Muhammad Morsi’s Islamic Jew-Hatred, Bernard Lewis’ Islamic Negationism
A month has passed since the Middle East Media Research Institute posted a 2010 video interview of Muslim Brotherhood leader, and now Egyptian president, Muhammad Morsi spewing Antisemitic vitriol. Morsi’s comments included a characterization of today’s Zionists — plainly Jews in his parlance — as “descendants of apes and pigs” — a specific invocation of Koran 5:60, which he had repeated, elsewhere, in print interviews, and commentaries.
That this dehumanizing Koranic depiction was in reference to Jews has been validated by the most authoritative classical and modern exegeses* (“tafsir,” or commentaries) on the Koran, the words of Muhammad himself (as recorded in the sira, or pious Muslim biographies of Islam’s prophet), as well as a large corpus of Islamic theological writings which demonstrate the motif’s application by Muslims over a nearly 1400-year continuum.
Yet to this day, thousands of reports and opinion pieces later (search “Morsi” + “apes and pigs” using Google.com to estimate the vast output), only a handful have noted this irrefragable link to a Koranic verse (i.e., 5:60) declaring the Jews to be apes and pigs. The apotheosis of this negationist trend was captured in a January 27, 2013 Times of Israel interview of Charles Small, head of the itinerant Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). Small piously proclaimed that ISGAP was uniquely committed to addressing what was framed as “Islamic” Antisemitism, because,
There’s a reluctance among scholars to open up this subject [i.e., “Islamic” Antisemitism]. This subject is dangerous, embarrassing. It touches on various political interests in international relations that people don’t really want to engage with.
However, also ignoring Morsi’s repetition of the Koran 5:60 “apes and pigs” reference, Small made this pathognomonic assertion, “The danger does not come from Islam itself.”
What explains the almost uniform, egregious omission of Morsi’s Koranic reference, and Small’s broader see-no-Islam in “Islamic” Antisemitism mindset, displayed even by politically centrist or conservative Western media outlets, and the centrist or conservative “Middle East experts” opining for them? I argue that such willful blindness is rooted in the misrepresentation of Islamic Jew-hatred — indeed its frank denial as a coherent doctrine — by one of the leading contemporary scholars of Islam, turned late-blooming, ubiquitous public intellectual, whose limited, dogmatic investigation of the subject has smothered all such desperately required discussion. That scholar is Bernard Lewis.
Accrued over a distinguished career of more than six decades of serious scholarship, Bernard Lewis clearly possesses an enormous fund of knowledge regarding certain aspects of classical Islamic civilization, as well as valuable insights on the early evolution of modern Turkey from the dismantled Ottoman Empire. A gifted linguist, non-fiction prose writer, and teacher, Lewis shares his understanding of Muslim societies in both written and oral presentations, with singular economy, eloquence, and wit. These are extraordinary attributes for which Lewis richly deserves the accolades lavished upon him.
But as I will demonstrate, Lewis’ remarkable contributions are diminished by yawning gaps in his expressed understanding of Islamic Jew-hatred, and the overall condition of non-Muslims vanquished by jihad, and living as so-called “dhimmis,” under the restrictive and humiliating mandates of the Sharia. Ultimately, Lewis takes the rather dogmatic (and apologetic) positions that Islam is devoid of theological Antisemitism, and dhimmitude has never existed as a Sharia-based Islamic institution. Lewis’s views on Islamic Jew-hatred and (for Jews, the conjoined institution of) dhimmitude are doctrinally and historically untenable, as the evidence I adduce will make clear. Moreover, Lewis’s apologetic tendencies must have been attractive to the Muslim Brotherhood/Saudi Wahhabi front Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, and its pseudo-academic Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs(JMMA), which has been an Abedin family enterprise since 1979. Regardless of whether Lewis was a willing dupe, or not, he served on the editorial board of the JMMA for some 14-years, from 1996 to 2010, despite the fact this “academic” journal was, and remains, a thinly veiled mouthpiece for Sharia supremacism. These critical limitations of his scholarship and judgment have implications which must also be recognized by all those for whom Lewis remains an iconic source of information, and advice, especially policy advice.
The late Orientalist Maxime Rodinson (d. 2004), a contemporary of Bernard Lewis, warned forty years ago of misguided modern scholarship effectively “sanctifying” Islam:
Understanding has given away to apologetics pure and simple.
