What are the origins of Muslim anti-Semitism?

[Behind the Aegis]

When he met Pope John Paul II in 2001, Syrian president Bashar Assad surprised the pontiff when he said of the Jews, "They try to kill all the principles of divine faiths with the same mentality of betraying Jesus Christ and torturing him, and in the same way that they tried to commit treachery against the Prophet Muhammad."

In order to understand the background to these accusations, one must go back to the year 1986 when then-Syrian defense minister Mustafa Tlass, who was considered an intellectual giant in the fields of the humanities and the arts, published his book "The Matzoh of Zion." The conclusion of the popular book was that the Jews had indeed murdered a Christian monk in 1840 as part of a ritual murder, in one of the most important blood libels in Jewish history, known as the "Damascus Affair."

The phenomenon of a blood libel against the Jews was until then an anomaly in the lands of Islam. The Muslim majority lived under the Ottoman rule in Syria alongside two minorities, the Christians and the Jews. The two minorities were considered "protected citizens" (dhimmi) and were treated in tolerant fashion. They were allowed to practice their religious precepts in return for paying a tax, and recognizing that they had a lower legal and social status. But in 1831-32, the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, conquered Syria from the Ottoman sultan, holding the territory until the end of 1840. The period of Egyptian rule in Syria was perceived by the country's Christians as a golden era, since they saw their rights increased. It's a period of great importance to any understanding of the change that occurred in the attitude of Muslims toward the Christians.

The rights that the Egyptian rulers granted to non-Muslims - including appointments to government councils, acceptance to the regional administrative system, the building and renovation of places of worship, permission to ride horses in the cities and to wear clothes of colors that previously had been permitted for Muslims only - hurt the feelings of Muslim subjects, arousing in them grudges toward the non-Muslim population. Muhammad Ali was considered to rule at the sufferance of the European powers, led by France, in return for which he granted excess rights to non-Muslim minorities, particularly the Christians. In addition, the local Christians were perceived as collaborators with the European powers that were hoping to gain control of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the Muslims started developing a hatred for the Christians, who were now perceived as political rivals.

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[cali]

1. no doubt that's a thread in the strand

but I think most of the Muslim antipathy toward Jews comes from the founding of Israel and the occupation. Still, I wish it would put to rest the persistant belief that things were wonderful for the Jews in the Arab world, prior to the founding of Israel.

[Vegasaurus]

5. People ought to read a little history

and familiarize themselves with the discrimination and outright bigotry Jews faced as dhimmi in Arab countries.

Then they were all chased out, and had their property and land stolen from them.

Arab anti-semitism far proceeds any occupation, but the conflict isn't about occupation (of the WB) anyway.

Israel could clear out the settlements tomorrow and there would still be Hamas, clamboring (and willing to kill) for ALL of "greater Palestine".

[cali]

6. bullshit. it takes a special kind of arrogance to so blissfully blow off

the occupation of the WB. YOU look at it as some minor little inconvenience that the citizens of the WB deserve. That never fails to startle me. You're pov is so rigidly one sided Israel good/Palestinians bad, that it makes discussion with you as difficult as it is with certain pro-P posters here.

[Vegasaurus]

8. Have I ever once "blown off" the occupation?

Knock yourself out finding evidence of that.

I have said here numerous times how I oppose the settlement activity,etc.

I have also been very clear that I don't think the Palestinian resistance would stop, even if there was no occupation of the WB.

The rocket fire from Gaza INCREASED after the Israelis left.

And Mishal and the Palestinian leadership has made clear that it will continue resisting until Israel is destroyed.

Not just until the occupation is ended, but until Israel is destroyed.

So quit assigning points of views to me that I don't have.

[cali]

10. yes. in this thread in the post I responded to

and your view of the Palestinians is rancid.

[Vegasaurus]

11. Idiotic remark

My post said nothing whatsoever in support of the occupation.

[Igel]

13. The article's not unreasonable.

Jews were hated in the Middle East before the WB occupation. The excuse was the creation of the state of Israel. Whether they were hated *more* is a question I can't answer--it involves being able to treat things in flux as though they were constant.

They were hated before Israel was founded. The grand mufti of Jerusalem didn't agitate among Balkan Muslims for (a) turning in Jews and (b) fighting on the Eastern front just because he liked Hitler's mustache. He hated Jews and wanted Hitler to let him have a Judenrein Palestine--or at least one in which the "Romans" and Jews knew their places. That hatred is put down to the Balfour Declaration and Jewish-Arab tensions in the '20s and '30s.

But those tensions resulted not from the mere presence of Jews, but from what the Jews did and how they acted. They had their own values and social norms; they brought in money and were industrious; they prospered. They were uppity, and what amounts to the real first and second intifadas were launched. Before 1940.

Before the Jews were the subject of hatred, Xians came in for their share. Usually when either the "minority" communities became too prosperous and comfortable, or when there was some military setback abroad that "hurt the Muslim's feelings"--a term of art for humiliating them, impugning them or their source of (ascribed) honor. Muslims had no trouble with pogroms against Xians or Jews. The minority communities were to be sufficiently humiliated, humbled, so that the nation who commanded right and prohibited wrong would be seen as the best.

