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Islam and antisemitism relates to Islamic theologicial teaching against Jews and Judaism and the treatment of Jews in Muslim countries.
With the origin of Islam in the 7th century AD and its rapid spread in the Arabian peninsula and beyond, Jews (and many other peoples) came to be subject to the rule of Muslim rulers. The quality of the rule varied considerably in different periods, as did the attitudes of the rulers, government officials, clergy and general population to various subject peoples from time to time, which was reflected in their treatment of these subjects. Reuven Firestone notes that "negative assessments and even condemnation of prior religions and their adherents occur in all three scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."[1] This article looks at the Muslim attitude to, and treatment of, Jews in Islamic thought and societies throughout history, and explores the ramifications of these attitudes in the contemporary world.
The Qur'an makes forty-three specific references to "Bani Isrāʾīl" (meaning the Children of Israel).[11] The Arabic term yahud, denoting Jews, and "yahudi" occur eleven times and the verbal form hāda (meaning "to be a Jew/Jewish") occurs ten times.[12] According to Khalid Durán, the negative passages use Yahūd, while the positive references speak mainly of the Banī Isrā’īl.[13] Jews are not mentioned at all in verses dating from the Meccan period.[14] According to Bernard Lewis, the coverage given to Jews is relatively insignificant.[15]
The references in the Qur'an to Jews are interpreted in different ways. According to Frederick M. Schweitzer and Marvin Perry, these references are "mostly negative" [8] According to Tahir Abbas the general references to Jews are favorable, with only those addressed to particular groups of Jews containing harsh criticisms.[16]
According to Bernard Lewis and other scholars, the earliest verses of the Qur'an were largely sympathetic to Jews. Mohammed admired them as monotheists and saw them as natural adherents to the new faith and Jewish practices helped model early Islamic behavior, such as midday prayer, prayers on Friday, Ramadan fasting (modelled after the Jewish Yom Kippur fast on the tenth of the month of Tishrei), and most famously the fact that until 623 Muslims prayed toward Jerusalem, not Mecca.[17] After his flight (al-hijra) from Mecca, where religious intolerance reigned, in 622 Mohammad with his followers settled in Yathrib, subsequently renamed Medina al-Nabi (‘City of the Prophet’) where he managed to draw up a ‘social contract’,[18] widely referred to as the 'Constitution of Medina'.[19] This contract, known as the Leaf (ṣaḥīfa) upheld the peaceful coexistence between Muslims, Jews and Christians, defining them all, under given conditions, as constituting the umma, or community of that city, and granting the latter freedom of religious thought and practice.[20] Yathrib/Medina was not homogeneous. Alongside the 200 odd emigrants from Mecca (the Muhājirūn), who had followed Mohammad, its population consisted of the Faithful of Medina (Anṣār, ‘the helpers’), Arab pagans, three Jewish tribes and some Christians.[21] The foundational 'constitution' sought to establish, for the first time in history according to Ali Khan, a formal agreement guaranteeing interfaith conviviality, albeit ringed with articles emphasizing strategic cooperation in the defense of the city.
In paragraph 16 of this document, it states that:'Those Jews who follow us are entitled to our aid and support so long as they shall not have wronged us or lent assistance (to any enemies) against us'.
Paragraph 37 has it that 'To the Jews their own expenses and to the Muslims theirs. They shall help one another in the event of any attack on the people covered by this document. There shall be sincere friendship, exchange of good counsel, fair conduct and no treachery between them.'.[22] The three local Jewish tribes were the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qurayza, and the Banu Qaynuqa. While Mohammad clearly had no prejudice against them, and appears to have regarded his own message as substantially the same as that received by Jews on Sinai,[23] tribal politics, and Mohammad's deep frustration at Jewish refusals to accept his prophethood,[24] quickly led to a break with all three. unfortunate linguistic misunderstandings may also have given the impression, evidenced in the Qur'an, that the Jewish community was publicly humiliating Mohammad.[25] One clan was evicted from Medina in 624. In 625, the Banu Nadir Jewish tribe was evicted from Medina. Lastly, in the Mecca siege of Medina in 627, the last major Jewish tribe initially helped the Muslims in fortifying the back portions of Medina, but due to their later exposed treachery in trying to assist the pagan Meccan army, the Muslims laid siege to this last group of Jews. Since the Torah prescribes the death penalty for treachery, the adult males of this last Jewish tribe were killed, and the women and children were taken into slavery (but later freed).[26] The direction of prayer was shifted towards Mecca from Jerusalem and the most negative verses about Jews were set down after this time.[27][28]
According to Laqueur, conflicting statements about Jews in the Qur'an have affected Muslim attitudes towards Jews to this day, especially during periods of rising Islamic fundamentalism.[29]
According to Bernard Lewis, there is nothing in Muslim theology (with a single exception) that can be considered refutations of Judaism or ferocious anti-Jewish diatribes.[30] Lewis and Chanes suggest that, for a variety of reasons, Muslims were not antisemitic for the most part. The Qur'an, like Judaism, orders Muslims to profess strict monotheism. It also rejects the stories of Jewish deicide as a blasphemous absurdity, and other similar stories in the Gospels play no part in the Muslim educational system The Qur'an does not present itself as a fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible but rather a restoration of its original message - thus, no clash of interpretations between Judaism and Islam can arise.[31][32]
In addition Lewis argues that the Qur'an lacks popular western traditions of 'guilt and betrayal'.[33] Rosenblatt and Pinson suggest that the Qur'an teaches toleration of Judaism as a fellow monotheistic faith.[34]
Lewis adds, negative attributes ascribed to subject religions (in this case Judaism and Christianity) are usually expressed in religious and social terms, but only very rarely in ethnic or racial terms. However, this does sometimes occur. The language of abuse is often quite strong. It has been argued that the conventional Muslim epithets for Jews, apes, and Christians, pigs derive from Qu'ranic usage. Lewis adduces three passages in the Qu’ran ([Quran 2:61], [Quran 5:65], [Quran 7:166]) used to ground this view.[35] The interpretation of these 'enigmatic'[36] passages in Islamic exegetics is highly complex, dealing as they do with infractions like breaking the Sabbath,.[37] According to Goitein, the idea of Jewish Sabbath breakers turning into apes may reflect the influence of Yemeni midrashim.[38] Firestone notes that the Qurayza tribe itself is described in Muslim sources as using the trope of being turned into apes if one breaks the Sabbath to justify not exploiting the Sabbath in order to attack Mohammad, when they were under siege.[39]
According to Stillman, the Qur'an praises Moses, and depicts the Israelites as the recipients of divine favour.[14] The Qur'an dedicates many verses to the glorification of Hebrew prophets, says Leon Poliakov.[40] He quotes verse [Quran 6:85] as an example,
We gave him Isaac and Jacob: all (three) guided: and before him, We guided Noah, and among his progeny, David, Solomon, Job, Joseph, Moses, and Aaron: thus do We reward those who do good: And Zakariya and John, and Jesus and Elias: all in the ranks of the righteous: And Isma'il and Elisha, and Jonas, and Lot: and to all We gave favour above the nations.
(Note the 'We' refers to a royal plural meaning I. Similar to How the British royalty spoke to crowds.)
