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Ahmed Al-Raissouni and Those Long-Suffering Muslims

Nov 19, 2019 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Ahmed Al-Raissouni, the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, reposted last July an article he had written in 2003 on Muslims as the “real victims of antisemitism.” It retains a peculiar relevance.

Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad was subjected to a vicious campaign by several Israeli and Western politicians and journalists, [just] for criticizing the aggressive Israeli policy against the Palestinian people and Arab countries, and for criticizing some Western and Jewish positions toward Islam and the Muslims. The routine accusation directed at the Malaysian politician, which was the basis for the campaign [against him], was the famous accusation of ‘antisemitism.’ Swiss Muslim intellectual Dr. Tariq Ramadan was subjected to a similar hostile campaign, which was joined several days ago by some French intellectuals and writers who hurled the old-new accusation of antisemitism at him for criticizing them and their ideas that are tainted with narrowmindedness, sectarianism and racism.

Was Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad unfairly described as “antisemitic”? What else should we call Mohamad’s rhetoric at the 2003 OIC conference, where he denounced “the Jews, who rule the world by proxy” and manipulate others to fight for them? And that OIC speech is only one example of his virulent antisemitism. In a 1970 book, Mohamed wrote that “the Jews are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively.” He made a similar statement about Jews and money in a 2018 BBC interview, in which he also disputed the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust (the Guardian, October 2, 2018). In blog posts in 2012, he repeated the claim that the Jews control the world, and also accused Israel of showing “Nazi cruelty” not only to its enemies, but even toward any of its allies who criticize its conduct toward the Palestinians (The JC, January 19, 2017). Surely everyone of sense would call those comments “antisemitic.”

As for Tariq Ramadan, in 1999 he was widely criticized for writing an essay attacking several “French Jewish intellectuals” – including Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkielkraut, Bernard Kouchner, André Glucksmann and Pierre-André Taguieff (who is in fact not Jewish, though Ramadan assumed he was) – on the grounds that their tribal identity as Jews had caused them to become knee-jerk defenders of Israel and thus to “relativize the defense of universal principles of equality and justice” (New York Times, February 4, 2007). Having identified them as Jews, Ramadan felt no need to actually engage in argument with them; defense of Israel could be dismissed as the mindless expression tribal solidarity. Apparently Ramadan expected us to overlook the far more potent “tribal solidarity” of Muslims like himself, who are quick to defend fellow Muslims, especially the Palestinians, from every charge made against them.

In the West and especially in France, the accusation of antisemitism has become a deadly weapon against freedom of expression and thought, and even against freedom of scientific and historical research. It is a stain cast upon modernism, liberty, rationalism and democracy, for [look] how many religious scholars, intellectuals and researchers [there are] whose studies have been banned and ideas have been suppressed. Some were [even] prosecuted, such as Muslim French philosopher Roger Garaudy, and others were fired from their university posts, and the list of victims goes on and on.

Ahmed al-Raissouni has things topsy-turvy. In the West, it is the accusation of “Islamophobia” that has “become a deadly weapon against freedom of expression and thought.” Evidence-based Islamocriticism is described as “Islamophobic” and “racist,” charges that have caused many potential critics of Islam to be silent. Ahmed al-Raissouni describes the charge of “antisemitism” as something that Jews use to protect themselves, and this is a “stain cast upon modernism, liberty, rationalism and democracy” – as if he, as a devout Muslim, cared one whit for “modernism, liberty, rationalism and democracy.” For these ideas and ideals are the very things that are most antipathetic to the letter and spirit of Islam.

Al-Raissouni mentions the suppression of those “religious scholars, intellectuals and researchers whose studies have been banned and ideas have been suppressed.” There has been no suppression of studies and ideas; there is exactly one claim that is not banned, but fined by the French state, which is Holocaust denial. And Roger Garaudy, the well-known antisemite and convert to Islam, despite Al-Raissouni’s claim, never was fired from his university posts; he was merely fined by the French government for claiming in his book The Founding Myths of Israel that the Holocaust was a “myth.” Making Garaudy, a vicious antisemite, into a martyr for free thought is absurd. As for Al-Raissouni’s claim that “the list of victims [of a pro-Jewish lobby] goes on and on” – no, it does not. There are no other “victims” (like Holocaust-denying Garaudy) who have had to pay fines for their Holocaust denial. His was a unique case. And his fine, by way, was not exactly crushing: it came, in 1998, to $18,000.

