The challenge for the Muslim World in the 21st Century will be to set out on the path that Judaism began with emancipation in the early 19th Century. That is, to engage religious scriptures and traditions in a dialogue with the humanities and social sciences.

Muslims need to wage the same battle against obscurantism that the leaders of the Jewish enlightenment pursued - in order to rescue their religion from intellectual irrelevance. Jewish leaders in the 19th Century realized that Judaism had to be repackaged, rebranded and remarketed as soon as
Europe's secular schools and universities started welcoming Jews.
Indeed, had Judaism not reformulated itself in Western Europe and America 150 years ago, it is plausible that there would nowadays be millions of apostate Jews.

by Rafael Castro

Traditional Judaism and Islam share many traits: Both are monotheistic, inspired by prophecy, and incorporate extensive religious jurisprudence. Both the Torah and the Koran
call for homosexuals, adulterers and polytheists to be killed. On the other hand, in both books appeals to righteousness, justice and charity predominate.

Nonetheless the gap between Jews and Muslims is wider than ever: Jews have built a flourishing state in the Middle East; Muslims populate some of the poorest, most corrupt and strife-ridden countries in the world. Jewish minorities in the West are prosperous and successfully integrated; In
Europe, Muslims are often poor, alienated and angry.


Jews contribute a disproportionate percentage of Nobel
prize-winners and philanthropists; Muslims contribute a disproportionate number of tyrants and terrorists. Last but not least, Jewish education flourishes with a rich variety of courses engaging Judaism with the latest developments in ethics, literature, and philosophy. Muslim education is for the most part based on rote memorization of the Koran and ideas that haven't changed for centuries.

What accounts for this gap? Some claim that Judaism since
thousands of years values learning and critical thinking. This opinion may be factually true, yet is incomplete. It does not explain why ultra-orthodox Jews, despite their sophisticated Talmudic disquisitions,have contributed relatively little to the outside world. The great Jewish contributions to culture, science and politics over the last 150 years have come from secular, reform, conservative or modern orthodox quarters - viewed as heretical by traditional Jewry.


The challenge for the Muslim World in the 21st Century will be
to set out on the path that Judaism began with emancipation in the early
19th Century. That is, to engage religious scriptures and traditions in
a dialogue with the humanities and social sciences.


Muslims need to wage the same battle against obscurantism that the leaders of the Jewish enlightenment pursued - in order to rescue their religion from intellectual irrelevance. Jewish leaders in the 19th Century realized that Judaism had to be repackaged, rebranded and remarketed as soon as
Europe's secular schools and universities started welcoming Jews.
Indeed, had Judaism not reformulated itself in Western Europe and America 150 years ago, it is plausible that there would nowadays be millions of apostate Jews.


The battle for Islam's future can only be won by presenting
Muslims with the same challenge. If the West invested a fraction of the amounts spent in Iraq and Afghanistan to provide Muslim countries with the resources and knowhow needed to teach humanities, critical thinking and modern research methodologies in schools and universities, Muslim youngsters would acquire essential cultural and intellectual tools. This would make them less vulnerable to jihadist rhetoric and inane slogans
such as "The Koran is our Constitution."


Muslim preachers would thus be forced to revise their sermons. This revision would be timid at first, but could - in the long-run- catalyze authentic reform movements in Islam that preach equality for women and non-Muslims, the abolition
of capital punishment and a thorough reformulation of jihad as an
instrument of non-violent resistance.



Is this unthinkable? In today’s Islam probably. However, had we
asked the most progressive rabbi a century ago whether there would be hundreds of female rabbis in 2012, he would have laughed. If in a few decades, ulemas in Egypt, Turkey or Pakistan when asked about female
imams smile, we can be confident that Muslims will contribute as much tothe common weal in the 21st Century as Jews did during the 20th Century.



Rafael Castro is a political analyst based in Berlin who holds degrees from Yale and from Hebrew University.


The right photo is of Regina Jonas from Berlin, who In 1935 became the first Jewish woman to be ordained as a rabbi. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 -