The 2019 “Muslim Man Of The Year”, The Antisemitism Envoy, and The Pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism Andrew Bostom
Appositely, Columbia University Jewish students are protesting the slated appearance of “proud” Jew-hating Malaysian Muslim Prime Minister Mahathir ibn Mohamad, Wednesday, September 25th at Columbia’s World Leadership Forum. Their protest petition references a comment this bigoted Muslim head of state made October 16, 2003, at the Putrajaya (Malaysia) summit for the leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now dubbed Organization of Islamic Cooperation), a de facto Sharia supremacist global Islamintern.
…the Jews rule this world by proxy and get others to fight and die for them.
But this isolated remark is completely de-contextualized from Mohamad’s mainstream Muslim worldview, rooted in sacralized Islamic jihadism and Jew-hatred, which these overarching statements from the same 2003 address, elucidate:
To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand…on Palestine…We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships…We may want to re-create the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practice what we think to be the true Islamic way of life. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter-attack. As Muslims, we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet (i.e., Muhammad who waged a bloody proto-jihad which slaughtered and subjugated the Medinan Jews). Surely the 23 years’ struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do.
Moreover the Columbia student protest petition also ignores this baleful reality: Mahathir Mohamad was designated the 2019 Muslim Man Of The Year in the 2019 Muslim 500, a yearly publication of the highly influential, mainstream, moderate Jordanian Muslim think tank, The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Institute/Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, renowned for its very active role in “interfaith dialogue.”
As I recently summarized, during a presentation entitled, “The Rising Scourge of Islamic Antisemitism,” hard data collected by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) place Mahathir Mohamad’s Antisemitic attitudes in their alarming global Muslim context.
Unique, extensive global and regional surveys the ADL performed between 2014 and 2017, captured the prevalence of those who agreed with six or more of eleven Antisemitic stereotypes, i.e., an index of extreme Antisemitism. The results demonstrated a remarkable, if depressing uniformity: there is a 2 to 4.5-fold excess of extreme Muslim Jew-hatred, relative to any other major religious affiliation, or atheism/agnosticism, and this association with Islam persists within the Muslim diaspora populations in Western Europe, and the U.S. Specific findings, included these disturbing revelations:
—The world’s 16 most Antisemitic countries are all in the Muslim Middle East, where 74% to 93% exhibit extreme Antisemitism—Judea-Samaria/Gaza 93%; Iraq 92%; Yemen 88%; Algeria 87%; Libya 87%; Tunisia 86%; Kuwait 82%; Bahrain 81%; Jordan 81%; Morocco 80%; Qatar 80%; United Arab Emirates 80%; Lebanon 78%; Oman 76%; Egypt 75%; Saudi Arabia 74%
—The 2 to 3-fold excess prevalence of extreme Muslim Antisemitism, globally, by religious affiliation—Muslim, 49%; Christian, 24%; No religion, 21%; Hindu, 19%; Buddhist, 17%
—The 2 to 4.5-fold excess prevalence of extreme Muslim Antisemitism in Western Europe—Belgium, 68% of Muslims vs. 21% of the general population; Spain, 62% of Muslims vs. 29% of the general population; Germany, 56% of Muslims vs. 16% of the general population; Italy, 56% of Muslims vs. 29% of the general population; United Kingdom, 54% of Muslims vs. 12% of the general population; France, 49% of Muslims vs. 17% of the general population
—The 2.4-fold excess prevalence of extreme Antisemitism in the U.S., 34% of Muslims vs. 14% of the general population
Antisemitic themes from canonical Islam—the Koran, and the traditions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad (the “hadith”)—especially as preached by Sunni Islam’s Vatican, Al-Azhar University, and its Grand Imam Papal equivalents, are most plausibly responsible for inculcating these Jew-hating attitudes in the global Muslim masses. The late Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (d. 2010), was one of the most revered modern authorities on Koranic exegesis, or “tafsir,” having edited a magnum opus 15-volume modern Koranic commentary, and helped create the largest online website of such analyses. He also authored what can be aptly described as modern Islam’s Koranic Kampf on the Jews, entitled “Banū Isrāʼīl fī al-Qurʼān wa-al-Sunnah,” or “Jews in The Koran and The Traditions”. Tantawi’s Kampf, a 700+ page Muslimacademic religious treatise, includes this summary Koranic rationalization for Muslim Jew-hatred:
[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [see Koran 2:61/ 3:112 ], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places (4:46), consuming the people’s wealth frivolously [4:161], refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do [3:120; 5:79], and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted (lascivious) envy [2:109]…only a minority of the Jews keep their word…[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.
Tantawi’s exhaustive modern analysis of Islam’s defining, canonical sources concluded, more ominously, by sanctioning hateful—even violent—Muslim behaviors towards Jews.
