Anti-Semitism Is Deepening Among Muslims

Stay in a five-star hotel anywhere from Jordan to Iran, and you can buy the infamous forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Pick up a newspaper in any part of the Arab world and you regularly see a swastika superimposed on the Israeil flag.

Such anti-Semitic imagery is now embedded in the mainstream discourse concerning Jews in much of the Islamic world, in the popular press and in academic journals.

The depictions are not limited to countries that are at war with Israel but can be found in general-interest publications in Egypt and Jordan, the two countries that have signed peace agreements with Israel, as well as in independent religious schools in Pakistan and Southeast Asia.

Arab leaders, for their part, have long rejected the accusation that their state-controlled press, universities and television stations promulgate anti-Semitic views. Islamic history, they say, contains nothing like the anti-Semitic horrors that occurred in Christian Europe, and Islam as a religion accepts many of the revelations embodied in Judaism.

The use of Nazi imagery, the newspaper caricatures of Jews with fangs and exaggerated hook noses, even the Arab textbooks with their descriptions of Jews as evil world conspirators — all of that, Arab leaders often insist, reflect a dislike for Israelis and Zionism but not for Jews and Judaism.

Yet in many Muslim countries the hatred of Jews as Jews, and not only as citizens of Israel, has been nurtured through popular culture for generations.

Take for instance an official Jordanian government textbook for high school students. It describes Jews as innately deceitful and corrupt. "Up to the present," it states, "they are the masters of usury and leaders of sexual exhibitionism and prostitution."

In the view of many scholars of Islam, such texts are a sign that the Arab-Israeli conflict has been transformed in Muslim culture from a political, nationalist and territorial battle into a cosmic war between religions and, indeed, between good and evil.

"You see a certain level of anti-Semitism that you look at and think, how can smart people really believe this?" said John L. Esposito, a professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University. "Part of the explanation is that they grew up with this, but part is also that they grew up in a confrontational situation. You make the world into `us and them,' and therefore you buy into every possible caricature of the other."

Both Jews and Muslims engage in hatemongering based on skewed readings of their holy books, said Professor Esposito, author of the recent book "Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam."

Islamic fundamentalists frequently refer to Jews as either the sons or the grandsons of apes and monkeys. These sorts of descriptions can sometimes be heard in sermons at mosques in the Palestinian territories as well as from some Saudi religious leaders.

The reference is drawn from a verse in the Koran that, taken in context, refers to Jews and Christians who break the Sabbath and who mock the early Muslims for their beliefs. The Koran says that God made those people as despicable as monkeys, pigs and idol worshipers.

"In all faiths, more exclusivist or militant verses are taken out of context by some and amplified in popular culture," Professor Esposito said. The Koran also contains complimentary verses about law-abiding Jews, at one point saying that the "believers and the Jews" who do right will be rewarded by God.

Islamic doctrine concerning Christians has also been reinterpreted in recent decades in an effort to forge a bond between Muslims and Christians against the Jews.

Literal Islam recognizes Jesus as a prophet but does not believe that he was crucified. The Koran says that Jews tried to crucify him, but that God rescued Jesus and that the Jews instead killed only a likeness of Jesus.

Yet a common charge from Muslims these days is that the Jews did indeed kill Jesus. When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus last year, President Bashar al-Assad greeted him with a speech accusing Jews of just that. Mr. Assad's minister of religion affairs, Muhammad Ziyadah, later embellished the remarks, saying, "We must be fully aware of what the enemies of God and malicious Zionism conspire to commit against Christianity and Islam."

That Jews would be demonized by some Arabs, and Arabs demonized by some Jews may not be surprising after nearly a century of conflict over Palestine. Even in less enduring wars, nations have engaged in vicious and sometimes racist wartime propaganda against the enemy. And since Israel was founded as a Jewish nation, the issue of religion has always been an element in its relations, or lack of relations, with its Arab neighbors.

Recent attacks on Jewish centers in France and an ancient synagogue in Tunisia have been attributed to Arabs or Muslim fundamentalists.

Last month the Saudi daily Al Riyadh published an article that accused Jews of consuming the blood of Christian and Muslim children during the holiday of Purim. The author, a lecturer at King Faisal University in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, called this medieval fiction a "well-established fact."

