The implication here is that “anti-Muslim rhetoric” — that is, public discussion of the jihad threat and what can be done about it — leads inexorably to the demonization of Muslims and ultimately to genocide. This is ridiculous, overheated rhetoric that only hinders the prospects of any genuine discussion of the salient issues, and that is probably the goal all along.
The common and hysterical claim that “Muslims are the new Jews” has been answered many times — as often as it has been asserted. Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong, Leftist “journalist” Jeffrey Goldberg, Iranian front group Board member Reza Aslan, Muslim Brotherhood-linked Congressman Keith Ellison, Nicholas Kristof, and Canadian Muslim leader Syed Sohawardy, among many others, have repeated it. The blazingly brilliant Daniel Greenfield takes it apart in this video. And in 2014, Bill Maher noted: “Jews weren’t oppressing anybody. There weren’t 5,000 militant Jewish groups. They didn’t do a study of treatment of women around the world and find that Jews were at the bottom of it. There weren’t 10 Jewish countries in the world that were putting gay people to death just for being gay.” Indeed, and no one is calling for or justifying genocide of Muslims now; there is no individual or group remotely comparable to the National Socialists in any genuine sense.
Christopher Hitchens also refuted this idea when writing a few years ago about the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero: “‘Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,’ Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like.”
The purpose of this claim is to intimidate people into thinking that criticism of Islamic supremacism leads to the concentration camps, and thus there must be no criticism of Islamic supremacism. The unstated assumption is that if one group was unjustly accused of plotting subversion and violence, and was viciously persecuted and massacred on the basis of those false accusations, then any group accused of plotting subversion and violence must be innocent, and any such accusation must be in service of preparing for their subversion and massacre. It is simply a method to foreclose on any criticism of jihad terror and Islamic supremacism.
“College Professor, Students Sport Yellow Jewish Stars to ‘Protest Islamophobia,’” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, December 18, 2015:
A University of San Diego professor and her students have raised eyebrows in the pro-Israel community after they led a protest this week against anti-Muslim rhetoric by wearing yellow Jewish star badges like those used by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
Bahar Davary, an Iranian-American associate professor of theology and religious studies at the school, held the protest with her students on Thursday, according to university officials.
While advocating against what they said is a growing trend in anti-Muslim rhetoric, the professor and students wore Jewish stars inscribed with the word, “Muslim.”
The accessory was deemed insensitive and off base among some in the pro-Israel world and has prompted Davary to defend her decision.
At least 100 students and faculty members on campus have been seen sporting the yellow star badges, according to local reports on the protest.
Davary defended her decision to use the yellow badge, saying through a university spokeswoman that it was not meant to draw an analogy between the Holocaust and the current atmosphere Muslims face.
“This is a class/campus project to raise awareness against Islamophobia,” Davary said. “It is not intended to make an analogy between the current situation of Muslims in the U.S. to that of Jews in Germany and wider Europe before the Shoah [Holocaust].”
“The idea was discussed in my classes of doing a project to start a campus conversation about the anti-Muslim rhetoric rising all around us,” Davary explained.
The protest, which was meant as a “learning tool” for students, was not aimed at diminishing the plight of more than six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, the professor said.
“We realize that it is a stark symbol that carries a lot of weight and meaning today not only for Jews but for humanity,” Davary said. “That is as it should be, if we are to learn anything from our collective history. The yellow Star of David with the word Muslim written on it is a symbol that my students and I wear with utmost respect for the memory of the Jewish lives lost.”
She and her students wore the yellow star “in sympathy with those who lived through the tragedy and survived, and those who still bear the painful memory.”
The goal was to raise awareness to the dangers of “marking any group of people as the ‘other,’” she said.
However, some said that use of the image comes off as insensitive and promotes flawed thinking about the current situation of Muslims and those Jews who experienced the Holocaust.
Jacob Baime, executive director at the Israel on Campus Coalition, an advocacy group that defends the Jewish state on college campuses, slammed the demonstration as highly offensive.
“This incident reflects cultural appropriation at its worst,” Baime said. “The industrial slaughter of 6 million innocent Jews by the Nazis is unique in human history. Any serious professor would have the decency to respect the memory of the victims.”…