Criticism of European anti-Semitism always neglects its context. That is, it mistakes its object, frequently construed as being Israel, for being more important than what it has in common with other continental racisms. It is always a criticism of the Jewish right to statehood, to political freedom, never an acknowledgment of a larger prejudicial impulse towards towards persons of Mideast descent, which attaches itself to different European Semitic communities at different times.

Indeed, contemporary accounts of anti-Jewish racism bear little to no difference from descriptions of the phenomenon in the 1930s, when Jews were the primary representatives of ethnic difference in Europe. This should come as no surprise. Anti-Jewish racism is an ancient prejudice, one whose roots go back over two millennia. Its age guarantees a sense of continuity, of feeling as though nothing has changed, that when it comes to European Jewry, history always remains at a standstill.

The problem is that it never does, that time moves on irrespective of how it favors us. Take, for example, the fact that for nearly sixty years, Europe has been, comparatively speaking, 'Jew-free', even though in countries such as Germany, Jewish populations have begun to grow. Most significantly, during this time Muslim migrants have begun calling the continent their home. Frequently hailing from Arab countries and from Turkey, as well as east Africa and south Asia, Muslims have come to bear the same kind of difference for Europeans as Jews.

The irony of this change is its timing. Taking place at precisely the same moment that European Jewry was formally reestablishing itself in the Mideast, these migrants came to live in a Europe that had only recently emerged from the Holocaust, and was disengaging itself from its colonial holdings in many of these immigrants own home countries. Living in the shadow of both of these events, their European presence has always been a challenge, in turn creating relations between Muslims and Jews different than those impacted by the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Reading the mountain of Jewish-authored op-eds last week about the Aftonbladet affair, I could not help but wonder why, if we were really dealing with a case of anti-Semitism, not a single charge ever sought to place itself within the context of greater trends in contemporary European xenophobia. Was it because of the political persuasions of the persons making the claims, who, even if they are not sympathetic to Arabs, cannot see the similar ideological mechanism that substitutes Muslim for Jew, and vice versa?

Or was it because the  critique of anti-Semitism took form before the advent of large scale Muslim immigration to Europe, and never had the opportunity to redefine itself to include both peoples? I’m inclined to believe the latter, especially considering the degree to which the critique of anti-Jewish racism became problematized in left circles following the Six Day War. ‘Anti-anti-Semitism’, as it is often called, came to be considered an ideology masking Israeli transgressions against Palestinians, not a critique of anti-Jewish racism.

To the post-1967 progressive mind, we had become Europeans, when, until Israel's independence, we were considered neither fully white nor adequately oriental, even though it was not uncommon for Jews to be derided as 'Muslim'. The problem is that the contemporary judgment of the left, committed as it is to the colonial critique of Zionism, oversimplifies this history, forgetting it, impeding the Arab connection. It also fails to acknowledge any other Jewish ethnicity than Ashkenazi, further severing any ties between Jews and the Levant. 

Anti-Arab racism had to unnecessarily get segregated, independent of European Muslims’ experience of the same basic prejudices as the continent’s former Jewish population. There would be no concentration camps, but there would be facsimiles of practically everything else: specifically a combination of ghettoization and integration. Muslims would be similarly treated as 'outsiders within the bourgeoisie', as Max Horkheimer once described Europe’s Jews, as well as icons of the global south, as perennially itinerant migrant laborers.

This is why the obsession over medieval blood libels and the like, in the case of Swedish allegations of organ harvesting, is so troubling. Its historic specificity repeats this act of segregating European racisms towards Jews and Arabs by unnecessarily privileging the archaic quality of the charge, in certain instances, contending that is also a product of outside influences, i.e. Arab agitation, if not representative of a coalescing of left-wing anti-Semitism and Palestinian-Muslim interests.

What if the accusation isn't reflective of such influences, but, rather, is an attempt to harness the distress of the Mideast conflict for the purposes of staging anti-Semitic prejudices, writ large? Might we not see it as equally exploitative of the Palestinian victim alleged to be the embodiment of this macabre crime, that he is also being exploited in a racist fashion, just like we are? What would that teach us about the kind of prejudice being exercised here, particularly the company Jews and Arabs are forced to keep by it?

It is not that identification of the resurfacing of the blood libel narrative is wrong, though, in my view, there is an uncomfortably narcissistic quality to its emphasis. The problem is that the charge of blood libel is not tied to anything else, that it is decontextualized. That this might be, perchance, a reflection of the way that the Arab-Israeli conflict has determined how we talk about racism, such that we could misconstrue its breadth. Or for that matter, discourage us from asking why Europeans would indulge it now, in such a highly complex manner.

Joel Schalit is Zeek's online editor. His next book, Israel vs. Utopia, will be published this October by New York's Akashic Books. Schalit lives and works in Milan, Italy.

 

One thing I've always admired about Britain is its almost pathological tolerance for eccentric or fringe opinion. We have fascists and communists in the United States, but they seldom pose a threat to commanding large, electable movements such as the British National Party, or the Socialist Workers Party, or the Galloway-led RESPECT coalition (which consists of a rump of disaffected Marxists marching arm-in-arm with Islamist reactionaries who, under more preferable circumstances, would happily kill disaffected Marxists). Anyway, my friends at the social democratic blog Harry's Place -- many of whom contribute to Jewcy, or allow us to cross-post -- have been doing excellent work bringing to their readers' attention instances of resurgent Jew hatred in the UK. They do this even when Israel is not at war with Hamas, but as you can imagine, their labor has trebled in recent weeks.

Jews were expelled from England in 1290 by King Edward I and only allowed back in after Oliver Cromwell decided they should be in 1656. Without issuing an official decree, the hero of the Roundheads simply instructed Menasseh ben Israel, a Sephardic Jew from Amsterdam, to establish a Jewish community in London.  Since then this small but vibrant minority has found itself entangled in domestic eruptions of fascism, communism, Zionism, and everything in between. Karl Marx did most of the spadework for Capital in the Reading Room of the British Museum. Arguably the most influential prime minister of the 19th century, Benjamin Disraeli, was himself a Jew, and one can't invoke the old aphorism, "think Yiddish, dress British" without recalling that Isaiah Berlin, who would find neither positive nor negative liberties embodied in the medieval fever-dream now gripping modern Europe, was a Russian-Jewish exile. Through tweed and toil--and humane skepticism of the materialist fever-dream he had fled in St. Petersburg--Berlin became the picture of donnish liberalism. 

I bring this up by way of introducing the following letter. It's as important as anything you've yet read about the international reactions to Operation Cast Lead:

In the Name of God, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful

16th January, 2009

Dear Fellow Muslims,

We are deeply saddened to hear about anti-Semitic assaults on British Jews, and a recent arson attack on a London synagogue. Although the perpetrators are yet unknown, we unreservedly condemn attacks on innocent British citizens and the desecration of all places of worship.

The ongoing killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza by Israeli forces has angered us all.

However, this does not, and cannot, justify attacks on our fellow citizens of Jewish faith and background here in Britain.

Most Muslims are completely against such behaviour. However, we call on all Muslims to continue to remain vigilant against attempts to bring our own faith and community into disrepute. British Jews should not be held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.

Yours in Islam and peace,

Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad, Cambridge
Shaikh Mawlana Shahid Raza, Leicester/London
Shaikh Sayyid-Mohammed Musawi, London
Shaikh Ali Qadiri, Barking
Shaikh Mufti Barkatulla, London
Shaikh Dr Musharraf Hussain MBE, Nottingham
Shaikh Dr Usama Hasan, London
Shaikh Bilal Abdullah, London
Shaikh Aftab Ahmad Malik, Bristol
Shaikh Irfan Chishti MBE, Rochdale
Dr Tahir Abbas, Birmingham
Navid Akhtar, London
Parvin Ali OBE, Leicester
Kamran Fazil, Birmingham
Rokhsana Fiaz, London
Ed Husain, London
Azeem Ibrahim, Glasgow
Maajid Nawaz, London
Dr Zahoor Qureshi, London
Usman Raja, Berkshire
Yasmin Sheikh MBE, London
Zeshan Zafar, London

Part 3 focuses on the Antisemitic motifs in Islamic eschatology and how they have become enmeshed with the "corporeal" Antisemitism from Islam's foundational texts to engender a contemporary atmosphere of genocidal Muslim Jew hatred. This third and final installment also illustrates the interaction between indigenous Islamic Antisemitism, and two salient "imports" from colonial Europe-specifically, the blood libel, and Nazism. Concluding observations illustrate the scope of contemporary Muslim Jew hatred fueled by orthodox motifs in Islam's foundational texts, and reinforced by Islam's central religious educational shrine, i.e., Al Azhar University, and its Muslim Pope equivalent, to textbooks widely used in Islamic schools across the globe, even those within the United States.

