Muslim Heretics Conference

First Published 2008-05-21, Last Updated 2008-05-21 11:27:29


Table exhibiting funding concentration (IRS and IRMEP 2003)

The Neo-Conservatives & ‘Islamofascism’

The threat of Islam has been driven home to the American people by the neoconservatives and the controlled media so that nations in the Middle East can be annihilated – wiped out. The leaders no longer serve the American people but the interest of Israel, says Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich.

John F. Kennedy warned: “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic”. After the attacks of 9/11, refusing to present the truth as authority, we have been led to believe that the greatest threat to civilization is Islam. Dominance and ownership of language enabled the neoconservatives to coin the term ‘Islamofascism’ in order to wage war against Iraq. Iran is their next target, while shamelessly and brutally the people of Palestine and Lebanon are being eradicated in the name of ‘democracy’.

Describing Neo-conservatism as “a Jewish phenomenon” Jacob Heilbrunn, a professed former neoconservative says: “Neoconservatives are bound by a “shared commitment to the largest, most important Jewish cause: the survival of Israel”. Many of the founders of neo-conservatism, including the Public Interest founder Irving Kristol and coeditor Nathan Glazer, Sidney Hook, and Albert Wohlstetter, were either members of, or close to the Trotskyist left in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In 1960, Norman Podhoretz, became editor of Commentary and it focused on foreign policy, Israel in particular, and the threat of the Soviet Union.

The end of the Cold War had left Israel in an awkward place. According to The Jerusalem Report, in 1991, the idea that radical Islam would replace communism had taken seed among the Israeli right. The basis of the idea was founded on the neoconservatives fear that with the demise of the Soviet Union, and the splintering of the America’s right wing faction, there would no longer be an unconditional support for a US-Israel alliance. Kristol and Podhoretz did not see the attraction to Islam as an ideology, but there was a decade of peace and prosperity to implement the seeds of hostility in the American psyche; As Podhoretz had stated: “But the real world and the world of ideas aren’t always in the direct communication they should be. In the world of ideas the major media, the universities, the artistic community all of these are still on the left.” (Jerusalem Report). These would have to be mastered.

In 1993, Samuel Huntington offered the solution, The Clash of Civilizations based on an earlier piece by Bernard Lewis. In an effort to Scapegoat Islam, he underscores that “Muslim societies and states located at the cultural fault lines of the world have shown to be excessively violent. He argues that Muslim enthusiasm for war and readiness to use violence cannot now be denied either by Muslims or non-Muslims. Although his theory was challenged by numerous reputable scholars, the neoconservatives continued to establish themselves in positions of power and influence.

Washington think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) became home to many influential neoconservatives such as Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and Richard Perle who came to join the AEI from the Jerusalem-based think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). A 2003 study by the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy (IRMEP) indicates a correlation between the Bush war policy and the funding of these think tanks.

In addition to think tanks, much of the media was given over to the neoconservative ideology. This was made easy by the regulations in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the 1980s allowing mergers and acquisitions. It was natural for Rupert Murdoch and the neoconservatives to come together in the 1990s who had continued to make his media empire grow, especially in the 90s. Murdoch was recognized by the US for his support of Israel, and the Jewish Congress of New York had voted him “Communication Man of the Year” in 1982.

In line with the neoconservative’s agenda, the mainstream media in the US framed September 11 within the context of Islam and Islamic terrorists. Refusing to acknowledge the identity of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, fifteen of whom were Saudi nationals, the threat of Islam as designed by Huntington was trumpeted by the media. As religious extremism was emphasized as the motive for the terrorist plot, all other inquiries were terminated. America’s response to 9/11 was not an accident. Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ was to provide new bearings for US foreign policy.

There seemed to be a deliberate attempt to portray the motivation of the hijackers as Islamic extremism, thus replacing the threat of Soviet Union with Islam. But who were the real hijackers? In that a new UN Human Rights Council assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is indicative that this group’s role is believed to be influencing US policies, if not determining it (New York Sun). What is irrefutable is that on September 20, 2001, a large group of neoconservatives outside the government sent an open letter to the White House outlining how the war on terror should be conducted. The target was to be Iraq even if evidence did not link Iraq directly to September 11. Among them were Norman Podhoretz, Defense and Policy Board members Eliot Cohen and Richard Perle, William Kristol, and Charles Krauthammer.

Two short months after the invasion of Iraq, William Kristol, Editor of Murdoch’s Weekly Standard and recently appointed New York Times columnist opined: “[T]he war in which we are presently engaged is a fundamental challenge for the United States and the civilized world ….The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East. The creation of a free Iraq is now of fundamental importance…But the next battle….will be for Iran.” (Weekly Standard). The threat of Islam has been driven home to the American people by the neoconservatives and the controlled media so that nations in the Middle East can be annihilated – wiped out. The leaders no longer serve the American people but the interest of Israel. The 2008 presidential campaign was a clear indication of the influence of the neoconservatives, the mass media, and the priorities in this country.

