The signatories insist that Islam “does not promote anti-Semitism and Arabs are also a Semitic people…”
“Islam does not promote antisemitism” because Arabs “are also a Semitic people”? This idiotic sleight-of-word is hardly worth discussing. It’s irrelevant whether the Arabs are also considered by ethnographers to be a “Semitic” people. The point is that the Qur’an is full of dozens of harsh denunciations of the Jews, whom Muslims are commanded to despise and hate as a people. Antisemitism has always been defined not as “hatred of Semitic peoples,” but as “hatred of the Jews.” Antisemitism is everywhere in Islam: in Qur’anic verses, in the hadith, in the furious sermons preached against the Jews in hundreds of thousands of mosques worldwide, in the cursing of Jews (as “those who have earned Allah’s wrath”) that is embedded in the Fatiha that devout Muslims recite 17 times a day, while saying their five daily prayers. Haj Amin El Husseini was the most sinister in effect, but hardly the only Muslim leader to promote antisemitism. The current head of Al Azhar, Mohammed el-Tayeb, has repeatedly broadcast his hatred of Jews. So has Sheik Youssef Al-Qaradawi, who is the most widely-read Sunni cleric in the world; his attacks on Jews, based on the Qur’anic text and on Islamic history reach tens of millions of Muslims. The late Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder and first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was a profound antisemite. One of his regime’s early acts was to execute, for supposed contacts with Israel, the unofficial leader of Iran’s Jews, Habib Elghanian. And no demonstration in the Islamic Republic is complete without shouts of “Death to Israel!” or “Death to Jews!” Yet these “26 Muslim scholars” in the U.K. would have us believe that Islam “does not promote antisemitism.”
“Jerusalem will be the capital of the Islamic Caliphate when it returns, Allah willing,” they conclude.
Some of Judaism’s holiest sites are located in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem; the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron; and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus.
Jerusalem had been the holiest site in Judaism for at least 2000 years before Muslim Arabs arrived in Palestine in the 7th century. “Palestine” was the toponym the Romans gave to what had previously been known as “Judea,” in an attempt to efface the Jewish connection to the land. During the 1,400-year history of Islam, though Muslims ruled the city during two periods, of 450 and 780 years, no one tried to make Jerusalem the capital of any Muslim entity. The capitals of the Rashidun Caliphate were Medina and Kufa. The capital of the Umayyad Caliphate was Damascus. The capitals of the Abbasid Caliphate included Kufa, Anbar, Baghdad, Raqqa, Samarra, and Cairo. The capital of the Ottoman Caliphate was Istanbul. There was also, in Islamic Spain, an independent Umayyad caliphate, with its capital in Cordoba.
But Jerusalem was never among those capitals. The Ottoman Turks, who ruled over large parts of the Middle East and North Africa, might have chosen Jerusalem as the capital of their caliphate, strategically placed as the city was between the Turkish homeland and the Arab peoples in the Middle East and North Africa who were the subjects of Ottoman domination, but no such move was ever contemplated during the more than 400 years when the Turks held Jerusalem. From 1948 to 1967, when Jordan held the eastern part of Jerusalem including the Old City, the Jordanians officially recognized two capitals — Amman and Jerusalem — but did not move a single office from Amman to Jerusalem. The part of Jerusalem held by Jordan between 1948 and 1967 remained a dusty backwater, not thought fit even to be the capital of tiny Jordan, much less of a future caliphate. Between 1948 and 1967, save for King Abdullah of Jordan, not a single Arab or Muslim leader even bothered to visit the city.
Why then are these “26 Islamic scholars” calling now for Jerusalem to become what it never was even when Muslims possessed it, the capital of a caliphate? They are doing it only to undermine the claim of the Zionists, by exaggerating the city’s significance to Muslims. Ever since Israel came into possession of all of Jerusalem, including the Old City, by force of arms in June 1967, the Muslims have been claiming that Jerusalem is a “city holy to three faiths.” This formula has been accepted in the credulous West. But distinctions must be made. Jerusalem in its entirety is not holy in the same way, with the same degree of intensity, to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. As a city, it is holy only to Jews and to Christians; for Muslims it’s not the entire city that is holy, but only the Haram al-Sharif (the Arabic term for the Temple Mount), with the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock built on top. And for Muslims these sites come third in importance after Mecca and Medina, which indeed are “holy cities” — the Two Noble Sanctuaries — to believing Muslims. But for Jews, and for Christians, Jerusalem comes first.
