Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger

American Jewish Committee
Tuesday, 7 May 2002

With virulence not seen since the Nazis, the anti-Semitism raging throughout Arab and Muslim societies and infiltrating Europe poses an immediate threat to Jews and Israel and should be heeded as an early warning by the entire civilized world.

This conclusion is drawn from a new report, issued today by the American Jewish Committee, called "Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger," by historian Robert S. Wistrich. The report was released at the National Press Club, just before the opening of AJC's 96th Annual Meeting.

Using "the kind of hideous stereotype familiar from the classic Nazi propaganda rag, Der Stummer," writes Wistrich, "Judaism itself is presented as a sinister, immoral religion, based on cabals and blood rituals, while Zionists are systematically equated with or identified as criminal racists or Nazis."

But the report sounds an alarm that goes far beyond classic anti-Semitism. The author draws parallels between what he terms "Islamic Fascism" and Nazism, citing their common search for world domination and their ruthlessness in its pursuit. The attacks of September 11 have underscored those parallels, he says.

"Fundamentalist Islam has the same totalitarian pseudo-messianic aspiration to world hegemony as German Nazism or Soviet Communism," writes Wistrich. For many of the radical Islamic groups, anti-Semitic anti-Zionism is an intrinsic part of their "nihilist-totalitarian mind-set," he goes on to observe. It "recalls the Nazi paradigm of Jew-hatred…genocidal in its implications."

"Israel and the Jews are perceived not only as a military, political and economic threat to the Arabs and Islam. They are also a symbol of all the phobias provoked by secularism and the 'poisons' of Western culture – pornography, AIDS, prostitution, rock music, Hollywood, mass consumerism, crime drugs and alcoholism."

The "rapture" with which the September 11 attacks were greeted in many parts of the Muslim world is "highly characteristic" of the "depths of Muslim Arab hatred for America, Israel and the Jews," according to Wistrich. Also characteristic is the fact that many Arabs and Muslims blamed the attacks on the Zionists and the Israeli government, particularly its intelligence arm, the Mossad. The claim that the Mossad had secretly instructed 4,000 Jews and Israelis not to report to their jobs at the Twin Towers on that fateful day was widely disseminated and, according to polls, widely believed.

"Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger" is intended as "the sounding of alarm bell for a very clear and immediate threat to Jews worldwide, and, by extension, to democratic values as well," says David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee.

"Our goals in this effort are clear," said Mr. Harris," to work cooperatively with those Muslims who seek dialogue and harmony, consistent with AJC's historic commitment to building strong ties of understanding among different faith groups, while shining the spotlight of exposure on those who would spread the poison of hatred."

The American Jewish Committee report traces the evolution of anti-Semitism in the Islamic world. It looks at the treatment of Jews in the Koran, Jewish legal status under Islam in the pre-modern era, and the ideology of modern secular Arab nationalism in the 20th century, as well as at Islamic fundamentalism today.

In his analysis, the author notes past efforts by some Arabs and Muslims to differentiate between anti-Semitism and the more politically correct anti-Zionism. But that differentiation "has been almost totally eroded," Wistrich concludes. "The anti-Semitic virus has taken root in the body politic of Islam to an unprecedented degree."

From supposedly moderate Egypt to openly hostile Arab nations like Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Jews and Israelis today are portrayed in popular culture as corrupt criminals, racists, and "a hateful, loathsome people to be feared and avoided." They are seen as controlling the world's media and are "authors of a dark unrelenting conspiracy to infiltrate and destroy Muslim society in order to eventually take over the world."

The report catalogs the incendiary anti-Jewish falsehoods that get reported as fact throughout the Arab world. These include charges that Israel distributes drug-laced chewing gum and candy that kills children, that it sexually corrupts Arab women, poisons Palestinian water, and supplies cancer-causing food and - the most longstanding and tenacious libel of all – that Jews use the blood of non-Jews to make matzah for Passover. But it is the dismissal of the Holocaust as a lie and a hoax that is central to the plank of Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism, understood as a Jewish instrument to achieve world domination through intimidation and blackmail.

Holocaust denial is attractive, Wistrich argues, because it undermines the moral foundation of the Jewish state and sets the stage for a "genocidal" terrorist drive against Israelis. Meanwhile, Israel is accused axiomatically of pursuing "Nazi-like" genocidal crimes against the Palestinians.

The author cautions that such anti-Semitic "incitement" should not be trivialized or "reduced" to a Palestinian tool of struggle against Israeli occupation, as conventional wisdom would have it. Indeed, the conflict goes far beyond the matter of settlements and extends to Israel's right to exist in the Middle East, he writes.

"We need to recognize that a culture of hatred has arisen that has become an end in itself, rather than a form of politics by other means."

The report concludes that radical Islamists have become emboldened by the failure of secular-nationalist and socialist ideologies in the Arab world, and believe they are riding the wave of the future.

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org