Antisemitism in Islam

This article is about the relationship between Islam and antisemitism. The nature and extent of antisemitism in Islam is a hotly-debated issue in contemporary Middle East politics.

Definition

Various definitions of Antisemitism in the context of Islam are given by the scholars. The extent of antisemitism among Muslims varies depending on the chosen definition:

• Scholars like Claude Cahen and Shelomo Dov Goitein defines it as the animosity specifically applied to Jews only and does not include discriminations practiced against Non-Muslims in general. For these scholars, antisemitism in Medieval Islam has been local and sporadic rather than general and endemic Shelomo Dov Goitein , not at all present Claude Cahen, or rarely present.

• According to Bernard Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil." According to Lewis, the outstanding characteristic of the classical Islamic view of Jews is their unimportance. The religous, philosophical, and literary Islamic writings tended to ignore Jews and focused more on Christianity. Although, the Jews recieved little praise or even respect, and were sometimes blamed for various misdeed but there were no fears of Jewish conspiracy and domination, nor any charges of diabolic evil nor accusations of poisoning the wells nor spreading the plague nor were even accused of engaging in blood libels until Ottomans learned the concept from their Greek subjects in 15th century. For Lewis, from the late nineteenth century, movements appear among Muslims of which for the first time one can legitimately use the term anti-semitic.

Qur'an

The Qur'an makes various remarks about Jews. According to Bernard Lewis, many of these passages reflect the struggles Muhammad had with the Jews of Medina after his migration. Rosenblatt states that the Jews of Medina rejected his apostolate, taunted and mocked him and opposed him both religously and politically. The Qur'an reflects the hostility that emerged between Muhammad and the Jews of Medina in passages in which the Jews are depicted as "stubborn and perverse, rebelling against the commands of God and rejecting and killing, or trying to kill, his prophets." These passages were for the most part concerned with Muhammad's own conflict with the Jews and were to some extent balanced by other passages in which a degree of tolerance is accorded with the Jews and they are spoken of more respectfully as the possessors of an earlier revelation. According to Laqueur, conflicting statements about Jews in the Quran have defined Muslim attitudes towards Jews to this day, especially during periods of rising Islamic fundamentalism. The attitude of the classical commentators who viewed Muhammad's struggle with Jews as a minor eposode in his career has changed in modern times under the external influences.

Attacks on Jews

Leon Poliakov, Walter Laqueur, and Jane Gerber, suggest that passages in the Qur'an contain attacks on Jews for their refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet of God. Uri Rubin states that the attacks deal mainly "with the sinners among the Jews and the attack on them is shaped according to models that one encounters in the New Testament."

The words "humility" and "humiliation" occur frequently in the Qur'an and later Muslim literature in relation to Jews. According to Lewis, "This, in Islamic view, is their just punishment for their past rebeliousness, and is manifested in their present impotance between the mighty powers of Christendom and Islam." Lewis states that the standard Quranic reference to Jews is verse ^{[Quran 2:61]}: "And remember ye said: "O Moses! we cannot endure one kind of food (always); so beseech thy Lord for us to produce for us of what the earth groweth, -its pot-herbs, and cucumbers, Its garlic, lentils, and onions." He said: "Will ye exchange the better for the worse? Go ye down to any town, and ye shall find what ye want!" They were covered with humiliation and misery; they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah. This because they went on rejecting the Signs of Allah and slaying His Messengers without just cause. This because they rebelled and went on transgressing."

According to Gerber, cowardice, greed, and chicanery are characteristics that the Qur'an ascribes to the Jews. Gerber furhter accuses the Qur'an of associating Jews with interconfessional strife and rivalry (Qur'an ^{[Quran 2:113]}), and claims that the Quran says Jews believe that they alone are beloved of God (Qur'an ^{[Quran 5:18]}), and that only they will achieve salvation (^{[Quran 2:111]}). Gerber says that the Quran gives credence to the Christian claim of Jews scheming against Jesus, " ... but God also schemed, and God is the best of schemers."(Qur'an ^{[Quran 3:54]}) In the Muslim view, the crucifixion of Jesus was an illusion, and thus the Jewish plots against him ended in failure. In numerous verses, (^{[Quran 3:63]}; ^{[Quran 3:71]}; ^{[Quran 4:46]}; ^{[Quran 4:160-161]}; ^{[Quran 5:41-44]}, ^{[Quran 5:63-64]}, ^{[Quran 5:82]}; ^{[Quran 6:92]}) Gerber claims the Qur'an accuses Jews of altering the Scripture.

