Concurrent with Israel’s military response to the latest wave of Hamas’s jihad terror—rocket and mortar salvos targeting its civilian areas—the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a May 20, 2021 press lease chronicling “a dangerous and drastic surge in anti-Jewish hate right here at home,” in the United States. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt noted his organization was “tracking acts of harassment, vandalism and violence,” the press release citing “193 reports [compiled] in the week after the crisis began.” Even the doctrinaire Leftist Greenblatt conceded during a PBS interview discussing these alarming findings,
“Well, let’s be clear. None of the people committing these crimes [were] wearing MAGA hats, right?… we have people waving Palestinian flags and then beating Jewish people.”
Predictably omitted from Greenblatt’s, and the ADL’s assessment was any reference to the organization’s own copious global polling data on the disproportionate occurrence of virulently Antisemitic attitudes among Muslims. Those bigoted sentiments are apparently shared by the unidentified “people waving Palestinian flags,” who, when attacking their Jewish prey, may also yell the jihadist war cry, “Allahu akbar,”—just as their lionized ancestors ostensibly did when attacking, and massacring the Jews of the Khaybar oasis, lead by Islam’s prophet, and “model” for jihad, Muhammad.
Although largely ignored, the pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism was revealed by ADL’s global survey reported in 2014, and both that survey’s 2015 follow-up “Muslim oversample” of Western Europe, and a U.S. survey ADL completed in 2016, and early 2017.
“Extreme Antisemitism,” defined by ADL as agreement with at least six of eleven Antisemitic stereotypes, is 2- to 4.5-fold more common among Muslims, relative to non-Muslims, worldwide, and regionally, including within Muslim diaspora populations in Western Europe, and the United States, per the ADL’s 2014-2017 surveys:
—The world’s 16 most Antisemitic countries are all in the Muslim Middle East, where 74% to 93% of the overwhelmingly Muslim denizens of these nations 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%.
—There is a 2 to 3-fold excess occurrence of extreme Muslim Antisemitism, globally, by religious affiliation—Muslim, 49%; Christian, 24%; No religion, 21%; Hindu, 19%; Buddhist, 17%.
—There is 2 to 4.5-fold excess occurrence of extreme Muslim Antisemitism in Western Europe—Belgium, 68% of Muslims vs. 21% of non-Muslims; Spain, 62% of Muslims vs. 29% of non-Muslims; Germany, 56% of Muslims vs. 16% of non-Muslims; Italy, 56% of Muslims vs. 29% of non-Muslims; United Kingdom, 54% of Muslims vs. 12% of non-Muslims; France, 49% of Muslims vs. 17% of non-Muslims.
—There is a 2.4-fold excess occurrence of extreme Muslim Antisemitism in the U.S., 34% of Muslims vs. 14% of the general population.
ADL released its most recent survey data November 21, 2019, characterizing the prevalence of Extreme Antisemitism within 18 countries assessed between April 15 and June 3, 2019. Six of these countries—Belgium, The United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy—again included a Muslim over-sample, allowing for a direct comparison of Muslims vs. Christians, those professing no religion, and the general populations. These findings confirmed the ongoing, disproportionate roughly 3-fold excess occurrence of Extreme Antisemitism among Western Europe’s Muslims.
Intellectually honest assessments of what animates such intense Muslim Jew-hatred—whether the current pandemic, or regional historical examples dating back to at least the 9th century, demonstrate Islam itself engenders this pervasive phenomenon. Islam conjoins theological Jew-hatred, with the animus of the perpetual jihad war against Jews (and Christians/“scriptuaries”), to be waged (and renewed) until their complete submission to an Islamic, Sharia-based order. Koran 9:29 elucidates this eternal jihad mandate, succinctly.
“Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth (Islam) from those who were given the Scripture (Jews/other ‘scriptuaries’) – [fight] until they give the jizya (Koranic poll-tax, in lieu of being slain) willingly while they are humbled (such as the humiliating jizya collection ‘rituals’, blows, mock beheadings, etc.).”
The late Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University—Papal equivalent of Sunni Islam’s Vatican—Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (d. 2010), was one of the most revered modern authorities on Koranic exegesis (interpretation) having edited a magnum opus 15-volume contemporary Koranic commentary, and helped create the largest online website of such analyses. Tantawi’s gloss on Koran 9:29, extracted, below, reiterates an overarching principle, established across a millennium of uniform commentary on this verse: Jews (and other “scriptuaries,” or “People of the Book,”) must be fought, subdued, and humbled because they constitute a chronic danger to an Islamic, Sharia-based society, and its mores. Tantawi further adds a comment on their “excruciatingly painful” punishment in the hereafter.
“The reasons for the order to fight them are: they do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, they do not prohibit what Allah and His Messenger [Muhammad] have prohibited, and they do not adopt the religion of truth (Islam)…The meaning is fight those who have these attributes from among the People of the Scripture until they pay the Jizya willingly and submissively (while) they are humbled, humiliated and subservient to your rule over them… Taking the Jizya from them…is also a way of contributing to the advancement and prosperity of the Islamic state….It is an acknowledgement on their behalf to submit to the instructions of this state…Those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, those who do not prohibit what Allah and His Apostle [Muhammad] have prohibited, and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islam] as their religion deserve this humiliation and ignominy in this world. As for the afterlife, their torture would be excruciatingly painful and everlasting.”
Earlier, Tantawi’s 700pp. Al-Azhar University Ph.D. thesis, (in English translation, Jews in the Koran and Traditions; completed 1966, published 1968), provided a summary gloss on the Koranic depiction of Jews, emphasizing its timeless relevance, and denouncing Jews who rejected Islam as “maleficent deniers,” granting Muslims license to commit violence against them, to extirpate Jewish “evil”:
(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…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.”
This toxic amalgam of canonical Islamic Jew-hatred, and jihad promotes “sacralized” calls for violence—and violent actions—against Jews, which reverberate across the Muslim world, far from the flashpoints of Israel, Gaza, Judea-Samaria, and the neighboring Arab Muslim societies.
A May 29, 2021 Jerusalem Post oped lamented how “the ugliness of Islamic hatred of Jews,” was “on full display with attacks on kippah wearers or anyone identifying or identified as a Jew.” Sadly, this oped statement describes the consequences of ignoring what I told The Jerusalem Post 13-years ago (6/19/2008):
“I want them [Muslims and non-Muslims] to understand the magnitude and the depth of the problem. And I want them to understand that this problem will not go away without discussion, without a mea culpa on the part of the Muslims, and that it’s the obligation on the part of the non-Muslims to encourage these reforms to take place. I think that it can’t be left up to Muslims themselves, because that hasn’t worked. Of course, in the long term, it will have to come from within. But in the meantime, non-Muslims are going to have to defend themselves and to demand a change.”
When will non-Muslim religious, political, and “intellectual” leaders publicly denounce the ongoing, institutionalized Jew-hatred of Sunni Islam’s pre-eminent teaching institution, Al-Azhar University, and insist upon wrenching reforms of mainstream Islam’s “sacralized,” Jew-hating canon?
