Understanding the Islam in Muslim Jew-Hatred
by Dr. Bostom
In the wake of the farcically mislabeled “Arab Spring,” we are
witnessing a swelling tide of Jew-hatred emanating from the triumphant
Islamists throughout the Middle East who don’t even bother to conceal
it. And why should they? Our own willfully blind and/or complicit
media downplay it or ignore it altogether.
Some argue that what is mistaken for contemporary Islamic anti-
Semitism is just a reaction to Israel’s “occupation” and “genocidal
oppression” of the Palestinians. Or that it is not intrinsic to Islam
but derives from the influence of Nazism. Or that it is a perversion
of Islam on the part of a tiny minority of extremists. What are the
true roots of Islamic Jew-hatred?
Andrew Bostom, M.D., M.S., has documented the answer. An Associate
Professor of Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, the major teaching
affiliate of Brown University Medical School, he is the author of two
essential, extraordinary, and meticulously documented works of
scholarship, The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic
Antisemitism, and of the upcoming Sharia versus Freedom (with a
foreword by the incomparable Andrew C. McCarthy). He has published
articles and commentary on Islam here on FrontPage and in the
Washington Times, National Review Online, Revue Politique, American
Thinker, and elsewhere in print and online.
This Tuesday in Los Angeles, Mr. Bostom will present “Understanding
the Islam in Muslim Jew-Hatred.” See here for information about
attending.
Mark Tapson: Dr. Bostom, what inspired you as a scholar to focus on
Islam?
Andrew Bostom: It’s pretty straightforward. The stimulus was
9/11/2001. Until then I was simply a medical academic at Rhode Island
Hospital (the major teaching hospital of The Warren Alpert Medical
School of Brown University), and an average citizen trying to keep
abreast of world events. I am not particularly religious as a Jew
though I certainly support the state of Israel. But I grew up in New
York, living in Queens most of my life, and I went to medical school
in Brooklyn. My wife and I still have family in New York City, so the
day of 9/11/2001 itself was traumatic, trying to make sure everyone
was OK. A colleague’s wife was in the second tower. She was very
lucky, barely getting out before it collapsed.
On the way home I grabbed a book by Karen Armstrong about Islam. I was
reading it and commenting to my wife that it just didn’t seem to jibe.
(I learned later that Armstrong is a notorious apologist.) As I read
it out loud my wife was just laughing. I didn’t find it particularly
funny. Nor the news reports over the next days that were transparently
apologetic. And I was alarmed at stories that appeared in the New York
Times (and other New York area newspapers) about an Egyptian Imam who
was preaching at a large Mosque in Manhattan, and spreading conspiracy
theories about Jews leaving the World Trade Center in advance of the
attacks, due to their “prior knowledge.”
So I started reading independently. A small book by Yossef Bodansky, a
terrorism expert, discussed Islamic anti-semitism as a political
instrument, and referenced the work of Bat Ye’or on the dhimmi. I got
that book by Bat Ye’or, and everything else she has written in English—
all her books, essays, and published lectures. I met Bat Ye’or after a
correspondence with Daniel Pipes, and brought her to Brown University
to give a guest lecture. She became a very close mentor, and
introduced me to Ibn Warraq and that’s how things started. I had begun
writing short essays within a year of 9/11. Ibn Warraq resided with us
in 2003, for a time, and he encouraged me to consider a book project.
I was increasingly interested in the Jihad and it was with Warraq’s
support that I put that first book, The Legacy of Jihad, together.
MT: What do you say to the common defense that Islam preaches
tolerance toward Christians and Jews – “the people of the book” – and
that Jew-hatred is not inherent within it?
AB: Although often invoked, these apologetic canards are diametrically
opposed to Islamic doctrine and the sad, if predictable historical
realities this sacralized hatred has engendered.
What has always been the nature of the system of governance imposed
upon indigenous non-Muslims conquered by Islam’s timeless,
institutionalized jihad wars?