The recent annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Charter, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology [end of times theology]. As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews' supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl-the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ-or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith included in the 1988 Hamas Charter (in article 7). Another hadith variant, which takes place in Jerusalem, has Isa (the Muslim Jesus) leading the Arabs in a rout of the Dajjâl and his company of 70,000 armed Jews. And the notion of jihad "ransom" extends even into Islamic eschatology-on the day of resurrection the vanquished Jews will be consigned to Hellfire, and this will expiate Muslims who have sinned, sparing them from this fate. Moshe Sharon recently provided a very lucid summary of the unique features of Shi'ite eschatology, its key point of consistency with Sunni understandings of this doctrine, and Iranian President Ahmadinejad's deep personal attachment to "mahdism":

Since the late ninth century, the Shi'ites have been expecting the emergence of the hidden imam-mahdi, armed with divine power and followed by thousands of martyrdom-seeking warriors. He is expected to conquer the world and establish Shi'ism as its supreme religion and system of rule. His appearance would involve terrible war and unusual bloodshed.

Ahmadinejad, as mayor of Teheran, built a spectacular boulevard through which the mahdi would enter into the capital. There is no question that Ahmadinejad believes he has been chosen to be the herald of the mahdi.

Shi'ite Islam differs from Sunni Islam regarding the identity of the mahdi. The Sunni mahdi is essentially an anonymous figure; the Shi'ite mahdi is a divinely inspired person with a real identity.

However both Shi'ites and Sunnis share one particular detail about "the coming of the hour" and the dawning of messianic times: The Jews must all suffer a violent death, to the last one. Both Shi'ites and Sunnis quote the famous hadith [Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985] attributed to Muhammad: The last hour will not come unless the Muslims fight against the Jews, and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and the stone or the tree would say: "Muslim! Servant of Allah! Here is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!" Not one Friday passes without this hadith being quoted in sermons from one side of the Islamic world to the other.

Here I think it is helpful (and sobering) to illustrate the still dominant understanding of so-called "Islamic" Antisemitism that persists in the public domain, as expressed, for example, in the brief Michael Ezra posting, and by journalist Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower, his widely acclaimed investigative account of the events leading to the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism on September 11, 2001.

Until the end of World War II...Jews lived safely -although submissively-under Muslim rule for 1,200 years, enjoying full religious freedom; but in the 1930s, Nazi propaganda on Arabic-language shortwave radio, coupled with slanders by Christian missionaries in the region, infected the area with this ancient Western prejudice [antisemitism]. After the war, Cairo became a sanctuary for Nazis, who advised the military and the government. The rise of the Islamist movement coincided with the decline of fascism, but they overlapped in Egypt, and the germ passed into a new carrier.

Wright's statement was not accompanied by documentation-this was the accepted "wisdom" after all, promoted, sadly, even by historian Bernard Lewis. And on Thursday, June 5, 2008 during an interview on the National Public Radio Boston affiliate (WBUR) program "Here and Now," with Robin Young, author James Carroll opined with distressingly ignorant certitude, "The Christian tradition of antisemitism has spread like a virus and it has been picked up-caught by segments of Arab, Islamic culture but one of the things to be quite aware of is that there is nothing endemic to the religion of Islam or to certainly the text of the Koran that leads to Antisemitism." [emphasis added].

Why are these (admittedly) imported motifs considered "Islamic," and what is their impact, relative to the Jew-hatred engendered amongst Muslims, for over a millennium, by indigenous, motifs from Islam's foundational texts?

The infamous 1840 Damascus blood libel represents a classic Christian Antisemitic motif transferred to the Islamic world. One cannot simply affirm (while grossly exaggerating) the "catastrophic effect" of Christian motifs "at work" in Islamdom, relative to Islam's own intrinsic Antisemitic motifs-the impact of the former has to be proven, and the historical "proof" is a negative proof, by any objective standard.

For example, morbid as such comparisons may be, the actual body count from the "watershed" 1840 Damascus event was paltry in comparison to the numerous Muslim anti-Jewish pogroms precipitated by purely Islamic motifs, like Koran 2:61 and the related apes (2:65 and 7:166) or apes/pigs (5:60) verses used to incite great massacres in Granada (1066), Baghdad (1291), and Touat, Morocco (~1490). Hundreds to thousands died in these earlier pogroms; despite the heinous accusations of the Damascus blood libel, only four of the thirteen Jews imprisoned for the 1840 Damascus blood libel died during their incarceration and torture. The other nine were released unconditionally, and one of these survivors, Moses Abulafia, became a Muslim in order to escape his torture.

Historical analyses of the 1840 Damascus blood libel by Tudor Parfitt and Jonathan Frankel emphasize these two key features which were independent of Christian anti-Jewish motifs, per se: the general support that the persecution of the Jews was given by the Arab Muslim population at large, in reaction against the various reforms introduced (under Muhammad Ali) which sought to ameliorate some of the most oppressive aspects of dhimmitude; the fact that this negative reaction by the Muslim masses to these reforms had much more serious repercussions-against Christians-during the anti-Christian pogroms which marred Damascus in the 1860s. Indeed as Frankel observes, despite their own bigoted anti-Jewish attitudes, it was the European consuls who drew the line in 1840,

... when it came to the threat of wholesale massacre...advising that the Jewish communities receive military protection. Just how real that danger was would become apparent twenty years later, when the Christian population of Damascus was decimated in a Muslim, primarily Druse, slaughter

With regard to the later impact of Nazism in the Muslim Middle East, thirty-fours years ago (in 1974) Bat Ye'or published a remarkably foresighted analysis of the Islamic Antisemitism and resurgent jihadism in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout the Islamic world. (A full English translation of this book chapter, till now only available in Hebrew, is included in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.) Bat Ye'or demonstrated that the primary, core Antisemitic and jihadist motifs were Islamic, derived from Islam's foundational texts, on to which European, especially Nazi elements were grafted.

The pejorative characteristics of Jews as they are described in Muslim religious texts are applied to modern Jews. Anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism are equivalent-due to the inferior status of Jews in Islam, and because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery, the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad. Here the Pan-Arab and anti-Western theses that consider Israel as an advanced instrument of the West in the Islamic world, come to reinforce religious anti-Judaism. The religious and political fuse in a purely Islamic context onto which are grafted foreign elements. If, on the doctrinal level, Nazi influence is secondary to the Islamic base, the technique with which the Antisemitic material has been reworked, and the political purposes being pursued, present striking similarites with Hitler's Germany.

That anti-Jewish opinions have been widely spread in Arab nationalist circles since the 1930s is not in doubt. But their confirmation at [Al] Azhar [University] by the most important authorities of Islam enabled them to be definitively imposed, with the cachet of infallible authenticity, upon illiterate masses that were strongly attached to religious traditions.

In The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, I have elaborated on how the earlier tragic mass killings-in Bat Ye'or's accurate parlance, these decimations by Jihad-for "breaching" the dhimma, which afflicted the Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire (Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians) throughout the 19th century, culminating in the jihad genocide of the Armenians during World War I (and documented, by historian Vahakn Dadrian [pp. 403ff] to have inspired Hitler to express the notion of predictable impunity with regard to future genocides), were nearly replicated in historical Palestine, but for the advance of the British army.

During World War I in Palestine, between 1915 and 1917, the New York Times published a series of reports on Ottoman-inspired and local Arab Muslim assisted antisemitic persecution which affected Jerusalem, and the other major Jewish population centers. For example, by the end of January, 1915, 7000 Palestinian Jewish refugees-men, women, and children-had fled to British-controlled Alexandria, Egypt. Three New York Times accounts from January/February, 1915 (reproduced in the book) provide details of the earlier (i.e., 1915) period.

