A Road to Peace in Western Asia? Cracking the Qur'an Code

בס''ד

Originally published at Desicritics.org, 22 May 2010
Copyright © R. Kossover, 2010

It was late April on a warm night in Jerusalem. The room on the third floor of the Israel Center in Jerusalem filled up. Dr. Asher Eder introduced the evening as the master of ceremonies. His opening remarks were to serve to introduce Lowell Gallin’s new book, Cracking the Qur'an Code: God’s Land, Torah and People Covenants with Israel in the Qur’an and Islamic Tradition.

In much the same fashion that the short story, The Sentinel, was the seminal work for the novel, 2001, this essay by Dr. Asher Eder, Peace is Possible Between Ishmael and Israel According to the Qur'an and the Tanakh, has been the seminal work that has helped bring forth Lowell Gallin's groundbreaking book, Cracking the Qur'an Code: God’s Land, Torah and People Covenants with Israel in the Qur’an and Islamic Tradition.

In his remarks, Dr. Eder pointed out how the Qur’an is deliberately misinterpreted to create conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims and read greetings from Sheikh Professor Abdulhadi Palazzi

The author, Lowell Gallin, then began his lecture. He described how a former Deputy-Attorney General of Israel, Nahum Rakover, introduced him to Sheikh Professor Palazzi, who has turned out to be the man whose appearance was foretold by Dr. Eder 40 years ago – a Muslim scholar who would arise who would state in plain Arabic and English that the “emperor had no clothes”; that Jew-hatred, Israel-hatred, holocaust denial and anti-Zionism was a lot of garbage. And then he launched into his subject.

I managed to get an interview with Lowell Gallin, and the topics covered on that hot evening in April in that lecture are revealed to you in the interview following immediately below.

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What inspired this book?

There was no such book and I thought there should be such a book. The book is composed of essays - but the "reactor core" of the book are the Sacred Verses which are divided into five sections:

1. God's Land Covenant with Israel,
2. God's Torah Covenant with Israel,
3. God's People Covenant with Israel,
4. The Eternal Capital of the Israelite Kingdom of David and Solomon, and
5. The Tabernacle - references to the First, Second and Third Temples (Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Qur'an by name - it is not mentioned in the Torah by name, either).

Why should a Muslim be interested in a Jew explaining his book to him? Doesn't that seem arrogant?

The book is written in honor of and based on the teachings of Dr. Asher Eder of Jerusalem, and Sheikh Professor Abdulhadi Palazzi of Rome, Italy. I acted as a scribe or recording secretary to put their teachings in book form. Sheikh Palazzi recommended that we use the English translation of and commentary of the Qur'an by Professor Abdullah Yusuf Ali - his English translation and commentary on the Qur'an is the one most respected by Muslims world wide. Note that the 3rd Edition of Prof. Ali's Commentary was published in Lahore, India, in 1938. It is critical to use a modern version of this work that is absolutely faithful to this 1938 3rd Edition, not one corrupted by "Saudi" or Wahhabi publishing houses. The two "kosher" publishing houses today of this work [Ali, Abdullah Yusuf. The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary] are Goodword Books, New Delhi, India, (e-mail: info@goodwordbooks.com) and Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc. Elmhurst, New York, (e-mail: read@koranusa.org).

Why and how does one make this claim? What do you mean by "kosher" editions?

A. In the original commentary Prof. Ali used the word "God" whereas the "improved" Wahhabi versions use "Allah" - the "improvers," the Wahhabi, believe that Allah cannot be translated. This is just a way to identify the tampered translation.

B. In the original commentary, Prof. Ali had many positive comments about other religions, Hindus, Zoroastrians, as well as Jews and Christians. The "improved versions" remove all of these.

You say you merely are a scribe or recording secretary. Sheikh Palazzi has a website where his own teachings are made very clear. Why this book, then?

This is the first book to give all qur'anic references to the five subjects I mentioned above. Professor Ali gives the majority opinions, and where applicable, he mentions minority commentators as well. You get from Professor Ali a "sense of the Muslim consensus". The book has a section on the work of Salah Choudhoury, a Bangladeshi journalist who is a Muslim Zionist, and a section on pro-Israel ethnic Turkic (Sunni Muslim majority) nations. It should be noted here that the Muslim world is not all anti-Israel, nor is it necessarily united in its politics, and we non-Muslims do not really comprehend it very well.

Somehow there is a disconnect here. Why is it that so many régimes, particularly Turkey, are so hostile to Jews and Israel if Muslims supposedly are not?

Muslims where? Albanian, Azerbaijani, and the Central Asian Turkic republics have strong diplomatic, economic and military relations with Israel. What about everybody else? The North African nations are not really Arabs. Ethnically, they are not Arabs at all. What about the Pakistani, the millions of Muslims in India? What about the Malaysians, the Indonesians, the rebels in the Philipines? What about the Arab nations and the Muslim "diaspora" in Europe and elsewhere? What function does the Jew-hatred, anti-Israel sentiment, and holocaust denial serve in these countries? It's really very simple.