Tolerance and respect for Jews

Poliakov argues that the Qur'an differentiates between "good and bad" Jews. Lacqueur states that some verses of the Quran, notably ^{[Quran 2:256]}, preach tolerance towards members of the Jewish faith. Rosenblatt states that the Qur'anic negative utterances reflecting Muhammad's struggle with the neighbor Jewish tribes left no marked traces on his immediate successors (known as Caliphs). According to Rosenblatt, on the religous grounds the first Caliphs based their treatment upon the Qur'anic verses like (2:256).

Ali S. Asani suggests that the Quran endorses the establishment of religiously and culturally plural societies and this endorsement has affected the treatment of religious minorities in Muslim lands throughout history. He cites the endorsement of pluralism to explain why violent forms of anti-Semitism generated in medieval and modern Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, never occurred in regions under Muslim rule.

Comparison to the Bible

According to Bernard Lewis, Muslims were not antisemitic for the most part due to certain differences of Islam and Christianity. In comparing the Qur'an and the Gospel, Lewis mentions the following differences: 1.The Qur'an views the stories of Jewish deicide as a blasphemous absurdity and further the gospels are not part of the educational system in Muslim society. 2. The Qur'an did not present itself as a fulfilment of the Hebrew Bible but rather a restorer of its original messages that had been distorted over time; Thus no clash of interpretations between Judaism and Islam could arise 3. The Qur'an views Muhammad as a fully human apostale, not a Son of God or Messiah; a claim to which Jews reproached less. Lewis also holds that lack the popular western traditions of "guilt and betrayal" in the Qur'an was as an important factor.

Muslim beliefs that certain Jews were transformed into apes and pigs

Johannes J. G. Jansen states that the qur'anic verse ^{[Quran 5:60]} qualifies the Jews of Medina with the epithets apes and pigs. Some modern writers have applied this term to the Jews of twentieth century. There are a number of other verses that refer to Jews being transformed into apes or pigs (e.g. see ^{[Quran 5:60]},^{[Quran 2:65]}, and ^{[Quran 7:166]}). According to some commentators the transformation literary happened while others understand it metaphorically (e.g. as something that happened to Jewish hearts).

A number of verses in the Qur'an refer to Jews being transformed into apes or pigs, in Suras ^{[Quran 5:60]},^{[Quran 2:65]}, and ^{[Quran 7:166]}. According to some commentators the transformation literary happened while others understand it metaphorically (e.g. as something that happened to Jewish hearts).

And well ye knew those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath: We said to them: "Be ye apes, despised and rejected. Qur'an ^{[Quran 2:65]}
Say: "Shall I point out to you something much worse than this, (as judged) by the treatment it received from Allah? Those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshiped evil;- these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even path! Qur'an ^{[Quran 5:60]}
When in their insolence they transgressed (all) prohibitions, We said to them: "Be ye apes, despised and rejected. Qur'an ^{[Quran 7:166]}

In 888, in Palermo, Sicily, the Muslim Aghlabid dynasty (9th through 11th century, North Africa) issued an order that Jews wear a patch that had an image of a monkey, and affix the same image to their homes. For Christians, the image was that of a pig. It is not known whether this was ever applied. There are reports of relatively frequent repetition of the ordinance in Sicily and North Africa. This has been both interpreted to mean that "it was not rigorously enforced - while the same has been adduced for the opposite."

According to Khaleel Mohammed "many Muslim preachers use the verses in a manner that is totally wrong, demonizing all Jews."