By April of 1917, conditions deteriorated further for Palestinian Jewry, which faced threats of annihilation from the Ottoman government. Many Jews were in fact deported, expropriated, and starved, in an ominous parallel to the genocidal deportations of the Armenian dhimmi communities throughout Anatolia. Indeed, as related by historian Yair Auron,

Fear of the Turkish actions was bound up with alarm that the Turks might do to the Jewish community in Palestine, or at least to the Zionist elements within it, what they had done to the Armenians. This concern was expressed in additional evidence from the early days of the war, from which we can conclude that the Armenian tragedy was known in the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine]

A mass expulsion of the Jews of Jerusalem, although ordered twice by Djemal Pasha, was averted only through the efforts of [the Ottoman Turks World War I allies] the German government which sought to avoid international condemnation. The 8000 Jews of Jaffa, however, were expelled quite brutally, a cruel fate the Arab Muslims and the Christians of the city did not share. Moreover, these deportations took place months before the small pro-British Nili spy ring of Zionist Jews was discovered by the Turks in October, 1917, and its leading figures killed. A report by United States Consul Garrels (in Alexandria, Egypt) describing the Jaffa deportation of early April 1917 (published in the June 3, 1917 New York Times), included details of the Jews plight, and this ominous warning:

The same fate awaits all Jews in Palestine. Djemal Pasha is too cunning to order cold-blooded massacres. His method is to drive the population to starvation and to death by thirst, epidemics, etc, which according to himself, are merely calamities sent by God.

Yair Auron cites a very tenable hypothesis put forth at that time in a journal of the British Zionist movement as to why the looming slaughter of the Jews of Palestine did not occur-the advance of the British army (from immediately adjacent Egypt) and its potential willingness "..to hold the military and Turkish authorities directly responsible for a policy of slaughter and destruction of the Jews"-may have averted this disaster.

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine-anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Congressional Record contains a statement of support from New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about "Turkish and Arab agitators... preaching a kind of holy war [jihad] against...the Jews" of Palestine. Earlier, in 1921, leaders of the Indian Khilafat (Caliphate) movement made clear at conferences held in (far removed) India that Islamic suzerainty must prevail over all of historical Palestine. And in 1920, at the local level, within British controlled Palestine, Musa Kazem el-Husseini, former governor of Jaffa during the final years of Ottoman rule, and president of the Arab (primarily Muslim) Palestinian Congress, in a letter to the British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuels, demanded restoration of the Shari'a-which had only been fully abrogated two years earlier when Britain ended four centuries of Ottoman Muslim rule of Palestine-stating that this Religious Law, was "... engraved in the very hearts of the Arabs and has been assimilated in their customs and that has been applied ...in the modern [Arab] states..." During this same era within Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current -epitomized by both Hajj Amin el-Husseini and shortly afterward, Izz ad din al-Qassam-promulgated the forcible restoration of Shari'a-mandated dhimmitude via jihad. Indeed, two years before he orchestrated the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920, i.e., in 1918-ten years before the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood-Hajj Amin el-Husseini stated plainly to a Jewish co-worker (at the Jerusalem Governorate), I.A. Abbady, "This was and will remain an Arab land...the Zionists will be massacred to the last man...Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country."

Nazi academic and propagandist of extermination Johannes von Leers' writings and personal career trajectory-as a favored contributor in Goebbel's propaganda ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers) while working as an anti-Western, and antisemitic/anti-Zionist propagandist under Nasser's regime from the mid-1950s, until his death in 1965-epitomizes this convergence of jihad, Islamic antisemitism, and racist, Nazi antisemitism, as described by Bat Ye'or, in 1974. Already in essays published during 1938 and 1942, the first dating back almost two decades before his formal conversion to Islam while in Egypt, von Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Medina. These essays reveal his pious reverence for Islam and its prophet, and a thorough understanding of the sacralized Islamic sources for this narrative, i.e., the Koran, hadith, and sira, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.

Citing (or referring to) the relevant foundational text sources (i.e., Koran 13:36; 8:55-58; 59:1-15; the sira and canonical hadith descriptions of the fate of individual Jews such as Abu Afak and Ka'b ibn Ashraf, and the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayzah, as well as the Jews of the Khaybar oasis), von Leers in his 1942 essay "Judiasm and Islam as Opposites,"-fully translated and annotated for the first time in English in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism-chronicles Muhammad's successful campaigns which vanquished these Jews, killing and dispersing them, "...or at most allow[ing] them to remain in certain places if they paid a poll tax." Von Leers further describes the accounts (from the hadith, and more elaborately, the sira) of Muhammad's poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, and also notes the canonical hadith which records Caliph Umar's rationale for his putative expulsion from northern Arabia of those remaining Jews who survived Muhammad's earlier campaigns:

On his deathbed Mohammed is supposed to have said: "There must not be two religions in Arabia." One of his successors, the caliph Omar, resolutely drove the Jews out of Arabia.

And von Leers even invokes the apocalyptic canonical hadith which 46 years later became the keystone of Hamas' 1988 charter sanctioning a jihad genocide against the Jewish State of Israel:

Ibn Huraira even communicates to us the following assertion of the great man of God: "Judgment Day will come only when the Moslems have inflicted an annihilating defeat on the Jews, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden says to believers: ‘Behind me stands a Jew, smite him.'"

Von Leers' 1942 essay concludes by simultaneously extolling the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty, and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later:

They [the Jews] were subjected to a very restrictive and oppressive special regulation that completely crippled Jewish activities. All reporters of the time when the Islamic lands still completely obeyed their own laws agree that the Jews were particularly despised...

Mohammed's opposition to the Jews undoubtedly had an effect-oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed by Islam. Its back was broken. Oriental Jewry has played almost no role in Judaism's massive rise to power over the last two centuries. Scorned, the Jews vegetated in the dirty alleys of the mellah, and were subject to a special regulation that did not allow them to profiteer, as they did in Europe, or even to receive stolen goods, but instead kept them fearful and under pressure. Had the rest of the world adopted a similar method, today we would have no Jewish question-and here we must absolutely note that there were also Islamic rulers, among them especially the Spanish caliphs of the House of Muawiyah, who did not adhere to Islam's traditional hostility to Jews-to their own disadvantage. However, as a religion Islam has performed the immortal service of preventing the Jews from carrying out their threatened conquest of Arabia and of defeating the dreadful doctrine of Jehovah through a pure faith that opened the way to higher culture for many peoples and gave them an education and humane training, so that still today a Moslem who takes his religion seriously is one of the most worthy phenomena in this world in turmoil.

And even earlier, in a 1938 essay, von Leers further sympathized with, "the leading role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem [Hajj Amin el-Husseini] in the Arabians' battles against the Jewish invasion in Palestine." Von Leers observes that to the pious Muslim, "...the Jew is an enemy, not simply an ‘unbeliever' who might perhaps be converted or, despite the fact that he does not belong to Islam, might still be a person of some estimation. Rather, the Jew is the predestined opponent of the Muslim, one who desired to bring down the work of the Prophet." Leers' description of the origins of the Muslim "forename," Omar Amin he adopted as part of his formal conversion to Islam in a November, 1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson, highlights his personal and doctrinal connections to the Mufti, with whom he engaged in a longstanding collaboration:

I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hadj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti.

This October 1957 US intelligence report on von Leers' writings and activities for Egypt and the Arab League confirmed his complete adoption of the triumphalist Muslim worldview, desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization by jihad-a vision all too prevalent today:

He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail.

The hypothesis that Nazism, as imbibed and promulgated by the Muslim Brotherhood is somehow the penultimate source of all "genocidal" Jew hatred in the modern Middle East, is completely untenable, as revealed in this simple exchange. I posed the following basic question to one of the champions of this Nazi-centric viewpoint, and recorded their reply:

[Question] "...what would have happened, say in late 1922-the Muslim Brothers were not formed until 1928; the Nazis do not come to power until 1933-with regard to Islamic jihad and Islamic Jew hatred, specifically, if the British had created some rump state Jewish homeland, actually governed by Jews, and rapidly departed, bearing in mind both the fate of other dhimmi nationalisms in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Serb, Greek, Bulgarian, Armenian), and the special place occupied by dhimmi Jews in Islamic eschatology?"

[Reply] "Yes. They [the Jews] would have been slaughtered, possibly to the last man, woman and child."

The rise of Jewish nationalism-Zionism-posed a predictable, if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order-jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews-of apocalyptic magnitude.

This is exactly the Islamic context in which the widespread, "resurgent" use of Jew annihilationist apocalyptic motifs-exemplified by the Hamas charter, the utterances by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, and the messianic beliefs of Ahmadinejad-would be an anticipated, even commonplace occurrence. The Shi'ite jihadist organization Hezbollah, not surprisingly, proclaims these sentiments with triumphant exuberance. Hezbollah is viscerally opposed to Judaism and the existence of Israel, stressing the eternal conflict between the Jews and Islam. Eradicating Israel represents an early stage of Hezballah's Pan-Islamic ambitions, and its jihad against the rest of the non-Muslim world.

