Posted on 12/11/2002 5:11:28 AM PST by SJackson
As someone born in an observant Muslim household in north Jersey, I'd like to tell you about the Arab/Muslim community's guilty secret.
[Published in a somewhat edited form in the Herald News of West Paterson, NJ, November 25, 2002.]
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The recent serialization of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by The Arab Voice of Paterson is a major affront to the Jewish community, and a disgraceful act of bigotry on the part of Walid Rabah, the paper's editor. As most people know, the Protocols are a series of documents composed in nineteenth-century Czarist Russia, outlining a supposed Jewish plot to take over the world. They are an absurd and self-contradictory forgery, intended to malign Jews, and to incite hatred for them. To serialize them is to show support for them, and to show support is to give sanction to the bigotry they express. What more is there to say?
Unfortunately, a lot more. As I've watched this controversy unfold from afar, I find myself dumbfounded by the fact that so few of the self-appointed leaders of the Arab and Muslim communities of New Jersey seem willing to denounce what has happened. What we hear instead is the deafening silence of leaders who have perfected the arts of whining and special pleading, but have talents for little else, much less for a principled stand against bigotry.
As someone born in an observant Muslim household in north Jersey, and who has lived in New Jersey for nearly three decades, I think I know the major reason for the silence. The sad fact is that anti-Semitism is the Arab/Muslim community's guilty secret-one that it can't afford to face, but can't manage to control. Everyone in the community knows this, and yet everyone evades the knowledge. Apparently, communal solidarity in the wake of 9/11 now requires that we tolerate it, too. We're simply supposed to look the other way as the anti-Semites take over, mumbling lame excuses like, "Nobody reads The Arab Voice. And anyway, the Jews are blowing this way out of proportion."
Many Arabs and Muslims, especially those in official leadership positions, will want to play dumb at this point, professing never to have encountered any significant anti-Semitism in their communities. But most people, I think, know exactly what I mean. I mean the kind of person whose explanation for anything is that "The Jews control everything," or the type who protests Israeli policies by chanting, "Hitler and Sharon are the same; only difference is the name." I mean the kind of person who says, "Jews drink Arab blood to hasten the coming of the Messiah," or the type who says, "Well, you never know; maybe the Protocols are true." I mean the child who tells me that he admires Hitler's nationalism, or the adult who says, "Hitler should have finished the job." And yes, I mean the person who supports Hezbullah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, while prattling on fatuously about the evils of Israeli occupation.
Such views are not the exception to the rule among the Arabs and Muslims I've encountered over the last three decades. They are the rule. And the time has come to face this fact openly and deal with it, rather than to deny it by sticking our collective heads in the sand. Too many of us have borne this denial in silent resignation for too long. The Protocols episode was the last straw for me. I won't be silent again.
If Walid Rabah is really interested in making amends, I'd suggest two things. First, an explanation for why Ibrahim Alloush, a notorious Holocaust denier, was and remains a correspondent for his paper. And second, full disclosure of every issue of The Arab Voice published between August and November of this year, so that we can conclusively determine just how much of the Protocols Mr. Rabah serialized, and what kind of "disclaimer" (if any) he offered when he did. I'm sure Mr. Rabah will protest at the pressure being exerted on him. But it strikes me as poetic justice that the purveyor of conspiracy theories should now be the object of universal suspicion.
More importantly, the Arab/Muslim community owes not just the Jewish community but the wider community an expression of genuine outrage over what has happened. No one is asking that we offer wholesale support for Israel, or that we ignore bigotry directed against us. The only request is one of basic decency: we cannot tolerate anti-Semitism, or make excuses for it, or remain silent when it finds expression in our midst. So far, with just a few notable exceptions, silence is the only thing that the community has produced-silence, evasion, excuses, and lies. Not exactly a record to be proud of. The time has come to break that silence, and in so doing, to root out the ugly bigotry that nourishes it.
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Irfan Khawaja is adjunct instructor in philosophy at The College of New Jersey and lecturer in politics at Princeton University.
He's going to be excoriated by his fellow Muslims.
This is a bold statement by a muslim... I just wanted to clarify a misconception in John Floyd's comment below.
I don't see the author stating that he's a Muhammadan practicing the Religion of Peace®. In fact, I found this at meforum.org:Comment submitted by Irfan Khawaja on August 23, 2002 at 17:45
I am not a Muslim. I'm an apostate--I was born in Islam, but left it.
Nam Vet
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