Islamic Tolerance Alert. This is the cumulative effect of incidents like this, and many others. It should seem curious, given the aggressive response "heresies" generally evoke within Islam, that this alleged "misunderstanding" of Islam with respect to the treatment of unbelievers keeps cropping up, and is allowed by the surrounding community to go on.
In reality, of course, the attitude comes from Islam's own founder, as Muhammad himself said: "I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim" (Sahih Muslim 19.4366).
"Yemen's last Jews set to flee country," by Haaviv Rettig Gur for the Jerusalem Post, August 14:
Israeli sources confirmed on Thursday Yemeni media reports that the overwhelming majority of the final remnant of Yemen's ancient Jewish community, numbering some 250 people, are looking to leave the country due to persecution and violence.
"About 120 of the Yemeni Jews want to move to Israel, 100 want to move to the US" - where there is a small Yemenite Jewish community - "and between 20 and 30 want to stay," the source said, citing information obtained from the community.
Some of the Jews wishing to leave are unable to do so because they are having trouble selling their property, the source said.
Saba, Yemen's official state news agency, reported Wednesday on a "mini-exodus" of Jews from the country "triggered by alleged harassment" and "fear of persecution."
The article quoted Rabbi Yahya Yaish, chief rabbi of the Ridah and Amran districts, who said that "all Jews in the area are preparing to leave for Israel within the next [few] days."
Yaish is the brother of Moshe Yaish al-Nahari, a community leader who was murdered in December by a local man who demanded that he convert to Islam. Nahari's three daughters moved to Israel shortly after his murder, while his three sons made aliya in recent days with the help of the Jewish Agency, according to reports in the Yemeni media. His killer was sentenced to death in June.
According to Saba, Yaish warned that "harassment has been stepped up against Jews in the districts of Amran and Kharef, with some of the Jews killed and others kidnapped."
Violent attacks and persecution have been a regular experience of Yemen's tiny Jewish community in recent years, against the backdrop of tensions and an anti-government insurrection in the northwestern part of the country, in the province of Saada, where a Muslim religious minority affiliated with Shi'ite Islam has been clashing with government forces since 2004.
Most Yemeni Jews lived in nearby Amran province before fleeing either to protected compounds in the capital city of Sana'a or to Israel or the US. Those who remain offer easy targets for zealots.
It stands to reason the Jewish residents of Yathrib (Medina) would have regarded Muhammad as one such zealot.
Here, to start things off, is most of the discussion that ensued when this article was up on IntenseDebate.
JOHNCBARILE said - May Adonai bear the last of Yemen's Jews aloft on eagle's wings.
AL2313 said - Bring the Yemen Jews over to America
GODHATESISLAM said - Check out the BBC news service, Amnesty International website - this episode of what is basically ethnic cleansing in completely off the radar. Not worth a mention to these disgraceful organisations.
MIKEYOBE said - This exodus can come as a surprise to no one.
Islam's crude and usually violent attempts to be the world's only religion is just winding up in Muslim countries and is swiftly infiltrating western society.
It is time for the west to wake up and take a stand to repel these vicious proselytizers from all the countries which they are infecting with their ancient tribal mores and ruthless, bloody laws.
ALASKANINFIDEL said - Once again the MSM skips this story. After all...our Hip Hop Prez says that islam is the light of the world and has kept civilization alive in the darkest of times.
Betrayed on so many levels so many times on so many different subjects. The MSM no longer deserves the protection of the American people, as they have joined the ranks of those that seek power and nothing more. They are willing participants in the lies told by tyrants and would be tyrants.
islam is a lie and
Truth is killing it.
Furthermore...
Obama is a liar and Truth
is killing his agenda. Thank God!
-GODHATESISLAM replied to ALINF - 'islam is a lie and Truth is killing it.'
I wish I had your optimism. I think we are being punished with this scourge because we have abandoned the Truth ourselves.
my fear -we may have to go through a second dark age until the world comes to it's senses once more. Kyrie eleison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xq22Uxb8Ck
-ALASKANINFIDEL responded - Punished? I don't believe that punishment from "God" comes in this life.
In this life we have free will and we, as humans, make our world what it is. Some humans happen to suck really bad for having made bad choices in exercising their free will.