Muhammad and hadith

See also Muhammad and the Jews of Medina

During Muhammad's life, Jews lived in the Arabian Peninsula, especially in and around Medina. They Although thye intially swore peace with Muhammad, they taunted and mocked him, charging him with ignorance and imposture after having sworn friendship and peace. According to F.E. Peters and Koppel Pinson, they also began to connive with Muhammad's enemies in Mecca to overthrow him (despite having signed a peace treaty ). After each major battle, Muhammad accused one of the Jewish tribes of treachery and attacked it. Two Jewish tribes were expelled and the last one was wiped out. Samuel Rosenblatt states that these incidents were not part of policies directed exclusively against Jews, and that Muhammad was more severe with his pagan Arab kinsmen than foreigner monotheists.

Muhammad is also known to have Jewish friends. In 629, Muhammad married a Jewish woman called Safiyya. Professor Khaleel Muhammad points out that, because of this marriage, racist comments about Jews are unacceptable to Muslim sensibilities. According to Poliakov, "the degree to which Muhammad shows his respect for each religion [Jews and Christians] is remarkable".

Hadith

The hadith (recordings of deeds and sayings attributed to Muhammad) use both the terms Banu Israil and Yahud in relation to Jews, the latter term becoming ever more frequent and appearing mostly in negative context. According to Norman Stillman:

Jews in Medina are singled out as “men whose malice and enmity was aimed at the Apostle of God”. The Yahūd in this literature appear not only as malicious, but also deceitful, cowardly and totally lacking resolve. However, they have none of the demonic qualities attributed to them in mediaeval Christian literature, neither is there anything comparable to the overwhelming preoccupation with Jews and Judaism (except perhaps in the narratives on Muhammad’s encounters with Medinan Jewry) in Muslim traditional literature. Except for a few notable exceptions... the Jews in the Sira and the Maghazi are even heroic villains. Their ignominy stands in marked contrast to Muslim heroism, and in general, conforms to the Qura'nic image of “wretchedness and baseness stamped upon them”

According to one hadith: "He who wrongs a Jew or Christian will have myself as his indicter on the Day of Judgment."

Another hadith says: "A Jew will not be found alone with a Muslim without plotting to kill him." According to another hadith, Muhammad said: "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.'" (). This hadith has been quoted countless times, and it has become a part of the charter of Hamas.

Islamic theology

Jerome Chanes states that there is no theological anti-semitism in Islamic traditions. According to him, there are no stories of Jewish deicide. Islamic scriptures, unlike Christian one, do not contain the Hebrew Bible, thus no clash of interpretations between Judaism and Islam can therefore arise.

Antisemitism in pre-modern Islam

According to Mark Cohen, Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose relatively recently, in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized").

Bernard Lewis opines that there is little sign of any deep-rooted emotional hostility directed against Jews, or any other group, such as the antisemitism of the Christian world. There were, however, clearly negative attitudes, which were in part the "normal" feelings of a dominant group towards subject groups (which exists in virtually any society). In part, more specifically, the contempt of the Muslim for non-believers who willfully choose to remain in their disbelief, while they had the opportunity to accept the truth; in part, certain specific prejudices directed against one or another group and not against the rest.

Lewis states that in contrast to Christian antisemitism, the attitude of Muslims toward non-Muslims is not one of hate, fear, or envy, but rather simply contempt. This contempt is expressed in various ways, such as abundance of polemic literature attacking the Christians and occasionally also the Jews. "The negative attributes ascribed to the subject religions and their followers are are usually expressed in religious and social terms, very rarely in ethnic or racial terms, though this does sometimes occur." The language of abuse is often quite strong. The conventional epithets are apes for Jews, and pigs for Christians. Lewis continues with several examples of regulations which were symbolizing the inferiority that non-Muslims living under Muslim rule had to live with, such as different formulae of greeting when addressing Jews and Christians than when addressing Muslims (both in conversations or correspondences), and forbidding Jews and Christians to choose names used by Muslims for their children by the Ottoman times.