Leon Poliakov,[41] Walter Laqueur,[9] and Jane Gerber,[42] argue that passages in the Qur'an reproach Jews for their refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet of God.[41] "The Quran is engaged mainly in dealing with the sinners among the Jews and the attack on them is shaped according to models that one encounters in the New Testament."[43] The Muslim holy text defined the Arab and Muslim attitude towards Jews to this day, especially in the periods when Islamic fundamentalism was on the rise.[9]
Walter Laqueur states that the Qur'an and its interpreters has a great many conflicting things to say about the Jews. Jews are said to be treacherous and hypocritical and could never be friends with a Muslim.[9]
Frederick M. Schweitzer and Marvin Perry state that references to Jews in the Qur'an are mostly negative. The Qur'an states that wretchedness and baseness were stamped upon the Jews, and they were visited with wrath from Allah, that was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. And for their taking usury, which was prohibited for them, and because of their consuming people's wealth under false pretense, a painful punishment was prepared for them. The Qur'an requires their "abasement and poverty" in the form of the poll tax jizya. In his "wrath" God has "cursed" the Jews and will turn them into apes/monkeys and swine and idol worshipers because they are "infidels".[8]
According to Martin Kramer, the Qur'an speaks of Jews in a negative way and reports instances of Jewish treachery against the Islamic prophet Muhammad. However, Islam didn't hold up those Jews who practiced treachery against Muhammad as archetypes nor did it portray treachery as the embodiment of Jews in all times and places. The Qur'an also attests to Muhammad's amicable relations with Jews.[10]
While traditional religious supremacism played a role in the Islamic view of Jews, the same attitude applied to Christians and other non-Muslims. Islamic tradition regards Jews as a legitimate community of believers in God (called "people of the Book") legally entitled to sufferance.[10]
The Qur'an ([Quran 4:157]) clears Jews from the accusation of deicide, and states "they [Jews] killed him [Jesus] not". They also argue that the Jewish Bible has not been incorporated in the Islamic text, and "virtuous Muslims" are not contrasted with "stiff-necked, criminal Jews".[8]
The standard Qur'anic reference to Jews is the verse [Quran 2:61].[44] It says:
And abasement and poverty were pitched upon them, and they were laden with the burden of God's anger; that, because they had disbelieved the signs of God and slain the Prophets unrightfully; that, because they disobeyed, and were transgressors.[45]
However, due to the Qur'an's timely process of story-telling, a majority of scholars agree that all references to Jews or other groups within the Qu'ran refers to only certain populations at a certain point in history and bare any racial profiling or religious profiling, it also gives some legitimacy to their religion in [Quran 5:69] "Those who believe, and the Jews, and the Sabi'un, and the Christians, who believe in God and the Last Day and do good, there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve."
The Qur'an gives credence to the Christian claim of Jews scheming against Jesus, " ... but God also schemed, and God is the best of schemers."(Qur'an [Quran 3:54]) In the Muslim view, the crucifixion of Jesus was an illusion, and thus the Jewish plots against him ended in failure.[46] According to Gerber, in numerous verses ([Quran 3:63]; [Quran 3:71]; [Quran 4:46]; [Quran 4:160-161]; [Quran 5:41-44], [Quran 5:63-64], [Quran 5:82]; [Quran 6:92])[47] the Qur'an accuses Jews of altering the Scripture.[42]
But the Qur'an differentiates between "good and bad" Jews, adding to the idea that the Jewish people or their religion itself are not the target of the story-telling process.[40] The criticisms deal mainly "with the sinners among the Jews and the attack on them is shaped according to models that one encounters in the New Testament."[43]
The Qur'an also speaks favorably of Jews. Though it also criticizes them for not being grateful of God's blessing on them, the harsh criticisms, are only addressed towards a particular group of Jews, as it is clear from the context of the Qur'anic verses, but the translations usually confuse this by using the general term "Jews". To judge Jews based on the deeds of some of their ancestors is an anti-Qur'anic idea.[16]
Ali S. Asani suggests that the Qur'an endorses the establishment of religiously and culturally plural societies and this endorsement has affected the treatment of religious minorities in Muslim lands throughout history. He cites the endorsement of pluralism to explain why violent forms of anti-Semitism generated in medieval and modern Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, never occurred in regions under Muslim rule.[48]
Some verses of the Qur'an, notably [Quran 2:256], preach tolerance towards members of the Jewish faith.[9] According to Kramer, Jews are regarded as members of a legitimate community of believers in God, "people of the Book", and therefore legally entitled to sufferance.[10]
Martin Kramer argues that for Muslims to arrive at the concept of the "eternal Jew", there must be more at work than the Islamic tradition. Islamic tradition does, however, provide the sources for islamic antisemitism. The fact that many Islamic thinkers have spent time in the West has resulted in the absorption of antisemitism, he says. Modern texts further distort the Qur'an by quoting it besides texts such as the Protocols of Zion. Thus, Kramer concludes that there is no doubt modern Muslims effectively make use of the Qur'an, using Islamic tradition as a source on which antisemitism today feeds, but it is also a selective and distorting use.[10]
During Muhammad's life, Jews lived in the Arabian Peninsula, especially in and around Medina. Muhammad is also known to have Jewish friends,[9] and had a Jewish wife (Safiyya). According to Poliakov, "the degree to which Muhammad shows his respect for each religion [Jews and Christians] is remarkable".[40]
The Jews reportedly refused Muhammad's offer for them to convert and accept him as the Prophet.[49] According to Koppel Pinson and Samuel Rosenblatt, although the Jews initially swore friendship and peace with Muhammad, they later taunted and mocked him, charging him with ignorance.[34]
According to Pinson, Rosenblatt and F.E. Peters, they also began to connive with Muhammad's enemies in Mecca to overthrow him (despite having signed a peace treaty[34]).[50][51] According to F.E. Peters, they also began to secretly to conspire with Muhammad's enemies in Mecca to overthrow him (despite having been forced by their conquerors to sign a peace treaty.)[50][52][53] After each major battle, Muhammad accused one of the Jewish tribes of treachery and attacked it. Two Jewish tribes were expelled and the last one, the Banu Qurayza, was wiped out after it threw itself on Muhammad's mercy.[9][54]
Samuel Rosenblatt states that these incidents were not part of policies directed exclusively against Jews, and Muhammad was more severe with his pagan Arab kinsmen than foreigner monotheists.[34][52] In addition Muhammad's conflict with Jews was considered of rather minor importance. According to Lewis, since the clash of Judaism and Islam was resolved and ended during Muhammad's lifetime with Muslim victory, no Muslim equivalent of the still unresolved theological dispute between Church and Israel fueled antisemitism. There is also a difference between Jewish denial of Christian and Muslim messages, since Muhammad never claimed to be a Messiah or Son of God.[55] It is significant that the death of Muhammad was not caused by Jews.[8]
The attitude towards Jews changed in the course of Muhammad's career, as expressed in more positive teachings in the earlier Qur'anic surahs, from the Mecca period, to increasingly hostile and negative ones, characterizing Jews as such, in Medina as the Jewish tribes there refused to submit completely to Muhammad's authority and claims. This distinction of periods is crucial to assess the weight of Qur'anic passages.