We have abandoned truth? We as humans? We as free men? Who is we?...cause I ain' part of that "we".
A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist. I am a realist and I truly do believe that islam is, though growing in some areas, losing the battle in general.
Just as the lie that is Obama is becoming clear, so shall the lie that is islam become clear, and with that clarity, shall come the end of islam an the freedom of muslims.
No islam...Know Peace...Know islam...throw up.
ICESTAR said - I am sad for the people who must leave their homes due to religious persecution. Some of my ancestors fled England for that reason, they were Quakers, who settled in the colonies before the American revolution. I hope they will look at the move as a new adventure, history in the making so to speak.
Too bad that the MSM continues to neglect the religious persecution of Jews and Christians in Dar al Islam. I continue to tell anyone who will listen about this.
BONESHACK said - This is the very type of story that must be broadcast in the highest volume! Where is the United States (i.e., BHO and Hitlery Clinton)? Where is the Useless Nations? I'll tell you where they are: AWOL!
This whole story is a complete disgrace to the free West.
I wish the very best for these Yemeni Jews on their Exodus from the Land of Satan. May YHWH lead them to their Promised Land.
ALASKANINFIDEL said - There was a time when free men would rise up and defend those persecuted by the tyranny of islam. No government was needed...just the will of free men.
Now...not even words for their defense let alone soldiers. Our free press is nothing but a tool now...used for one purpose or another instead of fulfilling their purpose...to speak and protect Truth. To guard us from tyrants. Now they enable them and are willing participants in the theft of our freedoms and our liberty. They are traitors to humanity.
DDA said – Comment to 'Nearly all of Yemen's remaining Jews prepare to leave'.
From the article: "According to Saba, Yaish warned that "harassment has been stepped up against Jews in the districts of Amran and Kharef, with some of the Jews killed and others kidnapped."
This is the story of one of those kidnappings.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=124644...
Does anyone here, familiar with the horrid Muslim habit of seizing and raping, sometimes drugging, brainwashing, and 'converting' non-Muslim girls, in Egypt and in Pakistan most notably at present, and also in Iraq, believe for one second that this Jewish girl, newly-married, went willingly to her Muslim gangster 'husband'? I would assume she has been told that unless she says what the thugs tell her to say, her Jewish husband and perhaps her entire community will be dead.
Actually, given that the female purporting to be her was in a burka, who knows whether it was even *her*? Quite possibly the whole scene was deliberately staged (with a female actress playing Lia's part, in burqa) in order to inflict maximum pain and humiliation upon the Jewish husband and the Jewish community.
Since the subject is the impending flight from Yemen of the tiny remnant of 250 Jews - remnant of a population that was present in Yemen at least a millennium before the rise of Islam, and probably longer - I think it is time to re-post a classic text that some of our newer lurkers and posters may not be aware of.
Here is the great Jewish physician, theologian and philosopher, Moses ben Maimon, or 'Maimonides', discussing Islam, and Arab/Muslim persecution of Jews, in his letter to the Jews of Yemen, ca. 1200 AD. At that time the Yemeni Jews were facing a severe persecution by the Muslims, and some were being forced to 'convert' to Islam.
Reproduced in Bat Yeor, The Dhimmi, pp. 351-52.
“Remember, my coreligionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins {and here we see that self-blame on the part of those attacked by Islam, is not a modern phenomenon - dda}
God 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. . . .
Although we were dishonored by them beyond human endurance, and had to put up with their fabrications,
yet we behave like him who is depicted by the inspired writer: “But I am as a deaf man, I hear not, and I am as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth (Psalm 38: 14).
Similarly our sages instructed/ us to bear the prevarications and preposterousness of Ishmael in silence….
'We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation, as Isaiah instructed us, “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair” [Isaiah 50: 6].
All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continual maltreatment which well nigh crushes us. {Note well: no matter how meekly and completely a dhimmi population submits, the Muslims will continue to attack - dda}.
No matter how we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them {that is, the Arab/Muslims - dda},
they stir up strife and sedition,
as David predicted: “I am at peace, but when I speak, they are for war” [Psalm 120: 7].
Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), Iggeret Taiman (Epistle to Yemen), edited by A S Halkin; translated by B. Cohen, New York, 1952 [p. 18].
In over eight hundred years, *nothing* has changed.