Pray For Palestinians Quotes

The Women in Black are Israeli Jews who meet wall in Jerusalem. They meet every Friday, the Sabbath evening, and pray. They begin by singing Kaddish for all the Israelis killed in the fighting in Israel that week. When they are finished, they pause and read all the names. Then, they turn again to face the wall and sing Kaddish again, this time for all of Palestinians killed in the fighting that week, and they turn when they are finished and once again recite the litany of the names of those killed.

Are the religious individuals in a society more moral than the secular ones? Many researchers have looked into this, and the main finding is that there are few interesting findings. There are subtle effects here and there: some studies find, for instance, that the religious are slightly more prejudiced, but this effect is weak when one factors out other considerations, such as age and political attitudes, and exists only when religious belief is measured in certain ways. The only large effect is that religious Americans give more to charity (including nonreligious charities) than atheists do. This holds even when one controls for demographics (religious Americans are more likely than average to be older, female, southern, and African American). To explore why this relationship exists, the political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell asked people about life after death, the importance of God to morality, and various other facets of religious belief. It turns out that none of their answers to such questions were related to behaviors having to do with volunteering and charitable giving. Rather, participation in the religious community was everything. As Putnam and Campbell put it, “Once we know how observant a person is in terms of church attendance, nothing that we can discover about the content of her religious faith adds anything to our understanding or prediction of her good neighborliness.… In fact, the statistics suggest that even an atheist who happened to become involved in the social life of the congregation (perhaps through a spouse) is much more likely to volunteer in a soup kitchen than the most fervent believer who prays alone. It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.” This importance of community, and the irrelevance of belief, extends as well to the nastier effects of religion. The psychologist Jeremy Ginges and his colleagues found a strong relationship between religiosity and support for suicide bombing among Palestinian Muslims, and, again, the key factor was religious community, not religious belief: mosque attendance predicted support for suicide attacks; frequency of prayer did not. Among Indonesian Muslims, Mexican Catholics, British Protestants, Russian Orthodox in Russia, Israeli Jews, and Indian Hindus, frequency of religious attendance (but again, not frequency of prayer) predicts responses to questions such as “I blame people of other religions for much of the trouble in this world.

Norenzayan distinguishes between private and communal religiosity in surveying support for suicide bombers among Palestinians.17 In a refutation of “Islam = terrorism” idiocy, people’s personal religiosity (as assessed by how often they prayed) didn’t predict support for terrorism. However, frequently attending services at a mosque did. The author then polled Indian Hindus, Russian Orthodox adherents, Israeli Jews, Indonesian Muslims, British Protestants, and Mexican Catholics as to whether they’d die for their religion and whether people of other religions caused the world’s troubles. In all cases frequent attendance of religious services, but not frequent prayer, predicted those views. It’s not religiosity that stokes intergroup hostility; it’s being surrounded by coreligionists who affirm parochial identity, commitment, and shared loves and hatreds. This is hugely important.

Although Saudi authorities promised after the September 11 attacks to revise textbooks that taught hatred against Jews and Christians, as late as 2006 Saudi texts still referred to Jews as “apes” and Christians as “swine.”27 And in April 2008 a British employment tribunal awarded 70,000 pounds ($115,000) to a teacher who had been fired from a Saudi-funded Islamic school for exposing that the school’s textbooks spoke of “the repugnant characteristics of the Jews” and asserted, “Those whom God has cursed and with whom he is angry, he has turned into monkeys and pigs. They worship Satan.”28 There is an endless parade of similar examples. In March 2004 Sheikh Ibrahim Mudayris, speaking on official Palestinian Authority television, railed against “the Jews today taking revenge for their grandfathers and ancestors, the sons of apes and pigs.”29 And during the swine flu scare in May 2009, Sheikh Ahmad ‘Ali ‘Othman, the superintendent of da’wa [Islamic proselytizing] affairs at the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments, declared that “all pigs are descended from the Jews whom Allah transformed into apes, swine and worshippers of Satan, and must therefore be slaughtered.” Othman based his argument on Koran 5:60, one of the Koran’s notorious “apes and pigs” passages.30 In his televised sermon denouncing the Jews regardless of their actions in Israel or elsewhere, Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub also invoked this theme: “As for you Jews—the curse of Allah upon you. The curse of Allah upon you, whose ancestors were apes and pigs. . . . Allah, we pray that you transform them again, and make the Muslims rejoice again in seeing them as apes and pigs. You pigs of the earth! You pigs of the earth! You kill the Muslims with that cold pig [blood] of yours.”31 Jews as apes and pigs: it’s in the Koran, holy book of the religion of peace.

How Good Deeds Conquered an Empire Humanly speaking, no one would have thought it possible to bring the nations to the worship of God through simple good deeds. How on earth could “good deeds” change a realm as mighty as the Roman Empire, let alone the whole world? As unlikely as it may have sounded at the time, Jesus’ call to be the light of the world was taken seriously by his disciples. They devoted themselves to quite heroic acts of godliness. They loved their enemies, prayed for their persecutors and cared for the poor wherever they found them. We know that the Jerusalem church set up a large daily food roster for the destitute among them—no fewer than seven Christian leaders were assigned to the management of the program (Acts 6:1—7). The apostle Paul, perhaps the greatest missionary/evangelist ever, was utterly devoted to these kinds of good deeds. In response to a famine that ravaged Palestine between AD 46—48 Paul conducted his own decade-long international aid program earmarked for poverty-stricken Palestinians. Wherever he went, he asked the Gentile churches to contribute whatever they could to the poor in Jerusalem.23 Christian “good deeds” continued long after the New Testament era. We know, for instance, that by AD 250 the Christian community in Rome was supporting 1,500 destitute people every day.24 All around the Mediterranean churches were setting up food programs, hospitals and orphanages. These were available to believers and unbelievers alike. This was an innovation. Historians often point to ancient Israel as the first society to introduce a comprehensive welfare system that cared for the poor and marginalised within the community. Christians

In the Old City of Jerusalem, the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish quarters are home to some of the holiest sites of the three major Abrahamic faiths. There’s the Western Wall, sacred to the Jewish people; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Christians believe to be the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus; and the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, where the Prophet Muhammad prayed with the souls of all the other prophets and ascended to heaven. Jerusalem is the third-holiest city in Islam and preceded Mecca as the first qibla, the direction toward which the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community faced to pray. Beyond that, the city is central to the Palestinian struggle and integral to the soul of every Palestinian, Muslim and Christian alike. It’s our eternal capital.

