Islamic Antisemitism - Quranic and Nazi Origins
August 20, 2019
It is clearly not a popular, liberal or humanistic view to examine antisemitism perpetrated, reinforced or endorsed by Muslim extremists. Few will deny that the Christian faith had adherents to antisemitism for eons, the Crusades were fought against Jews and Muslims, and Christian Europe is responsible for the blood bath that was the Holocaust. However, one cannot continue to present antisemitism as only a right wing, white nationalist ideology when clearly there is a long history of, as well as present day, hostilities dramatically dominated by Islamists globally. It is mere shadow boxing to say that fighting antisemitism starts and stops with fighting extreme rightist or Nazi views. Liberals have to wake up to the fact that the 3 headed monster of antisemitism is extreme right, extreme left and extremist Islam, the latter two often married to one another.
This video provides the correct history of the Nazi-Muslim Brotherhood alliance that aided Hitler and led to the Arab attacks on Jews in Palestine, continuing with Arab attacks on Jews in Israel, the intent of which has always been to extinguish Israel.
The Global Pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred
Mort Klein, CEO of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), presented to the House Judiciary Committee of the US Congress earlier this year. As reported on April 12, 2019 in Arutz Sheva, he "courageously shattered the prevailing, enforced silence of our (American) national political class regarding this global pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred, rooted in mainstream Islam." His full presentation is here and the ZOA written report is here.
Klein noted data available from the Anti-Defamation League’s latest published survey on the Global Index of Anti-semitism. No surprise: the highest level of antisemitic attitudes among the 19 European countries surveyed (randomly by phone and in person) is among the Muslim population in each country, whether immigrant or European born. When looking at regions of the world as a whole, here is the picture.
Going into the detail, the study revealed that 93% of Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank (disputed territories) hold antisemitic attitudes. Clearly this insidious hatred varies in degree across countries and regions, but it cannot be overlooked that it is highest in Muslim majority countries, even where there are no Jews, and is often taught within the Islamic culture. Education is not the panacea we once thought as this chart illustrates.
Where Christians and non believers are less prejudiced if better educated, the reverse holds among Muslim respondents to the survey. This suggests that Muslim education feeds antisemitic attitudes or the curriculum is biased against Jews. That has proven to be true of the UNWRA funded educational content offered to Arabs in Gaza and the disputed territories.
The survey extrapolates based on population size by country using the index of antisemitism, to determine that 1,090,000,000 people worldwide hold antisemitic views. The survey and its methodology are available here.
Let’s ask the tough unpalatable questions: did Nazism bring antisemitism to the Muslim world? Is the reported pandemic something now in the making? Is it entirely due to Israel’s existence which roused feelings of dispossession, oppression and of course, “occupation”, among Muslims? Is it inherent in the literal and fundamentalist teachings of the Islamic faith?
Senior Hamas Official Calls for Slaughter of Jews throughout World July 14, 2019
“We must attack every Jew on planet Earth and slaughter and kill them,” declared Hamas Political Bureau member Fathi Hammad.
Amid mounting tensions between Israel and Hamas, one of the terror group’s top officials in Gaza sent out a call on Friday July 12, 2019 to Palestinians throughout the world to attack Jews. The speech delivered at a “March of Return” rally, broadcast on the terror group’s television station, Al-Aqsa TV, demanded that Israel lift the “siege” on the Gaza Strip by Friday, July 19. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported this based on the video of the address, view here.
“There are Jews everywhere,” Hammad shouted. “We must attack every Jew on planet Earth!"
How are YOU sleeping at night?
Is the source of the pandemic, the existence of Israel leading to a newly developed antipathy for Jews, or did it begin with the alliance forged between Hitler and Husseini?
Here is where it’s imperative to look to “root cause” and one of the scholars who has studied the matter intensely is Dr. Andrew Bostom, an American MD whose written several books on the subject. Bostom commented after Klein spoke to Congress; a few excerpts here.
