Can You Divide the City of God?

 People say it so casually now.

“Divide Jerusalem.”

As if they are talking about a municipality. A zoning plan. A map drawn in a conference room far from dust, prayer, blood, memory.

Pause for a second.

Can you imagine Rome being divided? No.

Can you imagine Mecca being divided? No.

Or Medina?

Then why does the world feel so comfortable imagining Jerusalem sliced up like a diplomatic cake?

That question alone tells you something is off.

More Than a Capital, Less Than a Compromise

For Jews, Jerusalem is not just a capital. It never was.

It is memory turned into stone. Prayer turned into geography.

Yerushalayim is called the City of David not as poetry, but as lineage.

The claim that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people is not new, and it is not political spin invented in the 20th century. It is embedded in Jewish scripture, ritual, and historical consciousness going back three millennia.

That does not automatically cancel other attachments. But it does explain why the idea of division feels existential rather than administrative to many Jews.

No foreign power, no international body, no rotating committee of diplomats can dictate where a people believes its spiritual center lies. Capitals can move. Sacred geography does not.

Abraham’s Children, One City

Here is where things get complicated. And uncomfortable.

Abraham had two sons.

Isaac and Ishmael.

Two lineages. Two peoples. One ancestor.

Jews trace themselves to Isaac.

Arabs, including many Palestinians, trace themselves to Ishmael.

That matters. Not as a weapon, but as a reminder.

If both peoples claim Abraham, then both are rooted in the same story. Jerusalem did not emerge out of thin air in 1948. It sits at the intersection of shared ancestry and diverging histories.

This is precisely why some argue Jerusalem must be shared.

And precisely why others say it cannot be divided.

Both claims are drawing from the same well.

Conquest, Memory, and the Long View

History is not kind. It rarely is.

Empires came. Assyrians. Babylonians. Romans. Byzantines. Arab caliphates. Ottomans. British administrators with maps and mandates.

Arab conquerors expanded across the Middle East and North Africa, from Arabia to Tunisia. That too is historical fact.

Yet Jewish attachment to Jerusalem did not vanish in exile. It condensed. Hardened. Survived in liturgy, fasting days, wedding rituals, daily prayers facing the same city.

For nearly two thousand years, Jews did not forget Jerusalem.

They waited for it.

When Jews returned “from the four corners of the world,” as the phrase goes, they did not see themselves as colonizers arriving somewhere new. They saw themselves as returning home after an impossibly long absence.

That perspective does not erase Palestinian suffering.

But it does explain Jewish insistence that this is not a temporary claim.

The City of All Prophets

Jerusalem is sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That part is indisputable.

It holds the Temple Mount.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Few cities on earth carry that weight. Fewer still are expected to function like ordinary real estate.

This is why the phrase “divide Jerusalem” feels absurd to some and essential to others. One side hears erasure. The other hears exclusion.

The city belongs, in religious imagination, not to governments but to God.

And once a place is framed as divine property, compromise becomes theology, not diplomacy.

Can the City of God Be Divided?

That is the real question.

Not whether borders can be drawn. Borders always can be drawn.

But whether meaning can be partitioned without tearing something irreparable.

The prophet Book of Jeremiah speaks of an everlasting love. For believers, that verse is not metaphor. It is covenant.

Others will reject that framing entirely. They will argue that faith cannot dictate statecraft. That history does not grant eternal title deeds. That justice must consider those living now, not only those remembered.

And yet.

Ignoring faith in Jerusalem has never worked.

Neither has enforcing it by force.

One Hard, Unavoidable Truth

All Arabs and Jews trace their roots back to Abraham.

That fact alone should make endless war feel like a tragic family feud that spiraled out of control.

Maybe Jerusalem cannot be divided.

Maybe it also cannot belong exclusively to one people in lived reality, no matter what theology claims.

Dialogue sounds weak in a city soaked in history. Almost naïve.

But without it, every claim becomes total, and total claims leave no room for breath.

Jerusalem will not be solved by slogans.

Not by maps alone.

And certainly not by pretending it is just another capital city.

It is not.

It is the City of God.

And cities like that never submit quietly to human plans.

Sinwar, Trauma, and the Lessons the Middle East Refuses to Learn

 

It began with a reader’s question that lingered longer than the post itself.

“Did those perpetrators grow up with an oppression myth?” he asked.

I had written about Yahya Sinwar, often called the butcher of Khan Yunis by his critics, trying to understand what shapes such a mind. The reader reminded me that suffering does not always create monsters. Sometimes it builds moral memory.

Jews remember the ghettos, the camps, and the silence of the world. Yet they do not blow up buses in Munich. They built museums instead of militias. The pain of extermination was turned into vigilance and remembrance, not revenge.

