Judeophobia in the World of Islam

Let us now consider the situation of Jews in the Muslim world. Contrary to Arab propaganda, echoed by many leftist European and American and university professors, Jews were severely persecuted in the Muslim world. Where they were not massacred or cruelly expelled, they were heavily taxed unlike Muslims (a special “protection” tax), were not permitted to construct new synagogues, had to wear distinctive cloths, and were prohibited from holding any public office.

Their condition is summarized in the following annotated map:

 


 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

As soon as the State of Israel was established there was a mass exodus of Jews oppressed for centuries in Muslim countries to Israel, where they were integrated within a few years. Today the majority of the members of the Knesset (the Israeli single-chamber legislature) and several members of Sharon’s cabinet, including the Ministers of Defense and of Foreign affairs are immigrants or sons of immigrants from Arab countries. That mass immigration compared with a more limited flux of Jewish immigrants from Europe is presented in the following two maps.

 

 

 

 

 


 

 


 


 

 

The exodus of the Iraqi Jews is an outstanding example of the status of Jews in Muslim countries. Jews lived and flourished in Mesopotamia for 2500 years until 1947; see map.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the State of Israel was established and opened its gates to Jewish immigration, the number of Jews in Iraq dropped to less than 100.   Today, even after the fall of Saddam Hussein, none of the Jewish Iraqi emigrants is eager to return to that oppressive Islamic country.  This Jewish population has learned in Israel what it means to be citizens with unmitigated rights, which they were missing since the 7th Century, when they were forced to wear a distinctive yellow token (1300 years before Hitler instituted the same policy in Nazi Germany).

 The friendly tolerance of Jews in Muslim countries is an “urban myth” taught in many of our colleges and universities. If the distribution of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (mentioned above) is a measure of anti-Semitism, hundred of thousand copies of an Arabic translation of this book have been printed and distributed in Islamic countries.

 Moreover, Egyptian television has been broadcasting globally a 24 part series of a dramatization of the “Protocols” presumably to assure the poisoning of the minds of the illiterate Muslim masses. This was done with the full backing of the Egyptian president who was asked explicitly to stop this Judeophobic activity. This Jew-hatred is promulgated by a country that has a formal peace treaty with the State of Israel!

 

The Judeophobic policy of the Islamic world is demonstrated in editorial cartoons in the Arab press, exemplified below:

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The purpose of these cartoons, just like the “Protocols,” is to depict Jews as evil, subhuman people. Demonization of the Jews is necessary to justify their remorseless murder. The Nazis knew this and so do the Muslims. There are hundreds if not thousand of similar cartoons in the Islamic press, many of which can be downloaded from the Web. There are also several Islamic websites the spew anti-Jewish propaganda.

 What is the source of Islamic Judeophobia? Unlike in Christianity the Jews are not accused of deicide. Actually the Koran tells us that Jesus was never crucified but ascended directly to heaven as soon as the guards came to arrest him. According to Muhammad one of the disciples impersonated Jesus and was crucified instead. However, the Jews are still accused of killing their prophet Jesus and were cursed by Allah for eternity for this evil deed. This is not the only inconsistency in the Koran. 

What is clear from the Koran is that Muhammad hated the Jews and plundered, executed, and massacred many of them, including a highly respected old Jewish poet. Muhammad and his associates raped Jewish women and enslaved Jewish children. Since Muhammad is a model for all Muslims and no Muslim is supposed to criticize any of his deeds, hatred of Jews is a basic tenet in Islam, notwithstanding Western Islamophilic propagandists.

 Jews according to the Koran are descendents of apes and pigs, i.e., they are subhuman beings, and no Muslim is allowed to question even a single word of the Koran. Moreover this “truth” about the Jews is taught in Muslim religious schools from the age of four or five. According to the Islam, at the end of days all Jews must die and any Muslim can reach heaven for killing Jews, hence the suicidal Islamic murderers. In brief, mortal hatred of Jews is intrinsic in Islam much more than it ever was in Christianity.

This hatred is a major factor in the Arab-Israeli conflict; a factor that cannot be resolved by any concession of territory. Add to this the Islamic denial of Jewish ancient history, which is not described in the Koran and therefore it does not exist. Strangely enough, also Jerusalem is not mentioned in Koran, but the Muslim claim it is a prime prize, probably because it is sacred to Jews and Christians, so dispossessing them of their holy city would symbolize the supremacy of Islam over the Judeo-Christian religions. Since Islam, unlike Christianity or Judaism is a supremacist political religion, ideologically similar to Nazism, both the Arab-Israeli and the current global Islamic-Western conflict are religion driven.  One cannot exclude therefore Islamic holocausts of the remainder of the Jews as well of other non-Muslims. The 9/11 atrocities are most probably just the beginning of a protracted interfaith strife.

Christian versus Islamic Judeophobia

Christian theologians could abolish the 1500+ year old Christian Judeophobia, which was based on a Judeo-Christian political polemic based on a biased account of the death of Jesus, which existed in the 2nd to 4th Centuries, rather than on a theological disagreement.  Unlike Islam, there is no commandment in the Christian religion, whether Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, to hate Jews. Consequently, even if it took a generation or two to eliminate its toxic effects from the psyche of the masses, Christian Judeophobia of can be abolished for good. All it would take is a concerted decision of the religious leadership. There is at present an obstacle to this desirable outcome: There are “liberal” Christian clergy who fall for the Islamic propaganda aimed at delegitimization of the State of Israel. They seem to not to realize that this might lead to the eventual demise of the Jewish state, to the detriment of Christianity and of the entire Western culture. Consequently, they incite their congregants against Zionism, not realizing that Zionism is a basic tenet of Judaism. These “liberal” clergy seem not to grasp the simple truth that anti-Zionism is tantamount to Judeophobia or misojudaism (hate of Jews). This problem is not insurmountable – it calls for exposure of the falsehoods and inconsistencies in Arab public relations and for learning of the basics of the history, politics and religious connotations of the confrontation of Islam with the West. This might be achieved by discussions and debates on and off campus.