"Mr. Klein emphasized the disproportionate occurrence of hate crimes against Jews in America - a consistent phenomenon for over two decades based upon hard FBI data (1996 - 2017.
Indeed, despite the Committee’s hand-wringing about “Islamophobia” - notwithstanding 53 jihadist attacks which have caused 158 deaths in the U.S., since the cataclysmic 9/11/2001 jihad carnage, and zero, remotely comparable depredations by Jews - hate crime rates targeting Jews, between 2015 and 2017, remained 2.2 to 3.1-fold higher, relative to the rates of hate crimes against Muslims.
Mr. Klein’s greatest “offense,” however, was to expose the moral perversity of focusing on “Islamophobia,” or worse still equating it with Antisemitism, when Jews are being subjected to a global pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred, which includes the attitudes of U.S. Muslims."
"There is a 2 to 4.5-fold excess of Muslim Jew-hatred, relative to any other major religious affiliation, or atheism/agnosticism, and this association with Islam persists amongst the Muslim diaspora populations in Western Europe, and the U.S."
Specific findings, include:
The world’s 16 most Antisemitic countries are all in the Muslim Middle East, where 75% to 93% exhibit extreme Antisemitism - Judea-Samaria/Gaza 93%; Iraq 92%; Yemen 88%; Algeria 87%; Libya 87%; Tunisia 86%; Kuwait 82%; Bahrain 81%; Jordan 81%; Morocco 80%; Qatar 80%; United Arab Emirates 80%; Lebanon 78%; Oman 76%; Egypt 75%; Saudi Arabia 75%
The prevalence of extreme Antisemitism in Western Europe - Belgium, 68% of Muslims vs. 21% of the general population; Spain, 62% of Muslims vs. 29% of the general population; Germany, 56% of Muslims vs. 16% of the general population; Italy, 56% of Muslims vs. 29% of the general population; United Kingdom, 54% of Muslims vs. 12% of the general population; France, 49% of Muslims vs. 17% of the general population
The prevalence of extreme Antisemitism in the U.S., 34% of Muslims vs. 14% of the general population
The prevalence of extreme Antisemitism, globally, by religious affiliation—Muslim, 49%; Christian, 24%; No religion, 21%; Hindu, 19%; Buddhist, 17%
"Mort Klein further shattered an even more profound taboo: He made plain how Antisemitic themes from canonical Islam — the Koran, and the traditions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad (the “hadith”)—as preached, most importantly, by Sunni Islam’s Vatican, Al-Azhar University, and its Grand Imam Papal equivalents, were responsible for inculcating these Jew-hating attitudes in the global Muslim masses.
The late Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (d. 2010), was singled out by Klein — appropriately. Tantawi was one of the most revered modern authorities on Koranic exegesis, or “tafsir,” having edited a massive 15-volume modern Koranic commentary, and helped create the largest online website of such analyses. He also authored what can be aptly described as modern Islam’s Koranic Kampf on the Jews, entitled “Banū Isrāʼīl fī al-Qurʼān wa-al-Sunnah,” or “Jews in The Koran and The Traditions”. Tantawi’s magnum opus, a 766 page Muslim academic religious treatise, includes this summary Koranic rationalization for Muslim Jew-hatred:
"The Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [see Koran 2:61 / 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously [4:161], refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do [3:120; 5:79], and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted (lascivious) envy [2:109]…only a minority of the Jews keep their word…[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not."
More ominously, as Klein noted in his opening statement, Tantawi’s exhaustive modern analysis of Islam’s defining, canonical sources concluded by sanctioning bigoted—even violent—Muslim behaviors towards Jews."
"Tantawi’s successor, current Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb, whom Klein also alluded to, shares Tantawi’s Jew-hating virulence. Al-Tayeb has dubbed the Jews eternal Koranic enemies (per Koran 5:82), blamed Jews for the rise of ISIS and other jihadist groups, and claims “the issue of Antisemitism is a lie.”
