Philly “Fanaticism”, Or U.S. Muslim Children Taught “Classical” Islamic Jew-Hatred? Andrew Bostom
Chilling videos surfaced this past week (here; here) from an April 17, 2019 event sponsored by the mainstream, traditionalist Muslim American Society (MAS)—“one of the nation’s major Islamic groups”—at their Islamic Center in Philadelphia. Dubbed “Ummah [Global Muslim Community] Day,” the celebrations featured Muslim children intoning “you need force and the Koran,” then paying tribute to jihad murder martyrdom—sacrificing their “bodies and souls…without hesitation”—to kill “Zionists”, i.e., Jews. These “liberating” murderous actions—beheadings [Koran 8:12; 47:4]—would further cause their Jewish victims eternal Koranic [4:54–55, and 98:5–6; glossed, 4:54–55 and 98:5–6] damnation:
We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque. We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling His promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture.
Only on May 3rd, after exposure of these videos in the national press did the MAS provide a statement, transparent in its mendacity. The songs and declarations recorded for posterity and placed triumphantly on the MAS Philadelphia affiliate’s Facebook page, in all their ugliness, were “not properly vetted.” A spokesperson for the national MAS insisted on Sunday May 5th the video “does not represent our understanding of Islam, nor the understanding of the mainstream Muslim community,” and in response to media backlash, its Philadelphia affiliate’s Facebook page was shut down. However, on May 6, 2019 the Middle East Media Research Institute revealed another video from the MAS Philadelphia affiliate’s Facebook page, uploaded two years earlier, May 28, 2017, with children also calling for jihad murder “martyrdom.” Later that same day, May 6, 2019 Fox News chose to air an uncontested Islamic takiya (Islamic dissimulation) about the video presentation pronounced by so-called “reformist” Muslim Qanta Ahmed. Ms. Ahmed had the temerity to claim—again, without anyone to challenge her dishonest assertions—that,
It is absolutely anathema to Islam…This is completely not what Islam teaches. Islam sees Christians and Jews as legitimate believers who are party to paradise, who have a true message from God, and they are our brethren. We cannot be Muslim unless we believe in the Bible and the Torah.
The unchanged toxic reality of how U.S. Muslim children are educated, vis-à-vis Jews, can be gleaned by re-examining a March 30, 2003 New York Daily News exposé (free full-text here), entitled, appositely, “Sewing the seeds of hatred.”
The 3-month long NY Daily News 2003 investigation of textbooks widely used in New York city area Islamic schools demonstrated that Antisemitic archetypes—based on central motifs in the Koran, and the traditions of the nascent Muslim community under Muhammad (i.e., the “hadith”, and earliest pious Muslim biographies of Islam’s prophet, or “sira”)—were rampant in the texts being used to instruct American Muslim students. Amongst the examples provided were these:
In Long Island City, Queens, for example, fifth- and sixth-graders at the Ideal Islamic School on 12th St. learn that Allah has revealed [pace Koran 2:61/3:112] that “the Jews killed their own prophets and disobeyed Allah.” …Yet a third book, in use at the Ideal school, describes the hostile relations between Jews and the [Muslim prophet] Muhammad in Medina in the 7th century. “The reasons for Jewish hostility lies in their general characteristics,” the book says. Numerous Koranic citations follow with negative references to Jews – for example, “You will ever find them deceitful, except for a few of them.” [3:71; 4:46]
On Jewish hostility to Islam: “The reasons for Jewish hostility toward the Muslims of 7th century Medina lies in their general characteristics described in the Koran.” Example: “You will find the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans.” [Koran 5:82; from a textbook “The Messenger of Allah,” p. 34; targeting Grades 6-9]
On Jews wanting to kill Jesus, who in Islam is “Isa,” an exclusively Muslim prophet, preaching Islam: “The Koran states that the Jews did not kill Jesus [“Isa”] nor did they crucify him. Allah states, however, that the Jews thought they did it.” [Koran 4:157, 158, 159; from “What Islam Is All About,” targeting Grades 6-8]
Yahiya Emerick, then head of a Queens-based nonprofit curriculum development project for the Islamic Foundation of North America, and author of one of the texts examined [“What Islam Is All About,”], when questioned for the 2003 NY Daily News story, defended the language in these books, denying they were inflammatory. Emerick opined,
Islam, like any belief system, believes its program is better than others. I don’t feel embarrassed to say that…[The books] are directed to kids in a Muslim educational environment. They must learn and appreciate there are differences between what they have and what other religions teach. It’s telling kids that we have our own tradition.
A more conciliatory tack was adopted by Dr. Abidullah al-Ansari Ghazi, creator of the IQRA (= “recite”) Educational Foundation, whose textbooks were also examined—and inculpated. Mr. Ghazi for 11 years running, since its inaugural issue in 2009, has been listed as one of the “The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims,” per the assessment of “The Muslim 500,” a yearly publication by a mainstream Islamic think tank epitomizing “Islamic moderation.” Promising future “revisions,” Ghazi made the following candid admission about textbook materials he produced:
And, to tell you the truth, I based it on the classical sources, which are much harsher than what I wrote here [as reported in 2003].