Some cultures and religions find ways to mitigate the pain of humiliation. Some wear the pain on their shirtsleeves. This kind of thing is never pretty, and always harmful when acted on. It can work as long as it's kept in a sufficiently small-scale setting--true, it means that the proper people have to be kept in subjugation, but societally acceptable ways usually are worked out to reduce the amount of envy for those given to envy, for those whose self-image can't accept evidence that they aren't as superior as they need to believe. When it reaches across cultures, it can be truly nasty. When it impinges upon how a people identify themselves, it's untenable.

It's the kind of thing that leads to pogroms against Jews in Pol-Russ, against Xians in Syria and Spain, against blacks in Tulsa and against Koreans in Los Angeles, and against Palestinians in Hebron. As long as the "inferior" keep their place, submit as is proper to their superiors, all is well.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Very interesting, though the issue is more complicated than this

I doubt very much that this is all there is to it. Intergroup prejudices are very common, especially when religion gets involved:

"Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews..."

(Tom Lehrer, 1964)


And in the case of Jewish/Muslim relations, the territorial disputes of the Middle East have greatly inflamed prejudices on both sides (many Arabs are antisemitic; many Israeli Jews are prejudiced against Arabs and Muslims).

However, this article does give some insight into a question that has always puzzled me: why Middle Eastern antisemitism uses so many of the *same* themes as Europaean antisemitism, suggesting a strong influence by the latter at some point.

[UnseenUndergrad]

12. The Nazis...

They imported it wholesale with the help of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Dang Brits, if they had only let the other guy have the post.

Plus, my history prof (a Yalie) said that there was a thought paradigm within traditional muslim thought wherein Jews were seen as weak and cowards (something to do with Medina), and the victory in the 67 war, instead of being attributed to American help, training and a shitload of weapons, developed into European-style paranoia about jewish cabals and conspiracies.

[shira]

14. Arafat's beloved uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and his relationship to Hitler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husayni#The_Holocaust

[aquart]

3. They both claim the same piece of land.

The people in that area have, like people in other places, either allied with each other or tried to kill each other. Is this really different from Ireland, Yugoslavia, South Africa and so on and so on?

Religion is simply the way to distinguish sides. In the Sudan, Darfur, they use color to distinguish sides because both groups have the same religion.

It's really basic. Once you have determined your side, you dress it in every virtue and paint the other side as Satan.

And it doesn't help in the slightest that both sides are patriarchal and macho.

All the rest is mere commentary.

[shaayecanaan]

4. Amazing...a post of yours that I actually agree with...

I inwardly scoff whenever I hear someone try to explain an ancient enmity by saying that 2000 years ago someone farted in someone else's last pound of flour. Invariably it boils down to something fairly simple, two groups fighting over a limited quantity of resources.

I have similarly limited patience for people (pro-Israeli, generally) who insist that the conflict is complex and mysterious and almost impossible for outsiders to comprehend. Compared to truly complicated situations such as the Congolese war the I/P conflict is simple and straightforward, which is why it tends to rate fairly well in the news media.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Very true!

[azurnoir]

9. Thank you the crusades never ended n/t

[HamdenRice]

17. I think that's a bit simplistic

"Is this really different from Ireland, Yugoslavia, South Africa"

Actually it is. Those struggles were not, initially, two or more groups fighting over land they way Israel/Palestine is.

South Africa in particular is very misunderstood in the west. White South Africans rarely even contemplated a South African without black South Africans. That was pretty unthinkable.

It was always about maintaining a social structure with whites and blacks in which the latter worked for the former in a white dominated South Africa.

Even going back to the frontier days of the Great Trek, one of the surprising aspects is that whites always looked for black communities to settle near. A frontier homestead without a black village was useless because there would be no one to do the work.

Only very late in the apartheid scheme did the government come up with a bizarre plan to "denationalize" black South Africans into homelands, but even then the idea was that most "citizens" of homelands would spend most of their time working in "white South Africa."

Black and white South Africans were always inextricably bound together, and despite their posturing at times, this was always an underlying assumption of the political conflict.

Northern Ireland as well was more like South Africa than like I/P. Protestants rarely talked about driving Catholics out, only about keeping them down.

[IndianaGreen]

15. V. I. Lenin on Anti-Semitism

V. I. Lenin on Anti-Semitism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ1jlbS0bTg&feature=related

[HamdenRice]

16. There are logical theological reasons

I was amazed the first time I read the Muslim criticism of both Judaism and Christianity. I'm not talking about the hatred, blood libels or anti-Zionist nationalism, but the theological discourse that makes Judaism and Christianity distasteful to Muslims.

The main thing to keep in mind is that they take the basic premise of the three Abrahamic monotheisms seriously -- that there is only one god and he is the god of everything.

Although they trace their religion back to Judaism, they say that the Jews make the blasphemous error of believe that a universal god of all things and the entire universe could be the god of only one tribe.

Similarly, although they trace their religion through Christianity, and although Jesus is one of the most important prophets in Islam, they say that the Christians made the blasphemous error of confusing the messenger with the message, and worshiping the messenger as though he were also a god.

It was pretty interesting, and frankly a lot more logical than the positions of either Judaism or Christianity.