Hold on, truepeers. I think that Brian N is right in his premise of what Mr. Benz was purporting. I think it is petty clear from the limited amount of actual facts and quotations that were in this piece that Benz’s angle derives from a distorted theory of historical returns. One can argue (and should) that Benz is wrong in his assessment of the situation of Islam in Germany and Europe, but one cannot or, rather, should not distort or change what Benz’s thesis is.
And, if you compare anti-Islam sentiment to antisemitism, it just suggests that you, like Benz, fail to appreciate what it is about antisemitism that makes it quite unlike other forms of racism or religious prejudice. Er, sorry, but what is that which makes it so different and so much more heinous (I infer by the structure of this sentence that more evil is an implicit given). I ask this in complete sincerity and do not wish to pick a fight. For me, both the Jewish person tortured and killed and the Chinese person tortured and killed on the precept of sub-humanness during WWII were equally evil acts. For me, no race or religion holds a copyright on evil bigotries. Evil is evil. Yes, there are degrees of “evilness,” but do not feed me the bull that an anti-Semitic act of aggression is ipso facto more evil.
