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Muslim anti-Semitism is only decades old, Obama claims

Jan 21, 2014 6:36 pm By Robert Spencer

ObamaJan14

He was only about 1,400 years off. “Muslim anti-Semitism is only decades old, Obama claims,” by Neil Munro in the Daily Caller, January 21:

Experts are scoffing at President Barack Obama’s apparent belief that widespread Muslim hatred of Jews is only decades old.

“Obama reveals that he has no idea, or doesn’t want to give the impression that he has any idea, about the reality of Islamic anti-Semitism,” said Robert Spencer, the author of many books on Islamic ideas and director of Jihad Watch.

“Anti-Semitism is hard-wired into Islam,” from its origins before 700, said Andrew Bostom, author of three books about Islam, including “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism,” which lists centuries of anti-Semitic hatred, murders, pogroms and apartheid-like discrimination.

Intellectuals, politicians and diplomats are loath to admit the centrality of anti-Semitism in Islamic beliefs, because it fuels conflict with Israel and the West and it can’t be fixed by Westerners, Bostom said. ”You’re dealing with an intractable situation, and people hate intractable situations,” he said, adding “diplomats are the worst.”

In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Obama described the Muslim hatred of Israel as byproduct of recent fights, not as a consequence of Islam’s doctrinal objection to any Jewish government.

“With respect to Israel, the interests of Israel in stability and security are actually very closely aligned with the interests of the Sunni states,” Obama said.

The “Sunni states” are nations populated by Arabs who believe in the mainstream Sunni version of Islam. In contrast, Iran advocates the Shia version of Islam, which is endorsed by roughly 10 percent of Muslims.

“What’s preventing them from entering into even an informal alliance [against Shia-run Iran] with at least normalized diplomatic relations is not that their interests are profoundly in conflict but the Palestinian issue, as well as a long history of anti-Semitism that’s developed over the course of decades there, and anti-Arab sentiment that’s increased inside of Israel based on seeing [Jewish] buses being blown up,” Obama said….

Obama’s “course of decades” comment “ignores the numerous anti-Semitic teachings of the Quran and other Islamic texts — most notably the Quran’s designation of the Jews as the worst enemies of the believers,” Spencer said.

For example, Spencer cited the fifth chapter of the Quran, which declares that “If [Jews] believed in Allah and the Prophet and that which is revealed unto him, they would not choose them for their friends. But many of them are of evil conduct. Thou wilt find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe (to be) the Jews and the idolaters.”

The quote is Qur’an 5:82.

The Jew-hatred in the Quran is critical, said Bostom, because orthodox Muslims believe the Quran is a word-for-word copy of a divine book resting on a table in “jannah,” or the Islamic version of heaven. Most Christians believe most of their Bible is open for interpretation, but for Muslims, the Quran is “permanent and perfect. … It applies to all time, it is eternal, it is a pure, divine, eternal form of reality,” Bostom told The Daily Caller.

Islamic traditions also blame a Jewish woman for poisoning their prophet Muhammad, who is credited by Muslims with creating Islam. Several Jews tribes in Saudi Arabia were enslaved, murdered or exiled during the early 600s by Muhammad’s armies, according to Islamic traditions.

The Quran’s words created and maintain Islamic anti-Semitism, which is so ubiquitous that even sects of Sunni and Shia Muslims who are trying to kill each other agree that Jews are to blame for their fighting, he said….

Obama “seems to be attributing the rise in anti-Semitism in Arab culture to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, which ignores the many anti-Jewish pogroms that took place in that area before the founding of the State of Israel,” said Spencer.

The view fortified his mistaken belief that he can reform the Arab world, Spencer says. ”His hubris is founded upon his ignorance,” Spencer added.

“No well-informed individual could possibly think himself capable of overturning hatreds that are founded in religious texts that are over a millennium old and are still revered by hundreds of millions of people as the perfect and unalterable word of the deity,” Spencer said.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Islamic antisemitism Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Novus ordo seclorum says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 7:12 pm

    What I would like to know: how many Muslim terrorist attacks against Europeans or North Americans prior to the establishment of Israel as a nation, and how many after.