Muhammad's disputes with his neighboring Jewish tribes left no marked traces on his immediate successors (known as Caliphs). The first Caliphs based their treatment upon the Qur'anic verses encouraging tolerance.[34] Classical commentators viewed Muhammad's struggle with Jews as a minor episode in his career, but this has changed in modern times due to external influences.[33] Poliakov opines that Muhammad's actions and teachings gave rise to an open and more conciliatory society, where the Muslims were compelled to protect the lives and religion of the Jews.[40]
The hadith (recordings of deeds and sayings attributed to Muhammad) use both the terms Banu Israil and Yahud in relation to Jews, the latter term becoming ever more frequent and appearing mostly in negative context. According to Norman Stillman:
Jews in Medina are singled out as "men whose malice and enmity was aimed at the Apostle of God". The Yahūd in this literature appear not only as malicious, but also deceitful, cowardly and totally lacking resolve. However, they have none of the demonic qualities attributed to them in mediaeval Christian literature, neither is there anything comparable to the overwhelming preoccupation with Jews and Judaism (except perhaps in the narratives on Muhammad's encounters with Medinan Jewry) in Muslim traditional literature. Except for a few notable exceptions... the Jews in the Sira and the Maghazi are even heroic villains. Their ignominy stands in marked contrast to Muslim heroism, and in general, conforms to the Qura'nic image of "wretchedness and baseness stamped upon them"[56]
He said:
| “ |
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).Sahih Muslim, 41:6985, see also Sahih Muslim, 41:6981, Sahih Muslim, 41:6982, Sahih Muslim, 41:6983, Sahih Muslim, 41:6984, Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:56:791,(Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:52:177) |
” |
This hadith has been quoted countless times, and it has become a part of the charter of Hamas.[57]
According to Schweitzer and Perry, the hadith are "even more scathing (than the Qur'an) in attacking the Jews":
They are debased, cursed, anathematized forever by God and so can never repent and be forgiven; they are cheats and traitors; defiant and stubborn; they killed the prophets; they are liars who falsify scripture and take bribes; as infidels they are ritually unclean, a foul odor emanating from them - such is the image of the Jew in classical Islam, degraded and malevolent.[8]
The words "humility" and "humiliation" occur frequently in the Qur'an and later Muslim literature in relation to Jews. According to Lewis, "This, in Islamic view, is their just punishment for their past rebelliousness, and is manifested in their present impotence between the mighty powers of Christendom and Islam." The standard Quranic reference to Jews is verse [Quran 2:61]: "And remember ye said: "O Moses! we cannot endure one kind of food (always); so beseech thy Lord for us to produce for us of what the earth groweth, -its pot-herbs, and cucumbers, Itsgarlic, lentils, and onions." He said: "Will ye exchange the better for the worse? Go ye down to any town, and ye shall find what ye want!" They were covered with humiliation and misery; they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah. This because they went on rejecting the Signs of Allah and slaying His Messengers without just cause. This because they rebelled and went on transgressing."[58]
Two verses later we read: "And remember, Children of Israel, when We made a covenant with you and raised Mount Sinai before you saying, "Hold tightly to what We have revealed to you and keep it in mind so that you may guard against evil." But then you turned away, and if it had not been for Allah's grace and merecy, you surely would have been among the lost. And you know those among who sinned on the Sabbath. We said to them, "You will be transformed into despised apes." So we used them as a warning to their people and to the following generations, as well as a lesson for the Allah-fearing."(Qur'an [Quran 2:63]) The accusation that Jews will ultimately be transformed into apes and pigs is traditionally understood literally and is derived from such Qur'anic and other early Muslim sources.
The Qur'an associates Jews above all with rejection of God's prophets including Jesus and Muhammad, thus explaining their resistance to him personally. (Cf. Surah 2:87–91; 5:59, 61, 70, and 82.) It states that they are, together with outright idolators, the worst and most inveterate enemies of Islam, and thus will not only suffer eternally in Hell but in this world will be the most degraded of the Peoples of the Book, below even Christians, everywhere. (Cf. Surah 5:82; 3:54–56.) It also asserts that Jews believe that they are the sole children of God (Surah 5:18), and that only they will achieve salvation (Surah 2:111). According to the Qur'an, Jews blasphemously claim that Ezra is the son of God, as Christians claim Jesus is, (Surah 9:30) and that God's hand is fettered (Surah 5:64 – i.e., that they can freely defy God). Some of those who are Jews,[56] "pervert words from their meanings", (Surah 4:44), and because they have committed wrongdoing, God has "forbidden some good things that were previously permitted them", thus explaining Jewish commandments regarding food, Sabbath restrictions on work, and other rulings as a punishment from God (Surah 4:160). They listen for the sake of mendacity (Surah 5:41), twisting the truth, and practice forbidden usury, and therefore they will receive "a painful doom" (Surah 4:161).[56] The Qur'an gives credence to the Christian claim of Jews scheming against Jesus, "...but God also schemed, and God is the best of schemers"(Surah 3:54). In the Muslim view, the crucifixion of Jesus was an illusion, and thus the supposed Jewish plots against him ended in complete failure.[46] In numerous verses (Surah 3:63, 71; 4:46, 160–161; 5:41–44, 63–64, 82; 6:92)[59] the Qur'an accuses Jews of deliberately obscuring and perverting scripture.[60]
Jerome Chanes,[32] Pinson, Rosenblatt,[34] Mark Cohen, Norman Stillman, Uri Avnery, M. Klien and Bernard Lewis argue that antisemitism in pre-modern Islam is rare, and did not emerge until modern times. Lewis argues that there is little sign any deep-rooted emotional hostility directed against Jews, or any other group, that can be characterized as antisemitism. There were, however, clearly negative attitudes, which were in part the "normal" feelings of a dominant group towards subject groups (which exists in virtually any society). More specifically, the contempt consisted of Muslim contempt for disbelievers.[61]
According to Lewis, the outstanding characteristic of the classical Islamic view of Jews is their unimportance. The religious, philosophical, and literary Islamic writings tended to ignore Jews and focused more on Christianity. Although, the Jews received little praise or even respect, and were sometimes blamed for various misdeed but there were no fears of Jewish conspiracy and domination, nor any charges of diabolic evil nor accusations of poisoning the wells nor spreading the plague nor were even accused of engaging in blood libels until Ottomans learned the concept from their Greek subjects in 15th century.[62]
Poliakov writes that various examples of medieval Muslim literature portray Judaism as an exemplary pinnacle of faith, and Israel being destined by this virtue. He quotes stories from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights that portray Jews as pious, virtuous and devoted to God, and seem to borrow plots from midrashim. However, Poliakov writes that treatment of Jews in Muslim literature varies, and the tales are meant for pure entertainment, with no didactic aim.[63]
After Ibn Nagraela, a Jew, attacked the Quran by alleging various contradictions in it, Ibn Hazm, a Moor, criticized him furiously. Ibn Hazm wrote that Ibn Nagraela was "filled with hatred" and "conceited in his vile soul."[64]
According to Schweitzer and Perry, some literature during the tenth and eleventh century "made Jews out to be untrustworthy, treacherous oppressors, and exploiters of Muslims". This propaganda sometimes even resulted in outbreaks of violence against the Jews. An eleventh century Moorish poem describes Jews as "a criminal people" and blames them for causing social decay, betraying Muslims and poisoning food and water.[65]
Martin Kramer writes that in Islamic tradition, in striking contrast with the Christian concept of the eternal Jew, the contemporary Jews were not presented as archetypes—as the embodiment of Jews in all times and places.[10]
Jews and Christians living under early Muslim rule were known as dhimmis, a status that was later also extended to other non-Muslims like Sikhs. As dhimmis they were to be tolerated, and entitled to the protection and resources of the Ummah, the Muslim commonwealth. In return they had to pay a tax known as the jizya in accordance with Qur'an.[66] Lewis and Poliakov argue that Jewish communities enjoyed toleration and limited rights as long as they accepted Muslim superiority. These rights were legally established and enforced.[40][67] The restrictions on dhimmis included: payment of higher taxes; at some locations, being forced to wear clothing or some othe insignia distinguishing them from Muslims; sometimes barred from holding public office, bearing arms or riding a horse; disqualified as witnesses in litigation involving Muslims; at some locations and times, dhimmis were prevented from repairing existing or erecting new places of worship. Proselytizing on behalf of any faith but Islam was barred.
