“There is nothing ‘anti-Semitic’ about saying ‘Palestinian culture is beautiful,’” tweeted Rice University sociologist Craig Considine on January 19, 2020. His obliviousness to threats to Jews and Israel from a Palestinian society drenched in Islamic antisemitism further indicates the previously discussed warped anti-Israel influences upon this self-styled “Islamic apologist.”
Considine has ignored what others have documented as a terrorism-glorifying Palestinian “culture of death.” Thus the Gentile Considine can safely gush that “Palestinian hospitality is second is none,” which “resonates w/me as a Christian & human being.” By contrast, in his victimology Palestinians “have been more dehumanized more so than any other population in the world,” he stated during an April 19, 2019, presentation at the River Oaks Islamic Center (ROIC) near his Houston, Texas, home.
Unsurprisingly, Considine keeps an Israel-hating company. He responded on May 10, 2019 to outrage over Omar Suleiman, an imam with longstanding anti-Semitic Israel-bashing, having given an invocation to Congress the previous day, with a tweet about this
man of genuine integrity. He loves to serves [sic] humanity. He always condemns injustice no matter the type. This smear campaign against him is shameless. I stand firmly w/Omar.
Later, on November 10, 2019, Considine tweeted about his upcoming address to a gala dinner of the Houston affiliate of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). This Hamas-derived organization is an unindicted conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial, America’s largest terrorism financing case ever. CAIR, of course, is rabidly anti-Israel.
When the Israel-hatred of Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour prompted rebuke in 2020 from Joe Biden’s presidential campaign after she addressed a Democratic National Convention event, Considine sprang to her defense. “Her tireless work is both inspiring & necessary at this point in our nation’s history,” this “longtime admirer and supporter” of Sarsour tweeted on August 19, 2020. He was “disappointed that the Biden campaign smeared her. It is wrong. The Democrats need Linda today & in the future.”
Typically, Considine has tried to explain away his Israel-animus as merely being part of his Walt Whitman-like expansive celebration of diversity across faiths and cultures. In a since deleted January 17, 2020, tweet, Considine wrote that:
Being pro-Prophet Muhammad doesn’t mean that I am anti-Jesus. Being pro-Palestine doesn’t mean I am anti-Israel. Being pro-Islam doesn’t mean I am anti-Christianity. I am pro-Muhammad AND pro-Jesus, pro-Palestine AND pro-Israel, & pro-Islam AND pro-Christianity. I embrace it all.
Considine’s broadness conceals Islamic doctrinal dangers to Jews and others. In an August 28, 2020 tweet he quoted Quran 5:82 and rejoiced over its statement that Christians would be “nearest in affection” to Muslims. He neglected to mention that the same verse states that Jews will be the “most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers” in Islam.
Quran 5:32 is another scriptural favorite that Considine likes to misconstrue. “Whoever kills a person…it is as though he has killed all mankind,” he quoted in an August 24, 2019 tweet. Actually the Jewish Talmud is the original source of this message defined by the verse as intended for Jews. His selective editing again omits that this verse and the immediately following Quran 5:33 pervert the Talmud’s humane message into a brutal warning against Jews and any others who would dare challenge Islam.
This neglect of Islamic supremacist threats to Jews corresponds to Considine’s denigration of Jewish sovereignty in a secure state. He recognizes Jews as merely adherents to a personal faith, and not also members of a nation; therefore “Zionism is a political project” alone, he stated at ROIC. “If you are pro-Palestine, a lot of times in this country, you often get labeled anti-Semitic, which is an intellectual crime,” he argued, a restatement of the meaningless distinction between anti-Zionism/antisemitism. He himself wants to cancel Israel in a binational Arab-Jewish “one-state,” in which he fantasizes that Hamas and “all of the factions within the borders of Israel need to coexist as human beings.”
Considine’s thinking follows that of his intellectual mentor, John Andrew Morrow, in his fraudulent 2013 book, The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World. He imagined that “Jews and Muslims lived together harmoniously for most of Islamic history. This relationship, however, was virtually ruined by the establishment of the State of Israel.” Thus “Muslims differentiate between Jews, as followers of Abraham, with whom they have no problems, and Zionists, whom they oppose vehemently as usurpers and oppressors.”
The Catholic Irish-American Considine has similarly told Georgetown University Professor Jonathan Brown during a September 19, 2020 webinar that Considine’s understanding of Israel “is informed by Irish history.” During his doctoral studies at Trinity College in Dublin he learned “how passionate the Irish are for the Palestinian cause,” who see parallels with the British “colonization of Ireland.” The two academics discussed the 2006 film about Ireland’s fight for independence in 1922, The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
Considine recalled one of his academic supervisors, Ronit Lentin, who, like Brown and Considine, is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. “Living there in Ireland was liberating for me,” Consdine told Brown, because Considine felt free in this environment to express his condemnation of Israel. As he stated at ROIC, the Irish sympathize with “Palestinian underdogs,” as shown by the 2010 pro-Hamas flotilla that “tried to break the siege of Gaza,” one of whose ships bore the name of Irish-American Rachel Corrie. This mythical Palestinian icon “was murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces” when an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 accidentally ran over her as she tried to block the clearance of buildings used to hide terrorist smuggling tunnels into Gaza.