Former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, made the threat of Islamic terrorism the centerpiece of his campaign. He brought two neoconservatives on board with him as advisors; Daniel Pipes, the man who headed ‘Campus Watch’ to ensure that all education in this country is pro-Zionist, and Peter King, senior Republican Congressman on the House Homeland Security Committee who is of the opinion that there are “too many mosques in this country”. Podhoretz also joined Giuliani (now with McCain), as did John Deady who resigned after it came out that he said the following of Giuliani: “He’s got, I believe, the knowledge and the judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history and that is the rise of the Muslims. Make no mistake about it, this hasn’t happened for a thousand years, these people are very dedicated and they’re also very, very smart in their own way. We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves or, in other words, get rid of them.”[i] Renowned Evangelical Pat Robertson gave Giuliani his endorsement.

Mitt Romney raised eyebrows when he suggested that mosques be wire-tapped. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, allegedly dissuaded Mike Huckabee from “reaching out” to the Muslim world. Jim Backlin, a blogger for the Christian Coalition of America wrote: “Comments like ‘America was founded on Christian principles’ by Senator John McCain just might make him President” who sings ‘bomb Iran’. Mrs. Clinton has pledged to “obliterate Iran” should Iran attack nuclear-armed Israel with nuclear weapons [it does not have].

Where does America go from here? Wave our flags and destroy another country because we allow our congress and officials, including the president to be influenced by neoconservatives and in so doing tell us that they are saving our civilization?

“An army is a strange composite masterpiece, which strength results from an enormous sum total of utter weaknesses. Thus only can we explain a war waged by humanity against humanity in spite of humanity” – Victor Hugo.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an Iranian-American studying at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is a member of World Association of International Studies society, Stanford. Her research focus is US. foreign policy towards Iran, Iran’s nuclear program, and the influence of lobby groups.

Note:

[i] “The Religion Card; GOP Candidates Play on anti-Muslim Sentiments” The Progressive, Biography Resource Center, USC Feb 2008.

Sources:

- JJ Goldberg, “The Rest is Commentary”. The Jerusalem Report. Jerusalem:Sep 26, 1991.

- Eli Lake, The New York Sun, 10 April 2008.

- William Kristol, Weekly Standard, May 12, 2003.

- Tony Smith, “A Pact with the Devil”.

- Halper and Clarke, “America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order”. Cambridge University Press: 2004

Middle East Online

JERUSALEM: Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.

Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.

After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.

The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.

The Israeli Maariv daily reported Tuesday that hundreds of Jewish religious school students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were, he said.

He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a “commandment” to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.

“I certainly don’t denounce the burning of the booklets,” he said. “I denounce those who distributed the booklets.”

Jews worship from the Old Testament, including the Five Books of Moses and the writings of the ancient prophets. Christians revere the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, which contains the ministry of Jesus.

Calev Myers, an attorney who represents Messianic Jews, or Jews who accept Jesus as their savior, demanded in an interview with Army Radio that all those involved be put on trial. He estimated there were 10,000 Messianic Jews, who are also known as Jews for Jesus, in Israel.

Police had no immediate comment.

Israeli authorities and Orthodox Jews frown on missionary activity aimed at Jews, though in most cases it is not illegal. Still, the concept of a Jew burning books is abhorrent to many in Israel because of the association with Nazis torching piles of Jewish books during the Holocaust of World War II.

Earlier this year, the teenage son of a prominent Christian missionary was seriously wounded when a package bomb delivered to the family’s West Bank home went off in his hands.

Last year, arsonists burst into a Jerusalem church used by Messianic Jews and set the building on fire, raising suspicions that Jewish extremists were behind the attack. No one claimed responsibility, but the same church was burned down 25 years ago by ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists.

Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Israel - International Herald Tribune

Ahmad Junaidi, Jakarta

Jews are apparently one of — if not the — the most-hated people among Indonesian Muslims, because Israel as a state has committed gross human rights abuses against Palestinians for 60 years since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

In a meeting on media and diversity recently, chairman of the Indonesian Survey Institute Syaiful Mujani revealed a finding of his latest research that more than 30 percent of Muslims here did not want Jewish people as their neighbors.

Violence by the Jewish state, which celebrated its 60th anniversary May 14, has made headlines in newspapers for decades here while rocket attacks and suicide bombings on Israel’s discos and nightclubs by Hamas get little attention in the media.

