Home Why the Left Refuses to Talk About Muslim Anti-Semitism
Home Why the Left Refuses to Talk About Muslim Anti-Semitism

Why the Left Refuses to Talk About Muslim Anti-Semitism

Even articles about Muslim Anti-Semitism rarely want to talk about Muslim Anti-Semitism. In the aftermath of the Kosher supermarket massacre in France, articles about the Muslim persecution of Jews in Europe nervously hover around the subject before swerving away to discuss the European far-right.

An article about Muslim anti-Semitism in France inevitably becomes an article about the National Front, which is not actually shooting Jews in supermarkets. Broader European pieces obsessively focus on the Jobbik party in Hungary which for all its vileness has not actually killed any Jews.

(The endless articles about Jobbik characterize it as a far-right European Christian party, but in fact it’s a pan-Turkic organization whose chairman had told a Turkish audience, “Islam is the last hope for humanity.” Its actual identity is based on a broad front of ethnic solidarity by identifying Hungarians as a Turkic people. Its anti-Semitism is anti-Zionist. Jobbik hates Jews because it identifies with Muslims.)

The usual treatment of Muslim anti-Semitism is cursory. History books acknowledge its existence while asserting that European anti-Semitism was worse. Modern media coverage takes the same approach by finding a useful distraction in the European far-right.

Muslim anti-Semitism needs to be addressed on its own if for no other reason than that it’s the dominant form of violence against Jews in Europe. And it has been that way for some time now.

Articles that gloss over Muslim Anti-Semitism to flit on to the National Front, which in this current crisis has shown itself to be less anti-Semitic than the BBC whose reporter Tim Wilcox accused a daughter of Holocaust survivors in France of oppressing Palestinians, are very deliberately ignoring the issue. The politics of the media led it to class together anti-immigration with violent bigotry. But the violent bigotry isn’t coming from the sort of people that the media thinks it ought to.

It’s not UKIP supporters that are hunting down and killing Jews and so the media avoids the subject until some violent atrocity forces its hand and then it blames Muslim anti-Semitism on a failure to integrate. Ahmed can’t get a job because of UKIP or Wilders and so he shoots up a synagogue. The Jews are just collateral damage in Muslim blowback to their persecution by European opponents of immigration.

Throw in a little something about Israel and Muslim anti-Semitism is transformed into a misunderstood phenomenon that really isn’t what it appears to be. Muslims don’t hate Jews. They’re just confused.

But Muslim anti-Semitism predates the difficulties of integrating Algerians and Pakistanis into Europe by over a thousand years. In Islam, Jews represent both a subject race and a primal enemy. Israel infuriates Muslims so much not because they care a great deal about the Palestinian Arabs who have been expelled in huge numbers from Muslim countries within the last generation, but because Jews no longer know their place. Islam is supremacist. Allahu Akbar asserts Islamic supremacy over all other religions. As an historical subject race, Jews are a natural target for violence by Muslim immigrants with strong supremacist leanings. The disenfranchised Muslim isn’t looking for equality. He’s seeking supremacy. That is what the Islamic State and the Koran give him. He picks the same Jewish targets as Mohammed did because the Jews are a vulnerable minority. That is as true in Europe today as it was in Arabia then.

Unlike the Christian world, which was never fully subjugated by Islam, both the Jewish homeland and much of the Jewish diaspora population existed under Muslim rule long enough that non-submissive Jews became a particularly galling reminder of the fall of the Caliphate.

Muslims had taken Jewish submission for granted making the existence of non-submissive Jews, whether in Jerusalem or in Paris, that much more outrageous. The Algerian Muslim can more readily accept taking a back seat to a French Christian than to an Algerian Jew, whom he knows would have been considered inferior to him if they were both back in Algeria.

The left has become so mired in a post-colonial worldview that it refuses to understand that the struggle is not between Western European colonialism and a post-colonial Third World, but between different eras of colonialism. Arab Islamic domination is not post-colonial; it’s a colonialism that predates it.

When Western leftists make common cause with Arab and Islamic nationalists, they aren’t being post-colonial, they’re advocating an earlier form of colonialism that led and is once again leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass slavery and the destruction of indigenous cultures; including that of the Jews.

