166 • ChAPTEr 4
and immediate.” the Jews are, after all, “a nation [qawm] that engages
in excessive usury.” through their deception and money, the Jews
have been able to control France “like a ball in their hands and end the
rule of the Church”— despite the fact that France stands at “the pin-
nacle of science, civilization, politics, wealth, and power.” how much
more facilely, rida warns, will Jews be able to dominate the Ottoman
government, given its state of “ignorance and weakness and its need
for money.”
Before returning to his discussion of the corruption of the torah, rida
allows himself one further remark on contemporary events: a warning,
or threat, concerning the consequences of Zionism’s success. the Jews’
desire to rule palestine is so intense, and the danger so alarming, be-
cause “Jerusalem [bayt al- muqaddas] holds great importance for both
Muslims and Christians.” If Jews succeed in gaining control there, rida
contends, “they will establish Israelite sovereignty and transform the
al- Aqsa Mosque (the Temple of Solomon)— which is the direction they
face when praying^107 — into a temple exclusively for them.” And this,
rida suspects, will “ignite the fires of riots, prophesied clearly in the
traditions regarding the end of Days.” rida insists that “the Ottoman
nation [al-ummaal-ʿuthmāniyya] must strive to prevent” this Jewish
attempt to gain control over palestine. If not, “this will prove lethal to
Ottoman power, may God protect us.”^108 and with this, rida resumes
his exegetical discourse on a Qurʾanic sura that deals with the Jews’
corruption of their scripture.
For rida, Zionism represents the Jewish effort to replace the al- Aqsa
Mosque with a new Jewish temple. Jews are willing to use any means
at their disposal, and in particular illicit, sinister financial means, to
gain control of palestine. rida portrays the potential consequences of
Zionist success in terrifying, explicitly eschatological terms. Critical
to note here is that for rida, as for al- Khalidi, the Zionist movement
was a religious phenomenon— i.e., Zionists were acting out of religious
motivations^109 — and, especially for an Islamic scholar such as rida, the
movement was most appropriately understood and assessed through a
Qurʾanic exegetical lens.
One month later, in al-Manār’s final issue of 1910, rida once more
turned to the subject of Zionism in his opening Qurʾanic commen-
tary. he writes not only of the Jews’ desire “to restore their dominion
(^107) al-masjidal-aqṣā(haykalSulaymān) wa- huwa qiblatuhum. Clearly, al- Khalidi’s equa-
tion of the al- aqsa Mosque and the temple of Solomon, discussed in chapter 2, was not
entirely idiosyncratic in this historical and cultural context.
(^108) al-Manār 13:10 (November 1910), 726.
(^109) al- Khalidi, however, viewed the movement as a violation of the proper understand-
ing of modern Judaism, as we saw in chapter 2.