Later additions to the code included prohibitions on adopting Arab names, studying the Qur'an, selling alcoholic beverages.[8] Abdul Aziz Said writes that the Islamic concept of dhimmi, when applied, allowed other cultures to flourish and prevented the general rise of antisemitism.[68]
Schweitzer and Perry give as examples of early Muslim antisemitism: 9th century "persecution and outbreaks of violence"; 10th and 11th century antisemitic propaganda that "made Jews out to be untrustworthy, treacherous oppressors, and exploiters of Muslims". This propaganda "inspired outbreaks of violence and caused many casualties in Egypt". An eleventh century Moorish poem describes Jews as "a criminal people" and alleges that "society is nearing collapse on account of Jewish wealth and domination, their exploitation and betrayal of Muslims; that Jews worship the devil, physicians poison their patients, and Jews poison food and water as required by Judaism, and so on."[65]
Jews under the Muslim rule rarely faced martyrdom or exile, or forced conversion and they were fairly free to choose their residence and profession. Their freedom and economic condition varied from time to time and place to place.[69] Forced conversions occurred mostly in the Maghreb, especially under the Almohads, a militant dynasty with messianic claims, as well as in Persia, where Shi'a Muslims were generally less tolerant than their Sunni counterparts.[70] Notable examples of the cases where the choice of residence was taken away from them includes confining Jews to walled quarters (mellahs) in Morocco beginning from the 15th century and especially since the early 19th century.[71]
The caliphs of Fatimid dynasty in Egypt were known to be Judeophiles, according to Leon Poliakov. They paid regularly to support the Jewish institutions (such as the rabbinical academy of Jerusalem). A significant number of their ministers and counselors were Jews. Benjamin of Tuleda, a famous 12th century Jewish explorer, described the Caliph al Abbasi as a "great king...kind unto Israel". He further mentions Muslims and Jews being involved in common devotions, such as visiting the grave of Ezekiel, whom both religions regard as a prophet.[72]
With the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish Judaism flourished for several centuries. Thus, what some refer to as the "golden age" for Jews began. During this period the Muslims (at least in Spain) tolerated other religions, including Judaism, and created a heterodox society.[73]
Muslim relations with Jews in Spain were not always peaceful, however. The eleventh century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain; those occurred in Córdoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.[65] In the 1066 Granada massacre, a Muslim mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred about 4,000 Jews.[74] The Muslim grievance involved was that some Jews had become wealthy, and others had advanced to positions of power.[65]
The Almohad dynasty, which overthrew the dynasty that ran Spain during the early Muslim era, offered Christians and Jews the choice of conversion or expulsion; in 1165, one of their rulers ordered that all Jews in the country convert on pain of death (forcing the Jewish rabbi, theologian, philosopher, and physician Maimonides to feign conversion to Islam before fleeing the country). In Egypt, Maimonides resumed practicing Judaism openly only to be accused of apostasy. He was saved from death by Saladin's chief administrator, who held that conversion under coercion is invalid.[75]
During his wanderings, Maimonides also wrote The Yemen Epistle, a famous letter to the Jews of Yemen, who were then experiencing severe persecution at the hands of their Muslim rulers. In it, Maimonides describes his assessment of the treatment of the Jews at the hands of Muslims:
... on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael [that is, Muslims], who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us.... No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have.... We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, their absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear.... We have done as our sages of blessed memory have instructed us, bearing the lies and absurdities of Ishmael.... In spite of all this, we are not spared from the ferocity of their wickedness and their outbursts at any time. On the contrary, the more we suffer and choose to conciliate them, the more they choose to act belligerently toward us.[76]
Mark Cohen quotes Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, a specialist in medieval European Jewish history, who cautioned that Maimonides' condemnation of Islam should be understood "in the context of the harsh persecutions of the twelfth century and that furthermore one may say that he was insufficiently aware of the status of the Jews in Christian lands, or did not pay attention to this, when he wrote the letter." Cohen continues by quoting Ben-Sasson, who argues that Jews generally had a better legal and security situation in the Muslim countries than in Christendom.[77]
While some Muslim states declined, the Ottoman Empire rose as the "greatest Muslim state in history". As long as the empire flourished, the Jews did as well, according to Schweitzer and Perry. The Ottomans were more tolerant of Jews and promoted their economic development. The Jews flourished as great merchants, financiers, government officials, traders and artisans.[78]
Lewis states that in contrast to Christian antisemitism, the attitude of Muslims toward non-Muslims is not one of hate, fear, or envy, but rather simply contempt. This contempt is expressed in various ways, such as abundance of polemic literature attacking the Christians and occasionally also the Jews. "The negative attributes ascribed to the subject religions and their followers are usually expressed in religious and social terms, very rarely in ethnic or racial terms, though this does sometimes occur." The language of abuse is often quite strong. The conventional epithets are apes for Jews, and pigs for Christians. Lewis continues with several examples of regulations which were symbolizing the inferiority that non-Muslims living under Muslim rule had to live with, such as different formulae of greeting when addressing Jews and Christians than when addressing Muslims (both in conversations or correspondences), and forbidding Jews and Christians to choose names used by Muslims for their children by the Ottoman times.[79]
Schweitzer and Perry argue that there are two general views of the status of Jews under Islam, the traditional "golden age" and the revisionist "persecution and pogrom" interpretations. The former was first promulgated by Jewish historians in the 19th century as a rebuke of the Christian treatment of Jews, and taken up by Arab Muslims after 1948 as "an Arab-Islamist weapon in what is primarily an ideological and political struggle against Israel". The revisionists argue that this idealized view ignores "a catalog of lesser-known hatred and massacres".[65] Mark Cohen concurs with this view, arguing that the "myth of an interfaith utopia" went unchallenged until it was adopted by Arabs as a "propaganda weapon against Zionism",[80] and that this "Arab polemical exploitation" was met with the "counter-myth" of the "neo-lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history",[81] which also "cannot be maintained in the light of historical reality".[82]
Antisemitism has increased in the Muslim world during modern times.[83] While Bernard Lewis and Uri Avnery date the rise of antisemitism to the establishment of Israel, M. Klein suggests the antisemitism could have been present in the mid-19th century.[84]
Scholars point out European influence, including that of Nazis, and the establishment of Israel as the root causes for antisemitism.[83][84] Norman Stillman explains that increased European commercial, missionary and imperialist activities during the 19th and 20th centuries brought anti-Semitic ideas to the Muslim world. Initially these prejudices only found a reception among Arab Christians and were too foreign for any widespread acceptance among Muslims. However, with the rise of the Arab-Israeli conflict, European anti-Semitism began to gain acceptance in modern literature.[56]
According to Mark Cohen, Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose relatively recently, in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized").[85]
The Damascus affair occurred in 1840, when an Italian monk and his servant disappeared in Damascus. Immediately following, a charge of ritual murder was brought against a large number of Jews in the city. All were found guilty. The consuls of England, France and Austria as well as Ottoman authorities, Christians, Muslims and Jews all played a great role in this affair.[86] Following the Damascus affair, Pogroms spread through the Middle East and North Africa. Pogroms occurred in: Aleppo (1850, 1875), Damascus (1840, 1848, 1890), Beirut (1862, 1874), Dayr al-Qamar (1847), Jerusalem (1847), Cairo (1844, 1890, 1901–02), Mansura (1877), Alexandria (1870, 1882, 1901–07), Port Said (1903, 1908), Damanhur (1871, 1873, 1877, 1891), Istanbul (1870, 1874), Buyukdere (1864), Kuzguncuk (1866), Eyub (1868), Edirne (1872), Izmir (1872, 1874).[87] There was a massacre of Jews in Baghdad in 1828.[88] There was another massacre in Barfurush in 1867.[88]