Middle Eastern Jews, like other non-Muslim and non-Arab minorities, welcomed European colonialism as relief from Islamic and Arab colonialism. France is filled with Jews from North Africa because they received their rights for the first time under French rule. As French citizens, they could shed their mandatory black clothes and no longer fear being killed because of Islamic law, like Batto Sfez, a Tunisian Jew who was executed for blasphemy in an atrocity that triggered French intervention.

Yoav Hattab, one of the Jews murdered in the Kosher supermarket attack in Paris, was the son of the Chief Rabbi of Tunisia. While the Chief Rabbi was, in the unfortunate Dhimmi fashion of those who live under Islamic rule, forced to praise how well Tunisia treats Jews, his son was buried in Israel. Israel was also the place where most Tunisian Jews moved to escape Arab Muslim persecution.

The Western left can’t talk about Muslim anti-Semitism because it would also have to talk about Muslim colonialism. And then the entire basis of its approach to the Arab and Muslim world would collapse. If post-colonialism in the Middle East is just the replacement of one colonialism with another, then the left would have to admit that it has once again disgraced itself by supporting a totalitarian system.

Just as it replaced the czar with the commissar, it is replacing the protectorate with the caliphate.

Modern histories of the Middle East excuse the historical Muslim persecution of Jews for the same reason the media excuses modern Muslim attacks on Jews. This historical revisionism justifies Islamic colonialism in the service of post-colonialism with the myth of a golden age of benevolent tyranny.

The post-colonial narrative obligates academics and journalists to favorably contrast the Muslim treatment of Jews, then or now, with the European treatment of Jews. This obstructionism has endangered European Jews even more than Jihadist videos advocating violence because it makes it impossible to discuss an urgent violent threat for fear of violating the left’s post-colonial narrative.

Muslim anti-Semitism must be discussed. And it must be contextualized within the history of Muslim-Jewish relations, not European ones like the National Front or Jobbik. It must not be dismissed as some transient phenomenon caused by poverty or the latest Hamas clashes, but viewed within the context of Islamic colonialism and the treatment of non-Muslims in the Muslim world. The treatment of Yazidis in Iraq and Christians in Syria must also be placed within that same context.

Historical revisionism for Muslim anti-Semitism is as unacceptable as Holocaust denial or any other attempt to stick a smiley face on the oppression of Jews. And what is at stake here is not merely history, but the root cause that drives Muslim men and women born in Europe to attack and kill Jews.

The post-colonial authorities of the left may not be interested in discussing Muslim anti-Semitism, but Muslim Supremacist anti-Semitism remains interested in persecuting and killing Jews.

Comments

  1. Anonymous22/1/15

    Meh. I think it's simple envy again. Islam has not brought happiness to the Muslim and secularism has not brought happiness to the left. All that is left for them is to try and bring down someone else in a vain attempt to achieve the brief comfort of watching suffering in the people their respective religions have declared undeserving. The left has never had a problem with totalitarianism in principle.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous26/1/15

      Well said, drang nach schadenfreude on the part of the two totalitarians. Hey there's another totalitarian!: Central banks.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous22/1/15

    Great article! We are told what a great empire Islam had and how advanced it was but while all other empires in the Lefty lexicon are evil except for the entirely bureaucratic behemoth to come, Islam simply acquired it by accident and never did anything politically incorrect to acquire it.

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  3. Anonymous22/1/15

    John Molyneux of the Socialist Workers Party:

    "To put the matter as starkly as possible: from the standpoint of Marxism and international socialism an illiterate, conservative, superstitious Muslim Palestinian peasant who supports Hamas is more progressive than an educated liberal atheist Israeli who supports Zionism (even critically)."