In his seminal The Laws of Islamic Governance, al-Mawardi (d. 1058) —
a renowned jurist of Baghdad — examined the regulations pertaining to
the lands and infidel populations subjugated by jihad. This is the
origin of the system of dhimmitude. The native infidel “dhimmi” (which
derives from both the word for “pact” and also “guilt” — guilty of
religious errors) population had to recognize Islamic ownership of
their land, submit to Islamic law, and accept payment of the Koranic
poll tax (jizya, the tax paid in lieu of being slain) based on Koran
9:29. Al-Mawardi notes: “The enemy makes a payment in return for peace
and reconciliation. … Reconciliation and security last as long as the
payment is made. If the payment ceases, then the jihad resumes.” A
treaty of reconciliation may be renewable, but must not exceed 10
years.
This same basic formulation was reiterated during a January 8, 1998,
interview by Muslim Brotherhood “Spiritual Guide,” and immensely
popular Al-Jazeera television personality Yusuf al-Qaradawi,
confirming how jihad continues to regulate the relations between
Muslims and non-Muslims to this day. The “contract of the jizya,” or
“dhimma,” encompassed other obligatory and recommended obligations for
the conquered non-Muslim “dhimmi” peoples. Collectively, these
“obligations” formed the discriminatory system of dhimmitude imposed
upon non-Muslims — Jews and Christians, as well as Zoroastrians,
Hindus, and Buddhists — subjugated by jihad. Some of the more salient
features of dhimmitude include:
– The prohibition of arms for the vanquished dhimmis
– The prohibition of church bells
– Restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches,
synagogues, and temples
– Inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims with regard to taxes and
penal law
– The refusal of dhimmi testimony by Muslim courts
– A requirement that Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims,
including Zoroastrians and Hindus, wear special clothes
– The overall humiliation and abasement of non-Muslims
It is important to note that these regulations and attitudes were
institutionalized as permanent features of the sacred Islamic law, or
Sharia. The writings of the much lionized Sufi theologian and jurist
al-Ghazali (d. 1111) highlight how the institution of dhimmitude was
simply a normative and prominent feature of the Sharia:
The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. … Jews,
Christians, and Majians must pay the jizya [poll tax on non-Muslims].
… On offering up the jizya, the dhimmi must hang his head while the
official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on the
protruberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]. … They are not
permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells. …
Their houses may not be higher than the Muslim’s, no matter how low
that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may ride
a donkey only if the saddle-work is of wood. He may not walk on the
good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an
identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the
[public] baths. … [Dhimmis] must hold their tongue.
The practical consequences of such a discriminatory system were
summarized by the great historian of Muslim and non-Muslim (especially
Jewish) relations during classical Islam, S.D. Goitein, in 1970 :
Taxation [by the Muslim government] was merciless, and a very large
section of the population must have lived permanently at the
starvation level. From many Geniza letters [a trove of Oriental Jewish
correspondence etc., particularly from the Middle Ages, discovered in
Egypt] one gets the impression that the poor were concerned more with
getting money for the payment of their taxes than for food and
clothing, for failure of payment usually induced cruel punishment. …
The Muslim state was quite the opposite of the ideals … embedded in
the constitution of the United States. An Islamic state was part of or
coincided with dar al-Islam, the House of Islam. Its treasury was …
the money of the Muslims. Christians and Jews were not citizens of the
state, not even second class citizens. They were outsiders under the
protection of the Muslim state, a status characterized by the term
dhimma … They were also exposed to a great number of discriminatory
and humiliating laws. … As it lies in the very nature of such
restrictions, soon additional humiliations were added, and before the
second century of Islam was out, a complete body of legislation in
this matter was in existence. … In times and places in which they
became too oppressive they lead to the dwindling or even complete
extinction of the minorities.