On the other hand, there are many cases of Islamocritics who have been forced by Muslim threats to change their lives. Robert Redeker, the French lycee teacher who dared to describe the Qur’an as a “book of extraordinary violence,” had to leave his job, and has for years been living in hiding; for a while, he was sleeping at a different address every two days. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an apostate from Islam, requires tight security whenever she appears in public. Geert Wilders, the head of a major Dutch political party, has round-the-clock security to protect him from Muslims wishing to kill him. The American cartoonist Molly Norris has had to change her identity, because of credible threats against her from Muslims incensed that she once had called for an “Everyone Draw Muhammad” Day. The Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the famous cartoon of Muhammad wearing a bomb as his turban, was attacked in his home by an axe-wielding Muslim; he survived only because he managed to make it inside a panic room, and to bolt the door.

In the past year, several Moroccan intellectuals tried to pass a law in Morocco against what they called antisemitism. It is as if they cannot stand the idea that there is something in France – even something disgraceful – that they do not have in Morocco.

Al-Raissouni mocks those Moroccan intellectuals who wished through legal means to discourage the dissemination of antisemitic material in their own country. Instead of praising their concern for Jews, he depicts them merely as civilizational wannabes, eager to imitate the former colonial power. If France has laws against antisemitism, then these Moroccan “intellectuals” – one can imagine the scorn with which he applies that word – want them, too.

For Al-Raissouni, there is only one kind of antisemitism” that matters: that which is directed at the “semitic religion” of Islam.

Ahmed Al-Raissouni has convinced himself that Jews are the most powerful of all peoples, the envy of all others:

We know that the Jews of the world have gained unequaled status, influence and privilege, not only in the West but also in all the Arab and Muslim countries. They sometimes enjoy privileges, protection and security that no other sector or sect in society enjoys, including the [sectors] that constitute the vast majority…

If Jews have “gained unequaled status, influence and privilege,” why is it that they have been unable to prevent the U.N. from making Israel the object of more denunciations and negative resolutions than any other country in the world? Why is it that the U.N. Human Rights Council has a permanent item on its agenda that is devoted to one country only — Israel — and its “violations of human rights”? If Jews have that “unequaled status, influence, and privilege” of which Al-Raissouni complains, how is it that Israelis have had to fight three main wars just to keep their country alive? If Jews have such “status, influence, and privilege,” why is it they could do nothing to prevent the “Palestinians” from being able to pass on, as an inheritable trait, the status of “refugee” to children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren? Where was that Jewish power and privilege when, out of the tens of millions of refugees since World War II, the “Palestinians” have been the only group who have been allowed to do this? Why couldn’t those all-powerful Jews have stopped Jeremy Corbyn from becoming the head of the Labour Party in Great Britain, or prevented the resistible rise of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in the United States? Or, to ask the most obvious question: if the Jews are so powerful, why couldn’t they have stopped Hitler and the Holocaust?

Jews “sometimes enjoy privileges, protection and security that no other sector or sect in society enjoys, including the [sectors] that constitute the vast majority.” What is he talking about? The antisemitism that Muslim migrants have brought with them in their mental baggage to Europe has led to a great increase in antisemitic attacks, and a general sense of insecurity has spread among Jews, some of whom have been making aliyah to Israel to escape what they regard as an intolerable situation.

If there are police now standing guard outside synagogues and Jewish schools in Europe, that is not an example of “privileges, protection and security” for which Jews should be envied, but as a sign, rather, of the greater dangers that Jews must now endure.

Given [the Jews’] exalted and comfortable status in the world, one would expect the notion of antisemitism to disappear. This notion arose in response to Nazism, Fascism and other racist European currents, which have [since] been replaced with [the tendency to] glorify the Jews and grant them privileges and financial and moral compensation. But the Zionist movement insists on making useless efforts to keep the Jews and others under its pressure, and in order to serve its plans, and continues to wave the sword of antisemitism at the entire world.

