Skip to content
  • Image
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Podcasts
  • Email
  • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
  • Contact
The Arab Daily News

The Arab Daily News

Original news, features, opinions from Chicago to Jerusalem

  • About
    • About
    • Our Writers
    • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
    • Book Store
    • Contact
    • Submit Book Reviews, Press Releases
    • Advertise
    • Privacy Corrections Policy
    • Profile on Ray Hanania
    • Submit Press Release
  • Features
    • Food
    • Book Review
    • Humor
    • Movies
    • Travel
  • Arab Stores Targeted
  • Arab Community Network Page
    • Arab Community Network Page
    • Arab Heritage America resources
    • Directory
      • Groups & Organizations
      • Mosques, Churches
      • Restaurants
      • 2008 & 2014 Arab Media Directories
    • National Arab Heritage Month
    • Video: Chicago Arab History
    • Video: Photo Array of Chicago Arabs
    • Overview of Arabs in America
    • Hanania standup comedy
    • Arabs on the Titanic
    • Obituaries
  • Podcasts
    • Ray Hanania on Politics Podcast
    • Arab News Ray Hanania Radio
    • Arab Radio Podcast intro
    • Radio Baladi Detroit
  • Hanania on Tiktok
  • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
  • Toggle search form
  • photo credit author Nehemia Gershuni-Aylho www.NGPhoto.biz and Wikipedia
    Emergency Court Motions to Stop Elbit Drone Parts Shipment via Frankfurt Airport  Activism
  • American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh murdered by Israeli soldiers May 11, 2022
    Documentary names soldier it says killed Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 American Arabs
  • Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ
    Jordan bans 12 news sites for ‘spreading media poison’ following corruption report Arab World
  • CAIR Logo. Council on American Islamic Relations
    CAIR Condemns MIT for banning Class President from Graduation Ceremony over Anti-Genocide speech Activism
  • ADC creates emergency fund to defend people who are being punished for expressing views on the American-sanction violence by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Photo courtesy of ADC
    ADC Condemns ADL, Rep. Torres’ Defamation of Dr. Lara Sheehi Activism
  • UN Special Committee on Israeli practices in occupied territories warns of a second Nakba  Arab World
  • Arab American community liaison Hassan Nijem, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas and Bolingbrook Mayor Mary Basta at the Arab American Heritage Month event hosted by Pappas’s office.
    Pappas honors Arab American business and community leaders for Heritage Month Activism
  • 04-28-25 Pappas Arab Heritage Month
    Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas recognizes Arab American Heritage Month by honoring business and community leaders American Arabs
  • Stuffed Grape Leaves. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
    A recipe on how to make Stuffed Grape Leaves with lamb, ox tail and rice American Arabs
  • Andrew Boutros, interim US Attorney Northern District of Illinois. Photo courtesy of the US Attorney's Office
    Andrew S. Boutros Takes Oath of Office as United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois American Arabs
  • Israeli massacres of Palestinian civilians March 18 2025
    Palestinians demand investigation of Israeli war crimes in Gaza Strip Arab World
  • Illinois Muslim Action Day April 9 2025
    Illinois Muslim Action Day Policies at April 9 Statehouse News Conference American Arabs
  • Investigation demanded in March 23 massacre of 15 first responders by Israel's military in Rafah
    Investigation demanded into Israel slaughter of First Responder in Rafah on March 23, 2025 Arab World
  • More than a dozen candidates running for various local offices in the Chicagoland suburbs attended an Ifatr dinner Thursday, March 13, 2025 hosted by the Arab American Chamber of Commerce at the Jerusalem Banquet Hall in Bridgeview.
    Candidates promise fairness and engagement at Arab Chamber Iftar event March 13 Activism
  • Orland Fire Protection District, Fiscal Voices, receive endorsement of the Arab American Democracy Coaliton
    Independent candidates for Orland Fire receive Arab and Muslim American endorsement Activism

Christians Muslims: We are siblings not strangers

Posted on February 19, 2015February 19, 2015 By Abdennour Toumi No Comments on Christians Muslims: We are siblings not strangers
SHARE ...
          
