M
MugenOne
Guest
Now that the dust has begun to settle on the Mumbai attacks, it is time to pose a troubling question. What motivated its perpetrators to include the Mumbai Chabad Jewish center as one of a handful of targets, torture its inhabitants – including a pregnant mother – and then murder them in cold blood? Chabad is a nonpolitical organization renowned for the warm hospitality and spiritual support it offers to fellow Jews around the world.
There will be individuals, such as New York Times reporter Fernanda Santos, who raise the possibility that the center may have been “an accidental hostage scene.” Of course, the idea that the terrorists somehow stumbled upon their hapless Jewish victims in a city of 13 million with no Jewish population to speak of is the height of wishful thinking. Mostly, though, the question was simply ignored by the mainstream press and pundits alike.
But the answer, oddly enough, is provided in the 17th-century writings of Ahmad Sirhindi, an Indian Muslim cleric. As described by historian Andrew Bostom, Sirhindi, in the midst of writing an anti-Hindu diatribe, paused to note that “whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.” Like the Mumbai terrorists, Sirhindi was most unlikely to ever actually have met a Jew. And like the terrorists who lived four centuries after him, Sirhindi’s hatred was not “accidental.” He was simply giving voice to the anti-Semitic tradition that is deeply rooted within Islam.
The roots begin with the Quran, which is punctuated by descriptions that in any other context would be considered blatantly anti-Semitic. It describes Jews as, among other things, cursed, corrupt, disobedient, perverse, disbelieving, envious, with hearts as hard as rocks, lying, usurious, hedonistic, deceptive, ungodly, cheating, minions of the devil, apes and swine, and condemned to burn in the hellfires. The descriptions culminate with a curse that consigns Jews to eternal “humiliation and wretchedness.” Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories within Islam also abound, such as those accusing Jews of poisoning Mohammed, of murdering his prophets, and of allying themselves with or even being the Dajjal, the Muslim version of the anti-Christ. According to mainstream Islamic tradition, the messianic period will require the violent destruction of all Jews. All these themes were subsequently developed over centuries, codifying Jew hatred into Islamic religious law.
The legacy of Islamic anti-Semitism has borne bitter fruit for the Jews over time, exemplified by the incalculable suffering they endured under Muslim rule as a vulnerable, stateless people – the expulsions, forced conversions, pogroms, terrible humiliations and impoverishment. This legacy lives on as a growing tsunami of genocidal anti-Semitism that has enveloped the modern Muslim world. It is evident in the apocalyptical threats of Iran’s leaders and their minions Hezbollah and Hamas, in the millions of readers who made the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’’ a best-seller in Arab countries, in public statements such as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ recitation of the Quranic accusation that Jews corrupt humanity on earth, in the state-sponsored TV shows broadcast throughout the world that depict Jews as treacherous, cannibalistic, child-murdering subhumans. And, of course, in schools, madrassas and mosques that routinely teach Jew hatred. As Moshe Sharon, professor of Islamic studies, notes, “not one Friday passes without” such hateful religious themes “being quoted in sermons from one side of the Islamic world to the other.”
Accepting the reality of institutional anti-Semitism within Islam does not at all imply that every Muslim is an anti-Semite. Like religious people everywhere, Muslims can and do choose to ignore or reject various religious tenets they find personally objectionable. Some may not even be aware of the anti-Semitic traditions. But it also does not mean we can afford to ignore the existential threat it poses to the Jewish people. Islam urgently needs to purge itself of anti-Semitism, perhaps by using the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council as a model. But self-correction first requires self-diagnosis, something that, at least as far as Muslim anti-Semitism is concerned, is in scant supply. This is why it is so critical for Jews and others who wish to avoid a second Holocaust to reject the psychologically comforting strategy of denying, against all evidence, that such a threat exists. We must demand that anti-Semitism within Islam becomes as unacceptable as it has within Christianity. Failure to do so will result in far worse than was witnessed in Mumbai.
indystar.com/article/20081230/OPINION01/812300317/1002/OPINION
Islam is antismitic because Muhammad stole whatever revelation he claimed to have had from the Jews. So the thief hates his victim. Time to say it and not to speak of a “religion of peace”!
