Andaluz in Muslim occupied Spain. The Almohads perpetrated some of the more heinous pogroms of Spanish Jewry.
Rabbi Melchior was among the hundreds of Danes, including Prime Minister Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt who attended the funeral to render comfort to the bereaved family of 37-year old Dan Uzan, the Danish Jewish Economist and voluntary security guard at the Great Synagogue. He was killed by Danish Muslim terrorist, Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein. El-Hussein ,prior to his murder of Uzan at the Great Synagogue , had fired 40 rounds of automatic fire into a Free Speech event at the Krudttønden Café with Swedish Artist Lars Vilks and others present. He killed documentarian and filmmaker, 55 year old Finn Norgaard.
El-Hussein, the Danish-born son of Palestinian émigrés, was alleged to be a gang member, convicted of a stabbing, and spent time in a Copenhagen lockup, where it was alleged he was radicalized. Danish security police had listed him as a dangerous risk, but apparently somehow he slipped through the cracks. With the aid of like-minded Muslims who procured the weapons for el- Hussein he carried out his personal Jihad against Christian and Jewish infidels, last Sunday.
El-Hussein’s attitude is not uncommon in liberal Denmark given the evidence of rejectionist attitudes among young Danish Muslim criminals uncovered in the clinical work of Danish psychologist, Nicolai Sennels. We should not forget the eruption a decade ago in 2005 of global attacks throughout the Muslim Ummah. They were caused by a political cartoon of Mohammed in a bomb-like Turban drawn by Kurt Westergaard for Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Most mainstream media and at least one academic press at Yale University were loath to reproduce Westergaard’s and the other 11 cartoons published by the Jyllands Posten. Westergaard wasattacked in his home by a Somali émigré Muslim jihadist wielding an axe intent on doing bodily harm. Swedish artist Vilks, who drew sketches of Mohammed as a roundabout dog, was at the Kruttodonden free speech forum emerging unhurt. His home in Sweden was firebombed by émigré Muslim Jihadis.
One of the Danish Imams Ahmed Akkari who triggered the conflagrations and murders in the wake of the Danish Mohammed cartoons incident, was revealed by Lars Hedegaard in August 2013 as having rejected Islam during an introspective sojourn in Greenland. Akkari told a press conference that virtually all Mosques in Denmark were headed by extremists. Hedegaard, Danish and International Free Press Society co-founder, was a victim of a Jihadi attempt on his life in February 2013 by a Danish Lebanese Muslim émigré who fired a shot at him masquerading as a Danish postal worker delivering a package to his home. Hedegaard’s attacker subsequently fled to Turkey where his extradition request in 2014 was refused and subsequently he disappeared into Syria to presumably join up with ISIS.
Apparently the several hundred Muslim who participated in the interfaith Ring of Peace at the Oslo synagogue didn’t get the message preached by a Copenhagen Imam on the eve of last weekend’s deadly attacks. The Algemeiner reported a translated MEMRI video of Hajj Saeed, the Imam of the Al-Faruq Mosque in the city, on Friday February 13th rejecting interfaith dialogue with Jews. Imam Saeed is shown in the MEMRI video preaching against the backdrop of a black flag of international Muslim extremist group Hizb ut- Tahrir saying:
Interfaith dialogue is a “malignant idea,” and claimed that, “the people responsible for interfaith dialogue want to make all religions equal. [By doing so] they want to equate Truth with Falsehood. Between heresy and deception, between the religion of the Prophet Muhammad and man-made laws, legislated by these criminals in order to rule the world.”
Regarding Jews specifically, Saeed said that the Prophet Mohammad had Jewish neighbors in Medina, but instead of trying to call for reconciliation with them, “in the manner of…those who call to reconcile Truth with Falsehood,” he called them to accept Islam. And when they rejected his call to Islam, “he waged war against the Jews.”
Whether in Oslo, Copenhagen or in Washington, interfaith peace gatherings involving Muslims, Jews, Christians and others, should draw attention to murders of Jews, mass beheadings of Christians in Libya, burning of fellow Muslims in Syria and Iraq. Jews in Oslo who shout Allahu Akbar at such gatherings may be myopically hoping they share the same G-d. Maimonides told them early a millennium ago that Allah is not their G-D.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image was taken on Feb. 21, 2015 of more than 1,000 people forming a “ring of peace” around the Norwegian capital’s synagogue, an initiative taken by young Muslims in Norway after a series of attacks against Jews in Europe, in Oslo. (AP)