Lewis’s bowdlerized 1974 summary portrayal of the system of governance imposed upon those indigenous non-Muslims conquered by jihad is a distressing, ahistorical example of this apologetic genre.
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), based on Koran 9:29. Al- Mawardi notes that “The enemy makes a payment in return for peace and reconciliation.” He then distinguishes two cases: (I) Payment is made immediately and is treated like booty, “it does, not however, prevent a jihad being carried out against them in the future.” (II). Payment is made yearly and will “constitute an ongoing tribute by which their security is established.” 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 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. Ibn Kathir’s important 14th century Koranic commentary describes the essence of the Koran’s mandate in verse 9:29 for submissive tribute, or “jizya,” under the heading, “Paying Jizya is a Sign of Kufr [unbelief] and Disgrace.” He elaborates, as follows:
Allah said, “until they pay the Jizya”, if they do not choose to embrace Islam, ‘with willing submission’, in defeat and subservience, “and feel themselves subdued”, disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimma or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced, and humiliated. Muslim recorded from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said, “Do not initiate the Salam to the Jews and the Christians, and if you meet them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley”. This is why the Leader of the faithful ‘Umar b. Al-Khattab [d. 644; the second “Rightly Guided” Caliph], may Allah be pleased with him, demanded his well-known conditions be met by the Christians, these conditions that ensured their continued humiliation, degradation, and disgrace.
Collectively, these “obligations” formed the discriminatory system of dhimmitude imposed upon non-Muslims — Jews, 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, and 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; and 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 [Zoroastrians] 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 saddler-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 in A.S. Tritton’s 1930 The Caliphs and their Non-Muslim Subjects, a pioneering treatise on the status of the dhimmis:
…[C]aliphs destroyed churches to obtain materials for their buildings, and the mob was always ready to pillage churches and monasteries…dhimmis…always lived on sufferance, exposed to the caprices of the ruler and the passions of the mob…in later times..[t]hey were much more liable to suffer from the violence of the crowd, and the popular fanaticism was accompanied by an increasing strictness among the educated. The spiritual isolation of Islam was accomplished. The world was divided into two classes, Muslims and others, and only Islam counted…Indeed the general feeling was that the leavings of the Muslims were good enough for the dhimmis.
Yet over four decades after Tritton published this apt characterization, here is what Bernard Lewis opined on the subject (in 1974):
The dhimma on the whole worked well. [emphasis added] The non-Muslims managed to thrive under Muslim rule, and even to make significant contributions to Islamic civilization. The restrictions were not onerous, and were usually less severe in practice than in theory. As long as the non-Muslim communities accepted and conformed to the status of tolerated subordination assigned to them, they were not troubled.
The assessments of two other highly esteemed Western scholars — Professors Ann Lambton and S.D. Goitein — who were Lewis’s contemporaries (and colleagues), make plain that his flimsy apologetic on “the dhimma” does not represent a consensus viewpoint.
From 1972-78, the late Ann Lambton headed the Near and Middle East department, while contributing articles and analyses for The Cambridge History of Islam, which she co-edited with Bernard Lewis. Professor Lambton and Bernard Lewis were also both protégés of the famous School of Oriental and Asiatic Studies Islamologist, Sir Hamilton Gibb. Lambton’s obituarist, Burzine K. Waghmar, noted (on August 1, 2008),
Lambton was unrivalled in the breadth of her scholarship, covering Persian grammar and dialectology; medieval and early modern Islamic political thought; Seljuq, Mongol, Safavid, Qajar and Pahlavi administration; tribal and local history; and land tenure and agriculture. Her association with SOAS (School of Oriental and Asiatic Studies) in London, which lasted from her time as an undergraduate in 1930 until her death as Professor Emerita, aged 96, was one of the longest and most illustrious, and Lambton became acknowledged as the dean of Persian studies in the West. Without hyperbole, an era has passed in Middle Eastern studies.