The most senior clerical authority for Hezbollah, Husayn Fadlalah has stated, "We find in the Koran that the Jews are the most aggressive towards the Muslims...because of their aggressive resistance to the unity of the faith." Fadlallah repeatedly refers to anti-Jewish archetypes in the Koran, hadith, and sira: the corrupt, treacherous and aggressive nature of the Jews; their reputation as killers of prophets, who spread corruption on earth; and the notion that the Jews engaged in conspiratorial efforts against the Muslim prophet. Fadlallah argues, ultimately, "Either we destroy Israel or Israel destroys us."

Muhammad. Hassan Nasrallah, current Secretary General of Hezbollah, and a protége of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, presently Iran's highest ranking political and religious authority (i.e., its "Guardian Jurisprudent"), has reiterated these antisemitic and annihilationist views with particular vehemence. Invoking motifs from Islam's foundational texts, Nasrallah has characterized Jews as the "grandsons of apes and pigs," and as "Allah's most cowardly and greedy creatures." He elaborates these themes into an annihilationist animus against all Jews, not merely Israelis.

Anyone who reads the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history...

Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment...There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.

If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli...[I]f they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.

Unfortunately, the orthodox Islamic archetypes of Jew hatred promulgated by Hamas and Hezbollah, are also being disseminated by the most respected, mainstream Islamic institutions. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi wrote these words in his 700 page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred, Banu Isra'il fi al-Qur'an wa al-Sunna [Jews in the Koran and the Traditions], originally published in 1968/69, and then re-issued in 1986:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness...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.

Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in 1996, a position he still holds. These are the expressed, "carefully researched" views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope-the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 90% of the world's Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi has not mollified such hatemongering beliefs since becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on "dialogue" (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as "enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs" (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear.

Tantawi's statements on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, provided him another opportunity to re-affirm his ongoing commitment to the views expressed about Jews in his Ph.D. thesis:

...anyone who avoids meeting with the enemies in order to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes, is a coward. My stance stems from Allah's book [the Koran], more than one-third of which deals with the Jews...[I] wrote a dissertation dealing with them [the Jews], all their false claims and their punishment by Allah. I still believe in everything written in that dissertation. [i.e., Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, cited above]

Al-Azhar Grand Imam Tantawi's case illustrates the prevalence and depth of sacralized, "normative" Jew hatred in the contemporary Muslim world. Arnon Groiss' thorough examination of modern Egyptian school textbooks, published in April 2004, reveals that that this sacralized hatred continues to be inculcated among future generations of Egyptian Muslims. Groiss observed, regarding the critical depiction of Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Arabia,

The Jews are stereotyped and presented in a prejudiced manner, and the themes of treachery and hostility on the part of the Jews toward the Muslims are present here...

Once again, in this context Koran 5:82 ("Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews.." is invoked to remind these students, what "God Almighty says about the Jews' hatred toward the Muslims."

And a 3-month long NY Daily News investigation of textbooks widely used in New York city area Islamic schools published March 30, 2003, demonstrated that the same Antisemitic archetypes-based on central motifs in the Koran, hadith, and sira-are being taught to American Muslim students. The report provided these examples:

In Long Island City, Queens, for example, fifth- and sixth-graders at the Ideal Islamic School on 12th St. learn that Allah has revealed [pace Koran 2:61/3:112] that "the Jews killed their own prophets and disobeyed Allah."...Yet a third book, in use at the Ideal school, describes the hostile relations between Jews and the [Muslim prophet] Muhammad in Medina in the 7th century. "The reasons for Jewish hostility lies in their general characteristics," the book says. Numerous Koranic citations follow with negative references to Jews - for example, "You will ever find them deceitful, except for a few of them." [3:71; 4:46]

On Jewish hostility to Islam: "The reasons for Jewish hostility toward the Muslims of 7th century Medina lies in their general characteristics described in the Koran." Example: "You will find the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans." [Koran 5:82; from a textbook "The Messenger of Allah," p. 34; targeting Grades 6-9]

Finally a review of textbooks from the Islamic Saudi Academy of Fairfax, VA published in October 2007 by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, concluded, according to commissioner Nina Shea, that they contain "...blatant Antisemitism, blaming the Jews even for divisions within Islam.." The latter charge is an allegation made continuously for over a millennium since the earliest Sunni historiographies (for example by al-Tabari, d. 923) that a renegade Yemenite Jew, Abdallah b. Saba, is responsible-identified as a Jew-for promoting the Shi'ite heresy and fomenting the rebellion and internal strife associated with this primary breach in Islam's "political innocence," culminating in the assassination of the third Rightly Guided Caliph Uthman, and the bitter, lasting legacy of Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian strife.

When questioned for the March, 30 2003 NY Daily News story on New York area Islamic school textbooks, Yahiya Emerick, head of a Queens-based nonprofit curriculum development project for the Islamic Foundation of North America, defended the language in these books, denying they were inflammatory. Emerick opined,

Islam, like any belief system, believes its program is better than others. I don't feel embarrassed to say that...[The books] are directed to kids in a Muslim educational environment. They must learn and appreciate there are differences between what they have and what other religions teach. It's telling kids that we have our own tradition.

Emerick's triumphant denial at once affirms standard Islamic theological supremacism, while deliberately ignoring Islam's intrinsic, virulent Antisemitism-the latter denial being pathognomonic of the mindset of its Jewish victims, past and present.

The uncomfortable examination of Islamic doctrines and history is required in order to understand the enduring phenomenon of Muslim Jew hatred, which dates back to the origins of Islam. Even if all non-Muslim Judeophobic themes were to disappear miraculously overnight from the Islamic world, the living legacy of anti-Jewish hatred, and violence rooted in Islam's sacred texts-Koran, hadith, and sira-would remain intact. The assessment and understanding of Islamic antisemitism must begin with an unapologetic analysis of the anti-Jewish motifs contained in these foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer view Muslim Jew hatred-including annihilationist strains of this apocalyptic hatred-as a "borrowed phenomenon," seen primarily, let alone exclusively, through the prism of Nazism and the Holocaust, the tragic legacy of Judeophobic Christian traditions, or "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" from Czarist Russia.

Moreover, the jihad against the Jews is but one aspect-albeit primal-of the jihad to establish global Islamic hegemony.

Concluding Remarks

When the late 23 year-old Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi was being tortured to death in February 2006, his Muslim torturers, as Nidra Poller wrote in the Wall Street Journal "...phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background." In the heart of Western Europe, Ilan Halimi's torturers/murderers did not invoke any non-Islamic sources of anti-Jewish hate, only the Koran.

And Halimi's murder reflects this broader, ugly context: European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, Franco Frattini, who is the European Union official responsible "for combating racism and Antisemitism in Europe," as reported by The Jerusalem Post February 2 of this year, revealed that Muslims are responsible for fully half (50%) of the documented Antisemitic incidents on the European continent. Demographic data from 2007 indicate that the total number of Europeans is 494.8 million; estimates of the number of Muslims in Europe range from 15-20 million, or some ~3.0-4.0% of the total European population. Thus, on a population percentage basis, Muslims in Europe account for roughly 24.0 to 32.3 times the number of Antisemitic incidents as their non-Muslim European counterparts.

As a pre-condition to real dialogue-not its miserable simulacrum-Jews and their leadership-religious, political, and intellectual-must demand a mea culpa from their Muslim counterparts for the sacralized Islamic Jew hatred which is still being taught in Islamic schools, and contributed to Ilan Halimi's death, and countless other similar atrocities across space and time, since the advent of Islam.

Almost 850 years ago, elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction.

We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation...All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.

The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages-vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude-can be excused for their submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era given the existence of an autonomous Jewish State of Israel, and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora, particularly here in the United States, living under the blanket of hard won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.

My focus, over the last few years, has been on the activities of specific, named Islamist groups, and on the relationship between those groups, this Government, and those on both the extreme and liberal Left of the British political spectrum.

Anybody who reads Harry's Place regularly will know why I think this subject deserves attention. In short, I think that any attempt to impose a theocratic system of government that executes homosexuals and religious dissenters, and entrenches constitutional and legal inequality between men and women, and Muslims and non-Muslims, should be resisted by anybody who regards themselves as politically progressive. This issue is an important one, for two reason. First, this country is facing a very real and constant threat from British Islamist terrorists. Secondly, specific Islamist groups have been working very diligently over the last few years, to form strong political bonds with liberal and progressive organisations, and Government: and in some cases, have been very successful at achieving their aims.

