http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/02/iraq-tomb-jewish-prohet-ezra-turned-islamic.html
An Iraqi journalist claims that the shrine to Ezra, a Jewish
prophet, is a symbol of “religious tolerance and confessional coexistence”.
However, it seems to me that rather than it being a symbol of religious
tolerance, it is a symbol of a lack of sympathy and sensitivity towards other
religions. The Iraqi Shiites deliberately removed Jewish symbols, replaced them
with Islamic versus, and replaced any explanation of Ezra’s story with Islamic
books and Shiite figures. Obviously this exploitation of a significant space for
Jews will not positively affect Jewish-Muslim relations.
Shiite leaders justify the Muslim domination of the shrine
by stating that Ezra is a holy prophet according to the Quran. It is clear that
Jews and Muslims then share a role model- Ezra- so why not take advantage of
this shared admiration to bring these seemingly tension-filled religions
together?
When I wrote my article about this post, I took a completely different approach. I am not surprised at all that we have two majorly different opinions on this article, it's actually kind of cool because the way different people interpret different things varies so much. Personally, I thought the fact that the shrine still contains some Jewish symbols and Hebrew writing is good because it shows that coexistence is possible. But I can understand why it may seem offensive to Jews that read the article because the part about how some symbols were removed as well may stand out as a negative aspect.
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