Ann Lambton, wrote the following on the dhimmis, published in 1981:
As individuals, the dhimmis possessed no rights. Citizenship was limited to Muslims; and because of the superior status of the Muslim, certain juristic restrictions were imposed on the dhimmi. The evidence of a dhimmi was not accepted in a law court; a Muslim could not inherit from a dhimmi nor a dhimmi from a Muslim; a Muslim could marry a dhimmi woman, but a dhimmi could not marry a Muslim woman; at the frontier a dhimmi merchant paid double the rate of duty on merchandise paid by a Muslim, but only half the rate paid by a harbi; and the blood-wit paid for a dhimmi was, except according to the Hanafis, only half or two-thirds that paid for a Muslims. No dhimmi was permitted to change his faith except for Islam…
Various social restrictions were imposed upon the dhimmis such as restrictions of dress…Dhimmis were also forbidden to ride horses…and, according to Abu Hanifa valuable mules. The reason for this prohibition was connected with the fact that dhimmis were forbidden to bear arms: the horse was regarded as a ‘fighter for the faith,’ and received two shares in the booty if it were of Arab stock whereas its rider received one. Dhimmis were to yield the way to Muslims. They were also forbidden to mark their houses by distinctive signs or to build them higher than those of Muslims. They were not to build new churches, synagogues, or hermitages and not to scandalize Muslims by openly performing their worship or following their distinctive customs such as drinking wine…
The humiliating regulations to which [dhimmis] were subject as regards their dress and conduct in public were not, however, nearly so serious as their moral subjection, the imposition of the poll tax, and their legal disabilities. They were, in general, made to feel that they were beyond the pale. Partly as a result of this, the Christian communities dwindled in number, vitality, and morality…The degradation and demoralization of the [dhimmis] had dire consequences for the Islamic community and reacted unfavorably on Islamic political and social life. [emphasis added]
Shlomo Dov [S.D.] Goitein (d. 1985), was a historian of Muslim-Jewish relations, whose seminal research findings were widely published, most notably in the monumental five-volume work, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (1967-1993). Goitein was Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University, scholar at The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a colleague of Lewis. The New York Times obituary for Professor Goitein (published on February 10, 1985) noted, appositely, that his renowned (and prolific) writings on Islamic culture, and Muslim-Jewish relations, were “…standard works for scholars in both fields.” Here is what Goitein wrote on the subject of non-Muslim dhimmis under Muslim rule, i.e., dhimmitude, circa 1970:
…a great humanist and contemporary of the French Revolution, Wilhelm von Humboldt, defined as the best state one which is least felt and restricts itself to one task only: protection, protection against attack from outside and oppression from within…in general, 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 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 propagated by Wilhelm von Humboldt or the principles 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 mal al-muslumin, 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, for which protection they had to pay a poll tax specific to them. 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. [emphasis added]
Lewis’s conception of Islam’s doctrinal Antisemitism, and its resultant historical treatment of Jews, is a sham castle which rests on two false pillars. These glib affirmations, which amount to nothing less than sheer denial, are illustrated below:
[1984] In Islamic society hostility to the Jew is non-theological. It is not related to any specific Islamic doctrine, nor to any specific circumstance in Islamic history. For Muslims it is not part of the birth-pangs of their religion, as it is for Christians.
[2006] “dhimmi”-tude [derisively hyphenated] subservience and persecution and ill treatment of Jews… [is a] myth.
“Why do the media’s Middle East pundits ignore the Jew-hatred intrinsic to Islamic doctrine?”
I would suppose because they agree with it.
It should be suggested right here that the logistics/practicality/cost…dollar and social… of providing security protection to these “reporters” in the “news” media on the order of that for Salman Rushdie and Robert Spencer is simply out of the question.
So, dear readers, we’ve been effective blackmailed by these Muslim enemies of ours, and very effectively tricked into being dhimmis.
Who wants to actually pay Chicago-style cash “protection money” to these Muslims for these “reporters” not to have their throats cut? …..OR pay for their collective security?……I don’t.
So, we must realize and recognize as bulls**t whatever they write and dismiss everything, everything, these “reporters” issue forth from their keyboards. They must be identified.
Now…obviously that has practical drawbacks also as everyone is not too astute in seeing through this media bulls**t.
Joseph Goebbels, in retrospect, becomes more of a genius as the years pass.
My point:
Education of the lemming-claque-ilk who voted for Obama is clearly out of the question also, they’re simply uneducatable; so we must now in 2013 and the years to come, recognize that new demographics have us screwed, and we must do the best we can as the new discriminated-against minority, and apply the tactics of all minorities in the past against this new majority by waging “lawfare” as do our Muslim enemies against us…..