In 1839, in the eastern Persian city of Meshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue, and destroyed the Torah scrolls. This is known as the Allahdad incident. It was only by forcible conversion that a massacre was averted.[89]
Benny Morris writes that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th century traveler: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan."[88]
The massacres of Jews in Muslim countries continued into the 20th century. The Jewish quarter in Fez was almost destroyed by a Muslim mob in 1912.[88] There were Nazi-inspired pogroms in Algeria in the 1930s, and massive attacks on the Jews in Iraq and Libya in the 1940s (see Farhud). Pro-Nazi Muslims slaughtered dozens of Jews in Baghdad in 1941.[88]
American academic Bernard Lewis and others have charged that standard antisemitic themes have become commonplace in the publications of Arab Islamic movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Refah Partisi, the Turkish Islamic party whose head served as prime minister in 1996-97."[83] Lewis has also written that the language of abuse is often quite strong, arguing that the conventional epithets for Jews and Christians are apes and pigs, respectively.[90]
Despite the fact that an estimated 100,000 Muslims (primarily of Bosniak descent) were murdered during the Holocaust, the first attempts at an Arab Nazi movement occurred in 1933, when a Jaffa correspondent of the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram applied to the German council for help. Many of the Arabs were in full support of Nazi Germany, and believed that if Hitler won the war, the Arab cause would prosper. The influence of the Nazis in the Arab world continued to grow though the 1930s.[91] Nazi influenced political parties arose in the 1930s and 1940s, many of which played an important role in the leadership of the Arab world post-World War II. Egypt, Syria, and Iran are believed to have harbored Nazi war criminals, though they have rejected the charge.[92] Mein Kampf has been published and, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), was 6th on the Palestinian best-seller list in 1999.[93]
The Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni attempted to create an alliance with Nazi Germany against the Jews.
Historians debate to what extent al-Husayni's fierce opposition to Zionism was grounded in nationalism or antisemitism or a combination of both. [94]
On March 31, 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, al-Husayni sent a telegram to Berlin addressed to the German Consul-General in the British Mandate of Palestine saying Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere looked forward to spreading their ideology in the Middle East. Al-Husayni secretly met the German Consul-General near the Dead Sea in 1933 and expressed his approval of the anti-Jewish boycott in Germany and asked him not to send any Jews to Palestine. Later that year, the Mufti's assistants approached Wolff, seeking his help in establishing an Arab National Socialist party in Palestine. Reports reaching the foreign offices in Berlin showed high levels of Arab admiration of Hitler.[95]
Al-Husayni met the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop on November 20, 1941 and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on November 30, 1941 in Berlin.[96] He asked Hitler for a public declaration that "recognized and sympathized with the Arab struggles for independence and liberation, and that it would support the elimination of a national Jewish homeland", and he submitted to the German government a draft of such a declaration, containing the clause.[97]
Husayni aided the Axis cause in the Middle East by issuing a fatwa for a holy war against Britain in May 1941. The Mufti's widely heralded proclamation against Britain was declared in Iraq, where he was instrumental in the anti-British Iraqi revolt of 1941.[98] During the war, the Mufti repeatedly made requests to "the German government to bomb Tel Aviv."[99]
Al-Husayni was involved in the organization and recruitment of Bosnian Muslims into several divisions of the Waffen SS and other units.[100] and also blessed sabotage teams trained by Germans before they were dispatched to Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan.[101]
In March 1940, General Rashid Ali, a nationalist Iraqi officer forced the pro-British Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said Pasha, to resign.[102] In May, he declared jihad against Great Britain. Forty days later, British troops occupied the country. The 1941 Iraqi coup d'état occurred on April 3, 1941 when the regime of the Regent 'Abd al-Ilah was overthrown, and Rashid Ali was installed as Prime Minister.[103]
In 1941, following Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup, riots known as the Farhud broke out in Baghdad in which approximately 180 Jews were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were looted and 99 Jewish houses were destroyed.[104]
Iraq initially forbade the emigration of its Jews after the 1948 war on the grounds that allowing them to go to Israel would strengthen that state, but they were allowed to emigrate again after 1950, if they agreed to forgo their assets.[105]
In his recent PhD thesis [106] and in his recent book [107] the Israeli scholar Mordechai Zaken discussed the history of the Assyrian Christians of Turkey and Iraq (in the Kurdish vicinity) during the last 180 years, from 1843 onwards. In his studies Zaken outlines three major eruptions that took place between 1843 and 1933 during which the Assyrian Christians lost their land and hegemony in their habitat in the Hakkārī (or Julamerk) region in southeastern Turkey and became refugees in other lands, notably Iran and Iraq, and ultimately in exiled communities in European and western countries (the USA, Canada, Australia, New-Zealand, Sweden, France, to mention some of these countries). Mordechai Zaken wrote this important study from an analytical and comparative point of view, comparing the Assyrian Christians experience with the experience of the Kurdish Jews who had been dwelling in Kurdistan for two thousands years or so, but were forced to migrate the land to Israel in the early 1950s. The Jews of Kurdistan were forced to leave and migrate as a result of the Arab-Israeli war, as a result of the increasing hostility and acts of violence against Jews in Iraq and Kurdish towns and villages, and as a result of a new situation that had been built up during the 1940s in Iraq and Kurdistan in which the ability of Jews to live in relative comfort and relative tolerance (that was erupted from time to time prior to that period) with their Arab and Muslim neighbors, as they did for many years, practically came to an end. At the end, the Jews of Kurdistan had to leave their Kurdish habitat en masse and migrate into Israel. The Assyrian Christians on the other hand, came to similar conclusion but migrated in stages following each and every eruption of a political crisis with the regime in which boundaries they lived or following each conflict with their Muslim, Turkish, Arabs or Kurdish neighbors, or following the departure or expulsion of their patriarch Mar Shimon in 1933, first to Cyprus and then to the United States. Consequently, indeed there is still a small and fragile community of Assyrians in Iraq, however, millions of Assyrian Christians live today in exiled and prosperous communities in the west. [108]
In Iran, Reza Shah sympathized with Nazi Germany, making the Jewish community fearful of possible persecutions. Although these fears did not materialise, anti-Jewish articles were published in the Iranian media. A rumor that Hitler converted to Islam led to a marriage between the Shia clergy and the nascent, ultra-nationalist secularized prejudices in Iran.[109]
In Egypt, Ahmad Husayn founded the Young Egypt Party in 1934. He immediately expressed his sympathy for Nazi Germany to the German ambassador to Egypt. Husayn sent a delegation to the Nuremberg rally and returned with enthusiasm. After the Sudeten Crisis, the party leaders denounced Germany for aggression against small nations, but nonetheless retained elements similar to Nazism or Fascism, e.g. salutes, torchlight parades, leader worship, and antisemitism and racism. The party's impact before 1939 was minimal, and their espionage efforts were of little value to the Germans.[110]
During World War II, Cairo was a haven for agents and spies throughout the war. Egyptian nationalists were active, with many Egyptians, including Farouk of Egypt and prime minister Ali Mahir Pasha, all of whom hoped for an Axis victory, and full independence of Egypt from Britain.[111]
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Many Islamic terrorist groups have openly expressed anti-Semitic views.
