"Far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts"

In "Islam's history of anti-Semitism" in the Washington Times, Raymond Ibrahim, editor of the superb Al-Qaeda Reader, reviews the also superb Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism by Andrew Bostom.

Is there such a thing as Islamic anti-Semitism? That is the implicit question that Andrew Bostom's new book, "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism," tackles. The regrettable answer that presents itself is not based on conjecture, political correctness, anachronisms or wishful thinking — increasingly the domains and paradigms of modern academia — but rather primary texts that speak for themselves. Dr. Bostom, whom I have met and who evinces a passion for the subject of his book, still manages to approach it objectively. A medical doctor by profession, he applies the scientific method and bases his conclusions on the data — as all scholars used to.

And his data is significant: This consists of approximately 700, double-column pages of mostly primary text material, loosely divided into two genres: 1) Islamic law's stance toward the Jew, as delineated by Muslims (lest the charge of "bias" be made) and 2) historical texts documenting Jewish life under Islamic rule.

What does one learn from this approach? The historical documents make clear that, from day one, Jews and Christians have been systematically treated as second-class citizens, "dhimmis," in the regions conquered by Islam. Thus even if there were some sort of Andalusian "golden age" — as academics are fond of reminiscing and insisting — that's exactly all it was, an "age," an "aberration."

How else to explain the many documents, across the centuries and from all around the Islamic world, that demonstrate the substandard treatment and contempt Jews were made to live with, centuries before the Arab-Israeli conflict? The book debunks the popular thesis that Islamic enmity for Jews is a Western import.

The two main factors behind Western anti-Semitism — "Christian" hostility and racial theories — can have no influence on the Arab-Islamic world, which does not identify with Christianity. Nor can it, in any form of racial hierarchy, look down on its fellow Semites as inferior. If Nazis made Jews wear special insignias identifying them, so did some Muslims — 1,200 years earlier.

What, then, is the primary impetus behind Islam's antipathy for Jews? This is where Dr. Bostom's theological documents are key. We come to discover that, far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts.

Koranic verse after verse, hadith after hadith, castigate, condemn and curse the Jews; they are called "corrupters," "exploiters," "distorters," "prophet-killers," and, most infamously, "pigs and monkeys." Such slanderous words are contained in the Koran (the eternal words of Allah) and the Hadith (the words of Islam's prophet). Thus, Muslim hostility for Jews clearly has little to do with circumstance or politics....

Read it all.

Posted by Robert at May 20, 2008 10:52 AM
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