There are two types of people who disagree with me: Islamists and their fellow travellers, and anti-Muslim bigots. They both do so from a perspective that is pretty much identical. Islamist politicians argue that their religion requires that an Islamic state be created, and that any Muslim who disagrees is no true Muslim. And that is precisely what the anti-Muslim bigots say, as well. The fellow travellers defend the flank, by slandering as an “Islamophobe”, any attempt to criticise Islamist groups, or politicians.

It should be pretty easy, by now, to spot an anti-Muslim bigot. The giveaways, for me, include the following:

- Muslims are thought of an a homogenous bloc, without differentiation (sometimes referred to as “The Muslims”)

- Muslims are presented as either conspirators or dupes of a Muslim conspiracy to subvert the West.

- Muslims are attempting to take over the West by outbreeding non-Muslims.

- Any Muslim who denies this is either engaging in “Taqiyya” or has simply yet to realise the true nature of their religion.

I’m sure that most of you could identify other good examples. It doesn’t matter to the anti-Muslim bigot, that Muslims almost always reject Islamist politics when they’re given the choice to vote for it. As far as anti-Muslim bigots are concerned, that’s probably just part of their fiendish plan. Bigots can’t be reasoned with.

Can you imagine - have you even tried to imagine - what it must feel like to be a Muslim in this country, and to come across this sort of indiscriminate bile. I can. If you read a lot of hate speech, directed at your cultural group, you begin to internalise it. It does very strange things to you. If you’re Jewish, and you read article after article which tells you that you are part of a plot to trick the USA into war, to murder children, to control the banking industry and the media: that exposure begins to change the way you think of yourself. Are you really that bad? Do your friends think of you like that? You might find yourself worrying about whether a politician, journalist, or public figure is Jewish - might he be part of the conspiracy? Of course, there’s no conspiracy, but then is the Mearsheimer and Walt theory really so far fetched? What about Atzmon’s “Jewish Power” theories? What about Kevin MacDonald - David Irving’s expert witness - who believes that Jewish genes make Jews need to trick non-Jews in order to survive? Which of these criticisms are ‘beyond the pale’, and which are valid? Is there a germ of truth in even the worst of all this?

Anybody who is a member of any cultural minority group that has been at the sharp end of a campaign of vilification, will be familiar with what this feels like. It is hugely damaging. You might have thought that you were a complicated person, with a beautiful kaleidoscopic identity, negotiating the many joys and hazards of cosmopolitan life. But no. You’re one of “the Muslims”. Or “a Jew”. Or “a Gay”. You find yourself becoming a caricature of yourself, of the thing that others hate.

Then there’s the flip side of all this. Some people will actively seek you out, because they have decided that you’re part of a tragic victimised group, and they want to be your special friend. Pretty yucky when it is some sappy no-hope loner who has cottoned on to you. Even worse, when it is the Socialist Workers’ Party that wants to hold your hand. But I repeat myself…

This is what British Muslims live with, today.

None of this means that you should never criticise the precepts of a religion. Religions are just collections of ideas and practices. They have no particular sanctity.

Neither does it mean that there is no connection between Islam and Islamist politics. Of course there is. It couldn’t identify as a religious politics, if there wasn’t. However, you shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that religions that claim to be monolithic, unchanging, and directly transmitted by God, really do have those qualities. Follow any religion through the ages, and see how it changes. Look beyond the claims of coherence and universality, and look at the variation in its practice. If the Bible tells us anything of value it is this. Humans are schizmatic. We disagree with each other. We love to innovate and disobey. What matters about a religion is how it is practiced, and what its adherents say and do. For a bigot or an Islamist to lecture a Muslim who does not want a theocratic state on his supposed failings as a Muslim, is not only grossly offensive: it utterly misunderstands the diverse and mutable nature of religious faith and practice.

So, what can be done about this?

When I write articles about Islamist politics, I name the specific groups that I am talking about: Al Muhajiroun, Hizb ut Tahrir, Jamaat e Islami, Hezbollah or Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood, and their various front organisations. There are a limited number of people in this country who are involved in this politics. We know who they are. We can and do identify them, and chronicle their activities. That is the way to defeat Islamism.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer, ramble on in a vague way about the misdeeds of “the Muslims”, while throwing out the odd quip about paedophilia every now and then. That is the way to make Muslims in this country feel extremely exposed, and make you look like a complete wanker.

As you know, I maintain an open comments policy. However Harry’s Place’s editorial line on this subject is very clear. We are opposed to the politics of specific Islamist groups, the accomodation of those groups on the liberal Left, and within Government. We will also not stand for the whipping up of anti-Muslim bigotry.

Don’t stand by and let hatemongering go by, unopposed. I do not moderate comments, because I trust our side to win all the arguments. But that will only happen if you challenge anti-Muslim bigotry, and do not let it slide by.

In addition, remember that fighting your corner is good combat practice.

Click here for the answer.

Recently, a group of Evangelical Christian leaders let loose an Evangelical Manifesto upon the world (short summary here). By attempting to save Evangelical Christianity from the political and religious excesses that threaten believers and non-believers alike, the authors point to possible way forward for Muslims living in western countries, attempting to be good liberal democratic citizens and maintain their faith at the same time.

"Insistently moderate" as Alan Jacobs calls it, the Manifesto abjures a sound-biteAmerican Muslims: American, as well as Muslim discussion of Christianity and criticizes the whole spectrum of the Evangelical movement from right to left, including its own authors. And it extends beyond its own tribe, asking secular humanists and new atheists and liberals of all stripes if they are satisfied with the relationship that society and religion currently have, and taking a pox-on-both-thy-houses approach to "French style secularism" as well as "Islamist violence."

Evangelicals must not, the authors contend, become "useful idiots" to any political party --- no doubt a reference to Republican operatives like Karl who call Evangelicals "loons" behind their backs --- and they must not try to coerce or force other people to believe in their way. They must not try and depict themselves as the apex of truth. They must not be fundamentalist (yes, the manifesto uses the f-word), must help the poor, the under-trodden and needy. Over and again, the document condemns the "dangerous" alliance between church and state, denying that Christianity deserves special treatment because it's the majority faith, contending instead that "no one faith should be normative."

What's more the emotional and argumentative crux of the Manifesto --- the claim that "Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally" --- draws a necessary and important distinction between religious and other kinds of identities that should be instructive to people of all faiths, and to western Muslims in particular.

Is there such a thing as a "Muslim vote" or "Muslim politics"? And if there isn't should Muslims try and vote as "bloc"? Or should there be Muslims for Ron Paul, Muslims for Obama, Muslims for George Galloway, Muslims for Ken Livingstone, and Muslims for Joe Lieberman? Should mosques endorse candidates? Should our national organizations pander to politicians? Should there be "Muslim" PACs or "Muslim" foreign policy initiatives?

The Manifesto says "no," loudly. Muslims should define themselves theologically and not politically, socially, or culturally. They should see that their primary relationship to Islam isn't utilitarian but salvific, and that "Muslim" identity isn't a fulcrum with which to advance certain ends in the public sphere, but simply a pact with God, whose rewards are identity reaped in the next life.

Many Muslims will be quick to retort that given the current climate --- where they are under attack not just from fundamentalists among them but Islamophobes of every stripe --- taking such an apolitical approach to being Muslim is virtually impossible. Every day, Muslims are asked to condemn bombings, and address beheadings, and talk about foreign wars against their co-religionists. How, then, can anyone suggest that when Muslims talk about Islam, they should focus on the afterlife? Even if we wanted to, Muslims will say, other people wouldn't let us!

The Evangelical Manifesto has an ingenious response to this problem, interpreting it as a "cost of discipleship":

Unlike some other religious believers, we do not see insults and attacks on our faith as offensive and blasphemous in a manner to be defended by law, but as part of the cost of our discipleship that we are to bear without complaint or victim-playing.

In other words, when Muslims are put in a position where others are speaking for them --- and putting them into political and social and cultural categories --- it will be up to them to resist the temptation of accepting these categories. They, as the Manifesto suggests for Evangelicals, will have to say:

[W]e insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be. We are who we say we are, and we resist all attempts to explain us in terms of our --- true motives and our --- real agenda.

By taking this approach to political debates, even debates about Islam, Muslims could at last enter the debate not as Muslims, but as Americans. Or, say, as Philadelphians. Or as lawyers.