Important scholars of Islamic Antisemitism — from Hartwig Hirschfeld
in the mid-1880s, Georges Vajda in the late 1930s, S.D. Goitein in
1971, and Haggai Ben-Shammai in 1988 — have demonstrated,
collectively, all of the following:
– Clear historical evidence of specific Islamic anti-semitism, from
the Geniza record of the high Middle Ages — including the coinage of a
unique Hebrew word to characterize such Muslim Jew hatred, sinuth —
published in full by Goitein as of 1971
– The content of foundational Muslim sources detailing the sacralized
rationale for Islam’s anti-Jewish bigotry, including Hartwig
Hirschfeld’s mid-1880s essay series on Muhammad’s subjugation of the
Jews of Medina, based upon the earliest pious Muslim biographies of
Muhammad
– George Vajda’s elegant, comprehensive 1937 analysis focusing
primarily on the hadith (the putative words and deeds of the Muslim
prophet Muhammad, as recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions)
– Haggai Ben-Shammai’s concise 1988 study of key examples of Jew-
hatred in the Koran and Koranic exegesis
For example, Koran 3:112 is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas’
foundational Covenant—it is literally part of the very first statement
of the document. Here is the standard Arberry translation of 3:112:
Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon,
except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will
be laden with the burden of God’s anger, and poverty shall be pitched
on them; that, because they disbelieved in God’s signs, and slew the
Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and
were transgressors.
In classical and modern Koranic exegeses by seminal, authoritative
Islamic theologians this central motif is coupled to Koranic verses
5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and
pigs (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been
“…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78).
Muhammad himself — Islam’s founding prophet — repeats this Koranic
curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322),
“He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: ‘…curses were pronounced
on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the
tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary’”. And the related verse,
5:64, accuses the Jews—as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64—of being
“spreaders of war and corruption,” a sort of ancient Koranic
antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The Koranic curse (verses 2:61/3:112) upon the Jews for (primarily)
rejecting, even slaying Allah’s prophets, including Isa, the Muslim
Jesus (or at least his “body double” 4:157-4:158), is updated with
perfect thematic logic in the canonical hadith: following the Muslims’
initial conquest of the Jewish farming oasis of Khaybar, one of the
vanquished Jewesses reportedly served Muhammad poisoned mutton (or
goat), which resulted, ultimately, in his protracted, agonizing death.
And Ibn Saad’s sira account—the sira being the earliest pious Muslim
biographies of Muhammad—maintains that Muhammad’s poisoning resulted
from a well-coordinated Jewish conspiracy.
As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology highlights the
Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of
the Dajjâl – the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ – or according
to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance,
other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by
70,000 Jews from Isfahan, or Jerusalem, wrapped in their robes, and
armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil.
When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered—
everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree,
as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)
included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). This hadith is
cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim
genocide of the Jews:
…the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of
Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and
peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until
the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind
trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh
servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except
for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim,
Book 41, Number 6985)
Moreover, findings reported by the politically left Israel Foundation,
July 15, 2011, from an “intensive, face-to-face survey in Arabic of
1,010 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”
revealed that 73% of this representative statistical sample of
Palestinians surveyed agree with the dictates of the annihilationist
canonical hadith (i.e., Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) quoted in
the Hamas Covenant.
Unfortunately, Hamas’ views on Islamic Jew hatred, are entirely
concordant with those of the most authoritative religious educational
institution within Sunni Islam for over 1000 years, since the late
10th century—Al Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt. Consider a fatwa
written January 5, 1956 by then Grand Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Hasan
Ma’moun, and signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of
Al Azhar, and the major representatives of all four Sunni Islamic
schools of jurisprudence. [English translation from State Department
Telegram 1763/ Embassy (Cairo) Telegram 1256 D441214] This ruling
elaborated the following key initial point: that all of historical
Palestine—modern Jordan, Israel, and the disputed territories of Judea
and Samaria, as well as Gaza—having been conquered by jihad, was a
permanent possession of the global Muslim umma (community), “fay
territory”—booty or spoils—to be governed eternally by Islamic Law.
The January, 1956 Al Azhar fatwa’s language and arguments are
indistinguishable from those employed by Hamas (in its Covenant),
revealing the same conjoined motivations of jihad, and conspiratorial
Islamic Jew hatred:
Muslims cannot conclude peace with those Jews who have usurped the
territory of Palestine and attacked its people and their property in
any manner which allows the Jews to continue as a state in that sacred
Muslim territory.
