The sickness bequeathed by the west to the Muslim world

[barb162]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1666871,00.html

The sickness bequeathed by the west to the Muslim world

The Iranian president's support for Holocaust denial is a measure of how far the infection of Jew-hatred has spread

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian


There were few memorable moments in the election campaign of 2005, but there's one I won't forget. It came when I was interviewing a group of Muslim voters in Edinburgh, asking how the Iraq war had unsettled their political allegiances. One older man began telling me that he did not blame Tony Blair or even George Bush for the way things had turned out, because they were mere dupes of a more powerful force. The calamity of 9/11 was not all it seemed: the authors of that event were not the 19 hijackers, but more shadowy players, unknown even to Bush. Later, as he gave me a lift to the station, I asked who these secret powers might be. The answer was "rich Jewish people".

snip

So I saw the vox pop on Saudi TV asking people on the street whether they would ever shake hands with a Jew - unanimous answer: no - and guessed that perhaps this was an exceptional item, hardly indicative. I read the transcript of an interview with Basmallah, a three-year-old girl, again aired on Saudi TV, who was introduced as a "Muslim girl, a true Muslim". Here's the exchange:

Host: Basmallah, do you know the Jews?

Basmallah: Yes.

Host: Do you like them?

Basmallah: No.

Host: Why don't you like them?

Basmallah: Because they are apes and pigs

snip

[Coastie for Truth]

1. ...Continued...

---snip---

Suddenly, the usual apologetics won't work. No one can say Iran's president was really complaining about Israel or Zionism, rather than Jews. No one can say he was talking about the west's colonial crimes. He was peddling, instead, one of the defining tropes of the racist hard right: Holocaust denial. It is a stance that seeks to deny Jews their history, their suffering, almost their very being. Like denying that African-Americans were ever slaves, it is a move made by those who wish only harm.

---snip---

Well, now I'm done with the charitable explanations. A man who refuses to believe the historic truth is capable of anything. This is not an Arabic cable TV station or an obscure Egyptian newspaper. This is a head of government, the leader of a nation of 70 million - a country that aspires to lead the Muslim world. And, lest we forget, Iran has nuclear ambitions. So now it's not paranoid to worry about a president with annihilationist dreams - it's smart.

---snip---

It's hardly a surprise. TV stations across the Muslim world have been running this garbage for ages, along with lurid anti-semitism. Jordanian TV's Ramadan special this year was Al-Shatat, a Syrian-produced series that speaks of a "global Jewish government" and depicts the ancient blood libel: the accusation that Jews use the blood of Christian children in preparing food for Passover. That was a follow-up to Egyptian television's Ramadan treat in 2002: Horseman without a Horse, whose central theme was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the century-old forgery concocted by the Tsarist secret police which alleged a Jewish plot to take over the world.

We can deny it no longer: the virus of anti-semitism has infected the Muslim world. And virus it is, for Jew-hatred on this scale, as Christian Europe can testify, is a kind of sickness. This is one of the grossest legacies bequeathed by the west: that Muslims have taken to heart a form of anti-semitism alien to their own lands, borrowing a language and iconography that was made in Christendom. Blood libels and the Protocols were dreamed up in Norwich, Mainz or Moscow - yet now they breathe anew in Cairo, Riyadh and Damascus.

---snip---

[GrumpyGreg]

2. Man,this is one angry,Christian hating guy. I guess all

Christians should be thrown to the lions.

I'm a Catholic therefore I'm a Christian and I can't say I enjoy being blamed for the Muslim hatred of Jews.

[Coastie for Truth]

3. No.

Just British Colonial Office hating and Nazi hating.

[pelsar]

4. strange..

why is the author blaming the west/christians for muslims anti semetism?...cant they do it "on their own"........seems to me there are more than enough examples emitting from the muslim world that has no "influence" from the west?

[Coastie for Truth]

5. The "new" anti Semitism of the post-Sykes Picot and post-oil discovery era

is markedly different from the what Maimonides writes about in his letter to the Yemenites.

Background - I have a cousin is the "go to guy" on the history of North African and Islamic science in the history of whatever, metallurgy, materials science, solid state physics. Has lectured at Harvard and teaches at one of the "Big Ten" mid-western land grant state universities.

What he has published - and what Maria Rosa Menocal has published - is that the anti-Semitism of the Arab lands - (before Sykes-Picot, before the discovery of oil and acquisition of massive oil wealth in the region, before the "power politics" of the UK (the 1939 White Paper) and Germany (Grand Mufti of Jerusalem), and before the Cold War's creation of proxies in the region) was not at the level that we see now. He argues - as does Menocal - that this is a European export.

[Colorado Blue]

6. I think he's basing it on the fact that European bigotry, in the

form of texts like the "Protocols" and also Mein Kampf, etc, found their way into the Middle East from the beginning of the 20th century. This has caused a double whammy to develop - the blood libel and conspiracy theories and "Shylock" stereotypes on top of the pigs and monkies of dhimmitude. It's caused traditional Islamic views of Jewry to become much more virulent and hateful. There really wasn't this level of extremism in the past, except in isolated cases.

On the other hand the very conditions of dhimmitude caused heaven knows how many Christians and Jews simply to disappear and/or convert, so it was crushing in its own way. But it didn't have the "Christ killer" mythology, and similar blood libels, combined with some of Hitler's ideals, some of which are now common currency in the Middle East along with Holocaust denial, etc.

[pelsar]

8. ok..

now i understand...sort of like the taking western technology (cell phones) along with some western ideology (protocols of zion)...and add the addition of the US being the great satan while using US and israeli technologies to pass on that hatred (which makes it worse)....and one gets a very angry confused person....

[Colorado Blue]

7. No - please don't misunderstand. Hating Christians isn't

what this article is about.

It IS about certain stereotypes about Jews, which are common in the Christian world, and which date back almost 2,000 years to the idea that "The Jews Killed Christ". These are extremely virulent, and have resulted in terrible persecutions throughout the Christian world. Often these take the form of blood libels (Jew using Christian blood to make matzohs, etc) or conspiracy theories, Jews as bloodsucking money lenders, etc. Finally all these came together, combined with Hitler's crazy ideas, and resulted in the Holocaust.

Until recently, we didn't see these particular forms of bigotry in Islam, though they have their own opinions about "infidels". But now, old Western stereotypes about Jews are seen throughout the Muslim world on TV, in books, and now has taken the form of Holocaust denial.