This “exalted and comfortable status in the world” of Jews is a strange claim. Jews remain the most threatened minority in the world. Antisemitic attacks are on the rise in Europe and in North America, and far outnumber attacks on Muslims. Where is this tendency “to glorify the Jews”? Not at the U.N., where anti-Israel resolutions and speeches fill the assemblies. Not at the E.U., where Israel is harangued for its “occupation of Palestinian lands” and for its failure to meet Palestinian demands, and much else in the same vein. Not at the O.I.C., where Arab and Muslim leaders take the floor to outdo one another in the virulence of their attacks on Israel and “the Jews.”

The truth is that the real antisemitism today is that which is directed at Arabs and Muslims and at anyone with Arab, eastern or Middle Eastern features. Today, such features are reason enough to behave toward these people with hostility, abuse them, arrest them, provoke them, and expel them. Today’s antisemitism takes the form of expelling female students, teachers, administrators, and even parliament members just because they cover their hair [with a hijab]. Today’s antisemitism [takes the form of] hatred for the Semitic faith, namely the religion of Islam.

It’s quite a picture Al-Raissouni paints of the persecution of Arabs and Muslims. Just on the basis of their features alone, he insists, Arabs and other Middle Easterners are treated with hostility, abused, arrested, provoked, and expelled. Really? When European countries have allowed into their midst tens of millions of Muslim migrants, and lavished every sort of benefit on them, including free or highly subsidized housing, free education, free medical care, unemployment payments, family allowances, and more, can they really be accused of behaving toward Muslims with “hostility” or of abusing them?

Muslims are no longer being made quite as welcome in Europe, understandably, and some indeed are “arrested” – but for committing crimes, not for being Muslims. Al-Raissouni sees only unjust persecution of Muslims, but perhaps a list of European cities where Muslim terrorists have struck will bring him back to reality: Madrid, Barcelona, Paris (many times), Nice, Toulouse, Tours, St. Etienne-du-Rouvray, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, London (many times), Manchester, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Malmö, Helsinki, Turku, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Beslan are places where such terrorism has made a deep impression on Europeans. Al-Raissouni passes over all those attacks in silence. It is not blind anti-Muslim prejudice, but the observable behavior of Muslims, that feeds European suspicions and anxiety. Europeans now worry not just about Muslim terrorists, but also about those Muslims who have carved out No-Go zones in European cities where non-Muslims fear to tread, or who carry on aggressive campaigns of Da’wa,  especially among the most marginalized and vulnerable people in Western societies, that is, prisoners, and about the clerics who rant against the Infidels in the very heart of the West they so deplore. All that has led to a change in the attitudes of Europeans toward Muslims. And given all the attacks, and all the terrorist groups that now threaten Infidels – think of the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, Boko Haram, Islamic Jihad, Al-Nusra Front, Al Shebaab, Hamas, and Hezbollah — can we blame them?

Ahmed Al-Raissouni becomes unhinged in his final peroration about the persecution of the only “semites” who count in his book: the Arabs, and of Islam, the only true “semitic religion”:

Today’s antisemitism [takes the form of] hatred for the Semitic faith, namely the religion of Islam… Is there not a huge wave of hate and hostility against the Semitic religion and everything associated with it? If there is any room left in the world for the values of tolerance, for the struggle against oppression and racism and for criminalizing antisemitism, they must be used to protect Islam and the Muslims, who have become the victims of hatred, accusations and persecution [targeting] their religion, dress code, intentions, ideas and all their other rights. Antisemitism exists today only against Islam and the Muslims. It is hatred against the Semitic nation and the Semitic faith.”

Al-Raissouni invokes the “values of tolerance” that he wishes were observed with much-maligned Islam, and with Muslims whom he believes are being so unfairly and terribly treated. But when we look around the world, we see quite a different picture from the one he paints. Christians are the chief victims of intolerance, and their most important persecutors are Muslims. Christians have been murdered or their faith by Muslims in Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Algeria, and Nigeria. Meanwhile, tens of millions of Muslims live in security all over Europe and North America.

And if he wishes to uphold the “values of tolerance,” shouldn’t he begin by recognizing, and showing himself willing to discuss, those most intolerant verses in the Qur’an, where Believers are commanded to engage in violent Jihad, that is to “fight” and to “kill “and to “smite at the necks of” and to “strike terror in the hearts of” the Unbelievers?