Most of all, they preserved the land in prayer. Jewish prayer became suffused with the longing for the land. As a boy, growing up in a religious home in Brooklyn, I prayed in the winter months for rain and in the summer months for dew—regardless of the weather outside my window, following the natural rhythm of a distant land. In morning and evening prayers, in grace after meals, I invoked Zion. Before I’d even known the land of Israel as actual place, I knew it as inherited memory. When Sarah and I stood under the wedding canopy, we recited, as Jews have done for centuries, the ancient psalm “If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.” And then, at the moment of our greatest joy, we broke a glass, in memory of the destroyed Temple.

In 2008 I visited Israel and spent time in Muslim towns and villages meeting clerics, politicians, and young Muslim men wearing distinctly Israel Defense Forces trousers. At every meeting I asked a blunt question: “As a Muslim, do you feel you live in an apartheid state?” Invariably, the answer was a firm no. As one man in his twenties, in the northern town of Shibli (where a sign reading “Allahu Akbar” graces the entrance), told me, “Wallah al azeem” – as God is my witness – “I will never wish to trade my Israeli citizenship for any of those wretched Arab countries who do not know how to treat their own citizens with dignity.” I asked the same question of Imam Mohammad Odeh outside his spectacular mosque north of Haifa. He grinned before admitting, “We Muslims have difficulties, there is no doubt, and we feel Israel should end the occupation of the West Bank, but to say we Muslims are living in an apartheid state is a lie.” After a tour of the mosque, where we prayed, he invited me to his home. What followed was a long, heartfelt story of a Palestinian living as an Israeli citizen, the imam of a mosque and leader of a community of two thousand. Hurt was written on his face, but his complaints were aimed not at Israel but towards the intellectual bankruptcy of the men who lead the Palestinians. I asked him if he truly, in his heart, felt Israeli, and without hesitating he said, “Yes.

January 25 A Wee Little Man Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.—Luke 19:1-4 Zacchaeus was a short man, but his encounter with Jesus Christ was powerful. The applications for us can be the same regardless of our stature or position in life. Jesus was traveling about, teaching and healing. He entered Jericho, a city important in terms of location and economic position. Trading activities had led to its becoming one of the Palestinian tax centers. And where there are taxes, there are tax collectors. Zacchaeus was not only a tax collector but the Chief tax Collector, and he was wealthy. Interesting! Were all tax collectors wealthy? If we assume his wealth came from his occupation, is it fair to also assume he was neither well-liked nor trusted? So why did this short, chief tax collector want to see Jesus? Was he just going along with the crowd? Was this the in place to be? It surely was more than curiosity because Zacchaeus was energetic and creative in his efforts—he climbed a tree. Was he reaching for the love of God? How much do we want to see Jesus? Do we just go along with others? Are we wishing for a word from him, a touch, and assurance that he loves us? Do you pray that God will touch you with his love? Would you climb a tree for Jesus? Dear God, help us to see that You are always there. Give us the desire and the willingness to do whatever it takes, even to climb a tree.

Don't Despair - Victory Is Near *** O' God, show me the way So that I could tell Those who pray to one God, Those who follow their prophet Those who recite their Holy Book But neither people nor leaders In their lives Act on that as its context Kashmiris breathe In the tyranny of democratic beasts Palestinians live In the occupation of Zionists And cruel occupiers For decades and decades Alas, the Muslim world And United Nations Stayed: Dumb, Deaf, and Blind Except for issuing words of condemnation On the unjust, oppressive rapes, And killing practices and deeds The Muslim States and rulers And the Armed Forces are unique and brave, Only for murdering their people And damaging unity and resources To stay in power Such rulers destroyed Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran Spending trillions of wealth The Muslim States fought wars In the interests of those who preach  Justice, equality, honesty, harmony,  And peace, never learn themselves.  How they can apply justice  For Palestinians and Kashmiris? Otherwise, peace was a destiny And the destination of the Muslim State And entire humanity In such a scenario as Kashmir,  And Palestine will be bearing cruelty Unjust, oppression, and bloodshed We belong to Allah And to Him, we shall return Oh, Palestine, oh, Kashmir Do not despair Victory is near.

At last she finds them in one of the village’s churches. Muslims and Christians—Palestinians all—crowded together, praying their place of sanctuary will not be hit.

I am a Nakba survivor… When they arrived in Palestine in the 1880s, the Zionists said they were coming to a land without a people, and they continued to make this claim for decades. But look around you at these beautiful homes. This is just one of many Palestinian neighborhoods occupied by Israelis. Many of those homes were built before the Zionists came. They belonged to educated, sophisticated Palestinian families. Before the Nakba, Palestine, particularly Jerusalem, kept its doors open to people of all ethnic groups and creeds who wanted to pray or settle here. We Palestinians are proud to be part of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. We are here to stay, we, the survivors of the Palestinian Nakba.