In 888, in Palermo, Sicily, the Muslim Aghlabid dynasty (9th through 11th century, North Africa) issued an order that Jews wear a patch that had an image of a monkey, and affix the same image to their homes. For Christians, the image was that of a pig. It is not known whether this was ever applied. There are reports of relatively frequent repetition of the ordinance in Sicily and North Africa. This has been both interpreted to mean that "it was not rigorously enforced - while the same has been adduced for the opposite."

Abdul Aziz Said writes that the Islamic concept of dhimmi, when applied, allowed other cultures to flourish and prevented the general rise of anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism has not historically been prevalent in the Islamic world, and at times Jews in Muslim countries were able to live in relative peace and thrive in the culture and economy. Although required to pay the Jizya, and viewed as degraded Dhimmi, Jewish communities were largely left to their own devices.

Leah Kinberg writes:

As Dhimmis, they had to pay a poll tax, jizya, and the Koran (^{[Quran 9:29]}) insisted that the tax would be paid while they were humiliated. Also, Jews were prohibited from worship in temples higher than mosques, no new temples could be built, they were required to ride a donkey and not a horse, and men were required to sit sidesaddle, like a woman. Dhimmi women were not allowed to wear costly clothing. Dhimmis could not adopt Muslim names and were restricted in government service. Muslims legally married free dhimmi women, but dhimmi men could not marry Muslim women nor own a Muslim slave.

Whenever Jews were perceived as having achieved too comfortable a position in Islamic society, antisemitism surfaced.

In the 9th century, Jews in some Muslim areas had to wear on their shoulders a patch of white cloth that bore the image of an ape; Christians wore a pig image. Also, in the 9th century, the Caliph al-Mutawakkil designated a yellow badge for Jews. In the 11th century, in Spain, Jews were not to be met with the greeting, “Peace be upon you,” because they were not supposed to have any peace.

In the early 1000s CE, the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim "the Mad" in Egypt persecuted Christians and Jews. In 1007 he burned the entire Jewish quarter in Cairo.

In 1066 Granada massacre, a Muslim mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred most of the Jewish population of the city. "More than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day." The Jewish community of Granada had recovered over the years following 1066, but in 1090 it was attacked again at the hands of the Almoravides led by Ibn Iashufin, the event widely considered as the conclusion of the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula.

Its successor and overthrower, the Almohad dynasty, offered Christians and Jews the choice of conversion or expulsion; in 1165, one of their rulers ordered that all Jews in the country convert on pain of death (forcing the Jewish rabbi, theologian, philosopher, and physician Maimonides to feign conversion to Islam before fleeing the country). In Egypt, Maimonides resumed practising Judaism openly only to be accused of apostasy. He was saved from death by Saladin's chief administrator, who held that conversion under coercion is invalid. This Almoravid policy was reversed by the succeeding Marinid dynasty in 1212.

During his wanderings, Maimonides also wrote the The Yemen Epistle, a famous letter to the Jews of Yemen, who were then experiencing severe persecution at the hands of their Muslim rulers. In it, Maimonides describes his assessment of the treatment of the Jews at the hands of Muslims:

… on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael [that is, Muslims], who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us…. No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have…. We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, their absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear…. We have done as our sages of blessed memory have instructed us, bearing the lies and absurdities of Ishmael…. In spite of all this, we are not spared from the ferocity of their wickedness and their outbursts at any time. On the contrary, the more we suffer and choose to conciliate them, the more they choose to act belligerently toward us.

Mark Cohen quotes Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, a specialist in medieval European Jewish history, who cautioned that Maimonides' condemnation of Islam should be understood "in the context of the harsh persections of the twelfth century and that furthermore one may say that he was insufficiently aware of the status of the Jews in Christian lands, or did not pay attention to this, when he wrote the letter." Cohen continues by quoting Ben-Sasson, who argues that Jews generally had a better legal and security situation in the Muslim countries than in Christendom.

In 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after an accusation that a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in "an offensive manner." The killings touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout Morocco.

Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen in the middle ages. Jews were also forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen, Morocco, and Baghdad at certain times.

From the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, Jews met significantly less official and popular anti-Semitism in Muslim countries than in Christian Europe. Jewish communities flourished in such places as Muslim-occupied Iberia, and when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1497, many sought refuge in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, where they were welcomed by Sultan Beyazid II. Between 1504 and 1510, Barbarossa, on his voyages to Spain to rescue Muslims from the Inquisition, also evacuated a number of conversos who still practiced Judaism in secret. Later Ottoman Sultans also invited persecuted and legally disadvantaged Jews from Europe to settle in the Empire, particularly in Istanbul. Although in the seventeenth century, the reactionary Kadizadeli movement inspired some incidents of popular anti-Semitism, the Empire never adopted or endorsed anti-Semitic policies or practices, and by and large, protected the Jews from persecution.

Mass murders and ethnic cleansing of Jews did, however, continue to occur in Arab lands throughout the centuries, especially in North Africa in Morocco, Libya, and Algeria, where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos.

In the 19th century

Norman Stillman states:

Increased European commercial, missionary and imperialist activities within the Muslim world during the 19th and 20th centuries introduced anti-Semitic ideas and literature into the region. At first these prejudices only found a reception among Arabic-speaking Christian protégés of the Europeans in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt and were too new and too palpably foreign for any widespread acceptance among Muslims. However, with the ever-increasing conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine during the period of the British Mandate, the language and imagery of European anti-Semitism began to appear in political polemics both in the nationalist press and in books

British historian Martin Gilbert writes that in the 19th century the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries.

In 1839, in the eastern Persian city of Meshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue, and destroyed the Torah scrolls. It was only by forcible conversion that a massacre was averted.

In 1840, the Jews of Damascus were falsely accused of having murdered a Christian monk and his Muslim servant and of having used their blood to bake Passover bread. A Jewish barber was tortured until he "confessed"; two other Jews who were arrested died under torture, while a third converted to Islam to save his life.

Throughout the 1860s, the Jews of Libya were subjected to what Gilbert calls punitive taxation. In 1864, around 500 Jews were killed in Marrakech and Fez in Morroco. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis, and an Arab mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, on Jerba Island.

In 1875, 20 Jews were killed by a mob in Denmat, Morocco. Elsewhere in Morocco, Jews were attacked and killed in the streets in broad daylight.

In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia. In 1897, synagogues were ransacked and Jews were murdered in Tripolitania.

In 1903, 40 Jews were murdered in Taza, Morocco.

In 1905, old laws were revived in Yemen forbidding Jews to raise their voices in front of Muslims, to build their houses higher than those of Muslims, and to engage in any traditional Muslim trade or occupation.

Modern Muslim antisemitism

File:NYTimes 1948 Jews in Arab.jpg

Jews in Grave Danger in All Moslem Lands, article in The New York Times, May 16, 1948.

According to M. Klein, antisemitism in the Arab world first emerged in the mid-19th century. Klein states that due to the political conflicts between Arabs and the state of Israel, Arab antisemitism changed from an sporadic cultural manifestation to a significant permanent phenomenon which defines the basic attitude of Arabs towards the state of Israel. This antisemitism differs from European antisemitism in that it "is not distinguished by personal animosity towards Jews, nor do publications stress Judaism as an internal threat, to the majority population. This is basically political, ideological, intellectual, and literary antisemitism that focuses on the external threat which the State of Israel represents for the Arab countries..."

In 1944, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni said on Radio Berlin:

"Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you"

After the establishment of the State of Israel, European antisemitic ideas, including those of the Nazis, were internalized and Islamized.

According to Uri Avnery, "nothing like European anti-Semitism ever existed in the Arab world prior to the events which created the vicious circle."

Standard antisemitic themes have become commonplace in the propaganda of Arab Islamic movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas, in the pronouncements of various agencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and even in the newspapers and other publications of Refah Partisi, the Turkish Islamic party whose head served as prime minister in 1996-97."