Lashkar-e-Toiba's propaganda arm has declared the Jews to be "Enemies of Islam", and Israel to be the "Enemy of Pakistan".[112]
Hamas has been widely described as antisemitic. It has issued antisemitic leaflets, and its writings and manifestos rely upon antisemitic documents (the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and other European Christian literature), exhibiting antisemitic themes.[113] In 1998, Esther Webman of the Project for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Tel Aviv University wrote that although the above is true, anti-Semitism was not the main tenet of Hamas ideology.[114]
In an editorial in The Guardian in January 2006, Khaled Meshaal, the chief of Hamas's political bureau denied antisemitism, on Hamas' part, and said that the nature of Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not religious but political. He also said that Hamas has "no problem with Jews who have not attacked us."[115]
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a Shiite scholar and assistant professor at the Lebanese American University has written that Hezbollah is not Anti-Zionist, but rather Anti-Jewish. She quoted Hassan Nasrallah as saying: "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."[116] Regarding the official public stance of Hezbollah as a whole, she said that while Hezbollah, "tries to mask its anti-Judaism for public-relations reasons ... a study of its language, spoken and written, reveals an underlying truth." In her book, Hezbollah: Politics & Religion, she explored the anti-Jewish roots of Hezbollah ideology, arguing that Hezbollah "believes that Jews, by the nature of Judaism, possess fatal character flaws." Saad-Ghorayeb also said that "Hezbollah's Quranic reading of Jewish history has led its leaders to believe that Jewish theology is evil."[116]
France is home to Europe's largest population of Muslims — about 6 million — as well as the continent's largest community of Jews, about 600,000. In 2000, Muslims attacked synagogues in retaliation for damage done to their Muslim brethren in the Palestinian territories. (See also: Second Intifada) Many Jews protested, the acts were declared "Muslim antisemitism". By 2007, however, attacks were much less severe, and an "all-clear" was perceived.[117] However, during the 2008-2009 Gaza War, tensions between the two communities increased and there were several dozen reported instances of violence such as arson and assaults. French Jewish leaders complained of "a diffuse kind of anti-Semitism becoming entrenched in the Muslim community" while Muslim leaders responded that the issues were "political rather than religious" and that Muslim anger is "not against Jews, it's against Israel."[118]
On July 28, 2006, at around 4:00 p.m. Pacific time, the Seattle Jewish Federation shooting occurred when Naveed Afzal Haq shot six women, one fatally, at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. He shouted, "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel" before he began his shooting spree. Police have classified the shooting as a hate crime based on what Haq said during a 9-1-1 call.[119]
In Egypt, Dar al-Fadhilah published a translation of Henry Ford's antisemitic treatise, The International Jew, complete with distinctly antisemitic imagery on the cover.[120]
In a sermon, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on January 9, 2009 (as translated by MEMRI), Egyptian Muslim scholar and preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi stated:
"Oh Allah, take your enemies, the enemies of Islam. Oh Allah, take the Jews, the treacherous aggressors. Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people. Oh Allah, they have spread much tyranny and corruption in the land. Pour Your wrath upon them, oh our God. Lie in wait for them. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people of Thamoud at the hand of a tyrant, and You annihilated the people of 'Aad with a fierce, icy gale. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people Thamoud at the hand of a tyrant, You annihilated the people of 'Aad with a fierce, icy gale, and You destroyed the Pharaoh and his soldiers — oh Allah, take this oppressive, tyrannical band of people. Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one."[121][122][123][124]
In a subsequent speech on Al-Jazeera on January 30, 2009, al-Qaradawi expressed his views on Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, stating (as translated by MEMRI):
"Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers".[123][125][126][127]
In a speech delivered by Egyptian Salafi islamic scholar Muhammad Hussein Yacoub which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 17, 2009, he stated (as translated by MEMRI):
"We must believe that our fighting with the Jews is eternal, and it will not end until the final battle...You must believe that we will fight, defeat, and annihilate them, until not a single Jew remains on the face of the Earth...As for you Jews - the curse of Allah upon you. The curse of Allah upon you, whose ancestors were apes and pigs. You Jews have sown hatred in our hearts, and we have bequeathed it to our children and grandchildren. You will not survive as long as a single one of us remains...Oh Jews, may the curse of Allah be upon you. Oh Jews... Oh Allah, bring Your wrath, punishment, and torment down upon them. Allah, we pray that you transform them again, and make the Muslims rejoice again in seeing them as apes and pigs. You pigs of the earth! You pigs of the earth! You kill the Muslims with that cold pig [blood] of yours."[128][129][130][131]
Palestinian preacher Ibrahim Mahdi said in a sermon:
"Palestine will be, as it was in the past, a graveyard for the invaders - just as it was a graveyard for the Tatars and to the Crusader invaders, [and for the invaders] of the old and new colonialism... A reliable Hadith [tradition] says: 'The Jews will fight you, but you will be set to rule over them.' What could be more beautiful than this tradition? 'The Jews will fight you' - that is, the Jews have begun to fight us. 'You will be set to rule over them' - Who will set the Muslim to rule over the Jew? Allah... Until the Jew hides behind the rock and the tree. But the rock and tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, a Jew hides behind me, come and kill him.' Except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. We believe in this Hadith. We are convinced also that this Hadith heralds the spread of Islam and its rule over all the land... Oh Allah, accept our martyrs in the highest heavens... Oh Allah, show the Jews a black day... Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews and their supporters... Oh Allah, raise the flag of Jihad across the land... Oh Allah, forgive our sins..."[132]
On another occasion, Sheikh Madhi added:
"Oh beloved of Allah... One of the Jews' evil deeds is what has come to be called 'the Holocaust,' that is, the slaughter of the Jews by Nazism. However, revisionist [historians] have proven that this crime, carried out against some of the Jews, was planned by the Jews' leaders, and was part of their policy... These are the Jews against whom we fight, oh beloved of Allah. On the other hand, [what is our belief] about the Jews? Allah has described them as donkeys."[133]
Sami Al-Arian, a leading Muslim speaker in the U.S. until his arrest and conviction for funding an Islamist terrorist organization, on September 29, 1991, said in a speech at a Chicago conference that "God cursed those who are the sons of Israel", and that Allah had made Jews "monkeys and swine", and damned them in this world and the afterworld.[134]
Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais is the leading imam of the Grand mosque located in the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.[135] The BBC aired a Panorama episode, entitled A Question of Leadership, which reported that al-Sudais referred to Jews as "the scum of the human race" and "offspring of apes and pigs", and stated, "the worst ... of the enemies of Islam are those ... whom he ... made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive Jews and oppressive Zionists and those that follow them ... Monkeys and pigs and worshippers of false Gods who are the Jews and the Zionists."[136]
In another sermon, on April 19, 2002, he declared:
| “ | Read history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others'] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs...[137] | ” |
According to Dr. Leah Kinberg, "Saudi Sheikh Ba'd bin Abdallah Al-Ajameh Al-Ghamidi, in a sermon in Taif, explained":
| “ | The current behavior of the brothers of apes and pigs, their treachery, violation of agreements, and defiling of holy places ... is connected with the deeds of their forefathers during the early period of Islam – which proves the great similarity between all the Jews living today and the Jews who lived at the dawn of Islam.[137] | ” |
He also said Jews are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs."[135] Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque and Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, and "perhaps the foremost Sunni Arab authority", has been criticized for remarks made in April 2002, described Jews in his weekly sermon as "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs." [138][139][140]
Mahathir bin Mohamad, who served as Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, has made a number of public remarks about Jews.