Wake up America.
No one is tricked or duped.Only those who want to be.As for the media they do not care because in our societies they have the privige of being protect by the law.Let’s drop them into Egypt,Pakistan etc etc and see how they fare.
#1 FeralCat – because it doesn’t exist.
Gee, did you actually even look at the article above?
what the hell for?
Gosh, I don’t know; so you can know what the hell you’re talking about? How’s that for a reason? (If you don’t want to read the article, why are you commenting on it?)
Darn I was hoping this piece would be just a little bit longer….
I’m getting the picture that these guys say one thing for the English press and quite another for the islamic Jihadi Journalists……..
You mean we shouldn’t have given them so many F16′s?…………
One would almost believe that we are doing these things on purpose………
mean . . . ?
While I agree that Islam is inherently anti-semitic, making this only a Muslim versus Jew issue is self-defeating. This is a Muslim versus non-Muslim conflict. I understand that the author had a particular agenda, which he has met, but in general there needs to be less segregation of Islam’s confirmed enemies. Islam hates and seeks to conquer or destroy the non-Muslim world. This is not just an anti-semitic issue. Making it such dilutes resistance.
all get off their fat asses already
includes you Dave
Can someone teach Mr. Bostom some hyperlink skills please? Or am I the only one who finds the electric blue highlighting on a bright white palette eye-bleeding?
shades, Ed
The Spanish in the New World destroyed temples to make their churches. The Ottomans militarily subjugated all areas of the Muslim world formerly dominated by Arab Islam they could. That was not a friendly act against their ostensibly fellow Muslims. Timurlane, reportedly a devout Muslim, defeated Bayezid at the Battle of Ankara, Bayezid defeated a Christian coalition at the Battle of Nicopolis before that. It’s a half dozen of one and six of the other.
We might be getting a little deep in waters that confuse particulars, which all empires do not share, with principles, which they do – namely culturally oppressing those they have militarily conquered, and asserting their own cultural superiority and dominance.
In what empire have the vanquished not been second class citizens? People do not war on each other or enslave one another because of ideology or religion. Rather they often use these as an excuse to simply war, rape and steal, when prevented from preying on their own. White Europeans bought black slaves because they had to, and because they could, not because they delighted in oppressing blacks. Evil men do what they can, not what they want to.
Mughal/Hindu/English India had an ever-changing pecking order from the 17th to the 19th centuries. It was based on cannon, not culture, or cultural disdain. Men changed sides with alacrity, fortunes ebbed and waned. Englishmen went to India because they were second sons who could prey on people, not because they’d come to love the Irish or Scots. Targets in the homeland became fewer.
The Jews and Christians are in the bull’s-eye of parts of Islamic culture because they represent the formerly vanquished, and Islam itself is based on events that cannot be separated from military conquest. Of course laws which manage conquered populations will figure prominently in such a culture; it’s how it was created, by sweeping into the vacuum of power left by a depleted Byzantine Empire. But it is by no means alone nor are Islamic nations automatically buddies in some default mechanism once they fragment and are left to look with envious eyes at each other, any more so than are Christian nations.
Christian nations have warred on each other non-stop, enslaved, booted out Jews and Muslims. So has Islam. There’s been little to choose from in history.
Today you have Western democracies with human rights that have sought to even out these ancient tensions. Islamic culture is way behind in this regard, partially because they are not diverse cultures with the benefits of cross-pollination compared to the West, and this has blunted their sophistication and innovation in a variety of areas. And their religion, based on conquests no longer in force since they have absorbed everything in their own areas, has eaten all the other fish in the lake, because that is its ancient imperative.
But on their own terms, Islam is plenty diverse enough to make excuses to war and bicker among themselves, even today. What’s the real difference between an orthodox Sunni and fundamentalist Salafi to an outsider? Well, there’s plenty of difference to them. That’s why the idea of a pan-Islamic caliphate is absurd.
