It’s always of interest when someone well known outside of politics, and whose views you do not know, suddenly reveals himself or herself as being eminently sensible on the fraught subjects of Israel and antisemitism.
I don’t know much about the designer Karl Lagerfeld — only that he designs dresses for Chanel — but when he said that “One cannot – even if there are decades between them – kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place. I know someone in Germany who took in a young Syrian and after four days [listening to this Syrian] said ‘the greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust,’” I knew this was a sensible man.
Now some time ago I ran across an article about J.K. Rowling, none of whose books I have read, but whom I now esteem — with reservations, expressed in the latter part of the piece — for other reasons.
This story from Haaretz provides information about her excellent tweets on antisemitism;
In J.K. Rowling’s New Novel, the Villain Is an Israel-hating anti-Semite
For months author J.K. Rowling has been warning about the dangers of anti-Semitism in England, sparring on Twitter with critics who either downplay the phenomenon or say its proponents are confusing criticism of Israel with Jew hatred.
Now, in her newest book, she includes a character whose obsessive anti-Zionism morphs into anti-Semitism.
“Lethal White,” the fourth series in Rowling’s Cormoran Strike mystery series, written under the pen name Robert Galbraith, features a pair of hard-left political activists who believe “Zionists” are evil and have a stranglehold on Western governments.
Extortionist Jimmy Knight’s extreme hatred of Israel has led him to hate Jews.“I wouldn’t trust him if it was anything to do with Jews,” Knight’s ex-wife tells a detective. “He doesn’t like them. Israel’s the root of all evil, according to Jimmy. Zionism: I got sick of the bloody sound of the word. You’d think they’d suffered enough,” she says of Jews.
Rowling’s depiction of a far-left anti-Semite comes at a time of record high anti-Semitism in Britain, where she lives. Britain’s Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn have been accused of insensitivity to Jews and condoning anti-Jewish sentiments within the party’s ranks. Corbyn previously defended a grotesquely anti-Semitic London mural depicting Jewish bankers, and referred to his “friends” in terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, though he’s said he now regrets these positions….
“Most UK Jews in my timeline are currently having to field this kind of crap, so perhaps some of us non-Jews should start shouldering the burden,” she wrote in April, in response to a critic who said Judaism is a religion, not a race. “Antisemites thinks this is a clever argument, so tell us, do: were atheist Jews exempted from wearing the yellow star?”
Rowling, who is not Jewish, also shared with her 14.4 million Twitter followers examples of posts she’d received that denied anti-Semitism was a problem.
To a commenter who posted that Arabs cannot possibly be anti-Semitic because Arabs are Semites too, Rowling tweeted a photo of a dictionary definition of anti-Semitism: “hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” She also included a spirited defense of Jews: “Split hairs. Debate etymology. Gloss over the abuse of your fellow citizens by attacking the actions of another country’s government. Would your response to any other form of racism or bigotry be to squirm, deflect or justify?”…
There are, it turns out, quite a number of statements by Rowling on Israel and antisemitism. Here and here.
There is another J. K. Rowling, this one her Ignorant Twin, who makes pronouncements about Islam without, I am certain, having read the Qur’an, or any of the hadith, or anything about the past 1,400 years of Islamic conquest, all of which might just possibly change her mind.
That other J. K. Rowling is on record, I regret to say, defending Islam and Muslims in a way I found surprisingly simple-minded — after her clear-headedness on Israel and antisemitism — and even painful. Here, for example, she tweets that “Islam doesn’t kill people. People kill people.” A sentiment worthy of the NRA. Here she tweets about the attack on the Finsbury mosque that “Yeah, I was waiting for this. We’re fine with using pictures of Syrian refugees to whip up resentment about immigration, are we?” (She apparently has no idea what unsettling and malign effects Muslim migrants are having all over Europe.) She claims that “those who dehumanize & stereotype muslims have no moral high ground from which to deplore demonisation of secular westerners by Islamists.”
There’s so much one could say about that last sentence, beginning with the idea that it is “Islamists” who “demonize secular Westerners.” Anyone who studies the texts and teachings of Islam soon recognizes that it is not just “Islamists” who “demonize secular Westerners,” but mainstream Muslims, and that they are taught to demonize, or rather despise, not just “secular Westerners,” but all Unbelievers, including Hindus and Buddhists in the East. I hope she will soon read, in the Qur’an, such verses as 2:190-194, 4:89, 8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, and 47:4.