Perhaps precisely because Evangelicals have had the experience of acquiring massive political power and squandering it, they are singularly qualified to provide a lesson to American Muslims, who have virtually no power as a religious community. When religion becomes inextricably tied to partisan politics, it can be bought and sold like stocks, simultaneously cheapening the faith and corrupting the secular principles of liberal government. Addressed to every faith community in the US, the Evangelical Manifesto is a warning American Muslims should heed. To be accepted as full members of a liberal polity, they have to be prepared to accept that their profession of faith is just one feature of their identities among many, and not the one that should dictate their engagement with politics.

The Herzl/Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy boys basketball team in Denver qualified for the regional championship, but won’t be able to play because the game was scheduled to take place on Shabbat. The Colorado High School Activities Association governs the league the boys play in, and has refused to move the game to a time when the team could play without breaking Shabbat, claiming that rearranging the schedule on the regional level would be too complicated.
The Herzl Tigers: don't roll on shabbos
The communications coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Amina Rubin, has come out with a statement supporting the Jewish team: “In a nation as religiously diverse as America, it is important that we all make the extra effort to accommodate the beliefs and practices of others. Student athletes should not be forced to choose between their faith and participation in sports." Several news sites chose to lead with the revolutionary idea that Muslims might support Jews in anything.

But there are some gaps in this story, like: Why is RMHA suddenly making a stink now that they’re in the finals. Why not push for a policy of no championship games on Saturdays? Why hasn’t this been an issue before now? And if, as the CHSAA claims, moving the game to late Saturday night would affect fifteen other teams and could mean more missed school time for kids on those teams, does the RMHA really have the right to demand religious accommodations?

On the other hand, incidents of anti-Semitism in Colorado are on the rise, so maybe it’s a good thing to have the Jewish community standing up for themselves.

During the course of the presidential campaign, many of the candidates – and their staffers – on both sides of the political aisle have behaved in a way that has left Muslim citizens of this country feeling like a fifth column; as if Muslims do not belong here unless we cower and feel ashamed about our faith.

It started with Tom Tancredo of Colorado suggesting that he would be willing to bomb Mecca and Medina, sites considered holy by each and every American-Muslim. Then Mitt Romney stated that he couldn’t conceive of a reason why a Muslim might ascend to a cabinet position. Then Mike Huckabee implicitly compared Muslims to dogs. Then John McCain essentially said that Muslims were not qualified to run for President. Then one of Rudy Giuliani’s people said that Muslims – “all Muslims” – should be chased “back to their caves.” Then, early on, early Clinton’s staffers were fired for forwarding disinformation against Senator Obama. All of this occurred with terms like “Islamofascism” and “Islamic terrorists” flying about without nary a concern for accuracy or consequence.

Will Obama say "'Muslim' is no insult"? Every time someone says Obama is a Muslim, he and his people label it a smear. Before a Jewish group in Cleveland, he analogized it to getting swift-boated. He has gone to great lengths to minimize the religiosity of the Muslims he has encountered in his life, as if the fact that his father was agnostic will somehow dull the underlying prejudice that Americans have against Muslims. I have a message for him.

Dear Senator Obama: there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim. It is not a smear. It is not akin to swift-boating. There is nothing nefarious about it. There are millions of Muslims in America, contributing to its welfare just as you and the other presidential candidates aspire to do.

When people say that you are a Muslim, I don’t want to hear you or your people say that you are being smeared. It is, I repeat, not a smear to be a Muslim. Instead, I want you to say that your opponents are lying, since, after all, you are a Christian. In fact, your response should be: “I am not a Muslim, nor would it matter if I were.” The second half of that statement is crucial.

My ideas are not anything new. In fact, Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic, and a prominent Jewish intellectual, advised you to do the same in an article where he touted you as a good candidate for American-Jews. You have gone to great lengths to defend your association with Jewish-Americans -- why can you not do the same for American-Muslims?

Unless you yourself come out and say both parts of the aforementioned sentence, the suspicious emails that follow you around, the rumors that suddenly besiege you in a primary state, the whispers that surround you right before a debate, will continue. You will continue to give fuel to the right-wing whisper campaigns. The reason that rumors can continue about you is because you do not crush them and, just as importantly, do not challenge the prejudice that undergirds them.

Not only that, but you fail as a leader when you fail to take on the Americans who do find the very idea of a Muslim human being repugnant. Right now it seems that you are counting on the self-hate and political timidity among American Muslims – who have kept their heads down since 9/11 – to simply avoid taking you to task.

How long will your evasiveness continue? This is not good leadership. This is not the politics of hope. You are essentially saying: no, you won’t.

No, you won’t remind the American public that being the President has nothing to do with religion.

No, you won’t remind the American public that there is nothing intrinsically malicious or frightening or nefarious about Muslims.

No, you won’t remind the American public that you are not Muslim, nor would it matter if you were.

So far, all you've done is looked out for your interest. I am glad, because I do want you to win. However, there is more to leadership than self-interest; I learned that from you.

I understand that you are in a tough position. Unlike John F. Kennedy, who was looked upon suspiciously for being a Catholic, you are not being demonized for your own religion, but the religion people say that you are secretly. However, that’s exactly what makes this matter so much more pernicious. That same JFK – to whom you take great pleasure in being compared – said that the politics of suspicion needed to be opposed no matter what religion they were directed against. He said:

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew–or a Quaker–or a Unitarian–or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Senator Obama, this year the finger of suspicion is directed at Muslims. I, an American-Muslim, intend to cast my vote for you as President of the United States. Will you, as my candidate of choice, remind the world that in America, we are all identified, recognized and respected on the basis of our shared status as Americans -- and not on the basis of our religion?

UPDATE: Over the weekend, speaking to 60 minutes, Senator Obama said that the smear emails were offensive to Muslims as well.

Pickles was the most challenging and touching documentary that I saw at the Other Israel Film Festival. A moving film about the limitations of faith and culture, it follows the lives of eight Muslim widows who start a pickling factory in Israel.

Each woman in the film has her own struggle: Samira is estranged from her daugher, whose husband's family won't let the two women interact; Matza's son dies of a botched operation; Fatma begins a career in marketing once she is well into her fifties. Working in the factory gives them the opportunity to share these stories with each other. As they form a community, the women begin to question their roles in society. I interviewed Nitza Gonen, the producer of the film, to learn more about the significance of the film, its legacy, and the ideas behind it.

Women at work: In the pickles factory.What inspired the film Pickles?

One day, Dalit, the director, read an article about eight Muslim women in a northern village in Israel who started a pickle factory, and this story was very unusual because it was about widows. A widow isn’t supposed to go out of the home, she is supposed to watch over her children. She lives off social security and is watched over by her husband’s family. She is very miserable. She is not supposed to remarry. If she does, she cannot bring her children with her, and she must give them to her former husband’s family. There are few films about the inner lives of Muslim women. We wanted to lift the veil—and show that on the other side they were having a revolution.

As an Israeli Jewish woman making a documentary about Muslim widows, what were some of the obstacles that you faced during the production of the film? How did you deal with the language barrier? Were the villagers or women’s families suspicious of the motives of your film?

First, I don’t speak Arabic—none of us on the film crew speak it. We needed a common language so we got a translator. She was a Muslim woman who taught us the different cultural codes. The widows were very nice to us. They knew we had good intentions and that we were just trying to expose their lives to the world. The problem was with this woman in the municipality. Her role was to care for the women of the village and when she saw that we were making a film she interfered and forbade us from shooting private moments in the home and in the factory. She represented women trying to keep up their modesty and tradition, so I don’t blame her. Somebody had to protect the widows. But they couldn’t disobey her. She had lots of influence and she helped them to take care of their families. It was difficult because we didn’t want to raise conflict, so we missed some interesting situations.

In an interview with PBS, Dalit Kimor, the director, said that "Not one political word was said when we were filming" between the filmmakers and the widows. Why did you choose to do this? Do you consider your film political?

We didn’t want to make a political film. The widows weren't concerned with politics—on the first day of filming, Arafat died, and no one talked about him in the village. No one was occupied with his death. No one was praying for him in the mosques. They didn't speak about it. We didn't speak about it. We wanted to make a social human film. In Israel every film is political. Choosing Arab women as a subject of a film is political. Some people have criticized the film for not being political. It is completely innocent of politics.

Nitza Gonen: In her house in Israel.You have said that the women had never heard of the word feminism and yet were creating a small revolution. Was this film made from a feminist perspective? Did a feminist thread evolve during the production of this film?