The language of abuse is often quite strong. For example, the conventional epithets for Jews and Christians are apes and pigs, respectively (See the section on the #Muslim belief that certain Jews had been transformed into apes and pigs.

According to Lewis in 1999 the expression of antisemitism at the personal level in the Muslim world was still quite rare. However, in 2006 Khaleel Mohammed, Assistant Professor at the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University who specializes in Islam, has estimated that 95% of contemporary Muslims are exposed to anti-Semitic teachings, beginning between the ages of 5 and 8, "and we know that things learned at this stage of life become ingrained, almost to the point of being in one's DNA."[6]

Arab sermons

Palestinian preacher Ibrahim Madhi said in a sermon: "Palestine will be, as it was in the past, a graveyard for the invaders - just as it was a graveyard for the Tatars and to the Crusader invaders, [and for the invaders] of the old and new colonialism… A reliable Hadith [tradition] says: 'The Jews will fight you, but you will be set to rule over them.' What could be more beautiful than this tradition? 'The Jews will fight you' - that is, the Jews have begun to fight us. 'You will be set to rule over them' - Who will set the Muslim to rule over the Jew? Allah… Until the Jew hides behind the rock and the tree. But the rock and tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, a Jew hides behind me, come and kill him.' Except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. We believe in this Hadith. We are convinced also that this Hadith heralds the spread of Islam and its rule over all the land… Oh Allah, accept our martyrs in the highest heavens… Oh Allah, show the Jews a black day… Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews and their supporters… Oh Allah, raise the flag of Jihad across the land… Oh Allah, forgive our sins…"

A Palestinian, Ahmad Abu Halabiya, has stated, "O brother believers, the criminals, the terrorists - are the Jews… They are the ones who must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands, and will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them… The Jews are like a [gas] pedal - as long as you step on it with your foot, it doesn't move, but if you lift your foot from it, it hurts you and punishes you. This is the case of the Jews."

File:2001 ed The International Jew by Henry Ford.jpg

The same imagery revived on the cover of the 2001 Egyptian edition of The International Jew by Henry Ford.

In sermons, Jews are commonly referred to as the descendants of pigs and apes, and as calf-worshippers. As Ibrahim Madhi stated, "All spears should be directed at the Jews, at the enemies of Allah, the nation that was cursed in Allah's book. Allah has described them as apes and pigs, the calf-worshipers, idol-worshipers… Whoever can fight them with his weapons, should go out [to the battle]; whoever can fight them with a machinegun, should go out; whoever can fight them with a sword or a knife, should go out; whoever can fight them with his hands, should go out; This is our destiny… The Jews have exposed their fangs. Nothing will deter them, except the color of their filthy people's blood; nothing will deter them except for us voluntarily detonating ourselves in their midst. They have nuclear power, but we have the power of the belief in Allah… We blow them up in Hadera, we blow them up in Tel Aviv and in Netanya."

On another occasion, Sheikh Madhi added: "Oh beloved of Allah… One of the Jews' evil deeds is what has come to be called 'the Holocaust,' that is, the slaughter of the Jews by Nazism. However, revisionist [historians] have proven that this crime, carried out against some of the Jews, was planned by the Jews' leaders, and was part of their policy… These are the Jews against whom we fight, oh beloved of Allah. On the other hand, [what is our belief] about the Jews? Allah has described them as donkeys."

Hamas says:

Allah did not mete out the punishment of transformation on any nation except the Jews. The significance of it is actual change in the appearance of the Jew and perfect transformation from human to bestial condition... from human appearance to the form of genuine apes, pigs, mice, and lizards....

Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais is the leading imam of the Grand mosque located in the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The BBC aired a Panorama episode, entitled A Question of Leadership, which reported that al-Sudais referred to Jews as "the scum of the human race" and "offspring of apes and pigs", and stated, "the worst ... of the enemies of Islam are those ... whom he ... made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive Jews and oppressive Zionists and those that follow them: the callers of the trinity and the cross worshippers ... those influenced by the rottenness of their ideas, and the poison of their cultures the followers of secularism...Monkeys and pigs and worshippers of false Gods who are the Jews and the Zionists."