 
  

  • Tweet

Muslims and Christians have a long history of friendship and respect that can’t be broken by recent events involving terrorism and violence by a few. Christianity and Islam have close ties that should not be destroyed by stereotypes and lack of knowledge. Government leaders should remember that.

By Abdennour Toumi

Islam ChristiansParis – France — In the early 80’s some French Leftist reporters called the Mullahs’ regime in Teheran “Islamo-fascist.” Later some Algerian colonists and artists described that country’s terrorist groups as “Khmers verts,” comparing them to the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia of the 70’s. In the U.S. some right-wing political talk-show hosts on American cable networks and radio shows were using the term of “Islamo-fascist” to describe the same terrorist groups.

After the British intelligence service prevented a terrorist plot from taking place over the transatlantic sky, then-President George W. Bush used the term “fascist” to describe the terrorists saying, “This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom.”

This description of the so-called “enemy” of America has offended many Muslims in the U.S. and elsewhere. The phrase has also been promoted by Thomas Friedman, an arrogant “expert on the Middle and Near East.” However, President Bush had already used the problematic word “Crusader” and thus bought into the idea that the world is engaged in this new “struggle” between the civilizations of the West and East (where East seems to refer to Islam).  After the tragedy of 9/11 some like to call it the “Clash.”

The term “Islamo-fascist” is too simplistic and does nothing to help summarize the long-term struggle against any radical, fanatical, utopian ideology. The term “fascist” has nothing to do with religion.

While Paris, London and Rome were in intellect darkness, Grenada, Baghdad, and Damascus were focusing on mathematics, medicine, chemistry and the arts. El-Farabi, Ibn-Hayan and Avicenna did not have a self-destructive ideology. Those scientists that founded the Islamic civilization were never called fascists or intégristes because they were engaged in enlightening the spirits and minds of the world.

(Muslim scientists are still contributing to the enlightenment of the West. A Muslim Algerian-American, Dr. Iyes Zarhouni, was appointed Director of the National Institute of Health by President Bush in May, 2002.)

But today Baghdad is burning and el-Hamra Palace is just a sumptuous tourist trap. Ben Laden, Zarqaoui, Zaouahiri and el-Baghdadi are destructive forces tearing apart from within whatever is left of that which the great founders of Islamic civilization built.

Europe knew fascist regimes in Italy, Germany and Spain in the 20’s and 30’s, and those regimes were inspired by men of Christian backgrounds. But the Muslims never described them as “Christian fascists.” They were labeled as Fascists, Nazis or Franco-ists. Those regimes exterminated Jews, Gypsies and liberal Republicans in Spain and Italy. Conscientious Muslim soldiers fought against the fascists for their former Colonists, protected Jews from Nazi soldiers in Paris, Algiers, Rabat and Tunis — North African and sub-Saharan men who hoped one day to be able to have their “freedom,” as General de Gaulle promised.

It was a broken promise, just one in a long tradition of broken promises.

The West’s scornful attitude continued in Iran when in 1953 the U.S. helped to remove a democratic government and replace it with a tyrannical regime. Many if not all Muslim regimes in the post-Colonial era got dictators who served the interests of the West rather than the cause of freedom and democracy. 

The ray of hope and change that defined the Arab Spring offered an antidote to the disease of what the West is “fighting” today in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya Mali and North Nigeria. Because of the West’s suspicions surrounding the Arab Spring, however, the countries that comprise MENA are now a string.

The U.S. explicitly supported regimes such as Pinochet in Chile and the Contras movement in Nicaragua. France also supported dictators in Africa and the Arab World(s). The U.S. experienced a terrorist act in the mid-90’s when Timothy McVeigh took the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans in Oklahoma City. And a grand jury indicted Craig Hicks on three counts of murder when he gunned down three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, N.C. earlier this month.

