Thursday, November 09, 2006
Oh, Good...
Jews and Muslims in the Middle East have finally found something they agree on:
No word if Ted Haggard will be joining the protest.
- Jews, Muslims join to fight gay parade
Jerusalem event sparks anger, riots
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | November 9, 2006
JERUSALEM -- Ultra-Orthodox Jewish pop singer Benny Elbaz was so angry about the gay pride march planned for tomorrow that he joined forces with a Muslim man he normally would consider an enemy, to sing a duet he composed denouncing the event.
"Jerusalem Will Burn!" Elbaz croons in Hebrew on the single, released the week before the parade. "There will be no gay march!"
Religious Jews and Muslims are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum on most issues, especially over who should control the contested city of Jerusalem, which Israelis and Palestinians both claim as their capital. But Jews, Muslims, and even some Christians have formed a common front against Jerusalem's gay community, whose planned march they say besmirches the city.
"Only this onslaught of homosexual radicalism could bring together such disparate voices," said Rabbi Yehuda Levin, an anti gay activist from Brooklyn, N.Y., who has traveled to Israel several times this year to rally opposition to the gay pride parade.
Levin has joined forces with Tayseer Tamimi, the head judge of the Islamic Sharia court in the West Bank.
"This march is part of the wild campaign against Islam, the doctrine, the holy sites," Tamimi said. "All religions discredit gays...because it is against the decent human nature created by God."
Islamic religious leaders from the West Bank joined by video link because they are barred by Israel from visiting Jerusalem.
Elbaz formed another of the unlikely partnerships that has characterized the vociferous and at times violent campaign. "I decided to sing with an Arab singer to emphasize that both religions are opposed to the gay parade," Elbaz said. "No religion will have it, especially not in the Holy City."
But the rhetoric of the anti gay religious and secular leaders -- mostly Jewish, but some Muslim -- dwarfs Elbaz's comparatively tame lyrics.
The angry talk and open threats against the march have provoked alarm among gay rights leaders, who recall that last year an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed three people during the gay pride march.
No word if Ted Haggard will be joining the protest.