The mendacity of this manifesto by “26 Islamic scholars” is breathtaking. From a Muslim world full of fascist and despotic states, they single out the one true and inspiring democracy, Israel, that displays not a single one of the characteristics of fascist states: no one-party rule, no denial of civil or religious rights to anyone, full participation by all citizens in an electoral democracy, no militarism, no infallible Supreme Authority, and a lively political free-for-all that bespeaks a culture that is the very opposite of fascism.
The “26 Islamic scholars” also have the gall to flatly deny any connection between the “Palestinian people” and the Holocaust, when they know perfectly well that the leader of the “Palestinians” before and during World War II, Haj Amin el Husseini, spent the war years, from 1941 to 1945, in Berlin, where he became good friends with Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler, and spoke with Hitler about the Jewish question and its “final solution.” He urged the Nazis not to allow any Jews to escape to Palestine, but to keep them trapped in Europe, where he knew they would be killed. He is reported even to have visited Auschwitz with Eichmann. Those “26 scholars” certainly know, too, that El Husseini personally raised three S.S. divisions of Bosnian Muslims who were directly responsible for the murder of 90% of Bosnian Jews. If, as the “scholars” claim, the ‘‘Palestinians” had “nothing to do with the Holocaust, why was the “Palestinian” leader, Haj Amin el Husseini, sought by the British as a war criminal after World War II? He managed to escape to Cairo, where he lived out his days, an Arab war criminal among many German war criminals. So many things to reminisce about, so many thigh-slapping memories of the good old days in Nazi Berlin, when the Jews got what they deserved.
When these “26 Muslim scholars” denied any connection of the “Palestinians” to the Holocaust, they inadvertently raised the most damning of subjects: not only Haj Amin el Husseini’s promotion of the Holocaust in every way he could, but the role of other pro-Nazi Arabs during the war, and then, after the war, in helping Nazi war criminals to escape punishment, and to find safety, and support, in Cairo and Damascus. During the war the Prime Minister of Iraq, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, was an open collaborator with the Germans. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat also engaged in espionage for the Germans; for this, he was imprisoned for two years by the British. That chapter of his biography is rarely mentioned; it would merely complicate the picture — the public hates complications — of someone now presented, quite incorrectly, as a a veritable Prince of Peace.
In Egypt, after the war, hundreds of German war criminals escaped justice. There were German scientists building missiles for the Egyptians to rain death on Israeli civilians. There was Johann von Leers of the Waffen S.S., who helped the Egyptians with anti-Jewish propaganda, and dozens of former high officers from Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, too, who lent their expertise in the propaganda war against Israel. In Damascus, there was the infamous Alois Brunner, an S.S sadist who taught the Syrian secret police how to interrogate and torture their victims. By denying any connection of the “Palestinians” to the Holocaust, these “Muslim scholars” not only opened themselves up to a crushing rebuttal of their claim — the evidence about Haj Amin el Hussein’s activities in Nazi Berlin and Bosnia is overwhelming — but raised the even more damning matter of the wider Arab-Nazi connection, with so many war criminals finding refuge in Egypt and Syria. It’s not only the “Palestinians,” but other Muslim Arabs, too, who were enthusiastically on the side of the Nazis during the war, and helped Nazi war criminals find new lives after the war, especially in Egypt and Syria. They were happily employed, applying their expertise to weapons development, anti-Jewish propaganda, and methods of interrogation and torture that had worked so well in the Third Reich. By denying any link between the Holocuast and the “Palestinians,” those 26 Muslim scholars have opened the door to a wider discussion of the Arab-Nazi connection both during and after the war. It’s a subject they might better have passed over in silence. Too late.
mortimer says
Normative, intrinsic Jew hatred within Islam
Born to Hate Jews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCQEmeGfFmY
mortimer says
The Koran’s Hate Speech against Jews and Christians … key Koranic verses quoted …
The Islamic War on Jews (1/3) Apostate Prophet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aedCNf2g-rU
mortimer says
The late Grand Imam of Al Azhar University, Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, was Islam’s premier anti-Semite for decades. Tantawi’s academic treatise and magnum opus was “Jews in the Koran and the Traditions”.
