Response paper to Judaism (World Religion)

Identifying Judaism is so difficult for us. Term of Judaism can be referred to religion, ethnicity or political movement. In Indonesia, term of Judaism is more political than religious term. For instance, many Muslims in Indonesia worried about the conspiracy for destroying Islam (Bruinessen : no year. p.2).

This worrying usually arose from the propaganda from radical movement of Indonesia. They tend to spread that the root of decadency in Islamic world is based on the Jewish conspiracy, called Zionist. This is really wrong judgment because Judaism is different from Zionism. Many people just believe that Judaism and Zionism are similar. Of course, this blind judgment disserves Judaism at all. Many Jewish people recognize that they are Jews, but they are not Zionist.

Of course, our duty now is how to make a better understanding about Judaism. There is no doubt that Zionism and Judaism are interesting term for getting much attention of Indonesian Muslim. It will be difficult because the idea of simplify that all Jews are Zionist is very strong here.

Questions:

1.      Why does the Conspiracy theory always relate to Jews?

2.      How strong the identity of Judaism among those three categories, Judaism as religion, as ethnicity, or as Political movement?

3.      Does religious teaching of Judaism give much color of the interpretation of Zionism? How far?? Is it real religious movement or just political movement?