Because J. K. Rowling is clearly outraged by antisemitism, she might well be disturbed by the Qur’anic verses pertaining to Jews compiled by Robert Spencer:
The Qur’an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the wellbeing of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); as fabricating things and falsely ascribing them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); claiming that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); loving to listen to lies (5:41); disobeying Allah and never observing his commands (5:13); disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more.
My initial enthusiasm somewhat chastened, I allow myself to believe that those texts — the Qur’an, the most significant hadith, the histories that cover 1,400 years of Muslim Jihad — will pique her curiosity, that she will start to read, then read some more, and eventually J. K. Rowling will come round at last, and fully grasp the meaning, and the menace, of Islam.
mortimer says
Statistical Jew Hatred in Koran and Hadiths
– The grand total of Jew Hatred in KORAN = 10,242 words / 152,006 total words = 6.7% Jew hatred
– Total number of Jew Hatred VERSES in Koran: 123 verses Jew hatred
– 17% of Medinan Koran is Jew hatred
– 1% of Meccan Koran is Jew hatred
– 8.9% of hadiths are Jew hatred
– 12% of Sira is Jew hatred
– 9.3% of Islamic Trilogy is Jew hatred
– 7% of Mein Kampf is Jew hatred by comparison
– Koran of Mecca filled with Jewish stories plagiarized and distorted.
– Jews of Medina did not validate Mohammed’s prophecy, so he then exterminated the Jews, stole their property and enslaved their women and children. -Mohammed entered Medina with his people as refugees, but within a few years there were no Jews left in Medina.
– Mohammed provides the example of Jew hatred that Muslims must follow.
Rowlings can think about where this NEW JEW HATRED IS COMING FROM … It’s coming from Islamic texts.
carpediadem says
Thank you, Mortimer.
BC says
You do not need to quote the Quran all you need to do is set up spy microphones in every mosque and you will hear the Imams spouting hatred for all thing non Muslim at every prayer meeting, every week.
They would not be saying such vitriol if their audience did not wish to listen to it.
Renate says
Why was it again that we should listen to anything J.K. Rowling has to say?
Jean (old) says
Renate.
Because if one closes one’s ears to any part of reality, one knows less than the one who listens.
Renate says
I wish people like Rowling and Streep would keep their opinions to themselves.
Brian hoff says
Keep your opion on Islam to yourself too.
Renate says
Brian hoff, this website is all about opinions on Islam.
gravenimage says
“Brian hoff”–really, “DefenderofIslam”–is always trying to shut down exposure of the horrors of Islam. he has said that when Muslims have reached sufficient numbers they will vote out the Constitution and impose brutal Shari’ah law on us–including full crushing of freedom of speech.
Westman says
Her analogy with guns is way off. Muhammad and his sock-puppet Allah kill through their instructions in the Quran and Hadith to the slave robots; robots who are programmed 5 times a day and have a software update on Fridays.
A better analogy is that Islam is like the remnants of dead generation who left an active brain virus in their own wake that continues to infect developing brains.
Felix Quigley says
This is a very interesting article and indeed the political position of Rowlings is also interesting. She seems to mirror the position of the founders of Harry’s Place which itself is not so easy to define.
I would like her to have the history of Islam by Robert Spencer placed into her hands and call back in a week or so for her response.
But all shades of the British elites, which includes Tory and Labour Party alike, were opposed to all ideas of the Jews having a national homeland. I exclude of course certain individuals and groups such as Lord Balfour and some around him.
This is what has to be faced up to.
The various left renegades from socialism are I would maintain reflecting this dominant ideology of Jew Hatred, and this hatred often goes through various stages, as Barbara Amiel once noted, often also wrapped up inside of a noted hypocrisy.
The main fighter against Jew Hatred turned out to be also the leader of the Russian Revolution, that is equal leader with Lenin, Leon Trotsky of course.