In another sermon, on April 19, 2002, he declared:

Read history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others'] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs...

On May 5, 2001, after Shimon Peres visited Egypt, the Egyptian al-Akhbar internet paper stated that: “lies and deceit are not foreign to Jews.... For this reason, Allah changed their shape and made them into monkeys and pigs.”

Erel Shalit writes:

We need to bear to listen to the accusations from the Arab world, however outrageous and anti-Semitic many of them are, for instance,

The Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring ... the cum of the human race 'whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs...' These are the Jews, an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption... {The Imam of the Al-Haraam mosque in Mecca; the same words of incitement repeated time and again in the mosques of Gaza and Ramallah.)

On July 21, 2006 Syrian Deputy Minister of Religious Endowment Dr. Muhammad 'Abd Al-Sattar stated on Syrian TV.

The Koran used terms that are closer to animals than to humans only with regard to those people. Look at the bestiality they demonstrate in the destruction of the Arab, Lebanese, and Palestinian people. This is why the people who were given the Torah were likened to a donkey carrying books. They were also likened to apes and pigs, and they are, indeed, the descendants of apes and pigs, as the Koran teaches us.

This followed a broadcast on November 8, 2005 in which 'Abd Al-Sattar similarly referred to Jews as "those whom the Koran called the descendants of apes and pigs".

A May 2006 study of Saudi Arabia's revised schoolbook curriculum discovered that the eighth grade books included the following statements,

They are the people of the Sabbath, whose young people God turned into apes, and whose old people God turned into swine to punish them. As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the keepers of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christian infidels of the communion of Jesus.

Some of the people of the Sabbath were punished by being turned into apes and swine. Some of them were made to worship the devil, and not God, through consecration, sacrifice, prayer, appeals for help, and other types of worship. Some of the Jews worship the devil. Likewise, some members of this nation worship devil, and not God.

According to Dr. Leah Kinberg, "Saudi Sheikh Ba'd bin Abdallah Al-Ajameh Al-Ghamidi, in a sermon in Taif, explained":

The current behavior of the brothers of apes and pigs, their treachery, violation of agreements, and defiling of holy places ... is connected with the deeds of their forefathers during the early period of Islam – which proves the great similarity between all the Jews living today and the Jews who lived at the dawn of Islam.

He also said Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.” In April 2002, Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque and Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, and "perhaps the foremost Sunni Arab authority", described Jews in his weekly sermon as "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs."

On May 7, 2002, in a Saudi state-controlled TV station talk show entitled “Modern Muslim Woman” on channel Iqraa, broadcast around the world, a three-and-a-half year old girl was interviewed. In the interview, she said she doesn't like Jews because they are apes and pigs, and it says so in the qur'an. According to Daniel Pipes, "[t]he little girl is wrong, but her words show that, contrary to Condoleezza Rice's analysis, Muslim antisemitism extends even to the youngest children."

In April 2002, Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque and Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, and "perhaps the foremost Sunni Arab authority", described Jews in his weekly sermon as "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs."

Islamist groups

Many Islamist groups seeking to eliminate the State of Israel, which they regard as occupied Muslim land, have openly expressed anti-Semitic views. This is especially true of Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Lashkar-e-Toiba's propaganda arm has declared the Jews to be "Enemies of Islam," and Israel to be the "Enemy of Pakistan".

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a Shiite scholar and assistant professor at the Lebanese American University, indicates that Hezbollah is not Anti-Zionist, but rather Anti-Jewish. She quotes Hassan Nasrallah as saying: "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli." Regarding the official public stance of Hezbollah as a whole, she indicates that while Hezbollah, "tries to mask its anti-Judaism for public-relations reasons ... a study of its language, spoken and written, reveals an underlying truth." In her book, Hezbollah: Politics & Religion, she explores the anti-Jewish roots of Hezbollah ideology, arguing that Hezbollah "believes that Jews, by the nature of Judaism, possess fatal character flaws." Saad-Ghorayeb also indicates that "Hezbollah's Quranic reading of Jewish history has led its leaders to believe that Jewish theology is evil."