Islam is not capable of oppressing anyone outside their nations. They have only some few hypocritical moronic immigrants to the West who preach cultural superiority even while they refuse to live in their former polities, because they are so debased. The idea Islam can subvert the West is based more on their fantasies and overweening arrogance than any reality. They’re like fire ants or African bees. Life goes on. Because of political correctness, you’re not going to stem the flow of immigrants from these places, so deal with it, or deal with the real enemy: the suicide cult of liberalism that allows a last place team we beat up ages ago to stand with us on a fairly even footing, using laws and tech they can’t and won’t create themselves to harass us and nip at our heels.
This is opinion making at its best: un-documented and dripping of moral relativism just like Bernard Lewis’s laments that the author refutes so scientifically and so graciously. IMHO
You consider the sack of the New World accompanied by cries of “St. James” and also Nicopolis and Ankara to be undocumented? They are not examples of moral relativism but relative in exacting proportion one to the other.
Throw in the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions that controlled ones’ behavior in similar exacting proportion and realize a woman in 1970s Christian Spain couldn’t open a bank account without a man. What Muslims made them do that?
There is accident of birth and then there is conviction. Which are you? How did you get on whatever side you’re on?
Pathetic. The whole point is that the theo-fascist so-called Islamic “religion” has not evolved. By contrast the “vanquished” after WW2 were hardly forced to live in dhimmitude. But it was a nice excuse to parade your historical knowledge.
“After WWII” is being kinda friendly to your argument isn’t it? Guess you’ve never read about the riots in Cairo against the British or heard about the British Mandate. Or about how so many nations in the Middle East which had their present day borders drawn by British bureaucrats or Gordon or putting men on thrones in Jordan or a further list too long to present. Read about the history of Bahrain and property rights. To suggest that entire area didn’t suffer under second-class citizenship and racial and religious discriminatory laws is wacky. Were the British liberators? hahahaha.
Or is your lack of focus an “un-parade” of historical knowledge?
It’s useful in these cases to add also that infamous “Exodus” affair when the Jewish refugee ship was rammed by the British destroyer as a warning. The Brits had appeased the Arabs……also placed the Nazi holocaust survivors in camp on Cyprus…..to prevent them entering Israel.
Perfidious Albion.
Pasted here from Google…..the photograph of the rammed side of the ship is too big to add here.
“Exodus in the Port of Haifa
Featured here is the Exodus at port in Haifa on July 18, 1947, with the gaping holes in the ship from the ramming of British destroyers; British soldiers are removing the immigrants from the ship. Pictured below are some of the passengers from the Exodus praying aboard the deportation ship Empire Rival during its journey back to France on Tisha Ba’av (the traditional Jewish day of mourning), July 27, 1947.”
This is an inconvenient bit of British duplicity which has been buried.
Also:
“Cyprus internment camps – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_internment_camps
The majority of Cyprus detainees were intercepted before reaching Palestine, usually by boat. Most of them were Holocaust survivors, about 60% from the ……”
Readers here are urged to review the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Also the Balfour Declaration’s haughty phrase…..”His Majesty’s government view with favour…..” etc etc …..
True. This context is useful. Context always is. But the British hardly appeased the Arabs by creating the British Mandate, who’s purpose, stated in its preamble, as well as the Balfour Declaration, was to create a Jewish state. There’s no way that could be done without discomfiting Muslims, as we’ve all seen. And Arabs had the short end of the stick in the Mandate compared to the Jews overall. Look at the Arab rebellion. Both sides were angry, finally the British couldn’t take being caught between the two.
This part is amusing: “it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…”
If they had no intention of doing that they needn’t have formally stated it. Reminds me of the Monty Python letter where they say they’re sorry if they gave the impression of a heap of insults they then relate. Or maybe the lady doth protest too much.
Wonder how much Arab support on their flank the British would’ve gotten out of Lawrence and his ragtag bunch if they could’ve seen the future.
…..the “appeasement” of the Arabs came later….I’m rough on the chronology….when that subject of oil started to interest the Royal Navy to change over from coal….this whole fascinating new complexity intertwined with Arab Nationalism…again I’m mixing the chronology….but you’ll see where I’m going….then!…lo! …that Lawrence and then David Lean and widescreen Cinemascope….
[.....begging forgiveness here....but this whole starkly tragic subject matter of the Muslim butchery slicing so widely gets depressing.....]