Tantawi wrote these words in his 700-page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred:
[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word {Koranic citations here]….[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims {Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.
Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in 1996, a position he still holds. These are the expressed, “carefully researched” views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope—the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 90% of the world’s Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi has not mollified such hatemongering beliefs since becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on “dialogue” (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs” (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear.
-Source: Dr Andrew Bostom
Jaladhi says
These 26 “scholars” forget who collaborated with Fascist and who were killed by Fascists!!
Never ever trust these liars! Morons!
mortimer says
RECOMMENDED BOOK: “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History” Hardcover – May 30, 2008 by Andrew G. Bostom M.D. (Editor), Ibn Warraq (Foreword)
https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Islamic-Antisemitism-Sacred-History/dp/1591025540/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201010149&sr=1-1
“[This] is the place to look for answers…. Bostom’s bold book is a challenge to Muslims to reconsider the beliefs and practical manifestations of their faith.”
– First Things
“For those looking for a serious, scholarly work on the subject of Islamic hatred of Jews, there is simply no better book available on the market today.”
– Jihad Watch
gravenimage says
+1
mortimer says
MEIN KAMPF IS A BEST-SELLER IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES
THE TELEGRAPH: AN Arabic translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf which has become a bestseller in the Palestinian territories is now on sale in Britain.
BBC ARTICLE: a bestseller in Bangladesh: Adolf Hitler’s autobiography manifesto Mein Kampf is selling as well as Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol.
The street vendors in Dhaka are found at every major road junction and intersection.
Most of the sellers are young boys and many compete with beggars to attract the attention of motorists.
WND news: Mein Kampf is a standard Arab textbook.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute’s Special Dispatch No. 48, Hitler’s Mein Kampf In East Jerusalem And PA Territories:
Mein Kampf “is sixth on the Palestinian best-seller list”. This was back in 1999, and supports the claim of the BBC article in the OP which is from 2002.
Though the title in the OP generalizes to “Muslim countries”, there is no corresponding claim referenced in the OP. Instead there is just one claim about the Palestinian territories and one claim about Bangladesh.
In India, which is essentially in a 3-way tie with Indonesia and Pakistan for the largest Muslim population, Mein Kampf has also been selling well according to Indian business students snap up copies of Mein Kampf. However, the article makes associations with Hinduism rather than Islam.
The article further states:
India is not the only country where Mein Kampf is popular. It has been a best-seller in Croatia since it was first published in while in Turkey it sold 100,000 in just two months in 2005. In Russia it has been reprinted three times since the de facto ban on the book was overturned in 1992.
Mein Kampf sales soar in Turkey
Additionally, according to Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ surges to top of e-book charts (2014) which has screen-shot evidence that the book was the #1 seller in the Propaganda & Political Psychology category:
A digital edition of the manifesto is currently Amazon’s top-selling Propaganda & Political Psychology book, the 17th best-seller in Amazon’s Nationalism category, and places in the top 20 on iTune’s Politics & Events chart — twice.
So, it is true that Mein Kampf sells well in various Muslim countries.
gravenimage says
All grimly true.
Angemon says
And, in return, the local Ba’ath party rewarded him with a nice pension and a calm little life until he died of old age.
Anjuli Pandavar says
“The capitals of the Abbasid Caliphate included Kufa, Anbar, Baghdad, Raqqa, Samarra, and Cairo. The capital of the Ottoman Caliphate was Istanbul. There was also, in Islamic Spain, an independent Umayyad caliphate, with its capital in Cordoba.”
—
Plus one more: The capital of the Fatimid Caliphate was Cairo.