Even those “Charlies” intellos and philosophers in France repeatedly argue that they are against radical Islam, as do their counterparts in the U.S., yet the amalgam is obvious. Doe one speak of the Christiano-fascism of Anders Behring Breivik, the “butcher” of Norway, or the Judeo-fascism of the extreme far-right government of Israel?  No one calls them Christian-fascist or Judeo-fascists. Nor should they. 

The three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are all based on love, respect and harmony for all human beings. It is only the fanatics who betray them with their misinterpretations and ignorance.

Premier Valls is a leader in the land that penned the Human Rights Declaration, and President Bush was once a leader in the Free World. But Premier Valls needs to govern with patience and tolerance, not by borrowing a senseless phrase from Neo-con journalists and ideologists in D.C. who used “W” for their agenda to destroy MENA. Nor listen to those honey-tongues of the “Palace,” like BHL & Co. 

As a result, if today those dystopians are causing collateral damage to the U.S. and European national security, recall it was the West that paved that silky road in 2003.  Later, in 2011, then-President Sarkozy used the same map in Libya, then handed it on to his successor President Hollande in the Sahel.

Premier Valls who has a Catholic heritage should preach with knowledge and not under the influence of opportunism. President Bush was also a religious man (Born-again Christian) who instead of launching a dialogue between East and West (such as the one started by President Clinton in the mid-90’s), read instead Albert Camus’ book, The Stranger (L’étranger).

I don’t know what Premier Valls is reading these days but one hopes he is not reading about “Westerners” killing “Easterners” for no reason. May be he should read The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization by Richard Bulliet, in which the scholar argues that East and West are parts of one civilizational structure, and there is no room for any form of fascism. We are, surely, more siblings than strangers.

newswire info
  • About
  • Latest Posts
Abdennour Toumi
Follow me:
Abdennour Toumi
Abdennour Toumi:
- France correspondent for The Arab Daily News.
- www.bareed-areej.com Editor-in-Chief
رئيس تحرير مجلة بريد الأريج
- Political consultant at IMPR a Think-Tank based in Ankara, Turkey.
- Member at the European Observatory for Arabic Language Teaching based in Paris, France.
- Affiliated with Sociology of Islam Journal and contributor at Middle East Studies / International Studies, Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies Center, Portland State University in Portland, OR.

EDUCATION: Diplôme des Études Approfondies (DEA) in Political Science from Toulouse University I, France. Master’s degree in Law from Algiers University, Algeria.

Email im at: nourhty@gmail.com
Abdennour Toumi
Follow me:
Latest posts by Abdennour Toumi (see all)
  • The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Is the Neither-Peace-nor-Security As-sumption Dominating Again? - June 7, 2021
  • Algeria: “I Can See Clearly Now” - August 5, 2019
  • Majesty Mohammed VI and General Gaïd Salah Tear Down This Wall! - July 29, 2019

  • Tweet

SHARE ...
          
 
  
 
          
 
 Tweet 
Abdennour Toumi, Arab World, Bloggers, Commentary, Editors Picks, religion, Spotlight Tags:2011 Egyptian revolution, A-ok, Arab Spring, Houthis, Middle East, Shia Islam, United States, United States Department of State, United States Marine Corps, Yemen

Post navigation

Previous Post: Civil rights activists target RE/MAX convention in Vegas
Next Post: The American language of race and stereotypes

Related Posts

  • Le Bâton de Guerre of President Hollande on Terror Abdennour Toumi
  • Weeping Icon, Miraculous Lady of Cicero, St. George Church, Cicero, Illinois
    St. George Church celebrates 25th Anniversary of Weeping Icon miracle Christian & Muslim
  • head shot
    Soccer and Politics in a Day of Glory Abdennour Toumi
  • Protest in Sanaa, Yemen (February 3, 2011) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
    128 detainees repatriated back to Yemen from Saudi Arabia Arab World
  • rab American Democratic Club hosts a gathering of elected officials and journalists looking at the recent elections, celebrating Ramadan and Arab American Heritage month (April.)
    Arab American Heritage Month, Ramadan feted by Journalists and elected officials American Arabs
  • Daniel earl, murdered in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
    Blinken condemns Pakistan decision to acquit killers of Daniel Pearl Arab World