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  4. DenisO23/1/15

    Daniel; it's always fun to read your versions of history; some of it is pretty close to true. You do as much to create hate for Muslims as their Mullahs do against Jews. What drives Muslims to attack Jews and non-believers is not history, but clerics who focus the hate away from the monarchs and dictators who rule Muslim Countries that keep them poor and ignorant. It is truly nonsense to suggest there is some kind of genetic memory of ancient Jewish subservience to Muslims; they're too young to remember the Israel destruction of the coalition armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the rest in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. That was a very real and humbling embarrassment, but the clerics who preach the hate don't remember it either.
    The "killers" of Jews and Western journalists, doctors, children, and especially, and mostly, other Muslims, are driven by "religion", which is controlled by the Kings and royal families of the Middle East. If the young morons could think, they might realize who their real enemy and oppressors are, but that would disrupt the status quo and wealth of those dictator-states. The Mullahs are financed and richly rewarded to find enemies other than the real tyrants, and to keep any resistance, like ISSL and Al Qaeda ,from focusing on the police states of Saudi Arabia and the rest. They've taken out the rulers of Yemen, Iraq (with U.S. help), Lybia (ditto), Syria (almost), Pakistan, Nigeria, Bahrain (just starting), and take a look at a map of Africa and you'll see it happening all over.
    The Saudis are financing the Sunni's, who will soon be coming for them. That is real history in the making.
    Stop with the war on Islam; there's two billion of 'em. Let's focus on the real enemy, but that might take some thinking.
    Regards,

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  5. Denis, hate to break the news to you but the dictators narrative collapsed with the Arab Spring.

    It was never a choice between dictators and democracy, but between one flavor of dictator and another. There will always be oppressors. It's the nature of the beast.

    You may choose to have no historical memory, but the average Muslims (and for that matter the average Chinese and Russian) does. It's a fundamental part of their identity. Acting as if history and identity don't matter makes it impossible for you to understand the other side.

    Islam is a religion that is more often channeled than controlled. Islam channels violence and hate and is in turn channeled by rulers. It's the same old system that always existed and it promotes conquest and supremacism.

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  6. The Left is dedicated to establishing a socialist police state, a la Castro's Cuba and Chavez's Venezuela, both here in America and world wide.

    To reach that goal, they eagerly partner with vicious murdering tyrannical followers of Islam to eradicate freedom and individual rights.

    The Left and Islam are 'blood brothers' both figuratively and literally. Anti-semitism is just part of their intellectual and moral package deal.

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  7. Anonymous24/1/15

    DenisO
    (...)"they're too young to remember the Israel destruction of the coalition armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the rest in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. That was a very real and humbling embarrassment, but the clerics who preach the hate don't remember it either".
    Are you being serious? I bet most of them are OBSESSED by defeats like this.

    All three terrorists in France were born and raised there by the way, which pretty much nullifies the rest of your statement.

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  8. Denis: Your point is sensible but the logic only holds from a Western point of view. One of the things that I learned about Muslim civilizations during years of living in them is that their concept of time is different than in the West. It's difficult to describe, but it's consistently true. An event that may have happened in the fourteenth century, for example remains as relevant today as if it happened last week.

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  9. As most often is the case: the author is spot on. Sometimes i feel you are Mister Analyse It All. It can be over the top somtimes, your writings Mr. Greenfield. But that is just a minor personal remark from a reader who likes your work a lot actually. yeah,..so her i am in Europe with all these p.c. zombies and not so p.c. Arab immigrants. What to do besides reading stuff like yours ? BTW; a lot of stuff gets channeld these days, if i understand that meaning correctly. (non native) Not just Muslim matters, what about the stock market manipulation for example. Ups and downs come and go, and some profit more than others.

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  10. Y. Ben-David24/1/15

    Denis-
    As an American or Western European, you seem to have no idea how powerful historical memory is for the Arab/Muslim world. One of the arguments used against Assad's Alawites in order to fire up those who are fighting them is that his Alawites allied themselves with the Crusaders against the other Muslims. That was about 1000 years ago, but the memory still lives. You may recall that Saddam Hussein referred to the upcoming conflict with the US and its allies before the 1991 Gulf War as "the Mother of All Battles". Everybody in the West laughed about this, but the reference was to a battle more than 1000 years ago that the Muslims won, and EVERY school child in Iraq understood the reference.
    "Progressive" Westerers have a bedrock belief that everyone in the world is just like them, and since they have no interest in history and want to forget it, then it must be that the Muslims in the Middle East are the same. IT ISN'T TRUE.
    Regarding all the anti-Jewish violence by Muslims, I must refer you the commentary called "In The Shade of the Qur'an" written by the Egyptian philosopher Sayyid Qutb in the 1950's or 1960's. In his commentary to the Sura called "The Cow"" Qutb states that "Jews have been comspiring against Islam" since the time of Muhammed. This is what is operative in many, if not most devout Muslims' minds. When the Jews were weak and powerless and submissive, they might feel a need to physically fight against the Jews all the time, but today, since we stopped accepting this situation, many Muslims view us as a major EXISTENTIAL threat to them, as absurd as this may seem, and this explains the rapid spread of the genocidal antisemitism we are seeing.
    Your comment that attributes genocidal antisemitism and anti-Western propaganda as merely due to cynical political manipulation ignores the fact that many, many people around the world take their religion VERY seriously.

