Jihad and Hanukkah
By Rabbi Allen S. Maller
Florida is once again trying to outlaw the use of foreign and international law in state courts. Missouri has also mounted another attempt to pass an anti-foreign law measure after last year’s effort was vetoed by its Governor. And for the first time, Vermont’s Islamophobes are getting into the action.
These laws have already passed in seven states. They are the brainchild of anti-Muslim activists bent on spreading the imaginary fear that Islamic laws (Shari’ah) will soon take over American courts.
At first the proposed state laws openly mentioned Shari’ah law. However, after a federal court in Oklahoma in January 2012 blocked such a law as unconstitutional because it specifically targeted Sharia, new, more targeted bills specifically applying only to divorce, child support and custody hearings in family court were proposed..
They state that arbitration is unenforceable if a tribunal bases its ruling on a “foreign law, legal code or system” that does not grant people the same rights as the U.S. Constitutions.
About 30 states have considered or are considering similar laws, but only seven have passed them.
Jews and Muslims have joined together in opposing these laws because both religions have a long established tradition of religious law that is rooted in their own sacred Scriptures.
Jews and Muslims have also joined together in opposition to recent attempts in Europe to ban circumcision and ritual slaughter of animals.
Governmental attacks in European states on Muslim and Jewish religious law, ritual slaughter and circumcision are for Jews just history repeating itself, as it frequently has over the last twenty two centuries since the first Syrian Greek attempt to forbid circumcision.
The only difference now, is that both Judaism and Islam are under attack, because Muslims in the past have almost always lived in Muslim majority states.
In 169 BCE the Greek rulers of the Greek Syrian Empire, decided to prohibit Jews in the Land of Israel from circumcising their sons, as part of government program to make Jews conform to Greek standards of civilized behavior.
Greek pressure on Jews to ‘fit in’ culturally had some limited success with many wealthy Jews and among some of the upper levels of the priesthood in Jerusalem.
Then the Greek King ordered that a statue of himself be placed in the courtyard of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. He also ordered Jews to stop circumcising their sons.
This led to a revolt which broke out in 168 BCE in the small village of Modin, led by a man called Judah, the Maccabee (hammerer) and his four brothers.
With trust in God, the Maccabee brothers (four of who were killed in battle over the next two decades) defeated the much larger Syrian armies, recaptured Jerusalem and rededicated (Hanukah) the desecrated Temple in an eight day festival.
Hanukah, the Festival of Freedom celebrating the duty to say ‘NO’ to the unjust demands of a dictatorial government, is still celebrated to this day in Jewish homes by reciting blessings, lighting candles, singing songs and retelling the ancient story in various forms.
Unfortunately, the struggle (Jihad) for religious freedom exemplified by Hanukah still goes on. Thank God, those of us who live in democratic states can fight for religious freedom non-violently within the laws of our own countries. This was not the situation in the past.