The autocratic régimes, if you want to even call them that, can deflect the rage of their own people at the inablility of these régimes to provide anything. These societies are nightmares, they are living hell on earth. Their leaders say to themselves, "You cannot blame yourself, you cannot blame your elders, you cannot blame G-d." Some blame the Jews for the poverty. That's how these régimes survive. That's how the so-called "Palestinian" society survives. Their basic attitude is "someone else is always responsible for our mess".

Who funds all this? "Saudi" Arabia, Quwait, and the Gulf States are funding this world-wide. This is the "public" face of "Islam." What you are really seeing is the public face of Wahhabism pretending to be Islam.

What is Wahhabism? Why is it so bad?

Wahhabism is the tribal religious cult of the al-Saud tribe of Nejd in Arabia. Wahhabis believe that all NON-WAHHABIS are not really Muslims. ONLY Wahhabis are true Muslims. Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, in Wahhabi eyes, are NOT Muslims. All non-Muslims are fair game for murder, rape, theft, and torture. They make videos of the "fair game." Like fourteen year old school girls, or Daniel Pearl who was beheaded. Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the Taliban are all Wahhabi in theology and are funded from "Saudi" Arabia. Their oil money funds all these terror activities and wars.

The Wahhabi call themselves Salafi. Too many call them "jihadists", or "Islamo-fascists" or "Islamic fundamentalists." These names mean nothing and only mislead and cover up the true evil - the true people who are carrying on and inciting war between the Children of Abraham.

Thank you very much.

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In the end, this book, though written in English, is for Muslims to read. They are the ones who study the Qur’an. It is their holy book, and the bottom line, the argument of this book, is that the Qur’an guarantees the right of the Children of Israel to control all of the Land of Israel. Having contributed to this book myself, I cannot write a review on it. But the acid test is not how I, a Jew, might view this book, but how a Muslim might. And Professor Fazal ur-Rehman Afridi, a Muslim from Pakistan, has written a review of this work at his site, The Balkanization of Pakistan.

Dr. Eder made a point about Islam about how Muslims view efforts at success. According to Dr. Eder, who once considered converting to Islam, Muslims believe that they have an obligation to try three times with their best and strongest efforts to accomplish something. Only after they have tried three times with their best efforts, and have failed, will they say that Allah meant for that endeavor not to succeed. Then he explained how the Muslims attempted to conquer Europe twice – once in 782 C.E., when they were stopped by Charles Martel, and the second time in the late 1600’s C.E. when they were stopped by the Swedes. The third attempt is taking place now. If this book can help stop this effort, so much the better. But that is not the main reason this book has been written. The real intent of the book is to bring peace between the Children of Ismail, and the Children of Israel.

The reason I’ve sought publication of this article at a South Asian site, is that India has the second largest number of Muslims of any nation in the world, and to my knowledge, English speaking Pakistanis and Bangladeshis can access this site as well.

This means that hundreds of millions of Muslims could be exposed to this article, and possibly be influenced to buy this book (from Lulu.com) and to come to view the Qur’an in a light that can bring peace to my war-torn region of the world, as well as possibly to their own. At present, this region is on the edge of war, yet another war, one that will be brought about by evil men whose “messianic” vision will bring yet more death and destruction to this region.

Apparently, the millions dead in the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980’s were not enough; the thousands dead in the fighting in Yemen have not been enough. The thousands dead in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are not enough. The millions wounded and crippled for life are not enough. The homeless in refugee camps of the desperate throughout the Middle East are not enough. It seems that to the Wahhabi terrorists across South Asia and the Middle East, and to the Shi’a madmen in Iran, more death, more injured, and more refugees are what the doctor ordered.

Speaking as a Jew and as an Israeli, I tell you that if this nation is attacked, and it may well be attacked as early as this summer, this nation will deal out death to its enemies. Our eyes will hold no pity, and there will be more dead, more wounded, more refugees whose lives have been ruined by the destruction of their homes, and possibly even worse destruction, destruction I would rather not name.

But a lot of this can be changed by a change of heart. And Cracking the Qur’an Code provides an avenue for that change of heart.

So, I am appealing to my Muslim cousins reading this to take the effort to read Cracking the Qur’an Code to understand that yet one more time, the hand of peace is being offered; not the greasy palm of the bought off politician, but the dry hand of a man of peace who does not want to see his children forced to become men of war. Time grows short, and opportunities to avert terrible evil grow fewer and fewer. But a change of heart may enable wounded souls and hearts to heal and bring peace, that we might all sit, each one of us, under our own fig tree without fear and look towards tomorrow – a tomorrow of hope and prosperity.

Cracking the Qur'an Code: God's Land, Torah and People Covenants with Israel in the Qur'an and Islamic Tradition (Jerusalem: Root and Branch Association, Ltd., Print and E-Book Editions. Copyright © Lowell Gallin, 2009). On sale now at Lulu.com. Bulk order discounts and worldwide shipping are both available.