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Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative features Muslim academic who likens Austrian counterterror measures to Kristallnacht

Nov 23, 2020 3:00 pm By Robert Spencer 4 Comments

See? It’s as I’ve been pointing out for years: for the Hamas-linked Bridge Initiative, a program of the Saudis’ bought-and-paid-for Georgetown University, and for highly politicized “academics” such as Farid Hafez, no resistance to the global jihad whatsoever is allowed, no matter how tepid, half-hearted, or fantasy-based. It’s all “Islamophobia.”

Meanwhile, this likening of counterterror measures in Europe to the Holocaust is a new example of the increasingly common Leftist claim that criticism of Islam and Muslims over the jihad terror threat will lead to a new Holocaust of Muslims – or, as it has been expressed epigrammatically, “Muslims are the new Jews.”

Many, many others have made this claim before Farid Hafez, including the notorious non-Muslim Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong; “journalist” Jeffrey Goldberg; Leftist cannibal Reza Aslan; Nicholas Kristof, one of the New York Times’ Mideast pontificators; Canadian Muslim leader Syed Sohawardy; and the Philadelphia chapter leader of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Jacob Bender. Many others have repeated it.

The blazingly brilliant Daniel Greenfield takes it apart in this video.

The idea that Muslims are the new Jews is put forward by the Left, but it also has opponents on the Left. In 2014, as part of his ongoing awakening to the nature and reality of the jihad threat, Bill Maher noted:

Jews weren’t oppressing anybody. There weren’t 5,000 militant Jewish groups. They didn’t do a study of treatment of women around the world and find that Jews were at the bottom of it. There weren’t 10 Jewish countries in the world that were putting gay people to death just for being gay.

Indeed. Further, no one is calling for or justifying genocide of Muslims. No individual or group opposed to Islam is remotely comparable to the National Socialists. Not that facts have ever gotten in the way of a good meme.

Maher isn’t alone on the Left in having pointed out the absurdity of likening opposition to jihad to the lead-up to the Holocaust. The late Christopher Hitchens also refuted this idea when writing a few years ago about the notorious Ground Zero Mosque proposal:

“Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,” Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like.

The purpose of statements like the ones Hafez makes here is to intimidate people into thinking that criticism of Islam in connection with jihad terror leads to death camps. Therefore, there must be no criticism of Islam in connection with jihad terror.

“Xinjiang and Kristallnacht in Austria: Freedom of Religion Under Threat,” by Farid Hafez, Bridge Initiative, November 19, 2020:

On November 9 of this year, the Austrian government commemorated Kristallnacht of 1938—known as the “Night of the Broken Glass”—a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria that took place on the ninth and tenth of November. Jewish homes, educational institutions, hospitals, and businesses were destroyed and over one thousand synagogues were burned. While the government’s annual public ceremonies marking the inhuman atrocities may appear to be recognition of Austria’s role in the Holocaust, historians and political analysts argue Austria has never fully reckoned with its Nazi past….

On November 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Austrian security forces and the secret service raided the homes of thirty Muslims and even more Muslim institutions, allegedly to combat political Islam. The organization Palestine Solidarity Austria was first to reveal their ordeal on November 9, 2020, along with a list of those whose homes were raided and the questions posed in interrogation. The questions reveal the direction of the government’s future policies on Muslims and Islam. These policies are not about helping Muslims—quite the opposite….

“Muslim Brotherhood – affiliated political scientist drew comparison with the Pogrom,” translated from “Muslimbrüder – Betroffener Politologe zog Progrom-Vergleich [sic],” Oe24, November 22, 2020 (thanks to Medforth):

The Salzburg political scientist who was targeted by the authorities investigating the Muslim Brotherhood as part of “Operation Luxor” has likened the raids with the November pogroms. In an online article for an initiative of Georgetown University, he criticized the fact that the raids took place on the anniversary of the so-called “Kristallnacht”. Education Minister Susanne Raab and Interior Minister Karl Nehammer (both ÖVP) criticized the statements.

For the political scientist, the Austrian government is already going in a totalitarian direction, as he wrote on the site of the Islamophobia Initiative – not only through the criminalization of Islam, but also through the attempt to ban freedom of expression. The attempt to make political Islam a criminal offense is undermining the credibility of the “Kristallnacht” commemorations, writes the scientist.

“This monstrous comparison downplayed the terrible crimes of National Socialism and equated them with the legitimate and necessary fight against extremism,” said Raab in a statement to the APA. For Nehammer, equating the November pogrom “with the legitimate and determined appearance against radical political Islam” is not only completely tasteless, “but rather an expression of an anti-democratic attitude”.

The Muslim theologian Mouhanad Khorchide was also appalled in the “Neue Volksblatt”: “How can the beginning of the murder of millions of Jews be equated with a raid?”

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Filed Under: "Islamophobia", academia, Austria, claiming victim status, Leftist/Islamic Alliance Tagged With: Farid Hafez, Georgetown University, Mouhanad Khorchide


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Comments

  1. gravenimage says

    Nov 23, 2020 at 7:35 pm

    Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative features Muslim academic who likens Austrian counterterror measures to Kristallnacht
    ……………………

    How is opposing Jihad terror the Holocaust?

    And how what Jews were beheading Gentile Germans in the streets?

    Just grotesqe calumny.

    Reply
  2. mortimer says

    Nov 24, 2020 at 9:47 am

    Farid Hafez is trivializing and mischaracterizing what the Austrian government is doing in its scrutiny of Islamic political activists in Austria. Jihadists-in-training wish real harm against Austrians. Their teachers (mostly mullahs and other jihad apologists) are promoting a violent ideology which if undeterred will result in violent jihad attacks against Austrians.

    A government has the duty to defend its citizens from violent men who think of themselves as warriors.

    Reply
    • mortimer says

      Nov 24, 2020 at 9:48 am

      BTW, someone should point out to Farid Hafez that Saudi Arabia has a notable and well-known history of arresting, incarcerating and executing jihadists.

      Reply
  3. Larry says

    Nov 24, 2020 at 2:13 pm

    We need legislation to BAN public universities from accepting money from foreign governments. Period.

    Reply

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