Is there a paradigm shift in the Muslim world? - opinion

I just returned from the Republic of Kazakhstan, a most prominent Muslim-majority country, a paradigm of interreligious cooperation, a nation that is supportive of the State of Israel and the plight of the Palestinian people.

While in its capital, Astana, I had the distinct honor to meet with Kazakhstan’s top leadership and discuss Israel’s response to the mass murders committed by Hamas inside southern Israel – the greatest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, by an enemy bereft of humanity.

I explained that I, too, support the plight of the Palestinian people, but let’s make no mistake – Hamas does not represent the political aspirations of the Palestinians, and what we are witnessing is not a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Arabs, Jews and Muslims. To quote President Biden, this is a war between good and evil, a war against a more toxic and a more heinous modern-day ISIS.

Furthermore, Hamas’s charter not only calls for the destruction of Israel but for the destruction of the Jewish people, the eradication of Judaism. The war against Hamas is also a war against global antisemitism.

The following morning, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev issued a statement repudiating the October 7 massacre in Israel and his repulsion of such barbarism and savagery.

Are we witnessing a paradigm shift in the Muslim and Arab world?

More and more countries have demonstrated support for Israel, both publicly and privately against this unadulterated evil. Remarkably, a growing number of Muslim countries have disavowed the unbridled terrorism of Hamas. They have come to recognize the existentialist threat they pose to Jews, Christians, and Muslims as well.

Countries like the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and others, have joined many countries who have implicitly or explicitly spoken out of the need to combat and eliminate such evil. Such reactions would have been unimaginable five, 10, or 15 years ago.

For example, the United Arab Emirates’s Foreign Ministry described the attacks carried out by Hamas as a “serious and grave escalation.” They warned Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad not to intervene in the Hamas-Israel war. Ten of thousands of Azerbaijanis expressed a strong support for Israel, while a host of Azerbaijani parliamentarians strongly condemned these evil attacks. The Kingdom of Bahrain offered a similar condemnation.

I am not representing that we have reached the promised land of Israeli-Arab reconciliation, however, reasonable voices are now coming to the fore.

The former head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency and former Saudi ambassador to the United States Turki al-Faisal, while assessing the current crisis, was unequivocal of his condemnation of Hamas during an address at a conference hosted on October 17 by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

“I categorically condemn Hamas’s targeting of civilian targets of any age or gender as it is accused of,” he said. “Such targeting belies Hamas’s claims to an Islamic identity. There is an Islamic injunction against the killing of innocent children, women, and elders.”

With last week’s explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza and the mass killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, as a result of a rocket barrage by Hamas’s partner, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Muslim world must recognize that this evil consortium not only massacres Jews but is also responsible for the deaths of their own people.

As I departed Kazakhstan, a haven for Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, I reflected on how both the Nazis and Hamas perpetrated the same atrocities against innocent Jews.

But 2023 is not 1943.

Hamas is not targeting defenseless Jews. Today, the Jewish people are blessed with a Jewish state and one of the world’s most powerful military fighting forces. The State of Israel will defend the honor and dignity of every Jew.

With an unabashedly pro-Israel president in the White House, the iron-clad support of the United States, and a paradigm shift in the greater Muslim world, I am confident that ultimately good will prevail.

The writer, a rabbi, is president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, a noted adviser to many Gulf states, and the author of Sons of Abraham: A Candid Conversation about the Issues that Divide and Unite Jews and Muslims.