THESE are the issues.
gravenimage says
The Soviet Union was horrendously antisemitic, and was from virtually the beginning.
cornelius says
Perhaps Hugh’s optimism is justified. If J.K. is capable of moral and intellectual clarity on the issue of antisemitism, particularly in a country so smitten with antisemitism as Britain is, then she is capable of such clarity in other areas. But the deck is stacked against such self-enlightenment. The Islamophobia industry – to which she nominally belongs – is so hyper-vigilant and hyper-aggressive, that daring to defy it risks a resounding social repudiation.
In that vein, it was disheartening for me to listen to Sam Harris express regrets while being interviewed by Dave Rubin over his honest appraisal of Islam on Bill Mahar’s show (“Islam is the mother-load of bad ideas” to which Ben Afleck threw a hissy-fit).It’s not at all that Sam is walking back his criticism,….it’s just that the toll to his reputation was so debilitating that “[it took me over a year to get past it]”.
Sam clearly still despises Islam, but he was sufficiently chastened that he speaks less and less of it now in public….and when he does, he uses language that is much more cryptic and designed not to needlessly antagonize the Islamophobic industry.
eduardo odraude says
Interesting about Harris.
I’m optimistic about Rowling, not only based on her rejection of anti-Semitism, but also based on her Harry Potter books.
I guess you mean the “anti-Islamophobia” industry.
gravenimage says
Agreed, Eduardo.
westcoastjohnny says
I was baffled by your Lagerfeld quote, which doesn’t make clear who it is who thinks Germany’s best invention is the holocaust. So I googled the quote and found a much clearer translation in The Times of Israel:
“I know someone in Germany who took in a young Syrian who spoke a little English,” he said. “After four days, do you know what he said to the [German] lady? ‘Germany’s best invention is the Holocaust.’”
eduardo odraude says
Thanks for that alternate translation. I too did not quite get that quote as rendered in Hugh Fitzgerald’s post. Thanks for the alternate translation from Times of Israel.
gravenimage says
+1
JayT says
The effects from taking a blow to the head in her last game of Qidditch have apparently persisted.
eduardo odraude says
I finally read through Rowling’s Harry Potter books, all seven of them. I rather liked them.
The book’s good characters generally refer to the main malefic character as “the one who must not be named.” People are terrified to say his name, I guess because it is thought his evil attentions will be called to those who speak of him. The hero of the book, however, generally does refer to the main evil character by name: Voldemort.
The name seems to be derived from “valley of death.”
Evil does tend to prevent people from naming it. The conventions around Islam are quite remarkable in that respect.
eduardo odraude says
Where’s the commenter who goes by the moniker “dumbledoresarmy”?
gravenimage says
Eduardo, she has been very busy lately. But I did send her this story.
Mr. Maxwell S. J. Fenton says
Rowling revels in spiritual guff. Mishmashed, hokey pokey pagan pantomimes for kids.
Oblivious to spiritual reality she assumes Islam is misunderstood and corrupted by evil men, it doesn’t occur to her type to actually put some effort into studying it, she’s happy to bear witness to a ‘Fatima Akbar’
or other nominal idiots who demand their pagan detritus of peace and blessings via violent subjugation is the absolute truth.
She s a successful author of world renown but as for her political acumen, let’s just say, she’s so out of her depth she has already drowned, merely flailing into unconscious oblivion.
gravenimage says
Hugh Fitzgerald: J.K. Rowling On Antisemitism and Her Ignorant Twin On Islam
……………………
Glad to see her condemning antisemitism–but yes, she is sadly clueless about Islam.
The interesting thing is that the Harry Potter books are very savvy about the nature of evil, of denial, of appeasement, and of the power of a small band of heroic people who stand up against evil at great cost.
These books are truly inspirational, and I would recommend them to anyone here.
Poster Dumbledore’s Army’s username is a reference to these books.
Rowling just–like so many otherwise good people–sometimes has a hard time applying her values to what is going on in the real world.
Peggy says
How can she defend Jews and Muslims at the same time?
She obviously is not that smart because if she was she would notice how much Muslims hate Jews and could not possibly defend them.
Muslims hate everyone who isn’t Muslim and even other Muslims who aren’t Muslim enough.
I wouldn’t praise her at all. Standing against anti Semetism might just be a way to bamboozle people. It’s like standing up for the Jews and praising Nazis at the same time.
I wouldn’t trust her.
gravenimage says
There are lots of naive people, alas, who do this–and think that Muslims are just “needy refugees”. They understand nothing about Islam.