RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 69manuscript may indeed be understood as one of translation: to trans-
late Jewish history and Zionism into Arabic, making use of non- Arabic
sources. In so doing, al- Khalidi “inscribes” Judaism “with domestic in-
telligibilities and interests,” and this example of asqāmah– ijmāʿ is an
acute case of this process. As al- Khalidi works to understand the course
of Jewish history, he inscribes onto Judaism his (and his audience’s)
preconceptions and assumptions, from a knowledge of Islam, about
how religions function. Asqāmah may thus be seen as al- Khalidi’s do-
mestication of the Islamic ijmāʿ.
complicating the standard notion of translation, this case problema-
tizes the presumed direction of translation, showing the ability (or
even inevitability) of the receiving language and culture to impose its
assumptions on that which is ostensibly translated. This case suggests
that a translator might not only inscribe domestic meaning onto the
foreign text but actually inscribe the domestic concept into the for-
eign text. This discussion further highlights the issue of interreligious
translation: that is, the translation not simply between languages but
between religions as well. In translating Jewish history into Arabic in
Late Ottoman Palestine, al- Khalidi translates Islam into Judaism, inter-
preting the Jews’ internal history from the perspective of one whose
understanding of religious systems is grounded in Islam.
What is critical to stress, though, and what is too often overlooked
in the scholarship on this period, is that in the encounter between Zi-
onists and Arabs (be they Muslim or christian) in Palestine, there was
an encounter between individuals of different religions who, to some
extent at least, understood each other in religious terms (and on their
ownreligious terms); these religious terms were critical to al- Khalidi’s
“intelligibilities and interests.” Ignoring religion, then, prohibits the
scholar from recognizing and analyzing some of the most fundamental
tools of understanding, or misunderstanding, with which these individ-
uals and communities operated.
Navigating between Sympathy and FearThus far we have seen the extent to which al- Khalidi turns to Jewish
history in his effort to understand the modern phenomenon of Zionism.
Al- Khalidi accepts the biblical and ancient Jewish narratives of two in-
dependent Israelite commonwealths in Palestine, and he acknowledges
the subsequent, persistent hope of a return to the Holy Land. Of Jewish
messianic expectation in the Talmud, he writes that