Neither Dalit nor myself are feminists in the classic sense. Feminism is old news—we are feminists, but we are beyond this term. We didn't aim to make a feminist film, but the film talks about the rise of feminism in Arab society in Israel. The widows made a revolution in the village and the young women respect them. Now they are thinking of going to work, to school, and developing careers—and they weren't thinking of this before. These women did something for feminism without knowing it. Feminism is not the subject of the film, but it is the subtext.

After the production of Pickles, did any of the women stay in touch? Was a social network established? Did the pickle factory leave a legacy for the women in the film?

Widows are supposed to live in loneliness, and the factory gave them the opportunity to have a social club. In the film they cry together and tell jokes and comfort each other, and this it is not something that was in their lives before. So when the factory closed they had to go back to their former lives—but not Fatma. Because she was the marketing director she had a lot of contacts, so she is still making pickles, with her daughters. They have started their own business. Her daughters want to go to school, so she is saving money so they can study.

What has been the response to Pickles internationally and in Israel?

People liked the film very much, although it's unusual because when Israelis make films on Arabs it's always about identity, conflict with Palestinians, or about Palestinians, and this film was not dealing with this. In Israel, our subject was not dealing with the hard stuff. The big success of the film was abroad. People were surprised to learn how Arab women were living, to discover that they are like us, like everybody. The Muslim world in the eyes of the West—it's a kind of riddle. We see them as fanatics or fundamentalists, but we don't see their lives. The film revealed a lot about this without saying it.

Through the production of Pickles, you started a dialogue between secular Muslim women and secular and non-secular Jewish women in Israel. Have you done other work to increase dialogue or contact between Muslims and Jews in Israel? What are your thoughts on Jewish and Muslim relations in Israel?

We are both Mediterranean and we come from the same area. We have many shared characteristics: hospitality, human warmth, we are straight-forward. Before 1948, Arabs and Jews lived together and sometimes had good relations. Through progress I think that we will have better relations. On the last film I worked on, the director of photography and director were both Arab. I would like them to join all fields of life in Israel. We share the same country and there is no excuse for being apart.

* * *

Also in Jewcy:

The Other Israel Film Festival

Sometimes I like to close my eyes and try to imagine what I’d be like if I were a kooky feminist observant Muslim instead of a rockin’ feminist observant Jew. I would definitely subscribe to Muslim Girl instead of Lilith. I would cover my hair with neon purple hijabs instead of dying it purple the way I do now. I would probably kiss fewer boys (fewer, but not none). And where would I go for reliable sex education? Who would be the Muslim Dr. Ruth?

The last problem is now solved. Thanks to an awesome Salon.com article called Sex and the Married Muslim in which they interview Egyptian sexologist Dr. Heba Kotb. She has a popular TV show called “The Big Talk” during which she answers questions about sex and relationships for a huge Muslim audience. Here’s a little excerpt from the interview:

Heba Kotb: Will tell you how to get yours, girls
You've said you believe that by having more sex, married couples will please Allah. Why?

Whenever you have sex you get rewarded because you're avoiding the woman being prone to have sex outside of the marriage and vice versa. It's a way to please each other in our world and to please Allah.

Is the Quran concerned with female pleasure?

Yes, it is. The biggest chapter of the Quran is called "The Cow." There is a verse talking about the woman's rising pleasure. It's an order to the man to give the woman the right to have pleasure -- it orders the man to give the woman foreplay and also to get the wife to have sex repeatedly and to not wait for the woman to ask because sometimes she's too shy to ask.

You've blamed Egypt's high divorce rate on "bad sex." But why is the country stricken with "bad sex"?

I think that probably more than 80 percent of divorces in Egypt are from a lack of sex education. Sex is a taboo; it's not to be discussed or complained about. A lot of people didn't know that they could complain about sex.

Why is sex such a controversial topic in the Muslim world?

It's culture -- it's not Islam, whatsoever. Islam is a very liberal and progressive religion. It invites people to have sex, of course within the marital frame. Prophet Mohammed never showed any offense to anyone asking about sexuality. On the contrary, he responded to every single question. The thing is, the culture overwhelms this.

What do you think about the in-your-face American approach to sex and sexuality?

I'm totally against this. It's harmful -- sex loses its luster and its preciousness. God orders that sex remains precious, like a pearl -- it's not just for everyone. A balance has to be built: This is allowed, this is not allowed; this is halal, this is haram. Sex is one of the things that is forbidden before marriage and outside of marriage; on the other hand, it's allowed within marriage with a lot, a lot of freedom. This creates a balance. In the American approach everything is allowed -- you can have sex at any age, on any occasion.

Who do you think is having better sex -- Americans or Egyptians?

Well, I'm not a witness. [Laughs.] Believe it or not, I've been to several countries for various conferences and it's quite the same everywhere -- there are the same problems. I don't think one group is having better sex than the other, but there is great individual variation. Those who are open, clear with each other and confront the problems they are having are far ahead.

You have encouraged women to explore their bodies -- does that include masturbation?

The woman, by means of instinct, does not need masturbation. She's not like the man whatsoever. It's not a call of nature for her. So that's why I'm not very sympathetic with young women and girls choosing to masturbate. They're ruining their sexual future -- a woman has to remain blank until she gets married and by masturbating she's forming her sexuality.

I wish there was an Orthodox Jewish woman doing something like this. I’d do it except I bet I’d have to get married and wear a snood. No dice. I’ll watch, though.

According to this article in the Jerusalem Post, Muslim cab-drivers who work the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are about to receive some harsh penalties for refusing to serve passengers carrying alcohol.

The panel of the Metropolitan Airports Commission voted to suspend a driver's airport taxi license for 30 days for the first offense and revoke it for two years for a second offense. . . . The issue went before went before the panel after a months-long dispute in which passengers said they were being denied taxi service by some Muslim drivers if they were transporting alcohol. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport officials say more than 70 percent of the cab drivers at the airport are Muslim. . . .The drivers, however, have argued that Islam forbids the carrying of alcohol.

In the months before the decision to consider stiffer penalties, the commission proposed a compromise that would have let Muslim drivers display a different-colored light on their cab if they did not want to pick up passengers carrying alcohol.

Now, how do they know if the passenger is carrying alcohol? If I were carrying alcohol, I would pack it away in my bag rather than be seen schlepping it around like a person with a problem. This is where a good old Talmudic discussion would come in handy (what would Rashi say?), to answer questions like, What if the person who wishes to be carried in my taxi does not disclose that he is carrying liquor? Or, What if that same person does not carry a bottle of liquor, but has consumed alcohol within one hour of his request for my taxi-ing services -- does that count as carrying alcohol? And, what if the person who wishes to ride in my taxi is experiencing a life-threatening emergency, but I notice a bottle of Jim Beam peeking out of her carry-on bag?

I really really REALLY hate it when people bring up the Holocaust as a trump card. I have a huge respect for everyone who died in camps, and on death marches, and in ghettoes, and everywhere else during World War II, and that’s why I cringe whenever camps, ghettoes and death marches are brought up in political conversations. It seems disrespectful, and it also often seems whiny. And then when people start calling Jews Nazis for any reason whatsoever I just turn my back on the conversation entirely, because it seems to me that there’s NOTHING to be gained when you call someone a Nazi, and when that person is Jewish, you’re gonna get your tush kicked by someone’s Israeli soldier cousin, or the ADL, depending on who “you” are.
British Muslims Have Their Houses Searched for Explosives
But I have to admit, I didn’t know what to think when I saw this headline on an article in the London Times: We’re victimised like Jews by the Nazis, says Muslim leader.

On the one hand, all kinds of alarm bells are going off in my head right now. On the other hand, the article presents some pretty compelling evidence. There are nine Muslim men being held without charges in British prisons, and Mohammad Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, is understandably pissed about it. Muslims feel like they’re being “picked on,” he says, and feel that they’re being made the scapegoat of a terrorist witch hunt.

I think those are legitimate sentiments. I mean, when 13 Jewish men were randomly accused of espionage in Iran, the Jewish community completely freaked out.

Clearly, though, the British Muslim community is producing some terrorists who are committing acts of terrorism (like 7/7) fueled by a certain understanding of the Q’uran. And those people are causing all the negative response. But in Nazi Germany I’m pretty sure there was a blatant disregard for facts one way or another. The government was going out of their way to be explicitly anti-Semitic, more interested in broad strokes than making scapegoats of particular people (and if I’m wrong about this, somebody please correct me).