Anjuli Pandavar says
This three-part essay is a critically-important resource to have in the public domain, and more so than is commonly appreciated, more important than even its illustrious author concludes. It is true that these 26 “scholars” have put out a string of falsehoods. Our blind spot is that we do not recognise that it is beneath Muslims to comply with standards set by infidels, whether that be standards of conduct, standards of discourse or standards of veracity, and it is preposterous of infidels to presume to set standards for Muslims. It does not matter that we’ve debunked their arguments. They will *tell* us how it is and that’s all there is to it. What we think of it is irrelevant. They have spoken. We would do well to learn to place ourselves inside the mind of a supremacist. What matters to supremacists is that what they’ve said puts us in, keeps us in or restores us to our place: in this case, beneath them.
The real power lies in this: “By denying any link between the Holocaust and the “Palestinians,” those 26 Muslim scholars have opened the door to a wider discussion of the Arab-Nazi connection both during and after the war.” Certainly, bringing this disgrace into the open is a major step forward, but the 26 and many millions like them *feel proud of this history and amongst themselves will not deny it”. If they need to turn it on its head again next time a mendacious purpose arises, they will do so.
But Islam is also in deep crisis, much more so than encapsulated by the usual headlines. Islam is dissolving from the inside. That is because the social system that sustains Islam is dissolving. Without strict hierarchical relations of personal dependence, Islam becomes untenable. It persisted for 14 centuries especially in the Middle East (and Central Asia) not only because that’s where it originated, but because that’s where those kinds of societies endured for 14 centuries, insulated from social developments elsewhere. Of course, where it imposed itself, it remade social relations into forms that would sustain it.
The problem today is that hierarchical relations of personal dependence (the family, the clan, the tribe and the autocrat) are giving way to social relations of individual autonomy. This is death to Islam as Allah can *never* be a matter of personal choice. In the meantime, autonomous individuals are emerging all over the Dar al-Islam and they do what autonomous individuals do: they find things out for themselves, they think for themselves and they decide for themselves — three things a Muslim *cannot* do. These “new kids on the block”, a bizarre phenomenon in those societies, set their own humanity free from their oppressive faith and the surrounding social strictures and once that happens, there’s only one way to go: *out* of Islam.
The raising to public discussion of the link between the Holocaust and the Arabs, especially those of Palestine, puts the humanity of such doubting Muslims under enormous pressure and seriously compounds their disillusionment with Islam. The most critical importance of public discussion of the Arab role in the Holocaust, certainly at this juncture, is the propulsive force it puts behind those on their way to apostasy. For that, I am personally grateful to Hugh Fitzgerald.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Tbank you, Mr. Pandavar — and not for the first time.
gravenimage says
Fine post, Anjuli.
gravenimage says
26 Muslim Scholars Denounce “Fascist” Israel, Claim Jerusalem Will Be Capital of a New Caliphate (Part 3)
……………………..
So it is “Fascist” not to live under the Islamic heel.
AnnaLogue says
“Islam does not promote antisemitism” because Arabs “are also a Semitic people”? This idiotic sleight-of-word is hardly worth discussing. It’s irrelevant whether the Arabs are also considered by ethnographers to be a “Semitic” people.
This opening spoils what is otherwise a good informative article followed by thoughtful comment.
Arabs are equally Semitic as Jews. To imply otherwise is dishonest. It is also unnecessary. The case against Muslim Arabs’ noxious behaviour to their fellow Semites the Jews is already overwhelming.
I’ve never understood why ‘antisemitic’, which implies ‘anti ALL Semitic people’ is used in place of ‘anti-Jewish’. To say antisemitic when you actually mean one small section of Semites is so imprecise it’s confusing.
As a child, on first reading Hitler was antisemitic, I assumed he hated all Semitic people. What a shock to learn Hitler actually got on with the Semitic majority – Muslim Arabs – very well!
Probably the use of antisemitic to mean ‘hates Jews’ is too entrenched to change now. Despite that, other Semites have good reason to object co-opting of ‘antisemitic’ to shut out any Semites except Jews is language misuse and frankly, wrong.