Just because Muslims are in a war, doesn't mean they're going on jihad. It can be just fighting over land or for retribution or whatever.
It seems blindingly obvious that neither (or any) side is blameless in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Right, they can be related, but that doesn't make them the same.
Semite, anyway, is a cultural and linguistic classification. So it doesn't work in the sense you mean.
The majority of the ancestry of the Levantine Arabs comes from the Levant and has been there for many millennia.
Mizrahi...
Sure there are conspiracy theories, but generally the Mizrahim and Sephardim moved to Israel from Arab countries for a variety of push and pull factors.
Try getting all the Muslim countries in the world to agree on the concept of jihad, then not the need to apply it to a war against Israel, then to agree to fight alongside each other. That would be much more of a challenge.
Close save, hats off.
What I think is sorely missing from this perspective is personal experience of Muslim people and awareness of the sheer number of Sub-Saharan African Muslims.
I suppose I was more towards the latter end, but only insofar as that was even possible in a school as small as mine, where everybody knew everybody else in the year pretty well.
If that's the sphere around you, then is there a way you find other spheres to get into? Like, OK, you're into subjects that are more intellectual than a lot of people around you, aren't there groups or activities or whatever that relate to those around? Not necessarily in your area, but at...
Which religious or spiritual group is out there that you affiliate yourself with or sympathise with closely, HJ? Just to get a bit of a perspective on where you're coming from :)