Rabbis from Jewish settlements have given a box of Korans to a West Bank mosque as a gesture of solidarity after an arson attack blamed on settlers.

Palestinians cheered as the rabbis and other settlers arrived at the village of Beit Fajjar in bulletproof cars accompanied by Israeli soldiers. They were welcomed by the local imam.

The attackers set fire to a carpet and a dozen Korans in the mosque and wrote Hebrew slogans on the walls. The army has vowed to find the perpetrators. The residents of Beit Fajjar allege that a group of settlers from the nearby Gush Etzion settlement bloc entered their village on Monday and set light to its mosque in a bid to derail the Middle East peace process.

On Tuesday, a delegation including the prominent Rabbis Menachem Froman from Tekoa and Aharon Lichtenstein from Gush Etzion, visited the ancient mosque in a show of solidarity and condemned the attack. They brought with them about a dozen copies of the Koran.

“Our goal is to share our horror at the attack of the mosque and to clearly state that this is not the way of the Torah or the Jewish way,” said Rabbi Shlomo Brin of the Yeshivat Har Etzion.

“This act does nothing for the settlements; it is morally and religiously wrong and is offensive to its core,” he added. “This is not how we educated our children; Islam is not a hostile religion even if we have a dispute with some of its followers.”   »»» BBC News

The Qur’an tells us that there are righteous Jews and Jewish scholars recognize that there are righteous Muslims. The great Jewish scholar Maimonides (who was given asylum in North Africa by the Muslims after the Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain by the Catholic King Ferdinand, said:

Muslims are not in any way idolators. [Idolatry] has already been removed from their mouths and their hearts, and they unify G-d in the appropriate manner without any admixture [of idolatrous beliefs]. (Responsa 448)

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