Why the venom, when Jews, Muslims and Christians are all ‘People of the Book’?
THE letter by Yagyah Adams (Cape Argus, April 6) about Abdel-Qader Ben Ghabrit, who came to the rescue of the 1500 Jews, reminds me of another incident.
In 2013, an exhibition was launched at the Board of Deputies of British Jews in Bloomsbury, London. On display were photographs of 70 Muslims who – believe it or not – sheltered Jews during World War II, accompanied by detailed accounts of their acts of heroism.
The Hardaga family from Bosnia were one of the families who provided shelter for the Jewish Kavilio family when German forces occupied Bosnia in 1943. Fifty years later, the Kavilios came to the rescue of the Hardagas during the Bosnian Civil War.
With Sarajevo continuously being shelled, the Kavilio family also appealed to the president of Bosnia to permit their old protectors to travel to Israel.
The exhibition also documented the story of Bosnian Muslims who went to great lengths to preserve Jewish tradition by safeguarding the Sarajevo Haggadah, a 600-year-old manuscript which narrates the Exodus from Egypt every Passover.
A rabbi took it to Bosnia. It was stolen by Nazis during World War II, but later seized and kept by a Muslim cleric and hidden beneath the floor of a mosque until the war ended.
It’s unbelievable to witness the venom often present when Jews and
Muslims engage one another. One would never say that both groups, together with the Christians, are collectively referred to by the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an, as “People of the Book”.
Islam translated literally means “submit to the will of God”. If Jews and Muslims bow down to the same God, then why the perceived hatred, as witnessed in their actions towards each other?