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      Feb 11, 2014 at 2:34 am

      See “The Barbary Pirates”, for starters.

      The book “White Gold” describes *centuries* of Muslim terror-and-plunder-and slave-grabbing raids upon non-Muslim Mediterreanan *and Atlantic* coasts – including the coast of Cornwall and Ireland. People were seized from *Baltimore*, Ireland, in the 17th century.

      And as soon as the USA separated itself from England and became an independent country, Muslim corsairs attacked its ships; which is why Thomas Jefferson got hold of a translation of the Quran…he was Reading the Enemy’s Book. And it is why John Quincy Adams had his homework on Islam, and had gotten its number – he had figured out the Jihad imperative, and he had also come to understand Muslim duplicity – by 1829. There was no nation of Israel in 1829; but there *had been* vicious Muslim attacks upon US merchant ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic.

  2. mortimer says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 7:30 pm

    CLUELESS! Obama’s defense of Islam is pathological!

    Maimonides fled Islamic Spain in 1184 because of the fierce persecution of Jews. “his own words debunk the utopian view of the Islamic treatment of Jews. He wrote:

    “… on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael [that is, Muslims], who PERSECUTE US SEVERLY, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us…. No nation HAS EVER DONE MORE HARM TO ISRAEL . None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have…. We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, their absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear…. We have done as our sages of blessed memory have instructed us, bearing the lies and absurdities of Ishmael…. In spite of all this, we are not spared from the ferocity of their wickedness and their outbursts at any time. On the contrary, the more we suffer and choose to conciliate them, the more they choose to act belligerently toward us…”

  3. pdxnag says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 8:07 pm

    J. Christian Adams argues that people should: Stop Giving Obama Radicals the Benefit of the Doubt

    Don’t attribute to ineptitude the advancement of an evil pro-totalitarian agenda. Obama is not ignorant of Islam’s intrinsic hostility to freedom everywhere for 1400 years. It is a feature, not a glitch. And he favors it.

    • Larry A. Singleton says

      Jan 23, 2014 at 2:05 am

      …..should: “Stop Giving Obama Radicals the Benefit of the Doubt”

      How do you make a sentence or word a “link”?

  4. Runklestiltskin says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 9:13 pm

    We didn’t notice the fundamental hatred muslms have for jews as a people because there weren’t as many muslims in the west several decades ago.

    But he’s not entirely wrong about the increase in uabashed jew hatred being an increasing phenomenon.

    It’s been found in captured documents that The Musim Brotherhood has as a policy the agitating of jew hatred amongst muslims world wide. Not just Israel but jews themselves in whatever country they are. It’s clear that’s what is behind the explosive increase in unabashed jew hatred we see from muslims in Europe in recent years.

    They’re using Israel to make muslims hate jews and making them hate jews that have nothing to do with Israel. It’s to create a “wedge issue” to get themselves more supporters world wide. It’s not so paranoid a claim. We see both Democrats and Republicans do similar around election time.

    Like the issues our political parties use, jews and islam is an exising issue that is exploited.

  5. Softly Bob says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 10:38 pm

    There was a lapse in Muslim terrorism between 1920 and the 1950s. The Ottoman Empire had been neutered and dissolved. The Muslim World had no power, and no money to fund jihad (oil was not an issue then, and they had no funding).
    Before then, however Muslim terrorism had been rife for over a thousand years. The Muslims conquered the Middle East, Spain, Persia, North Africa and India. They even attacked Southern France but were driven back by Charles Martel. They eventually conquered Constantinople in 1453. As late as 1683 they tried to destroy Vienna. They were the most aggressive force in the World. They contributed to the Dark Ages by effectively cutting off Europe from the riches and knowledge of India and China.
    Only by persistent resistance from Europe were the Muslims eventually leashed. Both the Russian and British Empires fought them until they were pushed back and quarantined.
    Thanks to Arab and Iranian oil, and thanks to lax immigration policies, the Muslims have now made a comeback. Jihad is on the rise and is as dangerous as it has ever been.

  6. nacazo says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 11:48 pm

    Calm down people! Barry is absolutely correct. Muslim anti-semitism is actually a few decades old. 140 decades old to be precise.

