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Stop the presses! New study discovers antisemitism on the rise in the Islamic world

Apr 22, 2008 7:13 am By Robert Spencer

There is an inconsistency at the heart of this report: Erlich asserts that “until about 10-15 years ago, anti-Semitism was imported into the Muslim Arab world from Europe,” but we’re also told that the Muslim antisemites are “using well-known Koranic texts” in order to map out “the Jews’ ‘innate negative attributes.'”

Now, the Qur’an has been in the Islamic world since the seventh century, and its canonical interpretation essentially fixed by the most influential Sunni tafasir (commentaries on the Qur’an): those by Ibn Kathir, the two Jalals, Qurtubi, Tabari, the Tanwir al-Miqbas, etc. While there is some disagreement over some aspects of the Qur’anic teaching on the Jews, it is peripheral — it has to do with questions such as, Did the Jews whom Allah transformed into apes and pigs (Qur’an 2:62-65, 5:59-60, 7:166) have offspring or not? There is essentially agreement on the fact that the Jews are and will always be the Muslims’ worst enemies (5:82) and that they’re accursed (2:89, 3:112, 9:30).

In light of all that, which seems to be acknowledged at least in part in this report, it strains credulity that up until only ten or fifteen years ago, antisemitic material was imported into an otherwise non-antisemitic Islamic world. Whatever imports there were found an eager audience, already primed by Qur’anic antisemitism.

“Report analyzes Muslim anti-Semitism,” by Haviv Rettig in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to all who sent this in):

Muslim anti-Semitism is growing in scope and extremism, to the point that it has become a credible strategic threat for Israel, according to a 180-page report produced for Israeli policymakers by the semi-official Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) and obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post ahead of its Tuesday release.

According to the report, by educating generations of Muslims with a deep animus toward Israel and Jews, this anti-Semitism, actively promulgated by many states in the region, holds back the peace process and normalization efforts between Israel and Muslim countries. It also forms the intellectual justification for an eliminationist political program.

“This isn’t ordinary prejudice,” explained ITIC director Col. (res.) Dr. Reuven Erlich, formerly of the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate, who heads the team of researchers that produced the report. “This prejudice is evil because it isn’t theoretical. It is ideological incitement by states and organizations with the practical means of translating it into action.”

Following on a similar study produced in 2004, the report is a comprehensive examination of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, with emphasis on Iran and Arab states.

It is also an insight into the perception of the threat within the Israeli intelligence establishment. The ITIC operates under the aegis of the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center (IICC), the official commemoration agency for the fallen of Israel’s intelligence services. The IICC is chaired by former Mossad head Efraim Halevy and maintains close contact with Israel’s intelligence community. The ITIC’s reports are widely read among Israeli policymakers.

Among the report’s most worrying findings is the growth over the past three decades of uniquely Muslim roots to older European versions of anti-Semitism. Without discounting classical Christian Europe’s canards regarding secret Jewish conspiracies, the ritual slaughter of non-Jewish children and other allegations of Jewish evil, anti-Semitism in the Muslim world increasingly finds its own, Islamic reasons for anti-Jewish hatred through new interpretations of Islamic history and scripture.

From the Koranic story of a Jewess who poisoned Muhammad, to the troubled relations between Muhammad and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, radical Islamist groups and thinkers have been using extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric that has grown increasingly popular with the Muslim public, particularly in Iran and the Arab states. Using well-known Koranic texts, these groups have been mapping out the Jews’ “innate negative attributes” and teaching a paradigm of permanent struggle between Muslims and Jews.

The goal of this “Islamified” anti-Semitism, according to the report, is to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a national territorial contest which could be resolved through compromise to a “historic, cultural and existential struggle for the supremacy of Islam.”

The study examined books, newspapers, television and radio broadcasts and Internet sites, along with studies of groups following anti-Jewish discourse in the Muslim world, such as MEMRI and the ADL.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rising anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe was injected into Muslim lands through commercial and diplomatic ties. Spurred by opposition to Zionism and ideologically strengthened by Nazi rhetoric and support, Muslim anti-Semitism grew in the 20th century into a phenomenon so widespread that blatantly anti-Semitic texts can be purchased on street corners of Arab cities, even in countries where almost no Jews remain.

The research team did not deal with “anti-Israel incitement,” according to Erlich, “only with anti-Semitism. But when you read an article or listen to a speech, the terminology is confused and intertwined. You can’t distinguish the anti-Zionism from the anti-Semitism.”

According to the report, the past decade has seen a veritable explosion of anti-Semitic literature in the Muslim world which intentionally confuses Israel and the Jewish people and is broadcast worldwide through books, radio, television, newspapers, caricatures and Internet forums. This discourse reaches outside Muslim lands to a large Muslim audience in the West.

“Until about 10-15 years ago, anti-Semitism was imported into the Muslim Arab world from Europe,” says Erlich. “They translated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf into Arabic. Over the past 10-15 years, there’s been a deep change. Today it isn’t an import, but an export. This needs more research, since we don’t have access to European mosques, but we’re convinced that the export of anti-Semitic myths and politics to Europe is having an effect on European Muslim communities.”

The hundred-year-old Czarist forgery The Protocols, which accuses the Jews, among other “crimes,” of fomenting liberalism by masterminding the American and French revolutions, is being published in new editions in Egypt, Syria, Iran and other countries.

The report finds little government action either in the Muslim world or in the West to curb this phenomenon, citing restrictions on viewing Hizbullah’s Al-Manar television station as an exception that proves the rule….

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