Trends

Bernard Lewis writes that the expression of antisemitism at the personal level in the Muslim world is still quite rare.

According to Norman Stillman, Antisemitism in Muslim world increased greatly for more than two decades following 1948 but "peaked by the 1970s, and declined somewhat as the slow process of rapprochement between the Arab world and the state of Israel evolved in the 1980s and 1990s."

Johannes Jansen believes that antisemitism will have no future in the Arab world in the long run. In his view, like other imports from the Western World, antisemitism is unable to establish itself in the private lives of Muslims.

Statistics

According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project released on August 14, 2005, high percentages of the populations of six Muslim-majority countries have negative views of Jews. To a questionnaire asking respondents to give their views of members of various religions along a spectrum from "very favorable" to "very unfavorable," 60% of Turks, 74% of Pakistanis, 76% of Indonesians, 88% of Moroccans, 99% of Lebanese Muslims and 100% of Jordanians checked either "somewhat unfavorable" or "very unfavorable" for Jews.

See also

• Arabs and antisemitism
• Christianity and antisemitism
• Holocaust denial in the Muslim world
• Islamism
• Jihad
• New antisemitism
• Red-green-brown alliance
• Religious intolerance
• Criticism of Islam
• Jewish exodus from Arab lands
• Zionism and racism allegations

References

• Arberry, Arthur J. (1955). The Koran Interpreted. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.
• Bodansky, Yossef (1999). Islamic Anti-Semitism as a Political Instrument. Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
• Chanes, Jerome A (2004). Antisemitism. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Pages 41-5.
• Cohen, Mark (1995). Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01082-X
• Cohen, Mark (2002), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, Chapter 9, Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-199-28032-0
• Ernst, Carl (2004). Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-5577-4
• Gerber, Jane S. (1986). "Anti-Semitism and the Muslim World". In History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism, ed. David Berger. Jewish Publications Society. ISBN 0-8276-0267-7
• Laqueur, Walter. The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times To The Present Day. Oxford University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-19-530429-2
• Lewis, Bernard (1984). The Jews of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00807-8
• Lewis, Bernard (1999). Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-31839-7
• Maududi, Sayyid Abul Ala (1967). The Meaning of the Quran. Lahore: Islamic Publications Limited.
• Pinson, Koppel S; Rosenblatt, Samuel (1946). Essays on Antisemitism. New York: The Comet Press.
• Poliakov, Leon (1946). The History of Anti-semitism. New York: The Vanguard Press.
• Poliakov, Leon (1997). "Anti-Semitism". Encyclopedia Judaica (CD-ROM Edition Version 1.0). Ed. Cecil Roth. Keter Publishing House. ISBN 965-07-0665-8
• Rodinson, Maxime (1971). Mohammed. Great Britain: Allen Lane the Penguin Press. Translated by Anne Carter.
• Stillman, Norman (1979). The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. ISBN 0-8276-0198-0
• Said, Abdul Aziz (1979). Precept and Practice of Human Rights in Islam. Universal Human Rights. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Stillman, N.A. (2006). "Yahud". Encyclopaedia of Islam. Eds.: P.J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill. Brill Online
• Viré, F. (2006) "Kird". Encyclopaedia of Islam. Eds.: P.J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill. Brill Online
• Watt, Montgomery (1956). Muhammad at Medina. Oxford:University Press.

External links

• Middle East Research Institute Videos on Antisemitism in Muslim media
• "My fellow Muslims, we must fight anti-Semitism" 2002 interview with Tariq Ramadan in Haaretz
• Islamic Antisemitism And Its Nazi Roots
• The Anti-Semitic Disease - an analysis by Paul Johnson in Commentary
• A history of Muslim antisemitism and anti-Zionism
• Jews in the Koran and Early Islamic Traditions by Dr. Leah Kinberg