Leaders In Denial Over Source of Antisemitism, Author Charges: Joanne Hill
Dr. Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism and Sharia Versus Freedom, has a new monograph, The Mufti’s Islamic Jew-Hatred: What the Nazis Learned from the ‘Muslim Pope.’
Jewish and non-Jewish political and religious leaders are in denial about the real source of Islamic antisemitism, according to Dr. Andrew Bostom.
Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism and Sharia Versus Freedom. His new monograph, The Mufti’s Islamic Jew-Hatred: What the Nazis Learned from the ‘Muslim Pope,’ consists of the first authoritative English translation of a 1937 religious proclamation by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, followed by Bostom’s analysis and footnotes.
The Jewish Tribune interviewed Bostom by phone from Rhode Island after his appearance at an event in Toronto held by the Jewish Defence League. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Tribune: What was the theme of Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s fatwa?
Andrew Bostom: “It was an attempt to galvanize the entire global Muslim ummah [community] to wage a jihad to destroy Palestinian Jewry and the nascent Jewish state.
“The tropes about the grand mufti [have been that] he was a secular Arab nationalist who gravitated toward Nazism and then became fully ‘Nazified’ and, like the Nazis, wanted to destroy the Jews for his own statecraft reasons. That never made any sense and…historians had to modify that to, well, he sort of fiendishly worked with the Nazis to ‘Nazify’ Islam.”
JT: Yet your analysis showed that his fatwa contained no quotes or references from Nazi documents or even The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
AB: “It is canonical Islam from beginning to end…[and] there is nothing outside the mainstream in terms of how he interpreted [the verses he used].
“The Mufti ended his 1937 proclamation by invoking an annihilationist hadith [Islamic text], which is also quoted in the Hamas Charter and is exactly what the Iranian theocracy believes in…. You can’t look at these things in isolation.”
JT: You showed several video clips of Muslim leaders and children repeating antisemitic themes found in Islamic texts. Why were you especially concerned about a statement made on Egyptian TV by Ahmad Al-Tayeb, grand imam of Al Azhar University in Cairo?
AB: “Al Azhar University is the pinnacle of Islamic religious education for all of Sunni Islam. [Its grand imam] is the nearest equivalent to a pope in Islam and he gave an interview using one of the most profoundly antisemitic themes in Islam, which is this notion [found] in the Koran that the reason the Muslims are so suspicious and hateful toward the Jews is the undying enmity that the Jews have toward Islam.
“I find that chilling [but] I find the lack of reaction to it even more chilling. It’s astonishing and emblematic of the terrible denial of essentially the entire non-Muslim world.”
JT: How so?
AB: “If Pope Francis had gotten up on Oct. 25, 2013 and calmly given an interview extolling the worst antisemitic motifs from Christianity… there would be outrage and I want people to understand that’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about a marginal phenomenon….
“The larger problem [is with] non-Muslims and particularly Jewish community leadership – political and religious – who can’t even call [Muslims] out on this; there’s no condemnation. This makes the problem worse [because] Muslims feel more comfortable preaching and teaching this material with impunity.
“All this antisemitism that comes out of the Middle East is consistently blamed on Nazism, the Protocols [and] medieval Christian antisemitism. Yes, those are ugly sources of antisemitism [but] this is not what’s being routinely invoked. In fact, the canonical sources of Islam are used as a prism through which these other sources are validated and not the other way around.
“That fundamental mindset somehow has not penetrated the combined hubris and cowardice of the Jewish leadership. It’s very disturbing. I really do feel like we’re back in the 1930s and they’re railing about the Czar who no longer existed, but Hitler certainly did exist.”
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