Fast forward 13 years. The 2016 version of Ghazi’s “Mercy to Mankind: Madinah Period” was edited into a caricature apologetic of Muhammad’s interactions with the Jews of Medina. Islam’s prophet “tried hard to live in peace” with these Jews, despite, the textbook alleges, “their chiefs” having broken “their agreement with him.” Accordingly, the Jews were “defeated and moved out of Madinah” by Muhammad and his Muslim coterie, but “treated with fairness.” There is no mention (as depicted in the authoritative “classical” sources) of the gruesome political assassinations of individual Jews Muhammad orchestrated, or Muhammad labeling the Jews of the Banu Qurayza with the Koranic epithet [5:60] “apes and pigs,” prior to personally beheading some 600-900 of their adult males, and enslaving their women and children, to “celebrate” his victory over them. Notwithstanding these misrepresentations, albeit conveyed in a mellowed tone, the concluding message to Muslim schoolchildren is identical. The Jews are untrustworthy (“break agreements”) and must be subdued (by violence if required) to establish an ideal Sharia-based order of Islamic domination, as achieved by Muhammad:
He [Muhammad] brought the Sharia which treats all human beings equally.
Moreover, IQRA’s website currently promotes a “classical” source redolent with Jew-hating “classical”-cum- modern Koranic exegeses, Justice Sheikh Taqi Usmani’s, 2010 “The Meanings of the Noble Quran.” Usmani, who served as a Judge on the Sharia(t) Appellate Branch of the Supreme Court of Pakistan for two decades (1982-2002), is 6th overall, and 2nd amongst “scholars and preachers” in the 2019 “Muslim 500.” This highly esteemed “leading scholar of Islamic of Islamic jurisprudence,” per the assessment of the “Muslim 500,” composed the following Koranic glosses on central verses characterizing the Jews:
[Koran 3:112/2:61]: “That disgrace has been stamped over [i.e., indelibly] the Jews has also been mentioned in in [verse] 2:61.”
[Koran 5:51]: “The Jewish tribes, despite having a treaty of mutual cooperation with the Muslims, conspired against them. At the same time, they developed friendship with some Muslims in order to spy on them. Verse [5]:51 therefore forbade the Muslims from having close relations with the Jews…”
[Koran 5:64; Note—This is the terse, ancient Koranic antecedent to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and helps explain why that Czarist Russian forgery of conspiratorial Jew-hatred resonates across Islamdom]: Jews experience “divine punishment for their rebellious attitude toward the truth [Islam]…They frequently intend to wage war against the Muslims…they [also] adopt other ways to spread their mischief, like speaking ill of the Muslims before new converts, conspiring against them, preventing people form accepting Islam, and presenting [a] distorted version of the Torah.”
[Koran 5:82]: “Since…greed is the main hurdle in accepting the truth [Islam], they [Christians] are not as arrogant and hostile to the Muslims as the Jews…”
Not surprisingly, given such opprobrium, Usmani’s gloss on Koran 9:29 also concurs with this permanent, classical Koranic jihad war injunction that the Jews must be brought under the Sharia jurisdictions by force if they do not submit peacefully:
“[T]hey must submit to the Sharia in all civil and criminal matters…to be imposed on all non-Muslim citizens of an Islamic State”
Canonical Islamic Jew-hatred, as elucidated by an authoritative theologian such as Usmani, and conveyed by a respected educator like Ghazi, is promulgated throughout U.S. mosques, and Islamic education centers [here; here; here; here], to adults and children alike. Sowing this hatred has reaped a measurable harvest of disproportionate extreme Antisemitism within the U.S. Muslim community. The Anti-Defamation League, applying their scale of extreme Antisemitism (i.e., agreeing with at least 6 of 11 Antisemitic stereotypes), has determined that the prevalence of this severe extent of Jew-hatred was 34% amongst U.S. Muslims, vs. only 14% in the general U.S. population, a 2.4-fold greater excess. Since September 11, 2001, as one tangible manifestation of this Muslim Jew-hatred, there have been four murderous attacks by Muslims targeting Jews, resulting in 6 deaths. Moreover, during the past 5-month period, alone, four (three + one) potentially mass murderous attacks by Muslim jihadists on American Jews have been thwarted by U.S. law enforcement, in Montana, Georgia, Ohio, and California. One of the attacks prevented involved a convert to Islam “inspired” by the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting.
Nidra Poller observed that when the 23 year-old Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi was being tortured to death in February 2006, his Muslim torturers, “…phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan’s tortured screams could be heard in the background.” Ilan Halimi’s Muslim torturers/murderers, in the heart of Western Europe, did not invoke any non-Islamic sources of anti-Jewish hate, only the Koran.
Disingenuous Muslim obfuscation of Islam’s canonical Jew-hatred, by even much ballyhooed Muslim “reformers,” bolsters Islam’s mainstream theological supremacism. Till now, American Jewish political, religious, academic, and media elites have also chosen to ignore, or deny the virulent Antisemitism intrinsic to Islam. The failure of Jewish “leadership” to even identify Islam’s sacralized Jew-hatred has already had tragic consequences for U.S. Jews, which are destined to become calamitous if this cowardly denial persists.
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