Islamic Judeophobia is a much more serious problem. For one, it is an inseparable part of Islam, as it is explicitly state in the Koran, which is considered the unquestionable and immutable word of Allah (the God of Islam). To be a believing Muslim implies hating Jews – those evil subhuman beings. Denying those “truths” means for Muslims denying the infallibility of the Koran, which is not acceptable to devout Muslims. Therefore, as long as there will be traditional devout Muslims there will be Islamic Judeophobia, as well as hatred of all other non-Muslims, Christians included. Islam cannot readily undergo reformation as did Christianity and Judaism because criticism or reinterpretation of the Koran are considered blasphemy, punishable by death.

The Koran has many contradictory statements, including those concerning Jewish and other non-believers. So a Muslim can come up with a Koranic statement that contradicts the Judeophobic commandments or stories. However, since every Koranic statement is equally valid, Muslim clergymen can cite any statement that is “politically correct” at a given moment. This is how shrewd Muslims manage to misrepresent Islam when denying its militancy in Western media or academia. But one cannot eliminate the militant xenophobic aspects of Islam, which can be used whenever it is politically expedient.

The solution of this problem is not easy. This far, no “moderate” Muslims of stature are ready to stand up and challenge in public Islamic religion-motivated, xenophobic aggression. Islam may have to be ostracized by the entire non-Muslim world, as was Nazism that had a similar supremacist ideology. Only a concerted denunciation of Islam may shock it into a major reformation or result in a mass conversion of Muslims to another religion, more suitable for the realities of a globally interrelated world.  The latter possibility poses a major challenge to Christianity.  Either of these major changes might put an end to Islamic hatred of Jews and the unconditional acceptance of the Jewish nation in its ancient homeland.

Secular, atheistic anti-Semitism

In addition to Christian and Islamic Judeophobia which is rooted in religious sentiment (Eastern religions are not antagonistic to Judaism) there are atheistic haters of Jews.  A classic example is Hitler’s Nazism, but even today there are hundreds of thousands of active Jew-hating atheists. Their hatred is just as malicious as religion-motivated Judeophobia, on which it may feed, (see the Holocaust). Why do atheists hate Jews? Ironically, many modern atheists, especially members of the intelligentsia, advocate Marxism, an atheistic ideology formulated by Karl Marx, the son of a Jewish Rabbi.

Atheists, including ethnically Jewish atheists, hate Judaism and its associated Zionism because of their strong religious connotations. They consider Jerusalem, i.e., Zion, a religious symbol strongly associated with the belief in God. Consequently, they despise the attachment of Jews and Christians to Jerusalem and would gladly surrender Jerusalem to the Muslims whose Allah does not seem as threatening to them. According to them the political importance Israelis attribute to the sovereignty over Jerusalem is vain. Also the claim of the Israelis on the ancient Land of Israel is illegitimate because it is associated with Jewish faith. So they actively support the Arab cause of ridding the middle east of the Jewish state, not because the love the Arabs but because they hate the Jews, who remind them of God. Likewise the hate and speak out against Christian Zionists. They ignore Jewish history because it is interwoven with religious overtones and therefore invalid in their estimation.

Because Judeophobia, including the Holocaust, are part of the history of the Jewish people they downplay their significance. They do not necessary deny the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis, but since the common denominator of the victims was Judaism, it becomes meaningless to many of them.  Like the Muslims, they would applaud the disappearance of Judaism and Christianity bur for a very different reason. They do not see Islam as threat (although Muslims despise atheists no less than other “non-believers”). They look at Muslims as primitive barbarians who will eventually see the light of atheism. However, at the end of the day they will realize that Islam is not less theistic than Christianity or Judaism; but since most of them come from Christian or Jewish background, these religious faiths are the first targets of their contempt.

Will atheistic Judeophobia disappear one day? Chances are that as long as there will be Jews, there with be Jew-hatred by secular atheists. Fortunately, their bigotry is currently not violent, unlike in days of Nazi Germany. But they actively support politically the enemies of Zionism, whether Jewish or Christian. Because there is a large number of atheists among academicians and media people, they affect public opinion in Europe and the US out of proportion to their relatively small number in the general population.

Paradoxically they often call themselves “liberal” while they are intrinsically intolerant of religious people of any persuasion. In a way they practice a bigoted godless religion. The only effective way to fight them and their ideology is to make the public aware of their anti-religious bias and teach people the true historical and sociological facts, including the potential unwarranted consequences of an irreligious world.

In summary

We reviewed the history of anti-Semitism, Judeophobia or misojudaism, whatever you wish to call it, and its dire consequence to the Jewish people, including the danger it still poses to the Jewish nation. We tried to understand its various sources and its different motivations. We also tried to suggest ways to mitigate it. There is an enormous literature on this subject that we tried to cover in a limited number of pages in this book. If this rather superficial treatment of the subject helped you to appreciate the magnitude and significance of this problem, we have achieved out goal.

 (to continue)