More Related Articles

Media, Trump and a Moral Compass #MLK #FreePalestine American Arabs
Signed by USS LIBERTY Vets at 50th Reunion in Norfolk, VA. June 2017 American Legion Resolution 40 for USS LIBERTY and the 115th Congress Arab World
Egypt Human Rights group condemns government crackdowns Activism
Arab League backs Saudis against Iran aggression Arab World
Signed by USS LIBERTY Vets at 50th Reunion in Norfolk, VA. June 2017 USS Liberty Veterans Association to End 50 year Cover-up and Obstruction of Justice case against USS Liberty Crew Arab World
New book details forced marriage of Arab woman American Arabs

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Ray Hanania's 4 times a week columns at https://RayHanania.com at Substack

Enter Your Email to Subscribe to Ray Hanania’s Columns

  • OPINION COLUMNS
  • Photo courtesy of Journalist Abdennour Toumi
    France: Political Compromise vs Political Instability
    August 28, 2024
  • Zakia Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia
    Arabs eat Middle East food like they are making love
    June 27, 2024
  • Zwar lamb kabob and kufta with white and yellow rice
    Zwar ranked the Best Middle East restaurant in Chicagoland suburbs
    June 8, 2024
  • Pictured: Rahm Emanuel, Afghan activist Salman Aftab who was co-chair of the Iftar dinner, and several non-Arab Muslim leaders. Also pictured is Ald. Joe Moore. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania for Arab News
    Comprehensive look at the failings of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
    January 18, 2024
  • NEWSWIRE
  • CAIR Logo. Council on American Islamic Relations
    CAIR Condemns MIT for banning Class President from Graduation Ceremony over Anti-Genocide speech
    June 1, 2025
  • Arab American community liaison Hassan Nijem, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas and Bolingbrook Mayor Mary Basta at the Arab American Heritage Month event hosted by Pappas’s office.
    Pappas honors Arab American business and community leaders for Heritage Month
    April 29, 2025
  • 04-28-25 Pappas Arab Heritage Month
    Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas recognizes Arab American Heritage Month by honoring business and community leaders
    April 27, 2025
  • Mike Ghouse
    Celebration of 500th Interfaith Marriage Ceremony
    February 14, 2025

Creative Commons License
All work on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Do not edit original work. Give credit to the original source.

  • NEWS
  • photo credit author Nehemia Gershuni-Aylho www.NGPhoto.biz and Wikipedia
    Emergency Court Motions to Stop Elbit Drone Parts Shipment via Frankfurt Airport 
    June 7, 2025
  • American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh murdered by Israeli soldiers May 11, 2022
    Documentary names soldier it says killed Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022
    June 1, 2025
  • BOOK REVIEWS
  • Faisal Abbas Book Anecdotes
    Book Review: Arab author shares his anecdotes living in the United Kingdom
    October 22, 2024
  • Columnist Ray Hanania at the ADC Convention in Dearborn with the author Susan Abulhawa
    Book Review: Mornings in Jenin bySusan Abulhawa
    September 14, 2024
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • Television set and remote. Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
    MBC GROUP unveils MBCNOW, its brand-new groundbreaking entertainment service aggregator
    February 24, 2025
  • ArabCon 2024 Gala Program features Dr. Cornel West, Macklemore, and more
    September 6, 2024
  • New-iTunes-1400-x-1400-The-Ray-Hanania-Show-Podcast-Icon-300-x-300.jpg
  • Podcast-iTunes-Logo-Chi-City-Hall-1985.jpg
  • The-Kings-Pawn-Book-300-x-300.png
  • terroristbookcover-300-x-300.jpg
  • powerpr300x300ad.jpg
Arab News Newspaper Logo
Read the Arab News, the leading English language newspaper in the MIddle East

Follow Ray Hanania at
Twitter
Facebook
TitkTok
BlueSky
RayHanania Columns

Click here to get information on The Ray Hanania Radio Show and its podcasts

Copyright © 2025 The Arab Daily News.

Powered by PressBook Premium theme