In 1970, he wrote in his controversial book The Malay Dilemma: "The Jews for example are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively."[141][142]
In a statement made prior to hosting an international meeting of Muslim countries on terrorism, Mahathir said of terrorism:
| “ | At the moment the definition tends to be confined only to Islamic nations and Muslims at large whereas Israel and the Jews are also terrorist state or people.[143] | ” |
Mahathir address at a United Nations symposium on Islam at UN University in Tokyo:
| “ | "If the Arabs who before were not terrorists are today willing to commit suicide in order to fight against the Israelis or Americans, there must be a reason for it. And the reason is that they feel that Americans and the Jews and the Europeans have been unjust to them."[143] | ” |
On 16 October 2003, shortly before he stepped down as prime minister, Mahathir Muhammad said during a summit for the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Putrajaya, that:
| “ | We [Muslims] are actually very strong, 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million [during the Holocaust]. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries. And they, this tiny community, have become a world power.[144] | ” |
A May 2006 study of Saudi Arabia's revised schoolbook curriculum discovered that the eighth grade books included the following statements,[146]
| “ | They are the people of the Sabbath, whose young people God turned into apes, and whose old people God turned into swine to punish them. As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the keepers of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christian infidels of the communion of Jesus. | ” |
| “ | Some of the people of the Sabbath were punished by being turned into apes and swine. Some of them were made to worship the devil, and not God, through consecration, sacrifice, prayer, appeals for help, and other types of worship. Some of the Jews worship the devil. Likewise, some members of this nation worship devil, and not God. | ” |
On May 5, 2001, after Shimon Peres visited Egypt, the Egyptian al-Akhbar internet paper stated that: "lies and deceit are not foreign to Jews.... For this reason, Allah changed their shape and made them into monkeys and pigs."[147]
Author Erel Shalit has written that Jews must listen to statements made about them from the Arab world, regardless of whether they are positive or negative. He cited the following example:
The Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring ... the scum of the human race 'whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs...' These are the Jews, an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption... (The Imam of the Al-Haraam mosque in Mecca; the same words of incitement repeated time and again in the mosques of Gaza and Ramallah.)[148]
In Western countries, some Islamic groups and individual Muslims have made scattered efforts to reconcile with the Jewish community through dialogue and to oppose Antisemitism. For instance, in Britain there is the group Muslims Against Anti-Semitism.[149][150] Islamic studies scholar Tariq Ramadan has been outspoken against Anti-Semitism, stating: "In the name of their faith and conscience, Muslims must take a clear position so that a pernicious atmosphere does not take hold in the Western countries. Nothing in Islam can legitimize xenophobia or the rejection of a human being due to his/her religious creed or ethnicity. One must say unequivocally, with force, that anti-Semitism is unacceptable and indefensible."[151] Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran, declared antisemitism to be a "Western phenomena", having no precedents in Islam and stating the Muslims and Jews had lived harmoniously in the past. An Iranian newspaper stated that has been hatred and hostility in history, but conceded that one must distinguish Jews from Zionists.[83]
In North America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has spoken against some antisemitic violence, such as the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting.[152] According to the Anti-Defamation League, CAIR has also been affiliated with antisemitic organizations such as Hamas and Hizbollah.[153]
The Saudi mufti, Shaykh Abd al-Aziz Bin Baz, gave a fatwa ruling that negotiating peace with Israel is permissible, as is the cist to Jerusalem by Muslims. He specifically said:
The Prophet made absolute peace with the Jews of Medina when he went there as an immigrant. That did not entail any love for them or amiability with them. But the Prophet dealt with them, buying from them, talking to them, calling them to God and Islam. When he died, his shield was mortgaged to a Jew, for he had mortgaged it to buy food for his family.