I guess what I’m saying is, I think the Nazis solution was generally just to fabricate things completely, and wait until some random case came along that happened to uphold their view, and then to glorify that case. And in Britain it seems like people are just scared, so they’re taking the little information they have and applying it way too broadly, which results in the demonization of Muslims. This isn’t helped by an inept and insensitive government (but what is?).

Just when I was ready to write off the Times article as useless and over-the-top, I came across this penultimate quote, by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former leader of the Muslim Council of Britain: “I wouldn’t have used the Nazi reference but I know from the number of calls that we are getting that people are really disturbed by the onslaught on the Muslim community.”

Well, yeah. That’s pretty reasonable. But if you’re looking for something really helpful, check out this article from The Guardian about how eerily parallel the treatment of Jews and Muslims has been in Britain. Pretty much left my head spinning.

Even though I’m a grad student I’m enrolled in an undergrad class that sounded interesting to me. It’s supposed to be about the history and literature of the Middle East, co-taught by a history and a literature professor. So far, though, it’s been an ‘Islam is really not that bad’ class. As far as I can tell the underlying agenda of this class is to get all the rich white Christian kids in the class to see that not all Muslims are terrorists. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for educating people about religion, and I think Americans need to work as hard as possible to understand Islam because it looks like we’ll still be trying to sort things out in the Middle East a good thirty years from now. That said, sitting in class is excruciating.
City of Wrong: Most Obnoxious Book Ever
Our first assignment was to read a few chapters from a book called Islam Today by Akhbar S Ahmed. It only takes Ahmed ten pages to make a ridiculous claim: “Every Muslim is a fundamentalist, believing in the Quran and the Prophet.” Later he says, “For Muslims what happened in the past is important, since they live in the present with an acute awareness of their history.” Really the fastest way to piss me off is to make grandiose claims you can’t back up, like that every Muslim believes in the Quran and Prophet. Really? Every single one of the billion Muslims in the world? Wow! That’s great! And it’s so good to hear that history is important to Muslims, because it’s completely irrelevant to everybody else. Jews especially. We hate history.

And last week we read City of Wrong by M. Kamel Hussein. The book is a retelling of the day of the crucifixion, and on the very first page of the text it says, “On that day the Jewish people conspired together to require from the Romans the crucifixion of Christ so that they might destroy his message.” Several times in the course of the text he refers to Jews as a “corporate entity” and a “corporate personality” which is threatened by Jesus. Even if I wasn’t offended by the blatant disregard for any understanding of the political situation that was the actual provocation for the crucifixion, the assertion that “the Jewish people” did anything makes me crazy. The Jews? That implies everyone from King Solomon to Adam Sandler. And to imagine that shepherds and lawyers and judges all came together and were like, “As Jews, we feel strongly that this ‘King of the Jews’ character has got to go,” is ludicrous.

So yeah, I’ve been pretty offended by all kinds of things that go on in this class, but I’m hesitant to bring it up in class. First, because I don’t want to be the Jewish girl who’s always crying anti-Semitism. And second because if I get started talking about how a book written by a Muslim in Egypt in 1953 is hugely influenced by the animosity between Egypt and Israel at the time… well, that’s a good ten minutes that no one is learning about Islam, and even though I think it’s really important to know where this book is coming from, part of me wants to give the professors all the time possible to teach about Islam. Because isn’t it more relevant, more important, even, for someone to learn about Islam than Judaism in today’s world?

What do you guys think? Should I get out my soapbox, or zip it and just scribble my wrath into the margins of my book?

See no truth. Hear no truth.An Egyptian blogger is on trial for "on charges of insulting Islam and inciting sectarian strife for his Internet writing criticizing Muslim authorities and the Egyptian government."

Abdel Kareem Nabil, the blogger, has been detained in solitary confinement since November and could face up to seven years in prison. What's more, he's one of many bloggers in Egypt that have been arrested on the same charges.

Nabil, who uses the name Kareem Amer on his blog, frequently denounces the government of President Hosni Mubarak on his blog and is often deeply critical of Egypt's Islamic authorities, particularly Al-Azhar, one of the Sunni Muslim world's top religious institutions. Nabil, a resident of Alexandria, was former a law student at Al-Azhar University.

He was detained briefly in late 2005 after posting an article to his blog commenting on violent riots that erupted in October that year in which angry Muslim worshippers rioted and attacked a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.

Titled "The Naked Truth of Islam as I saw it," Nabil said of the riots, "Muslims revealed their true ugly face, and appeared to all the world that they are at full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity."

We've witnessed the backside of this true ugly face and it ain't pretty...

I joined Amnesty International my Senior year of high school in the hopes that I'd absolve the guilt associated with my apolitical outlook on life and in the process, help me appear more well-rounded to college admissions committees. Club etiquette consisted of writing countless letters to various POWs in third world countries with a standard form letter. I didn't think much of it, I just filled in the blanks, the names and addresses, etc. and handed it to the teacher. This was pretty much par for the course with the club.

Most of the time, however, I found myself vehemently opposed to writing the letter since I didn't feel informed enough politically of the particular country's ways or the crime committed to be telling them what to do. In short, I respected that country's decision, even though it wasn't always one that was in  accordance with my own beliefs. And my conscience was torn over this. And my guilt sky-rocketed.

There is a point to my rambling here. And it's not just that I'm anti-Global democracy.

In the past few days, I've been reading various articles on the ADL and getting that same feeling in my stomach that I felt for Amnesty 15 years ago. Disillusionment.

Case in point: A recent article on the ADL giving an award to Albanian Muslims. Not that I speak on behalf of all Jews when I say that anyone who saved a Jew during the Holocaust and risked their life in the process wasn't doing an incredible selfless mitzvah, but somehow I feel like bestowing the Courage to Care Award to the ancestors of Albanian Muslims that helped during the Holocaust 60 years after the fact, given today's global political climate, a little distasteful, not to mention manipulative on the part of the ADL.

And not that I'm trying to sound like an ultra-Zionist or someone who just watched a Steven Spielberg movie, but admittedly I'm both. However, it's not the ADL's responsibility to serve as social barometer of some faux global conscience they've helped to perpetuate. Their mission statement is, after all, to stop the defamation of the Jewish people. Not those that serve a greater political agenda. Besides, don't they have some Germans to hunt down?

A new piece of British legislation aimed at protecting gay rights is concerning religious groups- Muslims, Christians, and Jews, on the basis of "moral grounds" that they feel threaten the collective "freedom of conscience."

The rules, which are in line with European Union requirements, will punish businesses and organisations which discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation. Hotels which refuse to let double rooms to gay couples could, for example, be taken to court.

Nadia Lipsey, a spokesperson from the Board of Deputies gave a statement on behalf of Britain's Jewish community:

"It must be possible for people to live their lives in the manner in which they choose as long as it does not impinge upon the rights of others.

"We hope that to this effect the regulations will be framed in such a way that allows for both the effective combating of discrimination in the provision of goods and services whilst respecting freedom of conscience and conviction."

Speaking for the Muslim community, Dr. Majid Katme, of the Islamic Medical Association called for Muslims "to join our Christian friends in their campaign against the new proposed law on sexual orientation." He elaborated further with: "It is against our religious rights and against our human rights and against our conscience and religious beliefs to have this new unjust law forced on all of us British Muslims."

Note, in the above paragraph, the glaring absence of the word jew.

This story at Jewschool (God, how I love Jewschool!) seems not unrelated to what I was blathering on about yesterday.

We think the Catholics are honoring/respecting a bad guy and want them to stop (Pius).
But then some Muslims think that we’re honoring/respecting a bad Jewish guy (Prager).

The question is…. How much power should one group have over another, particularly in the incredibly subjective world of faith? Is it our place to tell other people when they’re being wrong/politically incorrect? Should we threaten each other with bad PR? Repercussions?

There are many many important differences between the two situations (namely that the US Holocaust Memorial Council is not a religious agency like the Catholic Church) but there’s something funny about reading the stories side by side.

Jews want to affect the way Catholics decide their own leadership/hierarchy/ agenda… and then are bothered by the idea that Muslims would feel the right to affect the process by which Jews determine their own leadership/hierarchy/agenda (assuming one can call the Holocaust Memorial Council a bunch of “Jews”. And one can argue that it’s not, but we certainly claim it most of the time.)

I’m still not sure that I have a “position” of any kind on this, but I’m trying to think about both situations and sort them out. I feel like we can pick at the differences in the situations, but in the end… it seems hypocritical to view them too differently.

Not that culture and faith don’t turn everyone into hypocrites, but in this case… both sides are trying to apply logic… and it isn’t quite working.