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  11. DenisO24/1/15

    "...Islam is a religion that is more often channeled than controlled. Islam channels violence and hate and is in turn channeled by rulers..."

    You misunderstand my point, I think. Islam doesn't channel violence and hate; Muslim clerics channel those things for the benefit of the rulers, by distracting the ignorant followers to direct their anger outwardly, against any entity that "god" tells them is their duty to hate. The "rulers" couldn't motivate them; only "holy men" with direct contact with angels and Allah.
    You say Islam is a religion and it "channels" or directs. That, of course, is impossible; Islam is a concept, a belief, which exists in minds; it does not have the capacity to act. A concept cannot be an enemy, and that's my point. You promote war against a concept; that's like war against a book.
    Define the enemy properly before you go to war.
    Regards,

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  12. Denis,

    You can't have an Islam that exists apart from Muslim clergy. Islam sprang from men and exists in the minds of men and for their own purposes.

    Insisting that Islam is something apart from the agenda of men is an argument that only a Muslim who believes Islam is divinely inspired could make.

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  13. DenisO25/1/15

    "...You can't have an Islam that exists apart from Muslim clergy..."
    Bingo. You are getting my exact point! The number of clergy compared to the number of Muslims is a compelling argument for determining if an enemy can be overcome. Your words, again and again, state that the enemy is Islam. I don't believe the average Muslim is that much different than any other modestly desperate person trying to keep his family alive. Human genes drive survival, and men can only be manipulated so far. Some are fanatic, but like other religions, most people "go with the flow", and it is possible to change the "flow", if the manipulators of the masses can be changed or moderated. I am not interested in fighting another un-winnable Viet Nam-type war, and neither are the Europeans you hope will lead the charge. No one, especially here, will lead the charge against Islam, but it is not unreasonable to believe there are potential forces that would focus on removing or degrading the religion's leaders. Defining the real enemy is the first and most essential element necessary to determine if a war is winnable, IMO. Numerically, Muslims are the major victims of Islamic terrorism, and I think if the medieval Catholic Church could be reformed by a Catholic, like Luther, the medieval Islamic religion can also be changed, if the focus can be changed and emotional arguments against a religion discarded.
    Regards,

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  14. aggiemom25/1/15

    My daughter had her own encounter with Muslim antisemitism this week even though she's not Jewish. She was filling in for a friend at the local Kumon math center (grading work done by students), and she told me when she got home that there were two guys there who were "very annoying" because they kept asking her if she and her friend were Jews. I asked her why they would keep asking her something like that, and then I thought to ask her if they were Muslims. As it turns out, they were, and she told me their father came in ranting about how much he wants to go back to his homeland (good riddance, I say!) and "blow up" Westerners. I wondered what they might have done if she were Jewish (or they just thought she was - it doesn't seem to make any difference to Muslims) or what they might do to someone else there, student or staff, who is Jewish. I'm definitely informing Kumon of what happened, but I expect they will be more worried about offending the Muslims than protecting other patrons and employees from them. No place seems safe anymore.

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  15. Denis, Islam doesn't exist apart from Muslim clergy. The idea that non-Muslims can transform Islam into a moderate religion is a thoroughly unrealistic idea. Those Muslims who want to try deserve our support, but we aren't going to deal with the problems we face by betting on Islamic reform.

    aggiemom, ugly stuff but unfortunately becoming more common these days

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  16. Y. Ben-David25/1/15

    Denis-
    How do you explain the apparent total indifference to the fratricidal slaughter among Muslims by their brothers living in free societies in the West?. When Israel defends itself against Arab terror and mass rocket attacks, like it did last summer in the "Tzuk Eitan" operation, there were large-scale anti-Israeli demonstrations, largely lead by Muslims in places like Paris and London. On the other hand, I have NOT heard of large peace demonstrations in these same places calling for an end to the killing by both (or all) sides in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, etc. It would certainly make an impression on non-Muslims in the West if there were a million people marching under banners that said things like "We Muslims Say it is a disgrace when people saying they are "good Muslims" are killing each other". BUT WE DON'T SEE THIS. We see indifference. Don't forget in Europe and the US the Muslims are not under the control of a "cynical" state-appointed clergy of the type you positied. I can only conclude that the religion of Islam is indifferent to mass slaughter, even if it is done to "brother Muslims" .

