Mitri Raheb is one of my favorite theologians. I came across his work after reading a book by Philip Jenkins called The New Faces of Global Christianity that was basically racist. Written in the early 2000’s in the wake of 9/11 it argues, among other things, that Muslims are all fundamentalists. Eager to purify my thoughts from this book’s contaminating influence, I bought Emerging Theologies from the Global South, which Raheb edited. This was so good that I wrote a book review of it for the Wesleyan Theological Journal, which just came out.
I bought this book, Decolonizing Palestine, several months ago. After a gripping introduction that describes the realities on the ground, there are four chapters. As is written in the introduction, “Over the last seventy years, many theological concepts have advanced and colonized the minds of generations of theologians worldwide. These concepts may have been well intentioned, but they perpetuate an orientalism that has dangerous implications in the current context of Palestine.”
Of the four chapters…
The first is on “Settler Colonialism, Palestine, and the Bible” of which my favorite part was how it talked about how “Christian theology has played a role in almost all settler-colonial projects” (5) and how the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 3379 which stated that “Zionism [is] a form of racism and racial discrimination” (15). There are also extremely important events about the past ten years of escalation up to October 7 (the book was released just before October 7, so it doesn’t cover the current genocide). Raheb writes at one point, “The plan promises prosperity for the Palestinians while denying them justice, colonizing their land, exploiting their natural resources, and robbing them of dignity and freedom” (26). Another damning comment: “Pence reiterated in his speech a common belief that Arabs and Muslims are the descendants of Ishmael. […] Isaac’s supremacy over Ishmael is taken at face value and has been used repeatedly by White supremacists to subjugate Black people, African Americans, First Nations, Arabs, Muslims, and the Palestinians” (27). This is 1/40th of all the good things in this chapter.
The second chapter, “Christian Zionism: The Christian Lobby Supporting Settler Colonization in Palestine,” talks about how we should think about Zionism as an action rather than as a theology and defines Christian Zionism as “a Christian lobby that supports the Jewish settler colonialism of Palestinian land by using biblical/theological constructs within a metanarrative while taking glocal considerations into account” (31). This whole chapter is fabulous.
The third chapter is “The Land, The Bible and Settler Colonialism.” There is so much good here, but to give you a flavor, on page 55 Raheb talks about talking with a friend who was a theologian about writing a book about Jerusalem. The friend, in the US, thought of Jerusalem as Jerusalem in the Bible, while Raheb was raised going there weekly. Raheb writes:
“I recognized his focus on the biblcial Jerusalem in his language. He referred to the area of the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (the Haram) as the ‘Temple Mount.’ Why would a Christian theologian call this area the Temple Mount when there has not been a temple there for the last two thousand years, and two major and ancient Muslim shrines dominate the skyline? […] Ignoring and failing to reference two current and major Muslim holy sites, instead refrerring to the whole area as the Temple Mount, can no longer be understood as innocent. In today’s volatile political context, the very phrase is problmatic, to say the least” (55).
The chapter goes into detail about why names matter.
And the fourth is “Chosen People?” This is my favorite chapter, and you’ll have to buy the book to learn more!
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