To make things short, the European imperialists conquered Judea cum Palaestina from the Turkish imperialists who conquered it from the Arab imperialists who conquered it from the Roman imperialists (the ones who renamed Judea Palaestina to punish the Jews for revolting against their heavy handed imperialist rule) who conquered it from the Judeans (AKA Jews) whose homeland it has been for millennia. Before that the Jews liberated it from the conquest of the Greek imperialists who conquered it from the Persian imperialists who conquered it from the Babylonian imperialists who conquered it from the Jews whose homeland it has been for millennia.
Meanwhile, with all the wars and imperialist conquets, Jews spread all over the place, were stateless for a couple of millennia because their land was ruled in turn by the different empires, were forced to wander from place to place due to persecution by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Christians and Muslims. The European Jewish community known as Ashkenazim was founded by all historical, philological and modern molecular genetic evidence availabe by Jewish immigrants from the Middle East, some of which married Euros, 1000-1300 years ago, which just happens to coincide with the rise, spread and consolidation of Islamic rule all over the Middle East, and with their various wars. But of course, it couldn’t have possibly have anything to do with Islam since we know Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance that treat all other religions wonderfully. Ah, and one shouldn’t forget that Muhammad visited in his dream the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem before the Al Aqsa mosque even existed, or any other mosque in Judea cum Palaestina for that matter, since Judea cum Palaestina was not yet conquered by the Arabs, which proves the Arabs were the aboriginal population of Judea.
The British were, of course, pro Jewish because they agreed on paper Judea should go back to the Jews to legitimize the British rule over it. Shortly after taking over the British Mandate they gave 78% of it to the Arabs, named it Trans-Jordan and disjoined it from the original mandate. They increasingly prohibited Jewish immigration to the remaining 22% while turning a blind eye to Arab immigration. Then the League of Nations decided to split the remaining 22% of the mandate into a Jewish state and a second Arab state in Judea cum Palaestina (which meant the Jews got about 12% of the original mandate). The Jews accepted, the Arabs rejected, the Brits abstained in the vote. The Brits created, armed, trained and funded the Arab Legion. It also had British commanders. In the 1948 Arab attack on Israel the British commanders formally resigned, but informally remained. The world imposed an arms embargo on the Middle East, but since the Brits already armed the Arabs that embargo would affect only the Israelis. But unfortunately for the Western plans some countries, notably Czechoslovakia, broke the embargo and supplied the Jews with weapons too. And the West also let the Nazi collaborator, the mufti Amin al-Husseini, escape rather than stand trial on Nuremberg even though his views and plans for the Jews were well-known (he was in complete agreement with Hitler). The British head of Palestine’s Criminal Investigation Division told the assistant American military attaché in Cairo that letting al-Husseini go would be a good idea because he is the only one who could unite the Palestine Arabs against the Jews. But of course, the British were pro-Jewish. Much like the Arabs are the aboriginal population of the entire Middle East (and Spain too, don’t forget Spain) and were never imperialists, and Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance.
It’s really heart warming to see how so many people revolt against the horrible, horrible injustice that the Arabs today don’t control every last grain of sand they’ve ever conquered, but just almost every last grain of sand they’ve ever conquered. Of course, they should get Spain back too. It’s theirs by right, like everything else.
Mostly agree with your comment except that it was not “the West” who let Amin Husseini “escape”. It was France, more concretely De Gaulle since given how he “escaped” at tleast tow ministries had to involved: Foreign Affairs and Interior (aka Police). That means the person who gave the order had to be able to give orders to the ministers. Despite the war DE Gaulle was still in the old liitle games of trying to undermine the British in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Whatever could have a told a low ranked Bristish officla in the Middle East, the Uk as a nation (that means ministers) wanted Amin Hussein hanging.
There are a couple of problems here. First is that all those imperialist-colonialist behaviors were codified into the Muslim religion, thereby not only legitimizing them, but also making them mandatory. When the West changed its mind about imperialism, war and imposing its culture and religion on others, Westerners could simply change their behavior to a great extenet, avoid imperialism, try to prevent war, become more tolerant and accepting of other cultures and religions. In the Muslim world, on the other hand, changing such views and behaviors amounts to heresy because they are sanctified as being commanded by god. The only ways to change this attitude are to either drop or reform Islam, neither of which is on the horizon. So when, for example, Saddat made peace with Israel he needed Al-Azhar to issue a justification that will allow it to coexist with Islam. The justification was to cite as precedence the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, a temporary peace treaty Muhamad made with infidels when he was in a weaker position. You can’t simply make a permanent peace with infidels since this is against Islam, against the will of god. The ruler who does it will likely lose his legitimacy to rule in the eyes of the people and might even get assassinated. Such inherent impediment to peace and tolerance doesn’t exist in non-Muslim societies.
