Tuesday 28 January 2020

I tell Vincent Bruno that it doesn't matter if Chabad don't think Muslims or Secular Koranists are Noahides

https://brunosblogm.blogspot.com/2020/01/ask-noah-officially-declares-claire.html

Rabbi Schulman says "That makes the Quran and Secular Koranism not Noahide-compliant."

This is not surprising because if you are Chabad  promoting Jew-administered Noahidism for gentiles, you must already think that Islam - which is based on the Koran - is not good enough.

As I see it, Judaism and Islam are complementary in that the Torah is for Jews and the Koran for gentiles. Unlike the Torah and Koran which are believed by Jews and Muslims to be the Word of God, not even Christians are claiming that the New Testament was the Word of God. As we know, it was written by some guys called Matthew, Mark, Luke, John etc. Since Christianity is ipso facto idolatrous in the worst possible way - it is hard to think of exceeding the blasphemy of worshiping an executed revolutionary as the co-equal of the supreme and eternal Abrahamic God  - it drops out of the picture leaving Islam the only team to join if you want to worship the Abrahamic God without being guilty of idolatry.

It seem the late Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh whose idea it was in the 1860s to devise a Jew-administered religion for gentiles had some rather eccentric. His Wikipedia entry states:

"He claimed that Christianity is too monotheistic in comparison with the Kabbalah which views all pagan deities in their essence as partial manifestations or faces of the Absolute. Similarly, Benamozegh criticized the Christian view of Jesus as incarnated God on monistic or panentheistic grounds. According to Benamozegh's Kabbalistic view, the entire world is an incarnation of Shechina, the feminine aspect of Divinity. He believed that Hinduism is closer in this respect to mystical Judaism than Christianity."

His declaration of faith as an Italian Jew would doubtless be regarded as blasphemy and idolatry attracting the punishment of stoning, for it was as follows:

"O Israelites, that you will always love Italy, that you will love her with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind."

If Spinoza was so horribly cursed for confusing the Universe with God, then all the more would Rabbi Benamozegh if he had lived in the same time and place as Spinoza.

The point is that we cannot expect Chabad to be enthusiastically acknowledging Secular Koranism over their own Jew-administered Noahidism which they have been promoting since the 1860s.

The fact that Rabbi Benamozegh said idolatrous things whose punishment would attract the death penalty in a Torah theocracy would tend to discredit his idea of Jews devising a Jew-administered Noahidism for gentiles.

There are also the practicalities of selling it to gentiles. What kind of gentile would have his religion administered by Jews when he could avail himself of Islam? I think it would be a dim and Islamophobic kind of gentile tending to idolise Jews who would go for this sort of thing.

Now that I have demonstrated how easy it is for rabbis and gentiles to fall into idolatry, it is easy to justify not having a formal punishment, as the Koran does not, other than admonishing idolaters from time to time.

Finally, Jews and gentiles should not idolise their hatred and fear of Muslims and Islam to the extent of ignoring their own rules. I see no reason why Jews cannot simply promote Islam as a suitably Noahide religion other than the one of not wishing to antagonise Christian American Zionists. However, if they settled their territorial dispute with their neighbours, then all should be well again, and Jews will finally be able to speak the truth about idolatrous Christianity without fear or favour.

I am certain Israel adopting Secular Koranism (which is just another School of Sharia) would mollify Muslims everywhere and create an atmosphere of keen interest in what kind of job Jews make of interpreting and applying Secular Koranism.  Nothing in Secular Koranism (which is based on the Koran) should offend a reasonable Jew, I like to think. If only the Chabad rabbis would read it!

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