In my forthcoming book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is…and Islam Isn’t (coming this summer from Regnery Publishing), I argue that Jews and Christians, as well as Hindus and Buddhists and others, need to ally against the jihad threat. Ingrid Mattson and other Islamic leaders don’t want that to happen: “Islamic leader urges Jews be wary of fundamentalists,” by Charles A. Radin in the Boston Globe:
CAMBRIDGE — The president of the Islamic Society of North America warned last night that American Jews who ally with right-wing Christians to oppose Muslim organizations are pursuing a high-risk strategy that could backfire.
Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, at an event sponsored by the school and four Muslim student organizations, Ingrid Mattson, a Canadian-born convert from Roman Catholicism who became the Islamic society’s first woman president last year, said that many American Jews have an existential fear that Muslims are anti-Israel.
Such fear leads Jews to ally with Christian fundamentalists who are supportive of Israel and critical of Islam, she said.
“Right-wing Christians are very risky allies for American Jews,” Mattson said, “because they [the Christians] are really anti-Semitic. They do not like Jews” and enter into the alliance on the basis of fundamentalist beliefs that it would be desirable for all Jews to return to Israel. She suggested that fundamentalist Christians might turn against Jews or that there could be backlash from ordinary Americans against Jewish and fundamentalist Christian supporters of Israel.
This is flatly false. I’d like to see Ingrid Mattson produce anything antisemitic from any of the Christian fundamentalists who have allied with Israel. I’d like to see her produce anything from any contemporary Christian spokesman to rivals the antisemitism of this from IslamOnline: “Jews as Depicted In the Qur’an,” which concludes:
After this clear explanation, we would like to note that these are but some of the most famous traits of the Jews as described in the Qur’an. They have revolted against the Divine ordinances, distorted what has been revealed to them and invented new teachings which, they claimed, were much more better than what has been recorded in the Torah. It was for these traits that they found no warm reception in all countries where they tried to reside. Rather, they would either be driven out or live in isolation. It was Almighty Allah who placed on them His Wrath and made them den of humiliation due to their transgression. Almighty Allah told us that He”d send to them people who”d pour on them rain of severe punishment that would last till the Day of Resurrection. All this gives us glad tidings of the coming victory of Muslims over them once Muslims stick to strong faith and belief in Allah and adopt the modern means of technology.”
Read it all, Ingrid Mattson, and let us know what you are doing to combat these attitudes within the Islamic community.