Where is this “huge wave of hate and hostility” against Muslims and Islam of which Al-Raissouni complains? Surely the striking thing is not how much, but how little “hate and hostility” has been provoked in Europe by  Muslim attitudes and behavior. Has Europe become a place where Muslims need be fearful? Not at all. It has become, rather, a place where the indigenous Infidels, and especially Jews, have been made fearful of Muslim “hate and hostility.” It is the Unbelievers who are being attacked on the streets of European cities by Muslims.

Al-Raissouni claims that Muslims have become the “victims of hatred, accusations, and persecutions.” Again, he has things backwards. Christians are the victims (see Egypt, see Pakistan, see Nigeria, see Iraq) of Muslim “hatred, accusations, and persecution.” European countries have treated Muslims with great generosity, opening their doors wide, lavishing benefits on millions of these economic migrants. That kindness has been repaid with, precisely, Muslim “hatred, accusations, and persecutions.” The kid glove treatment of Muslims by Europeans can be seen in their allowing back into their countries even the most dangerous of all Muslims, those who left to join the Islamic State. There have been no bombings of mosques in Europe, nothing like the bombings of churches in so many Muslim lands. No Unbelievers are baying for the blood of Muslims, the way Pakistani mobs did when they demanded that Asia Bibi, the Christian accused of blasphemy, be put to death. No Muslims are being set upon in the streets of Europe’s cities.

With his insistence that Muslims are suffering every sort of hatred from Unbelievers — victimhood on stilts — Al-Raissouni induces a kind of moral nausea. His claims, fortunately, are so preposterous that only fellow Muslims, and not even all of those, could possibly believe them. Ahmed al-Raissouni has made one thing perfectly clear. He has proven himself a worthy successor, as head of the International League of Muslim Scholars, to that inexhaustible fountain of nonsense and lies, Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

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Filed Under: "Islamophobia", claiming victim status, Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald Tagged With: Ahmed Al-Raissouni, International Union of Muslim Scholars


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Comments

  1. Christopher Watson says

    Nov 19, 2019 at 11:08 am

    Perhaps Al-Raissouni ought to read a little English history of the Jews in England. William I invited over a small number of Jews from Rouen to lend him money and for their medical skills. They were prohibited from doing anything else. During the 11th and 12th centuries they were generally favoured and allowed to travel throughout the kingdom although there was the ‘blood libel’ which accused them of killing Christian children. In 1190 over 150 Jews were burnt in York. In 1290 they were evicted from England by Edward I. They were not allowed back until the 1640s under the policy of religious toleration. The German Ashkenazy community began to arrive after 1692. Since then their presence has been generally accepted although antisemitism has occasionally flared.

  2. Eur says

    Nov 19, 2019 at 11:50 am

    Muslims do not miss the opportunity to proselytize. They use the victimist card and also affirm that they represent the true Abrahamic Semitic religion. Nothing new, supremacism. Islam is the Nazism of the desert.

  3. Ray Jarman says

    Nov 19, 2019 at 1:09 pm

    Once again the term academic is used so often to describe these Lothario type creatures who abrade the population with incubus like rhetoric. If one only read the Bible and could quote certain passages, would that qualify the person as an academician? I think not. While the State of Israel and Jewish doctors around world advance the state of medicine and cures for so many deceases, these monsters only advocate the slaughter of others and Jews in particular. Also, throughout the world where Jews comprise a significant percentage of the population, the rate of crimes are almost always lower than the general population, whereas the percentage of crime committed by Muslims is exponentially greater than their percentage of the population.

  4. Angemon says

    Nov 19, 2019 at 3:53 pm

    Given [the Jews’] exalted and comfortable status in the world, one would expect the notion of antisemitism to disappear.

    And yet, it doesn’t. Perhaps the premise (Given [the Jews’] exalted and comfortable status in the world“) is wrong to begin with…

  5. Battle says

    Nov 19, 2019 at 9:00 pm

    “the Jews are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively.” -Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir bin Mohammad

    The picture shows Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad has a beak.

  6. gravenimage says

    Nov 19, 2019 at 10:31 pm

    Ahmed Al-Raissouni and Those Long-Suffering Muslims
    ………………

    How *dare* some civilized people take issue with virulent Muslim Jew-hatred? Bad dhimmis…

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