  7. mortimer says

    Jan 21, 2014 at 11:54 pm

    THE GRIEVANCE THEORY of Islamic anger is hogwash! The only ‘grievance’ is that the dirty kafirs do not worship Allah and his partner Mohammed.

  8. kilfincelt says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 12:29 am

    Re: Softly Bob’s comment: You are correct. Also, the U.S. had its first taste of the Muslim world in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. We fought two wars with the Barbary coast rulers and won. (Note: The Barbary pirates were in the habit of seizing ships and demanding ransom for the crews.) Furthermore, at the turn of the 19th century Muslims were still raiding Italy and other coastal areas for people that they could ransom and/or enslave. In addition, the discovery of the Americas was a direct result of the Europeans having to find another way to China and India because of the rise of Islam.
    As to Jewish hatred, it is endemic in Islam. The Qur’an is full of hateful statements about Jews and Christians. In fact if hate speech laws were ever enacted in this country, the first book that would have to be destroyed is the Qur’an. I suspect that Obama knows this is and is just practicing his lying as he was taught by his Muslim teachers in Indonesia. Remember that Obama is a Muslim. In Islam if your father is a Muslim then so is the child. It is automatic. Obama, Sr. was a Muslim and so Junior is automatically one as well.

  9. Historical accuracy says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 2:49 am

    Might depend on your definition of terrorist attacks and your definition of European but if you include murder, kidnapping, piracy, rape, slave-taking, stealing of children etc then the answer is countless attacks from when Islamic jihadis emerged from the Arabian peninsula. If however you’re looking just for the current ‘traditional’ type of terrorist attack then there wouldn’t have been as many but there still some – e.g. 1/1/1915 – 2 muslims answered the Ottomon Sultan’s call to Jihad by opening fire on a train of people going to a picnic outside the town of Broken Hill in Australia, killing a number of them. The notes left by those 2 Jihadi’s are remarkably similar to those left by suicide bombers today.

  10. Redwine says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 4:39 am

    Perhaps the focus of Muslim jihad was not so evident in Europe, but Arab terrorism against Jews was particularly horrific in the 1920s and ’30s in pre-state Israel, with Arab riots and bloody pogroms carried out against Jewish civilians, especially the pogroms of 1929. The 1950s were rife with pogroms and expulsions of Jews across the Islamic world – Iraq, Iran, North Africa, Yemen, etc.

  11. Bianca says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 4:45 am

    @Novus ordo seclorum Any such comparison is ridiculous and worthless. The world has changed radically in the last 100 years, esp. as far as technology is concerned. What these barbarians can do now, they couldn’t dream of doing then. Also, there have been political, demographical and economical changes that made a big difference.

  12. David Levy says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 4:49 am

    10 000 times?
    100 000 times?

    over the past 1400 years Muslims have attacked Europe countless times.

    within a 100 years of Mohammed dying Islamic armies had invaded southern Europe conquering modern day Spain, southern France etc etc during those wars of islamic colonization tens of thousands of Europeans where slaughtered and enslaved

    is that not terrorism?

  13. Carmen Sporidis says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 5:38 am

    frankly, an ignorant have no colour of skin but dark brain

  14. Bob Whitley says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 5:53 am

    That is an important question. The answer is that IslM was almost constantly at war from about 650 AD until the European nation states reached substantial power around 1480 AD. The tactic of “convert or die” was normal practice.

  15. Dwight says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 6:41 am

    This video will explain the several jihads into Europe.

    http://www.mrctv.org/videos/bill-warner-islam-1400-years-fear-english-titles

  16. macck says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 6:42 am

    Anti-semitism is hard-wired into Islam; that is a fact. Of course, it is also a fact that it is hard-wired into Christianity, and no amount of rationalizing or denial will change that fact: read the Book of Timothy in the New Testament if you don’t believe me. It lays the foundation for what some call “supercessionism” whereby the new religion of Christianity replaces/displaces Judaism and renders obsolete the then more than millennium practices of Judaism, with the strong implication that those who continue those practices are at best mistaken and at worst evil.

