By Haroon Moghul
(CINCINNATI) I am neither Israeli nor Palestinian, yet the conflict there matters dearly to me. As a human being, of course, I cannot but be pained by the oppression and murder of innocents. And as an American, I am outraged that my taxes fund the dispossession and occupation of a people. As a person of recent Pakistani ancestry, the fact that (settler) colonialism continues today is deeply distressing.
But Palestine, and especially, Jerusalem, matter to me for still another reason. I am Muslim. And like all Muslims, I have religious obligations to the land – and its inhabitants.
While media coverage of the recent escalation in the conflict has markedly improved, not only because of social media but also because of the (long overdue) inclusion of minority voices into our mainstream conversation, still something is missing. There is precious little consideration for why so many Muslims are so invested in Jerusalem and its environs.
Indeed, it might not be too much to argue that hundreds of innocent lives could have been saved had we been aware of the force of these religious convictions, shared by nearly one-quarter of humanity, and how they intersect with and are amplified by 70-some years of ethnic cleansing, systemic discrimination and even apartheid.