Another problem is that the West today doesn’t merely say like you: “OK, they’re like that, but we were like that too”. The West largely denies Islam is like that and even that it was ever like that in the past. Instead we hear that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, that it did not spread by the sword, and that under Muslim rule members of all faiths lived in peace, harmony and even equality. Persecution of Christians is under-reported, and then often decribed as sectarian or inter-religious strife, suggesting the weak Christian minority is equally responsible and equally engaged in the same type of attacks against Muslims, which is just a lie. Jew-hatred is entirely denied as if it does not exist at all and never has. Infidel-hatred is denied — instead we are made to think Islam has a positive attitude toward other religions. The fact Muslims were not any less imperialist-colonialist than Europeans is never mentioned in the mainstream — one is led to believe Islam is the aboriginal religion on all the vast territories it now rules, and all the others are the aliens and invaders, and so you shouldn’t take it to heart if they are forced to flee because they supposedly don’t belong there in the first place.
The West is extremely self-critical regarding certain “sins”. If you merely criticize Obama you have a good chance of being branded a racist. If you merely complain about the persecution of Christians under Muslim rule you will be branded an Islamophobe. If you raise the slightest doubt about Muslim mass immigration you will be branded a xenophobe. When Glenn Beck called George Soros a “puppet master” he was accused of anti-Semitism even though he spoke only of Soros as an individual and not of Jews, and even though he quite often warns against the threat of contemporary anti-Semitism. Yet the media almost completely ignores the open genocidal antisemitic agitprop in the mainstream media in the Middle East. Why is the double standard?
The Muslims are not a weak tiny global minority, of say 0.2% of the world population, unarmed and without a land of their own and any natural resources. So why are they treated as such? More than 25% of the states in the world are Muslim states. They rule vast territories the Muslims conquered. They have a siginificant share of the global natural resources. Their wealth may not be eqaully distrubuted, but when it comes to the influence they buy through investements in the West they have an enormous amounts of it. They have the OIC to coordinate the policies and actions of the different Muslim states in relation to global politics. The OIC is the second largest states organization in the world after the UN. They have an enormous power in the UN and drive much of its agenda. They have many allies. They have growing minorities with growing electoral power in the West and elsewhere. AND they have the support of the Left that currently dominates the West. Why does the Left treat them as weak and defenseless is beyond comprehension.
And what are you invoking next? Europan canibalism in Cro-Magnon times? To begin with whatever the Spaniards did in the XVIth century they no longer do it while Mulims continue doing it not as an exception as the norm. Second: The Spaniards didn’t sail to the New World with the goal of destroying temples. They thought “free conversions are the only ones valid” (these are the very own words of one of the men who conquered Mexico). They had idealistic ideas of tribes accepting the Good New”, of valiant priets entring the jungle like in the “Mission” movie, accepting martyrdom but their martyrdom moving the locals and contributing to convert them. But then they found themocals were not rousseauist good savages they saw canibalism, tens of thousands people sacrified to Huizipolotchli, hearts torn out of the chest of living men and then the Spaniards said “No and hell no!”.
You see, the pagan temples and christian churches destroyed by the Muslims were neither places of human sacrifice nor their worshippers were esting babies in front of their mothers. That is the diffeence between Muslims and Spaniards.
So, if I have it right, we (the non muslims) have to pay for the right to eat a shit sandwich and like it. And this goes back to its founding document, the koran and all later studies? Have we turned into a bunch of patsies since 800 AD?
“Ultimately, Lewis takes the rather dogmatic (and apologetic) positions that Islam is devoid of theological Antisemitism, and dhimmitude has never existed as a Sharia-based Islamic institution.”
There is no mystery about the protective apologia evinced by Bernard Lewis towards dhimmitude and Islamic Antisemitism. It is symptomatic of a well known phenomenon found in Westerners who study and reside in non-Western lands and cultures. Many of them “go native”.