In much of the Muslim world, the opposite happened. Our stories of loss were not healed; they were inherited as anger. The rhetoric of humiliation became the air our children breathed. The “oppression myth,” once rooted in truth, hardened into ideology. It became a tool for leaders who found power in grievance.

Sinwar is only one symptom. Behind him stands a generation raised on the memory of occupation but not on reflection. The same trauma that once demanded liberation now sustains the logic of endless war.

Maybe that is what separates memory from myth: one seeks to preserve the dead, the other to avenge them.
Still, I do not believe pain must always end in blood. Perhaps the real question is not why the Jews remember differently, but why we keep teaching ourselves to forget in the same way.

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The Myth of Oppression

Every nation builds its stories around loss. Some turn those stories into maps for survival, others into trenches.
In our part of the world, “oppression” became a permanent identity. From classrooms to Friday sermons, the message stayed the same: We are victims of the West, of Israel, of history itself. It was not always untrue, but it became too useful to question.

The rulers found comfort in it. The preachers found power in it. The people found meaning in it.
And over time, the story grew louder than the truth.
Real grievances—poverty, corruption, the failure of education—were hidden beneath the grand idea of a besieged ummah.

You can see the result in the eyes of young men who grow up believing they are born to avenge the world.
That’s not faith. That’s indoctrination.
And it kills both the body and the spirit of a society.

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Memory Without Murder

The reader who commented on my piece reminded me of something simple: remembrance can be sacred without becoming violent.
The Jewish people never forgot what was done to them. They built their memory into museums, universities, and archives. They taught their children to speak, not explode.

That doesn’t make them saints, but it shows a difference in what trauma can become. Memory, when faced honestly, can teach humility.
In contrast, we in the Muslim world often hide our trauma behind pride. We mistake rage for dignity.

Look at how the word resistance has been emptied of meaning. Once it meant the right to exist; now it means the right to destroy.
Our heroes are men with rifles, not reformers with pens.
Our martyrs are those who die killing, not those who die creating.

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Sinwar’s Shadow

Yahya Sinwar embodies that broken inheritance.
He calls himself a liberator, yet the people under his rule whisper another name: “the butcher of Khan Yunis.”
His power feeds on perpetual siege. Every rocket he fires strengthens the narrative that Gaza can only live through death.

But the deeper tragedy is not Sinwar himself; it’s the silence that allows him.
The world looks at Gaza and sees a victim. Gazans look inward and see a cage built by two hands—Israel’s and their own.
No one wins in this geometry of grief.

Sinwar’s story could have been different. He spent years in Israeli prisons, learned Hebrew, studied his enemy. He could have used that knowledge to imagine coexistence. Instead, he turned it into a manual for vengeance.

Perhaps he believes he’s making history.
Perhaps he knows he’s only repeating it.

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The Choice of Memory

We can’t choose what happened to us, but we can choose what we do with it.
Jewish survival, Rwandan reconciliation, South African truth commissions—these are proof that even the worst pain can be reshaped.

In the Muslim world, that work has barely begun.
We remember our martyrs but not our mistakes. We build monuments to conquest, not compassion.

If memory is power, then we’ve spent ours poorly.
Maybe it’s time to reclaim it—to remember without hating, to mourn without teaching revenge.

Until then, men like Sinwar will keep rising from the ruins, and the myth will keep devouring the truth.

Jewish and Muslim Burial Rites: Mirrors of Sacred Humility

 

A woman at her first taharah whispered prayers over a stranger’s body, while her hands trembled at the coldness of lifeless skin. Somewhere else in the world, a Muslim daughter prepares her mother for ghusl al-mayyit, her tears falling into the rinsing water. Two faiths. Two languages. Yet the gestures look almost the same.

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Washing as an Act of Love

In Judaism, the Chevra Kadisha washes the deceased limb by limb, keeping the body covered, whispering verses, moving slowly so dignity is never broken. In Islam, relatives or close community members wash the body three, five, or seven times, uncovering only the part being cleansed. Both call this moment purification. Both see it as mercy, not duty.

When Muslims pour water across the whole body, or when Jews complete the ritual stream of washing, the feeling is identical — a return to God in a state of purity.

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The White Shrouds

Jewish tachrichim. Muslim kafan. Plain white, simple, no jewelry, no silk, no marks of status. The wealthy professor and the poor beggar are made equal before God. Death levels what life could not.

In both traditions, women and men are clothed in humility. The white fabric is not a costume of sorrow. It is a declaration: here lies a soul, not a bank account, not a title, not an ego.

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Prayers That Ask, Not Boast

At the close of taharah, the group leader speaks to the deceased by name, asking forgiveness for any mistake made in washing. In the Muslim janazah prayer, the whole community gathers and asks Allah to forgive the deceased and grant mercy. Neither ritual praises the dead. Both ask for compassion, for peace, for forgiveness.