Dr. Andrew Bostom Explains the History of Islamic Antisemitism
Excerpted from Amazon.com
This comprehensive, meticulously documented collection of scholarly articles presents indisputable evidence that a readily discernible, uniquely Islamic antisemitism-a specific Muslim hatred of Jews-has been expressed continuously since the advent of Islam. Debunking the conventional wisdom, which continues to assert that Muslim animosity toward Jews is entirely a 20th-century phenomenon fueled mainly by the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict, leading scholars provide example after example of antisemitic motifs in Muslim documents reaching back to the beginnings of Islam.
Dr. Navras Aafreedi Looks at Antisemitism in South Asia
Countries that are located in South Asia, such as Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, have produced some of the most influential Islamic thinkers, who have all played a pivotal role in shaping political Islam. Thinkers such as Shah Wali Allah, who is considered to be one of the originators of pan-Islamism, Rahmatullah Kairanwi, Muhammad Iqbal, Syed Abul A’la Mawdudi, and Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi are among some of those Islamic thinkers, who not only shaped political Islam, but also have had a global impact as a whole. Unfortunately, Islamism is intertwined with Muslim antisemitism, and South Asia is a region that is home to some of the most important and influential inspirations of Islamic theological studies. Studies such as, “Darul Ulum Deoband,” which is the alleged source of ideological inspiration to the Taliban.
A history professor from the “Presidency University,” in Calcutta, India, Navras Aafreedi wrote a paper that touches upon important topics of Islamism, topics such as, how Muslims see other religions like Christianity and Judaism, how the European colonial experience shaped the nineteenth-century Islamic political thought, how contemporary Islamist Judeophobia has textual roots in the Qur’an, and many other crucial topics that are necessary to understand in order to start understanding why Muslims see the other religions the way that they do.
Aafreedi’s paper also talks about influential South Asian Islamic figures of then and now, figures like Shah Wali Allah of Delhi, who is considered to be one of the three leading renewal advocates, who are considered the originators of pan-Islamism, Rahmatullah Kairanwi, who wrote in 1864, his famous book, “The Truth Revealed”, where he writes that the Jews falsified the sacred texts, and many other figures who have all played their roles in shaping the Muslim mindset not only in the Middle East, but in the Muslim world as a whole. This paper will give an introductory overview of antisemitism in the Muslim intellectual discourse in South Asia.
Aafreedi’s academic work is making a huge contribution to understanding the problem of Islamic Antisemitism.
Read Antisemitism in the Muslim Intellectual Discourse in South Asia, published last month.
A Millennial’s Perspective on Standing Up for Israel
By Daniel Bordman, Communications Coordinator
There is a new Zionist superstar in the Jewish community, and as Menachem Begin would say, she is not a Jew with trembling knees. Earlier this year, Lauren Isaacs burst into the public consciousness when she decided to take a seemingly innocuous picture of herself holding a Jewish flag on the Temple Mount.
As many of us are aware, we live in a world where Catholics can take pictures at the Vatican, Muslims can take pictures at Mecca and no one will bat an eye. However, if a Jew has the audacity to take a picture at the holiest site of Judaism, this is somehow a controversy.
Speaking with Lauren, her reasoning behind the photo had nothing to do with politics, or making a point. She was simply a proud Jew, happy to be standing on the holiest site in Judaism. This seems a refreshing view point. What followed was a cascade of hate mail and death threats, though with a balance of messages of support. Probably the most refreshing part of this whole event was the fact that she did not backdown and wilt under the hatred.
A few words from our Summer Student, Artem Meleshchenko
On behalf of CAEF, I would like to thank second year college student, Artem Meleshchenko, who functioned as Admin Assistant for part of the summer, and showed us how a non Jewish young adult can gain knowledge of issues affecting the global Jewish world and how much this is essential to addressing antisemitism.
Three exciting presentations by Professor Xu Xin.