Martin Kramer considers that as "an explicit endorsement of normal relations with Jews".[10]
According to Norman Stillman, Antisemitism in Muslim world increased greatly for more than two decades following 1948 but "peaked by the 1970s, and declined somewhat as the slow process of rapprochement between the Arab world and the state of Israel evolved in the 1980s and 1990s."[154] Johannes J. G. Jansen believes that antisemitism will have no future in the Arab world in the long run. In his view, like other imports from the Western World, antisemitism is unable to establish itself in the private lives of Muslims.[155] In 2004 Khaleel Mohammed said that "Anti-Semitism has become an entrenched tenet of Muslim theology, taught to 95 per cent of the religion's adherents in the Islamic world", a claim immediately dismissed as false and racist by Muslim leaders, who accused Mohammed of destroying efforts at relationship building between Jews and Muslims.[156][157]
According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project released on August 14, 2005, high percentages of the populations of six Muslim-majority countries have negative views of Jews. To a questionnaire asking respondents to give their views of members of various religions along a spectrum from "very favorable" to "very unfavorable", 60% of Turks, 74% of Pakistanis, 76% of Indonesians, 88% of Moroccans, 99% of Lebanese Muslims and 100% of Jordanians checked either "somewhat unfavorable" or "very unfavorable" for Jews.[158]
In the Netherlands anti-semitic incidents, from verbal abuse to violence, are reported, allegedly connected with islamic youth, mostly boys from Moroccan descent. According to the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel, a pro-Israel lobby group in the Netherlands, in 2009, the number of anti-Semite incidents in Amsterdam, the city that is home to most of the approximately 40,000 Dutch Jews, was said to be doubled compared to 2008.[159]
In the Netherlands anti-semitic incidents, from verbal abuse to violence, are reported, allegedly connected with islamic youth, mostly boys from Moroccan descent. According to the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel, a pro-Israel lobby group in the Netherlands, in 2009, the number of anti-Semite incidents in Amsterdam, the city that is home to most of the approximately 40,000 Dutch Jews, was said to be doubled compared to 2008.[159] In 2010, Raphaël Evers, an orthodox rabbi in Amsterdam, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that jews can no longer be safe in the city anymore due to the risk of violent assaults. "Jews no longer feel at home in the city. Many are considering aliyah to Israel."[160]
There were recorded well over a hundred antisemitic attacks in Belgium in 2009. This was a 100% increase from the year before. The perpetrators were usually young males of immigrant background from the Middle East. In 2009, the Belgian city of Antwerp, often referred to as Europe's last shtetl, experienced a surge in antisemitic violence. Bloeme Evers-Emden, an Amsterdam resident and Auschwitz survivor, was quoted in the newspaper Aftenposten in 2010: "The antisemitism now is even worse than before the Holocaust. The antisemitism has become more violent. Now they are threatening to kill us."[160]
In 2004, France experienced rising levels of Islamic antisemitism and acts that were publicized around the world.[161][162][163] In 2006, rising levels of antisemitism were recorded in French schools. Reports related to the tensions between the children of North African Muslim immigrants and North African Jewish children.[164] The climax was reached when Ilan Halimi was tortured to death by the so-called "Barbarians gang", led by Youssouf Fofana. In 2007, over 7,000 members of the community petitioned for asylum in the United States, citing antisemitism in France.[165]
Between 2001 and 2005, an estimated 12,000 French Jews took Aliyah to Israel. Several émigrés cited anti-semitism and the growing Arab population as reasons for leaving.[166] At a welcoming ceremony for French Jews in the summer of 2004, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caused controversy when he advised all French Jews to "move immediately" to Israel and escape what he coined "the wildest anti-semitism" in France.[167][168][169][170]
In the first half of 2009, an estimated 631 recorded acts of antisemitism took place in France, more than the whole of 2008.[171] Speaking to the World Jewish Congress in December 2009, the French Interior Minister Hortefeux described the acts of antisemitism as "a poison to our republic." He also announced that he would appoint a special coordinator for fighting racism and anti-Semitism.[172]
Rises in antisemitism in modern France have been linked to the intensifying Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[173] Since the Gaza War in 2009, decreases in antisemitism have been reversed. A report compiled by the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism singled out France in particular amongst Western countries for antisemitism.[174] Between the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza in late December and the end of it in January, an estimated hundred antisemitic acts were recorded in France. This compares with a total of 250 antisemitic acts in the whole of 2007.[175][176]
After Germany and Austria, Sweden has the highest rate of antisemitic incidents in Europe.[177] A government study in 2006 estimated that 39% of the Muslim population, harbor strong and consistent antisemitic views. Former Prime Minister Göran Persson described these results as "surprising and terrifying". However, the Rabbi of Stockholm's Orthodox Jewish community, Meir Horden claimed that "It's not true to say that the Swedes are anti-Semitic. Some of them are hostile to Israel because they support the weak side, which they perceive the Palestinians to be."[178]
In March 2010, Fredrik Sieradzk told Die Presse, an Austrian Internet publication, that Jews are being "harassed and physically attacked" by "people from the Middle East," although he added that only a small number of Malmo's 40,000 Muslims "exhibit hatred of Jews." Sieradzk also stated that approximately 30 Jewish families have emigrated from Malmo to Israel in the past year, specifically to escape from harassment. Also in March, the Swedish newspaper Skånska Dagbladet reported that attacks on Jews in Malmo totaled 79 in 2009, about twice as many as the previous year, according to police statistics.[179]
In early 2010, the Swedish publication The Local published series of articles about the growing anti-Semitism in Malmö, Sweden. In an interview in January 2010, Fredrik Sieradzki of the Jewish Community of Malmö stated that “Threats against Jews have increased steadily in Malmö in recent years and many young Jewish families are choosing to leave the city. Many feel that the community and local politicians have shown a lack of understanding for how the city’s Jewish residents have been marginalized.” He also added that "right now many Jews in Malmö are really concerned about the situation here and don’t believe they have a future here.” The Local also reported that Jewish cemeteries and synagogues have repeatedly been defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, and a chapel at another Jewish burial site in Malmö was firebombed in 2009.[180] In 2009 the Malmö police received reports of 79 anti-Semitic incidents, double the number of the previous year (2008).[181] Fredrik Sieradzki, spokesman for the Malmo Jewish community, estimated that the already small Jewish population is shrinking by 5% a year. “Malmo is a place to move away from,” he said, citing anti-Semitism as the primary reason.[182]
In October 2010, The Forward reported on the current state of Jews and the level of Anti-semitism in Sweden. Henrik Bachner, a writer and professor of history at the University of Lund, claimed that members of the Swedish Parliament have attended anti-Israel rallies where the Israeli flag was burned while the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah were waved, and the rhetoric was often anti-Semitic—not just anti-Israel. But such public rhetoric is not branded hateful and denounced. Charles Small, director of the Yale University Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism, stated that “Sweden is a microcosm of contemporary anti-Semitism. It’s a form of acquiescence to radical Islam, which is diametrically opposed to everything Sweden stands for.” Per Gudmundson, chief editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, has sharply criticized politicians who him claims offer “weak excuses” for Muslims accused of anti-Semitic crimes. “Politicians say these kids are poor and oppressed, and we have made them hate. They are, in effect, saying the behavior of these kids is in some way our fault.”[183] Judith Popinski, and 86-year-old Holocaust survivor, stated that she is no longer invited to schools that have a large Muslim presence to tell her story of surviving the Holocaust. Popinski, who found refuge in Malmo in 1945, stated that, until recently, she told her story in Malmo schools as part of their Holocaust studies program, but that now, many schools no longer ask Holocaust survivors to tell their stories, because Muslim students treat them with such disrespect, either ignoring the speakers or walking out of the class. She further stated that "Malmo reminds me of the anti-Semitism I felt as a child in Poland before the war. “I am not safe as a Jew in Sweden anymore.”[184]
In December 2010, the Jewish human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel advisory concerning Sweden, advising Jews to express "extreme caution" when visiting the southern parts of the country due to an increase in verbal and physical harassment of Jewish citizens by muslims in the city of Malmö.[185]
In 2010, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation after one year of research, revealed that anti-semitism was common among Norwegian muslims. Teachers at schools with large shares of muslims revealed that muslim students often "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews", that "Jew-hate is legitimate within vast groups of muslim students" and that "muslims laugh or command [teachers] to stop when trying to educate about the Holocaust". Additionally that "while some students might protest when some express support for terrorism, none object when students express hate of Jews" and that it says in "the Quran that you shall kill Jews, all true muslims hate Jews". Most of these students were said to be born and raised in Norway. One Jewish father also told that his child after school had been taken by a muslim mob (though managed to escape), reportedly "to be taken out to the forest and hung because he was a Jew".[186]
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