There is something strangely comforting in this restraint. The words are not about what you achieved but about where you are going.

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A Shared Respect for the Soul

Jewish belief holds that the neshama hovers near the body, sensitive and unsettled, until burial. In Islam, the ruh is also believed to linger close. So both faiths whisper, never mock, never delay the burial. Both hasten to return the body to earth — Jews in a simple coffin, Muslims directly in the grave facing Mecca.

Silence, humility, and tenderness bind these last moments.

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Why It Matters

Seen side by side, these rituals are mirrors. They remind us that beyond theology and centuries of conflict, Jews and Muslims meet in one quiet truth: the dead deserve respect, not spectacle. Death erases pride. What remains is kindness, whispered prayers, and the white fabric of equality.

Perhaps that is the final mercy — that we are brought close, even in the way we leave.

When David Becomes Goliath: Jon Stewart and Peter Beinart on Gaza

 

Jewish voices are not united on Gaza. Some defend Israel’s campaign as a matter of survival. Others, equally rooted in Jewish faith and memory, say the opposite: that the occupation and siege are tearing away at Judaism’s moral foundation.

On The Daily Show (source, full episode here), Jon Stewart sat down with writer and scholar Peter Beinart to wrestle with a question that refuses to go away: when does defending a people’s security become the very thing that endangers it?

A Personal Cost

Beinart admitted that speaking against Israel’s war in Gaza has cost him friendships. Judaism, he said, is at the centre of his life. Losing the approval of fellow Jews hurts, but silence would cost more. He stressed that he lives freely and safely, unlike Palestinians in Gaza. That contrast fuels his decision to speak.

Good Jew, Bad Jew

Stewart raised the old accusation. Critics call him a “bad Jew” for challenging Israel. But what, he asked, makes a Jew “good”? Stewart argued that Judaism itself gave him moral clarity: if history teaches Jews to side with the underdog, how can they ignore Palestinians? “What happens when David becomes Goliath?” he asked.

Beinart answered that Jewish texts show both sides of human nature. Jews have been victims, but they have also become rulers and oppressors. To him, honesty means acknowledging both roles.

The Word Nobody Wants to Say

The conversation turned to the harshest accusation: genocide. Beinart cited B’Tselem, Israel’s most prominent human rights group, which has declared that the policy in Gaza meets that definition. Stewart noted a New York Times column that claimed Israel could not be guilty of genocide because it was too strong to kill slowly. Beinart dismissed the logic as “cynical,” pointing instead to deliberate starvation and siege tactics.

Safety Bound Together

Beinart’s central claim was blunt. Israeli Jews will never be safe unless Palestinians are safe. Security cannot be built on inequality. He recalled Martin Luther King’s phrase that Americans were “bound in a single garment of destiny.” The same, he said, applies to Jews and Palestinians.

The Failure of Nonviolence

What, Stewart asked, about those who insist Palestinians should resist peacefully? Beinart pointed to 2018, when thousands in Gaza marched non-violently. Israeli soldiers shot into the crowds, maiming so many that an amputee soccer team was later formed. Boycotts are criminalized. Appeals to the International Criminal Court are punished with sanctions. “The message to Palestinians,” Beinart said, “is that non-violence doesn’t work.” That leaves room for groups like Hamas to thrive.

A Fortress or a Home?

Stewart recalled being taught that Israel was necessary to guarantee Jewish survival. But if Jews require an armed fortress to exist, he asked, has humanity already failed? Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 might have been an opening. Instead, settlements in the West Bank expanded and settler violence rose. Hope dimmed.

Beinart reminded him of Salam Fayyad, the most moderate Palestinian leader in recent decades. In 2013, Fayyad admitted defeat: despite rejecting violence, he could not stop settlements “for a single day.” His failure, he warned, would only empower Hamas.

Listening to Palestinians

Why do many American Jews defend equality under law in the United States but not in Israel? Beinart answered simply: because they rarely hear Palestinians. Palestinian voices are excluded from synagogues, schools, and mainstream media. When people go and see life under occupation, when they listen, he said, their views often change.

A Painful Book

Stewart ended by describing Beinart’s new work, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, as painful but necessary. The book, he said, forces readers to decide for themselves.

Credit: Conversation from The Daily Show (YouTube link). Full video: Jon Stewart with Peter Beinart.

Is Jerusalem essential for Muslims from religious point of view?