  17. rev g says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 8:38 am

    Novus, look to your history books. What of the Islamic conquests which were precursor to the crusades? What of Moorish Spain? Do you conveniently ignore these things and more, or have you just never looked?

  18. ApolloSpeaks says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 8:39 am

    IF ISRAEL DIDN’T EXIST

    Jew hatred in the Moslem world (rooted in Medina’s Jews rejecting Mohammed) wouldn’t be so oceanic and all-consuming as it now is. Israel’s existence in the heart of the Moslem world (the Arabian Peninsula where Islam was born) is a refutation of Islamic truth driving Moslems violently insane with doubt about the supremacy and inevitable triumph of their faith. For Moslems to believe again with perfect faith requires Israel’s extinction. Obama, the ignoramus that he is, is too shallow-minded and blinded by ideology to understand this.

  19. Gee says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 9:16 am

    Novus ordo seclorum – the answer is millions. The first attacks by Muslims on Americans was in 1784. The Muslims murdered or enslaved millions of Europeans hundreds of years prior to 1948.

  20. Shane says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 10:11 am

    Muslims have been attacking Europe for 1,200 years. This is the reason that the Crusades were launched. Watch Why We Are Afraid, A 1400 Year Secret, by Dr Bill Warner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Qpy0mXg8Y

    Obama is practicing Taqiyya here by stating this obvious falsehood to make Muslims look better.

  21. Crystal says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 11:08 am

    Obama is not stupid, not ignorant. He knows precisely what he is doing & what he’s doing is the Muslims’ bidding. Israel no longer as the US as an official ally.

  22. Bradamante says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 11:32 am

    I don’t know exact numbers, but I know that both Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams had to deal with Islamic attacks on US ships and citizens during their presidencies. And the Turkish genocide against the non-Muslim Armenians came well before the establishment of the State of Israel.

  23. Western Canadian says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 12:41 pm

    I have read them both, and you are full of it. You really have to try hard to prentend that your assertion is anything but twaddle. And could you possibly point out in the NT just where your claims are to be found?? Dozens of versus blow you out of the water….. Hard wired my a**.

  24. Redwine says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 1:16 pm

    Yes, DustyFae. Hussein is a hard-core practitioner of taqiyya.

  25. LemonLime says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    I see the “Reply” button still does not work here. The commenter “Western Canadian” thought it was clear whom he was responding to, but intervening comments and the lack of a working Reply feature obscures that.

  26. Morticiaa says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 3:22 pm

    Harvard savant or acting with good intentions. Either way the results lead to hideous outcomes

  27. Geppetto says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 4:54 pm

    Or is it that Obama knows exactly what he’s doing. The intent may be to portray the so called Palestinian problem as one of recent origin coincident perhaps with the formation of Israel over the last 60 years. This is demonstrably false but it certainly plays into the notion that it is modern day Israel who is the perpetrator of the intransigence to the so called “two state solution” and the Palestinians the victims. It fits with Obama’s ideology and his actions in the Middle East from his participation in the downfall of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, his friendship with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and his recent appeasement to Iran, to mention just a few of his pro Muslim, anti-Israeli actions.

    J. Christian Adams wrote an article in Frontpagemag.com entitled, “Stop Giving Obama Radicals the Benefit of the Doubt” essentially by measuring the intent of their efforts as stemming from innate incompetence. Adams is of the opinion that it is anything but incompetence.

    http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/j-christian-adams/stop-giving-obama-radicals-the-benefit-of-the-doubt/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=61ff821b14-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-61ff821b14-156560113

    I tend to agree; it’s more malicious intent.

  28. wakeup333 says

    Jan 22, 2014 at 6:49 pm

    Novus — Know the Marines’ hymn? “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.”

    Tripoli refers to the First Barbary War, which saw the creation of the United States Navy to fight North African Muslim pirates who attacked U.S. merchant ships, enslaved crews and held them for ransom. (Like Muslim Somali pirates do today. So much for Islam’s “role” in our nation’s beginnings!)

    In 1785 Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, in London to negotiate with Tripoli’s ambassador, reported, “It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War

  29. Fritz Kohlhaas says

    Jan 23, 2014 at 6:32 pm

    Obama really is an imbecile!

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