After the article was translated from the Arabic and publicized by an Israel-based group called the Middle East Media Research Institute, the editor of the newspaper repudiated the article, saying it was nonsense and should not have been published.

The recycling of such stories has become a fixture of Muslim discourse, said Bernard Lewis, a historian of Islam and the Middle East, who has called this trend the "Islamization of anti-Semitism."

Its literature, he has written, includes classic European anti-Semitic writings like "Protocols," introduced to the Middle East in the late 1800's and now easily available in Arabic throughout the region and in English. In recent decades this material has been supplemented by a home-grown body of work, ascribed to Islamic teachings, that describes what it calls the innate wickedness of the Jewish people throughout the ages.

Yet Jews were minor players in Islamic theological writing for centuries, Professor Lewis wrote in "Semites and Anti-Semites."

They figure in the Koran, which Muslims call the final and perfect revelation of God, as obstinate antagonists to the prophet Muhammad's efforts to bring Islam to the people of the Arabian Peninsula. Of the tribes he encountered, the Jews were the most hostile to his message. But in the end, the Jewish tribes were defeated, and the Koran refers to them as a people whose rebelliousness had always been punished by God.

In more modern Islamic teachings, which can be found in Arab textbooks and mainstream newspaper articles, the Koran's description of the Jews' opposition to Muhammad takes on monumental importance. The Jews corrupted the word of God from the start, the more recent interpretations say, and their scheming against the prophet was an expression of their innate wickedness.

"Some people confuse certain verses of the Koran attacking the Jews of that day, as an attack on Judaism," said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. "It's not innocent confusion. It's deliberate confusion, and it happens on both sides."

This is a modern development, less theological than emotional, and leaves as its casualty a long tradition of amity between Islam and Judaism, he added.

"If religious authorities in both religions put the demands of God above nationalistic and ethnic feelings," Professor Nasr said, "then maybe something can be done."

Islam: the Facade and the Facts

By Abdullah Al Araby

The Facade

The "Islam" Muslim activists introduce to the West these days is completely different from the Islam we knew and experienced in the Middle East. This is a new edition - revised, modified, expanded and abridged - of the real Islam. A major facelift operation has been taking place here.

To their credit, I must acknowledge that the international Islamization movement, in recent years, has grown much in both intelligence and sophistication. They lacked power, so they decided to be smart. Since they could no longer use the sword to conquer the world, as they once did, they decided to use more cunning methods.

The following are some of the methods Muslim activists are now adopting:

Change of Identity,br> They avoid referring to teachings that may offend the Western citizen, such as the Islamic code of punishment.

They stress that they believe in Moses and Jesus. They refrain from calling Jews and Christians "infidels", nor would they call them "Zionists" or "Crusaders".

The last thing they want to do is to shock people. They once had a Muslim host on their TV. program with a Christian name, "Paul"; names like Mohammed, Mustafa and Omar were too strong to swallow they thought. They use the term "Sunday School" in place of "Friday Class", and they end their speeches with the Christian expression "may God bless you".

They brag about being Americans, and have the American flag cover the background of their program set. This is the same flag Muslims in Iran used to burn in their daily rituals, calling America "The great Satan".

Change of Vocabulary

They are using now a completely new terminology. Words like love, grace... are now part of their vocabulary. Theological Christian terms such as : Salvation, Justification and Sanctification are now part of their teachings.

They change Quranic translations to hide some of Islam's harsh teachings.

An example is the new French translation of the Quran which has caused tremendous furor among Muslim fundamentalists. The translation attempted to please Jews by modifying some verses of the Quran that condemned Jews. An example is a verse that used to read "The people of Israel, after sowing corruption twice on earth for the purpose of dominating other people, will push themselves up into a position of extreme power before being punished by God."

The new translation reads just the opposite: "The people of Israel will be twice destroyed as an innocent victim, and God will reward them by elevating them to great heights."

Change of Strategy

Their new strategy lies in trying to be accepted, included and involved in all activities; religious, social and political.