Considine’s screeds against Israel and his questionable affiliations, as with a Dublin mosque suspected by American embassy officials of radical ties, cast a pall over his uplifting interfaith rhetoric. “Judaism, Christianity, & Islam are essentially one supra-religion w/ three manifestations,” as he tweeted on February 23, 2020. This “Abrahamic family” forms the “spiritual heirs to the universal God. No branch is superior to the others. All are equal.”
In reality, Considine follows the recurring anti-Semitic pattern of those who preen over their defense of Islam against any “Islamophobia.” If Islam is to appear as a benign religion of peace, then Jews, and not Islamic doctrine, must be responsible for any of their conflicts with Muslims. Behind his veneer of theological open-mindedness lies narrow-minded bigotry.
mortimer says
Let’s closely examine the facts of Palestinian identity from the Arab perspective, rather than speculate.
-“Palestine and Jordan are one…” said King Abdullah of TransJordan in 1948.
“The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan,” said King Hussein, in 1981. (Transjordan was renamed in 1949 to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to reflect their territorial aspiration to seize the West Bank.)
-“Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is only one land, with one history and one and the same fate,” Prince Hassan of the Jordanian National Assembly was quoted as saying on February 2, 1970.
-Accordingly, Abdul Hamid Sharif, Prime Minister of Jordan declared, in 1980, “The Palestinians and Jordanians do NOT belong to DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES. They hold the same Jordanian passports, are Arabs and have THE SAME Jordanian culture.”
-“There should be a kind of linkage because Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people,”according to Farouk Kaddoumi, then head of the PLO Political Department, who gave the statement to Newsweek on March 14, 1977.
-Distinguished Arab-American Princeton University historian Philip Hitti testified before the Anglo-American Committee, “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history.”
Aastra says
when all the mainstream media, universities, so called human rights orgs are hijacked by such people. who continuously set narrative that oppressors are victims and victims are oppressors.
then people will start believe it as truth.
mortimer says
You cannot fool all the people all the time. – Abraham Lincoln
Aastra says
repeat a lie thousand times and it becomes truth.
mortimer says
No, disagree. A falsehood never becomes true through repetition. It merely becomes believed by people who do not reason independently.
Rob Porter says
The fact is, Considine is a tedious imbecile and thousands if other tedious and horribly ignorant individuals will swallow his nonsense.
mortimer says
Considine’s whitewash of Islam does not hold water. Considine would defeated in minutes in a scheduled debate with Robert Spencer, but Considine is a coward who hides behind the unchallenged blandness of interfaith groups. He couldn’t go a single round in the ring of a hard-hitting debate.
James Lincoln says
Craig Considine has the countenance of an unhinged / narcissistic / leftist / muslim apologist – on CAIR’s payroll..
I’m not kidding – take a close look…
mortimer says
For me, Considine has the guilty look of someone who expects at any moment to be found out and forced to pay for his misdeeds.
gravenimage says
Craig Considine and the Jews (Part Two)
“There is nothing ‘anti-Semitic’ about saying ‘Palestinian culture is beautiful,’” tweeted Rice University sociologist Craig Considine
………………..
Never mind that the core of “Palestinian culture” is hating Jews…
mortimer says
Too true.
Tony Said says
There was no hatred or even suspicion of Jews by the inhabitants of Palestine at the time of the Balfour treaty. They even welcomed the Jews into the land which had been theirs ever since the armies of Titus punished and expelled the Jews for their revolt(s) against the Romans in 70 AD., as Christ had foretold. The dislike and hatred of “Jews began when they began to ignore the treaty and take lands that were not theirs by that treaty and by the consent of the Palestinians.
Then by their acts of theft of land not legally theirs by international treaty which continues to this day they became.self made enemies of the Palestinians whom they were persecuting. If your ancestral land was invaded and stolen and your family home and farm bulldozed, could you not be forgiven a little hatred or at leas strong dislike of those aggressors who were responsible for such outrage? I think so!
And would you not expect that your friends would be just as angry and outraged, and begin to seek some redress? In the case of Muslims, of course, this internationally illegal persecution of their co-religionists is a clear call to Jihad against the persons and nations responsible for it – in particular The USA and Israel, since the whole rest of the United nations with a few small exceptions has voted it illegal and highly reprehensible.. The whole so-called terrorist threat and activity of the exact followers of the Koran and the example of Muhammed is based in this illegal aggression of Israel, backed and funded by the US, against Muslims; and the longer it continues, especially when the great lie of Israel that any Palestinian resistance to it is “terrorism”, and when the and heavy and pitiless military bombardment and ever more onerous sanctions against a poor, disinherited people who have and can procure no effective way of defending themselves, continues unabated along with the thefts of property and bulldozing of homes..