Read Robert Wistrich Lethal Obsession in which he discusses antisemitism and Islam
Bernard Lewis is a very educated person but he still could have missed a few points in his 70 years about Islam.My point is that today you don’t need a PHD just look at the news and you’ve got the whole picture. If we want to survive we must do what we must do!
There’s a fairly serious irony here. Bernard Lewis is hardly a liberal. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq war. Far from embracing feel-good multi-culturalism, he promoted the “clash of civilization” bit before Huntington made a big deal out it. I guess right-wing thought control really is pretty rigorous. No deviation allowed.
There absolutely is a long tradition of anti-Jewish feeling in Islam. It’s not as long as the anti-Semitic tradition of Christianity, but it’s very real. Thing is, though, as everybody who has ever tried to understand the history of the Middle East is aware, it is also true that the various Islamic regimes tended to be more tolerant in practice than Europe. Both Jews and Christians participated in the intellectual and political life of the various Islamic regimes in a way that Jews and Muslims never could in Europe up to a couple of centuries ago. Which is why, for example, Jewish intellectuals fled to Muslim countries. The reverse exodus, so far as I know, just didn’t happen.
If you try to define religions by treating their holy books as if they were operating manuals, you’ll come up with some pretty peculiar conclusions. By themselves, the horrible things in the Koran and the rather enlightened things in the Kora, don’t mean any more than the awful stuff in Levictus or, for that matter, the radically leftist sections of the New Testament. Because they are all factually false, religions don’t have any bones in them. They can become anything whatsoever. You finally have to look at what’s going on in the present. I don’t know if contemporary Islam will evolve in the direction of something constructive or at least neutral. I do know that the more alarming tendencies in modern Islam are only part of the story and that there is a war on inside Islam, not only between the Sunnis and Shias, but between its more tolerant tendencies and fanatical movements such as the Wahabbis. Do we really want to guarantee that the whole religion will be our enemy by assuming in advance that Islam has a unitary essence? There are also alarming tendencies inside Christianity. Are we going to read Christendom out of the human race just because of the nastiness of so many Fundamentalists?
Please don’t waste your time and energy on the likes of Jim Harrishmuck a.k.a. Jim Hitlerson. He has venomous opinions on every topic, even ones he knows nothing about. He is simply too ignorant to understand how ignorant he is. However, he thinks he knows everything about everything and thinks he has the solution to all of the world’s problems. The guy is what Thomas Sowell might call a self-anointed messiah. He believes that civilized and successful people and countries are intrinsically evil and he has a vicious hatred of Jews and of Israel. His posts are often incoherent ramblings. He evades questions, he tells outright lies and he throws tantrums. Please don’t waste your time and energy on this immature, malignant, narcissistic, attention-starved, anti-Semitic demagogue.
Antisemitism is a Pillar of Islam just like the other pillars HYPOCRISY, LIES, DECEPTION and MISOGYNY.
If you remove all the antisemitism, misogyny, Arab supremacism, the mistake laden plagiarism from the Bible and the Talmud, the mistakes and the self contradiction from the Koran all you are left with is the nonsense.
Think for example how the self proclaimed creator and pre-destinator of all (no FREEWILL in Islam) could be so totally ignorant of the planet he supposedly created that he does not know that it has Poles where the sunlight/darkness mix varies from constant daylight to constant night. He quite clearly was not aware of this when he commanded Muslims to fast from SUNRISE to SUNSET at Ramadan.
First, this is the kind of really exceptional writing that brought me to PJ’s in the first place. I get the warm fuzzy’s when I’m immersed with info, cogency and originality. The writer, as far as I’m able to tell (having read some of B. Lewis) is also correct. When he’s at the top of his game Bernard Lewis is a marvel, but I can only agree that to ignore the exhortations of koranic and hadithic writing is to be willfully blinded for whatever reason. Being less than a novice on the historical side I’ll refrain from any bargain basement motivational assessments.
To Pnina, I’m mightily impressed with your delivery of historical fact, but this sentence troubled me.
“Why does the Left treat them as weak and defenseless is beyond comprehension.”
It has little or nothing to do with muslims per se. Any excuse to defile, defame, debase or otherwise put the (barely) normative values of the west on defense will do. Both the left and muslims are united in the maxim that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’