They are now becoming active in partisan functions in order to have a say in parties platforms. They conduct letter compaigns to members of Congress to influence legislation. They run for public offices in hope of reaching a position of authority. They make full use of their voting power to get concessions in their favor. They try to be represented on educational programs to go in line with their beliefs.

The stage of weakness and the stage of Jihad (Holy War)

It seems that these new tactics we discussed are not without precedent in Islamic history. Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, the noted Egyptian author, refers to this concept in his book "Autumn Furor". He states:

"So the element of Jihad emerged in the ideology of Abul Aala Almaudoody. He went on to differentiate between two separate stages a Muslim community goes through: "The stage of weakness - In it a Muslim community is unable to take charge of its own destiny. In this case - according to his thinking - they must withdraw for the purpose of preparing themselves to be capable of executing the second stage.

"The second stage is the Jihad stage, and it will come when the Muslim community has completed its prepardness and is ready to come out of its isolation to take charge, through Jihad.

"In this, Abul Aala Almaudoody was making a comparison between the two stages of weakness and Jihad on the one hand, and on the other hand, Mohammed's struggle in Mecca then in Medina." Mohammed in Mecca and Mohammed in Medina

Historians agree that there is a big difference between Mohammed's personality in Mecca and his personality after his migration to Medina.

In Mecca Mohammed was weak, struggling to be accepted, often mocked at and ridiculed. He tried to appeal to the people of Mecca by being compassionate and loving. His teachings condemned violence, injustice, neglect of the poor. However, after he moved to Medina and his followers grew in strength and number, he became a relentless warrior, intent on spreading his religion by the sword.

This change in Mohammed's personality becomes apparent by comparing the Meccan and the Medinan surahs. The following are some examples:

In surah 73:10 God tells Mohammed to be patient with his opponents "Be patient with what they say, and part from them courteously." While in surah 2:191 God orders him to kill his opponents "Kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from wherever they drove you out..."

In surah 2:256 God tells Mohammed not to impose Islam by force "There is no compulsion in religion." While in verse 193 God tells him to kill whoever rejects Islam "Fight (kill) them until there is no persecution and the religion is God's."

In surah 29:45 God tells Mohammed to speak nicely to people of the Book (Christians and Jews) "Argue with people of the Book, other then evil doers, only by means of what are better! and say, we believe in what has been sent down to us and sent down to you. Our God is the same as your God, and we are surrendered to him." While in surah 9:29 God tells him to fight the people of the Book, "Fight those who do not believe in God and the last day...and fight People of the Book, who do not accept the religion of truth (Islam) until they pay tribute by hand, being inferior."

To justify this sudden change in the Quran's mood from peaceful to militant, conciliatory to confrontational, Mohammed claimed that it was God who told him so. It was God who abrogated the peaceful verses and replaced them by harsh ones.

However the truth of the matter, as Almaudoody puts it, is that Mohammed became strong enough to move from the stage of weakness to the stage of Jihad.

Today, in the West, we are witnessing the Islamic stage of weakness, but lets not be fooled, the stage of Jihad is coming sooner or later. This meek little lamb will turn out to be a ravening wolf, the sweet melodious "Baa Baa" will change to a thunderous roar.

The Facts
The following are some real teachings of Islam:

Men are superior to women (surah 2:228).

Women have half the rights of men: in court witness (surah 2:282) and in inheritance (surah 4:11). A man may punish his wife by beating her (surah 4:34). A man may marry up to four wives at the same time (surah 4:3).

A wife is a sex object for her husband (surah 2:223). Muslims must fight until their opponents submit to Islam (surah 9:29).

A Muslim must not take a Jew or a a Christian for a friend (surah 5:51).

A Muslim apostate must be killed (surah 9:12).

Stealing is punished by the amputation of the hands (surah 5:38).

Adultery is punished by public flogging (surah 24:2).

Resisting Islam is punished by death, crucifixion or the cutting off of the hands and feet (surah 5:33).

Fate decides everyone's eternal destination (surah 17:13).

Every Muslim will pass through Hell (surah 19:71).

Heaven in Islam is the place where a Muslim will be reclining, eating meats and delicious fruits, drinking exquisite wines, and engaging in sex with virgins (surah 55:54- 56) & (surah 52:17,19).

http://www.islamreview.com/articles/facade.htm

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