TIMES ONLINE: The Chief Rabbi has called on Muslims to get used to living as a minority in Britain and to learn to separate religion from power.
Lord Sacks said that neither Muslims nor Christians had yet learnt the lessons inflicted on the Jewish people by the Babylonian exile.
“One of the great advantages of being Jewish is you know how to sing in the minor key,” he said. “We have had 26 centuries of experience ever since the Babylonian exile of living as a minority in the midst of a culture that does not share our views. Christianity and Islam have not had that experience.”
He said that Christianity had learnt toleration but only after 100 years of “knocking the hell out of each other all over Europe”.
He said: “So Christianity went through its experience, Judaism has been through it a long, long time ago and Islam has not yet had that experience.
“I have no doubt that Islam will work its way through to the essential situation that Judaism arrived at and Christianity, namely the substantive separation of religion from power. But there’s no quick way of getting there. It is quite a difficult and painful process within religion.
“Only Muslims can do it. Nobody can tell them from the outside. That would be taken as an affront and I would regard it as morally unacceptable. I do see some wonderful Muslims in this country and elsewhere, in Iraq and even in Iran, going through that process. >>> Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent | Friday, November 06, 2009
