72 the islamic prismthe demand for a Jewish national home. More than a dispute over na-
tional rights, it was primarily a religious challenge: a former Dhimmi
group was aspiring to be the own er and master of a land that had con-
tinuously remained under Islamic rule since 638, when Caliph Umar
captured Jerusalem. If one excludes the period of the Crusades (1095–
1291), Jerusalem and its environs had remained under Arab and Otto-
man rule for over a millennium. So long as the Jews were prepared to
accept Islamic rule and the conditions imposed by the Dhimmi arrange-
ment, their lives and properties were protected. The kind of anti- Semitic
death and destruction perpetrated by Eu ro pe an Christendom never
plagued the Jews of Islam.^15 The demand for a Jewish homeland radi-
cally challenged this arrangement. The Zionists or “new Jews” now de-
manded sovereignty, not protection; equality, not toleration; and po liti-
cal rights, not religious privileges.
Even if he did not appreciate the nuanced diff erences between the old
and new Jew, the Mahatma’s views on the Palestinian question captured
the central arguments of Islam. Unlike other Indian leaders, he had a
better grasp of the religious aspects of the issue and was prepared to ex-
plain his support for the Arabs using explicit and easily identifi able Is-
lamic motifs. More so than Nehru, he was prepared to see the problem
in its true sense: as an Islamic question. Regarding Islamic claims, the
Mahatma was less diplomatic and more blunt. As a wafq property, he ar-
gued, Palestine could not be handed over to non- Muslim sovereignty. In
his assessment, the prophet Mohammed had given the holy land to the
believers and thus non- Muslims could not aspire for any national home
there, as the Balfour Declaration visualized. As discussed earlier, these
positions were controversial and not without their share of problems. At
the same time, they clearly made Islam a factor in India’s understanding
of the problem in Palestine.
The intertwining of the protection of the Ottoman Empire and the
caliph with the events in Palestine had an overwhelmingly religious fl a-
vor. Initially, the Congress Party shared Muslim concerns over Allied war
objectives vis-à- vis the Ottoman Empire. It viewed the Allied campaign
as a war against an Islamic power whose ruler also functioned as the
temporal head of the ummah (literally, the community of believers). Once
the offi ce of the caliph was abolished by the modern Turkish state, INC
leaders shifted their concern to the issue of Islamic holy places not being
under Islamic control. Even though nationalism subsequently became