The publicist Khola Maryam Hübsch
Image: Verena Müller
We must regain sovereignty over our religion. The terror of invading hordes, disguised as vigilantism of the oppressed, remains barbaric extremism. A guest post.
II still remember the first time I heard the story about the Prophet Muhammad and a Jewish corpse. The prophet, it is said, stood up out of respect as a congregation of Jewish mourners passed him. His companions persuaded him to stay put: only one Jew died, they say. “Isn’t a Jew a human soul?” replies the prophet and stops.
I immediately thought of a scene from Lessing’s Nathan, probably the most important drama of the Enlightenment. Drunk with wisdom, the Jew asks Nathan: “Are Christian and Jew more like Christian and Jew than human beings? Uh! If only I had found one more in you for whom it was enough to be called a human!”. In the Jerusalem of the Crusades, Lessing turns a Jew, who lost his entire family in an anti-Semitic pogrom, into a symbol of humanity. With God’s help, he manages to overcome his hatred of Christians and adopts a Christian baby.
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