[as] Jews have taken a part of Palestine and there established their
non-Islamic government and have also evacuated from that part most of
its Muslim inhabitants… Jihad… to restore the country to its people..
is the duty of all Muslims, not just those who can undertake it. And
since all Islamic countries constitute the abode of every Muslim, the
Jihad is imperative for both the Muslims inhabiting the territory
attacked, and Muslims everywhere else because even though some
sections have not been attacked directly, the attack nevertheless took
place on a part of the Muslim territory which is a legitimate
residence for any Muslim.
Everyone knows that from the early days of Islam to the present day
the Jews have been plotting against Islam and Muslims and the Islamic
homeland. They do not propose to be content with the attack they made
on Palestine and Al Aqsa Mosque, but they plan for the possession of
all Islamic territories from the Nile to the Euphrates.
The continual, monotonous invocation by Al Azhar clerics of such
jihadist and antisemitic motifs from the Koran (or other foundational
Muslim texts) is entirely consistent with the published writings and
statements of the late Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi—Grand Imam of
this pre-eminent Islamic religious institution from 1996, till his
death in March 2010.
My book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism includes extensive first
time English translations of Tantawi’s academic magnum opus, Jews in
the Koran and the Traditions. Tantawi wrote these words rationalizing
Muslim Jew-hatred, in his 700 page treatise:
[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…[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become
Muslims [Koran 3:113], 41 the bad ones do not.
Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being
named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, a position he held for 14-
years. These were 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 85 to 90% of the world’s Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi never
mollified such hatemongering beliefs after 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.
Here is but a very incomplete sampling of barely known pogroms and
mass murderous violence against Jews living under Islamic rule, across
space and time, all resulting from the combined effects of jihadism,
general anti-dhimmi, and/or specifically Antisemitic motifs in Islam:
6,000 Jews massacred in Fez in 1033; hundreds of Jews slaughtered in
Muslim Cordoba between 1010 and 1015; 4,000 Jews killed in Muslim
riots in Grenada in 1066, wiping out the entire community; the Berber
Muslim Almohad depredations of Jews (and Christians) in Spain and
North Africa between 1130 and 1232, which killed tens of thousands,
while forcibly converting thousands more, and subjecting the forced
Jewish converts to Islam to a Muslim Inquisition; the 1291 pogroms in
Baghdad and its environs, which killed (at least) hundreds of Jews;
the 1465 pogrom against the Jews of Fez; the late 15th century pogrom
against the Jews of the Southern Moroccan oasis town of Touat; the
1679 pogroms against, and then expulsion of 10,000 Jews from Sanaa,
Yemen to the unlivable, hot and dry Plain of Tihama, from which only
1,000 returned alive, in 1680, 90% having died from exposure;
recurring Muslim anti-Jewish violence—including pogroms and forced
conversions—throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, which
rendered areas of Iran (for example, Tabriz) Judenrein; the 1834
pogrom in Safed where raging Muslim mobs killed and grievously wounded
hundreds of Jews; the 1888 massacres of Jews in Isfahan and Shiraz,
Iran; the 1910 pogrom in Shiraz; the pillage and destruction of the
Casablanca, Morocco ghetto in 1907; the pillage of the ghetto of Fez
Morocco in 1912; the government sanctioned anti-Jewish pogroms by
Muslims in Turkish Eastern Thrace during June-July, 1934 which
ethnically cleansed at least 3000 Jews; and the series of pogroms,
expropriations, and finally mass expulsions of some 900,000 Jews from
Arab Muslim nations, beginning in 1941 in Baghdad (the murderous
“Farhud,” during which 600 Jews were murdered, and at least 12,000
pillaged)—eventually involving cities and towns in Egypt, Morocco,
Libya, Syria, Aden, Bahrain, and culminating in 1967 in Tunisia—that
accompanied the planning and creation of a Jewish state, Israel, on a
portion of the Jews’ ancestral homeland.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/23/understanding-the-islam-in-muslim-jew-hatred/