Generated by Grok
From a religious perspective, Jerusalem, known as Al-Quds in Arabic, holds significant importance for Muslims, although it's not on the same level as Mecca (Makkah) where the Kaaba is located, which is the direction (Qibla) Muslims face during prayer . Here's a breakdown of why Jerusalem is considered essential for Muslims:

1. Historical and Prophetic Connection :
   • Night Journey (Isra) : One of the most significant events in Islamic history is the Night Journey (Isra) where Prophet Muhammad was miraculously transported from Mecca to Jerusalem, specifically to the site now known as Al-Aqsa Mosque, before ascending to heaven ( Mi'raj). This event is mentioned in the Quran (17:1) and underscores Jerusalem's sanctity.
   • Prophets and Messengers : Jerusalem is linked with many prophets revered in Islam, including Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), Dawud (David), and Isa (Jesus). This connection adds to its spiritual significance.
2. Spiritual Importance :
   • Al-Aqsa Mosque : Located on the Temple Mount, Al-Aqsa is considered the third holiest site in Islam after the Kaaba in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. Muslims believe that prayers at Al-Aqsa are rewarded significantly more than in other places, except for Mecca and Medina.
   • First Qibla : Initially, Muslims prayed towards Jerusalem before the Qibla was changed to Mecca. This historical fact adds to its reverence.
3. Political and Cultural Significance :
   • Islamic Rule : Jerusalem has been under Muslim rule for significant periods, which has embedded it deeply within Islamic culture and history. The city's architecture, like the Dome of the Rock, symbolizes Islamic presence and sovereignty.
4. Current sentiment :
   • From X posts and broader discussions, there's a mix of sentiments. While many Muslims acknowledge Jerusalem's religious importance, there's also a pragmatic understanding that the Kaaba's centrality in prayer does not diminish Jerusalem's spiritual value. However, some might argue, as you've suggested, that the focus on Jerusalem sometimes seems disproportionate due to political conflicts rather than purely religious reasons.
5. The Kaaba and Prayer :
   • It's true that Muslims must face the Kaaba for prayer, which symbolizes unity in worship. This doesn't negate Jerusalem's importance but rather places it within a broader context of Islamic sacred geography.

In summary, while the Kaaba is undeniably central to Islamic prayer and pilgrimage, Jerusalem's religious significance for Muslims is rooted in historical events, prophetic connections, and the presence of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The sentiment among Muslims regarding Jerusalem's importance might vary, but from a traditional Islamic viewpoint, Jerusalem is indeed essential, although in a different manner than Mecca. The "fuss" you mention might be more about political and nationalistic sentiments intertwined with religious reverence, especially in the context of ongoing conflicts over the city's status. However, dismissing its religious importance for Muslims would be an oversimplification of its role in Islamic faith and history.

Judaism's Traditional Position on Homosexuality

 

Judaism's Traditional Position on Homosexuality

The Torah, specifically the book of Leviticus, expresses unequivocal condemnation of male homosexual sex. Leviticus 20:13 states: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." The biblical prohibition does not extend to female homosexual acts, though later commentators disapproved of lesbianism.Traditionally, Judaism has seen homosexual male intercourse as contrary to Judaism, not homosexuality in-and-of-itself. The Leviticus verses imply that it is the act of homosexual sex, not the homosexual person, that is abhorred. The medieval book Sefer HaHinuch compares homosexual sex to marrying a barren woman, citing the lack of procreative potential as the reason for the abhorrent nature of the homosexual act.

Orthodox Judaism's Position

While a variety of views exist within the Orthodox Jewish community, Orthodox Judaism generally prohibits homosexual conduct. Male-male anal sex is put in the category of yehareg ve'al ya'avor, 'die rather than transgress', the small category of biblically-prohibited acts which an Orthodox Jew is obligated to die rather than do.However, there are growing signs of welcome in a few Orthodox spaces. In 2010, more than 150 Orthodox rabbis and educators signed a declaration calling for the welcoming of LGBTQ+ Jews in the Orthodox community. Organizations like Eshel support Orthodox LGBTQ+ individuals in their desire to live fully in their religious and cultural traditions.

Liberal Jewish Denominations' Positions

The liberal denominations, such as Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Judaism, have debated the extent to which gays and lesbians can be fully integrated into religious communities.Reform Judaism is the most welcoming, ordaining LGBTQ+ rabbis and cantors and encouraging its communities to become fully inclusive of LGBTQ+ individuals. The Union for Reform Judaism passed resolutions in 1977 affirming opposition to discrimination against homosexuals and calling for legislation to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults.Conservative Judaism's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has issued multiple opinions under its philosophy of pluralism; one opinion continues to follow the Orthodox position while another opinion substantially liberalizes the view of homosexual sex and relationships.In summary, while traditional Judaism condemns homosexual acts, liberal denominations have become increasingly welcoming and inclusive of LGBTQ+ Jews, with Reform Judaism being the most affirming.