Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has refused to host an event in honor of the holy month of Ramadan, breaking with a tradition that began a couple of years before the time 19 Muslims drove two passenger jets into the World Trade Center in downtown NYC, Reuters reported late Saturday night.
President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright began the tradition 18 years ago, and it has become a tradition for the secretary of state to speak about the meaning of Ramadan. Incidentally, the same Albright has announced recently that she is considering registering as a Muslim in solidarity Muslims in Donald Trump’s America.
And she just discovered her Jewish roots not long ago…
Reuters has dug up an April 6 State Dept. memo recommending that Secretary Tillerson hold an Eid al-Fitr reception at the end of this year’s Ramadan, on Friday, June 15. No plans for such an event have been issued since.
This will likely become fodder for op-ed writers and late night comedians, who serve a nation that demands its daily servings of Trump – which will predictably conclude in Tillerson’s capitulation. Already a State Department spokesperson has told Reuters: “We are still exploring possible options for observance of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month of Ramadan. US ambassadors are encouraged to celebrate Ramadan through a variety of activities, which are held annually at missions around the world.”
So, sure, get ready for the post-Ramadan barbecued lamb at the State Dept. in about a month.
It is difficult to ignore the influence of Jewish tradition on Muslim rituals in general and Ramadan in particular, in a kind of upping the spiritual ante on the part of the illiterate security guard who ended up galvanizing a new religion. Jews pray three times a day (four on Shabbat) year-round, but on Yom Kippur we pray five times (adding the Ne’ilah prayer at the end of the services). So Mohammed decreed that Muslims pray five times a day year-round. Jews fast one day on Yom Kippur? Mohammed decrees that Muslims would fast for a whole month.
It’s also known as Supersessionism, or replacement theology. It began with the Christian view that the Christian Church has succeeded the Jews as God’s favorite children, and was followed by Islam, which views itself, the way Clive Kessler put it after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris, carried out by faithful Muslims, as “the final successor to and the completion of the Abrahamic faith tradition of ethical and prophetic monotheism.”
According to James Carroll, writing in the NY Times in 2007, “this dynamic does not end when Islam replaces Christianity and Judaism as the fully realized religion of revelation, but continues within the traditions, with Protestantism, for example, claiming to supersede Roman Catholicism. Among Muslims, exclusivist sibling rivalry takes the form of the Sunni-Shiite argument over inheritance of the mantle of Mohammad.”
And, if we may be so bold, Reform Judaism is following the same dynamics when it wishes to replace the Rabbinic tradition in Israel, most notably at the Kotel.
A happy month of Sivan and a happy celebration of the holiday of the giving of the Torah – which started all this trouble.