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  17. To that we can add the reluctance of the ADL under Abe Foxman to address Muslim anti-Semitism. A few years ago Foxman was addressing a Jewish group in Newport Beach when a friend of mine in the audience asked him to comment on the on-going problems at UC Irvine with the Muslim Student Union. Foxman dismissed his concerns by saying there was no problem of anti-Semitism at UCI; that the administration and Jewish students had it under control. My friend is an activist who has been involved in the UCI mess for years and knew this to be a false statement. (As do I.)

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  18. Anonymous28/1/15

    Dear Daniel,
    Thank you for your steadfast shining light of wisdom and truth. The environmentalists prevailed again recently over the Drakes Bay Oyster Farm in west Marin County, Ca. This was a rare battle that conservatives and less rabid leftists could agree on. Sadly we lost - here is a link to the story:http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/U-S-evicting-Point-Reyes-oyster-farmer-4077624.php

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  19. Anonymous28/1/15

    Dear Daniel,
    Thank you for your steadfast posts of wisdom and truth. Environmentalists recently prevailed in the Drakes Bay Oyster Farm lease conflict (Marin County, CA). Conservatives and a few leftists rallied together on this, but to no avail. Here is a post on the sad end to this battle: http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/U-S-evicting-Point-Reyes-oyster-farmer-4077624.php

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  20. Anonymous6/2/15

    About reformin Islam:
    The Islamic sacred texts (Quran, Hadith and Sunnah) devote 9.3% of their content to spread hatred, bigotry and even violence and genocide of the Jews,
    In these texts, Jews are not only compared to donkeys but also to apes and swine.
    “Wretchedness and baseness were stamped on the Jews and they were visited with wrath from Allah.” [Quran 2.61]
    “Jews are the greediest of all humankind. They'd like to live 4,000 years. But they are going to hell.” [Quran 2:96]
    “For the wrongdoing Jews, Allah has prepared a painful doom.” [Quran 4:160]
    “Allah has cursed the Jews, transforming them into apes and swine and those who serve the devil.” [Quran 5.60]
    “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” [Quran 9:29]

    There are numerous such verses in the Quran and hadith, calling for attack, enslavement, murder, and even genocide of all non-Muslims in an open-ended manner until all peoples of the world become Muslim. Nothing can be greater hate speech and incitement to violence than such 'divine' teachings. If there is one book in the world that deserves to be banned because of hateful and violence-inciting content, it must be the Quran. If the American legal measures against hate speech are to be applied resolutely, it must start with banning the Quran and arresting Muslims, who utter those verses, and shutting down all mosques.

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  21. I wouldn't argue with anything in the article, but there was one thing which didn't seem right to me. Islamic colonialism is only an earlier form of colonialism if you don't link later European colonialism to its obvious predecessor, Roman colonialism. The era of colonialism which could be seen as starting with Columbus voyage was undoubtedly influenced by Islamic colonialism, but only peripherally.
    Bat Ye'or mentions that not only the dhimmi laws but also some aspects of Islamic theology itself were derived from the Byzantine Christians, who of course saw themselves as Rome. The theology of Islam, like the theology of Rome, was geared to colonialism.
    The example of the Mongol Empire is maybe the clearest in showing the link between Christianity and empire building as long as you realise that the dominant tribe in the confederation that initiated the Mongol expansion was Nestorian Christian. Other tribes were, too, and not only the scribes but many of the most influential people amongst the Mongols were Nestorians. Even the Catholic Church had an influence on them. The pattern of their conquests seems obviously, to me, to show Christian thinking. Once the majority converted to Islam the pattern changed, the conquests were mostly in India and many returned quietly to their homeland amongst the Muslims and bordering on China.

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