Robert Spencer - Well as you may know I am a Melkite Catholic
and my family is from the Islamic world.
http://catholicreport.org/?id=130
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism:
From Sacred Texts to Solemn History [Hardcover]
Andrew G. Bostom (Editor), Ibn Warraq (Foreword)
Careful, Methodical, Debunking of Myths and Presentation of
Important Data June 1, 2008
By Danusha Goska
Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam." Andrew
Bostom was working on a book about Islamic treatment of "dhimmis,"
"infidels" or non-Muslims, when he came across this quote by Sufi
jurist Sirhindi (d. 1621). The virulence of this quote inspired Bostom
to put his general work on Islamic treatment of dhimmis aside, for the
moment, and to focus on Islamic anti-Semitism.
Andrew Bostom, a medical doctor, is a careful and ethical researcher
and writer. Nowawdays, there is so much political frenzy around the
question of Islam, that readers often fear that they are exposed to
more heat than light in best-selling books. When reading Andrew
Bostom, readers need not worry that they are being spoon fed
propaganda.
Bostom works his way with painstaking slowness and exactitude through
mountains of primary sources, and he presents that data to the reader,
with full citations to original texts. Bostom uses Islam's own
documents, including Islamic legal documents on Jews, and historical
accounts of Jewish life in Muslim lands, to support his inevitable
conclusion: from the earliest days, from the founding of Islam by
Mohammed, and from Islam's central text, the Koran, anti-Semitism has
been a central aspect of Islam, and any reform of this aspect of Islam
will be very difficult.
Bostom effectively debunks three oft-repeated Islam-apologist myths:
the alleged Islamic Golden Age, that Muslims learned their anti-
Semitism from Christians or the West, and that anti-Semitism arose in
the Muslim world only after the recognition of the state of Israel.
There was no "Islamic Golden Age" when persons of various faiths lived
in peace and harmony under wise, tolerant Islamic rulers, Bostom
insists. From the days of Mohammed, non-Muslims under Muslim rule were
subject to taxation, humiliation, oppression, exile, and murder.
Bostom devotes great energy to proving this through historical
analysis.
Muslims did not learn their anti-Semitism from Christianity. Muslims
who had never met a Jew or a Christian brought their culturally-
ingrained anti-Semitism with them into India, a largely Hindu and
Buddhist sub-continent. Nor did they aquire anti-Semitism from
Scientific Racism's or Nazism's racial disdain for Jews. Arabs are
Semites, just as Jews are. Muslims forced Jews to wear distinctive
badges more than a thousand years before Hitler did so. Christians
also had to wear identifying badges under Muslim leaders.
The Koran is replete with anti-Semitic verses, most notoriously, the
ones equating Jews with "pigs and monkeys." There is also the hadith,
or saying of Mohammed, that rocks will speak to Muslims, asking them
to kill Jews. These verses are freely cited by Islamic religious
leaders today, as Muslim sermons posted on youtube reveals. Mohammed,
the founder of Islam, exercised murderous hostility toward Jews.
It will be very difficult to discover reformers within Islam who wish
to co-exist with Jews in respect and tolerance; it will be even harder
for those reformers to realize their dreams. Islam leaves no room for
reform, especially when it comes to hostility to non-Muslims,
especially Jews. The Koran is believed to be the perfect, unchanging,
eternal word of God, and the Muslim God refers to Jews as monkey and
pigs.
Bostom's book is essential reading for those hoping to understand the
truth about Islam.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Legacy-Islamic-Antisemitism-History/dp/1591025540