[T]he Jews always remain maleficent deniers….they should desist from their negative denial…some Jews went way overboard in their denying hostility, so gentle persuasion can do no good with them, so use force with them and treat them in the way you see as effective in ridding them of their evil. One may go so far as to ban their religion, their persons, their wealth, and their villages.
As Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Tantawi’s public statements on “dialogue” (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs” (April 2002; from Koran 5:60), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002)—issued after the Netanya Passover slaughter—made his personal Muslim Jew-hatred eminently clear. Tantawi’s comments on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, re-affirmed his ongoing commitment to the views expressed in “Jews in The Koran and The Traditions”.
Tantawi’s successor, current Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb, shares Tantawi’s Jew-hating virulence. Al-Tayeb has dubbed the Jews eternal Koranic enemies (per Koran 5:82),blamed Jews for the rise of ISIS and other jihadist groups, and claims “the issue of Antisemitism is a lie.”
Tuesday evening, 9/10/19, U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Elan Carr, participated in a panel discussion of Antisemitism sponsored by the B’nai Zion Foundation, at Manhattan’s Kehilath Jeshurun synagogue (which can be viewed in its entirety here). Addressing a question posed to him which was introduced by this tweet of mine, and the ADL data [here;here; here] described above, Elan Carr became the first Special Envoy to openly acknowledge the global pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism.
Moderator, Rabbi Elie Abadie, elicited Carr’s landmark response to a concluding query, as follows [video clip]:
“Let me just introduce this section by saying that today (Tuesday 9/10/19) Andrew Bostom tweeted, he’s the author of The Legacy of Jihad, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Sharia Versus Freedom, –so he tweeted today that ‘The Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] conference featured Sanders, Bernie Sanders, and Linda Sarsour, promoted mainstream Islamic, Al-Azhar-endorsed manual on Islamic law*, which admonishes Muslims to wagejihad on Jews and Christians.’ (*“Reliance of the Traveller,” certified by Sunni Islam’s Vatican equivalent, Al-Azhar University as ‘conforming to the contemporary ‘practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.’). So, moving into Islamic Antisemitism, the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] study survey of ~55,000 [see here] people shows—and these are the results of that study(ies), according to this question [reading index card query from the audience]—that based on agreement with [at least] six of all [i.e., eleven] Antisemitic statements, Muslims in Western Europe exhibit 49% to 68% rates of extreme Antisemitism versus 12% to 19% [actually to 29%] amongst other [i.e., non-Muslim] populations, a 2.0 to 4.5-fold times greater percentage of Antisemitism than non-Muslims in those individual countries. Another result was that extreme Antisemitism among Muslims [i.e. worldwide, overall] measures 49%, versus 24% in Christians, and 21% for atheists, and so on. And also that the most—(a curiously irritatedDeborah Lipstadt interrupts)‘What’s the question?’—Rabbi Abadie continues—the most Antisemitic countries with rates of 74% to 93% are all in the Muslim countries in the Middle East. And the last one [i.e., ADL survey result] was that 34% of Muslims show extreme Antisemitism versus 14% of the general population, which is 2.4 times more than that average, in the United States. So the question is, I know most of our history dealt with Christian Antisemitism in Europe, and South America. Now we are in an era which Islam is very important, and there is a lot of Islamic Antisemitism. So let me start with you Elan. What are we going to be doing, how are we going to thwart that threat?”
Such direct admonitions appear to have helped prompt Special Envoy Carr, to, paraphrasing the bard, “show us the mettle of his (intellectual) pasture.” Rising to the occasion, without hesitation, Elan Carr replied: “So, first of all, there is no question that’s the case,” openly acknowledging the ADL findings demonstrating a disproportionate prevalence of extreme Antisemitism amongst Muslims, worldwide.
Carr then added, emphatically,
Virtually all of the violence against Jews in Western Europe has been from the Arab [Muslim] and [broader] Muslim population—virtually all. So, we cannot ignore that fact, we can’t downplay that fact. That is, we’re stuck with it, and that is something we have to acknowledge.
Although Carr further suggested going “to the source,” the Arab Muslim Middle East, and encouraging “these countries to change the way they speak about Jews,” he failed to identify the canonical Islamic Antisemitic motifs inculcated by the Middle East’s most authoritative religious teaching institutions, notably, Sunni Islam’s Vatican, Al-Azhar University, which animate this Jew-hating discourse.
Kudos to Elan Carr for courageously shattering the prevailing, enforced silence of our national political class regarding the global pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred, embodied by Malaysian Prime Minister, and 2019 Muslim Man Of The Year, Mahathir Mohamad. It is my fervent hope Mr. Carr will next acknowledge how this pandemic of hate is rooted in mainstream Islam. Such acknowledgment must be followed, in turn, by intellectually honest admonition of institutional Islam to begin its own mea culpa-based process—akin to Vatican II/Nostre Aetate—for removing theological Islamic Jew-hatred from the minbar.
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