This website is clearly on the wrong side of justice because it is dishonest to the facts of and international law and has forgotten pity.. Why are you people so pro-Israel, pro Christ-denying Jewishisness,?. Jesus Christ was not! Read your New Testament. especially the passages where Jesus calls the Jews that refused to believe in and accept Him the “children of your father, the Devll” and saying that they “call themselves Jews but ARE NOT but are the Synagogue of Satan.” And then examine yourselves to see if you are not lacking in basic honesty,,and if you are Christians, in basic Christianity and also in common humanity and charity to a grievously betrayed and persecuted people in favor of your unconscionable and incomprehensible near worship of the “”the poor Jews”… .
gravenimage says
Tony Said wrote:
There was no hatred or even suspicion of Jews by the inhabitants of Palestine at the time of the Balfour treaty. They even welcomed the Jews into the land which had been theirs ever since the armies of Titus punished and expelled the Jews for their revolt(s) against the Romans in 70 AD., as Christ had foretold. The dislike and hatred of “Jews began when they began to ignore the treaty and take lands that were not theirs by that treaty and by the consent of the Palestinians.
…………………………
What *absolute crap*. Muslims have been oppressing and murdering Jews for almost 1400 years now,
And the idea that there were no Jews in the Levant until shortly before the existance of the modern state of Israel is also quite false.
More:
Then by their acts of theft of land not legally theirs by international treaty which continues to this day they became.self made enemies of the Palestinians whom they were persecuting. If your ancestral land was invaded and stolen and your family home and farm bulldozed, could you not be forgiven a little hatred or at leas strong dislike of those aggressors who were responsible for such outrage? I think so!
And would you not expect that your friends would be just as angry and outraged, and begin to seek some redress? In the case of Muslims, of course, this internationally illegal persecution of their co-religionists is a clear call to Jihad against the persons and nations responsible for it – in particular The USA and Israel, since the whole rest of the United nations with a few small exceptions has voted it illegal and highly reprehensible..
…………………………
Actually, Jews purchased most of this land.
Then, the Jews lived in large numbers in the region. The implication that invading Muslims were the natives in Israel is false. Then, the Balfour Treaty determined that this tiny stretch of land would be set aside for the Jewish state. Never mind that Israel actually holds just a fraction of this land today.
Then, Muslims didn’t have to leave–some left because their coreligionists told them that all the Jews would be slaughtered–but this didn’t happen.
More:
The whole so-called terrorist threat and activity of the exact followers of the Koran and the example of Muhammed is based in this illegal aggression of Israel, backed and funded by the US, against Muslims; and the longer it continues, especially when the great lie of Israel that any Palestinian resistance to it is “terrorism”, and when the and heavy and pitiless military bombardment and ever more onerous sanctions against a poor, disinherited people who have and can procure no effective way of defending themselves, continues unabated along with the thefts of property and bulldozing of homes..
…………………………
Well, this is just bizarre–modern Israel didn’t exist when the “Prophet” Muhammed first began murdering Jews.
And yes–trying to destroy civilized Israel and wipe out the Jews *is* terrorism, whatever Tony Said here pretends.
And far from stealing, Israel provides services to the “Palestinian territories”–even including Gaza.
And this is especially odd, since Tony Said has previously noted that the Qur’an teaches violence. I guess he forgot about that…
More:
This website is clearly on the wrong side of justice because it is dishonest to the facts of and international law and has forgotten pity.. Why are you people so pro-Israel, pro Christ-denying Jewishisness,?. Jesus Christ was not! Read your New Testament. especially the passages where Jesus calls the Jews that refused to believe in and accept Him the “children of your father, the Devll” and saying that they “call themselves Jews but ARE NOT but are the Synagogue of Satan.” And then examine yourselves to see if you are not lacking in basic honesty,,and if you are Christians, in basic Christianity and also in common humanity and charity to a grievously betrayed and persecuted people in favor of your unconscionable and incomprehensible near worship of the “”the poor Jews”…
…………………………
Ah, yes–you “filthy Infidels” think that murdering Jews is wrong–bad dhimmis!
And Christians have full rights in Israel–the *only* place in the Middle East where this is so. Note that Tony Said has *nothing* to say against Muslim persecution of Christians here.
And Jesus himself was Jewish–Tony Said seems to have forgotten that point.
Jews are the victims of Jihad terror–but Tony Said seems good with that.
Ecosse1314 says
Fantastic and complete disection of mr said rather curious take on history. Tip my hat to to you GI
gravenimage says
Thank you so much, Ecosse.
Andrew Blackadder says
Hey Considine there is nothing more stupid than the mentioning of a people who have never existed, never even named as such until the 1960s and was done so by a nutter from Egypt, but I dont expect a “Scholar” from the USA to have much in the Scholary knowledge these days.
Is this dude a plant by the CIA into the friendly arms of CAIR, or is he just a Taco short of a Combination Plate?.