There will be individuals, such as New York Times reporter Fernanda Santos, who raise the possibility that the center may have been “an accidental hostage scene.” Of course, the idea that the terrorists somehow stumbled upon their hapless Jewish victims in a city of 13 million with no Jewish population to speak of is the height of wishful thinking. Mostly, though, the question was simply ignored by the mainstream press and pundits alike.
But the answer, oddly enough, is provided in the 17th-century writings of Ahmad Sirhindi, an Indian Muslim cleric. As described by historian Andrew Bostom, Sirhindi, in the midst of writing an anti-Hindu diatribe, paused to note that “whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.” Like the Mumbai terrorists, Sirhindi was most unlikely to ever actually have met a Jew. And like the terrorists who lived four centuries after him, Sirhindi’s hatred was not “accidental.” He was simply giving voice to the anti-Semitic tradition that is deeply rooted within Islam.
The roots begin with the Quran, which is punctuated by descriptions that in any other context would be considered blatantly anti-Semitic. It describes Jews as, among other things, cursed, corrupt, disobedient, perverse, disbelieving, envious, with hearts as hard as rocks, lying, usurious, hedonistic, deceptive, ungodly, cheating, minions of the devil, apes and swine, and condemned to burn in the hellfires. The descriptions culminate with a curse that consigns Jews to eternal “humiliation and wretchedness.” Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories within Islam also abound, such as those accusing Jews of poisoning Mohammed, of murdering his prophets, and of allying themselves with or even being the Dajjal, the Muslim version of the anti-Christ. According to mainstream Islamic tradition, the messianic period will require the violent destruction of all Jews. All these themes were subsequently developed over centuries, codifying Jew hatred into Islamic religious law.
The legacy of Islamic anti-Semitism has borne bitter fruit for the Jews over time, exemplified by the incalculable suffering they endured under Muslim rule as a vulnerable, stateless people – the expulsions, forced conversions, pogroms, terrible humiliations and impoverishment. This legacy lives on as a growing tsunami of genocidal anti-Semitism that has enveloped the modern Muslim world. It is evident in the apocalyptical threats of Iran’s leaders and their minions Hezbollah and Hamas, in the millions of readers who made the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’’ a best-seller in Arab countries, in public statements such as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ recitation of the Quranic accusation that Jews corrupt humanity on earth, in the state-sponsored TV shows broadcast throughout the world that depict Jews as treacherous, cannibalistic, child-murdering subhumans. And, of course, in schools, madrassas and mosques that routinely teach Jew hatred. As Moshe Sharon, professor of Islamic studies, notes, “not one Friday passes without” such hateful religious themes “being quoted in sermons from one side of the Islamic world to the other.”
Accepting the reality of institutional anti-Semitism within Islam does not at all imply that every Muslim is an anti-Semite. Like religious people everywhere, Muslims can and do choose to ignore or reject various religious tenets they find personally objectionable. Some may not even be aware of the anti-Semitic traditions. But it also does not mean we can afford to ignore the existential threat it poses to the Jewish people. Islam urgently needs to purge itself of anti-Semitism, perhaps by using the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council as a model. But self-correction first requires self-diagnosis, something that, at least as far as Muslim anti-Semitism is concerned, is in scant supply. This is why it is so critical for Jews and others who wish to avoid a second Holocaust to reject the psychologically comforting strategy of denying, against all evidence, that such a threat exists. We must demand that anti-Semitism within Islam becomes as unacceptable as it has within Christianity. Failure to do so will result in far worse than was witnessed in Mumbai.
indystar.com/article/20081230/OPINION01/812300317/1002/OPINION
Islam is antismitic because Muhammad stole whatever revelation he claimed to have had from the Jews. So the thief hates his victim. Time to say it and not to speak of a “religion of peace”!