Although Palestine is geographically far away, it’s emotionally close to many Muslims here, even though not all Palestinians are Muslims.

The Palestinian miseries have also been a favorite talking point for some Islamist parties here which regularly deploy thousands of supporters in demonstrations condemning the only democratic country in the Middle East.

A recent seminar in Depok, West Java, which featured Muslim pundits and Jewish rabbis, aimed to convince the public that the conflict was not based on the religions of Judaism and Islam.

But the conclusion of the seminar should not be just lip service. It needs to be followed up with real actions, such as eliminating teachings that discriminate against the Jews, an almost impossible mission.

Since kids, ulemas in pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) have told us “to hate Jews — and Christians would never be sincere to you (Muslims) until you follow them”.

Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji in her recently-translated book, Beriman Tanpa Rasa Takut: Tantangan Umat Islam Saat Ini (Faith Without Fear: The Challenge for Muslim Today), revealed how Muslims have discriminated against the Jews since the beginning of Islam.

Despite praising the same monotheistic roots inherited from Prophet Ibrahim, Manji, who recently visited Jakarta and Yogyakarta, questioned among other things the concept of dzimmi which gives protection to Jews but at the same time discriminates against them by urging different clothes and walking in separate streets in Medina, a place idolized by Islamists here.

Manji, who was expelled from a madrasa (Islamic school) in Canada when she was 14 years old, currently campaigns for ijtihad (critical thinking) among Muslims.

Many scholars believed anti-Semitism started here in the 1960s. Actually, many Jewish communities lived here peacefully, especially in Jakarta and Surabaya, during the Dutch colonial era.

With the current increasing trend of fundamentalism — particularly the influence of Wahabism — slogans such as “Go to hell, Israel” or “Jihad against Jews” can be easily found in the streets.

The puritans would easily label other people with different opinions as Jewish cronies and American collaborators as perhaps they did with the followers of Ahmadiyah.

The efforts by moderate Muslims to convince the world that God assigned Prophet Muhammad as a blessing for universe (rahmatan lil alamin) seem to go unheard among noisy rallies using symbols of violence, such as fake weapons and time bombs with Pakistani attire.

Some may think anti-Semitism is to a lesser degree similar to anti-Chinese sentiment here. The Holocaust could be considered a large-scale version of the May 1998 tragedy in which hundreds of Chinese-Indonesians were killed and their properties destroyed.

Dozens of Chinese-Indonesian women were allegedly raped or sexually harassed during the riots which then pushed the downfall of authoritarian president Soeharto.

Some viewed all of the “anti spirits” — anti-Semitism, anti-Chinese, anti-America, anti-foreign capital– were just a manifestation of our failure to solve our own social, political and cultural problems.

But the “anti-spirit” is not seen in the soccer game. We still love Chelsea although it’s favorite manager Portuguese Jose Maurinho was replaced with Avram Grant, the former Israel coach.

Blaming the others — with all those ridiculous conspiracy theories — is the easiest way and often conducted by losers, instead of finding the roots of the problems in our culture, including religious teachings.

Ijtihad, instead of jihad (holy war), is one of the ways to reconcile Muslims with those who are considered by some puritans as “the others”: the West, Jews, Indonesian-Chinese and Christians.

Forget the Indonesian Muslim Council’s fatwa (edict) banning pluralism, secularism and liberalism, all of which are actually the pillars of critical thinking.

Ijtihad should move forward, instead of backward into puritanism and searching and applying values of a medieval desert age. It should be wide open for all Muslims, instead of just conducted by narrow-minded goateed ulemas.

Thanks to the late Muslim scholars such as Nurcholish Madjid, Ahmad Wahib, Mukti Ali, Munawir Sadzali and Mansour Faqih for opening youths’ horizons in various studies from religious teachings to gender studies.

Amid the increasing fundamentalism with its stalemated thought, Muslims here have developed enlightened ideas that could make them live together with global citizens in peace.

The writer is a journalist at The Jakarta Post. He can be reached at junaidi@thejakartapost.com

The Jakarta Post - Questioning religions without fear

BY
TANVEER JAFRI

Terror or terrorism is one of the oldest disasters on the earth. It can be said that this system named terrorism is, for the centuries, here on this earth. But there have always been differences to define it. If you talk from the side of terrorists, you can hear different reasons of terrorism from every affected area of terrorism. If not going deep into, it can be understood, the affected victims of the society call it terrorism what the terrorists indulged in terrorism call it crusade, revenge or an offensive action to oppose. The worldwide terrorism has different reasons in different parts of the world. Somewhere the terrorism is to get freedom or somewhere to get sovereignty. At same place, these activities are being carried out to free the region from the opponents. At some places the basic reason of terrorism is poverty, starvation & unemployment. But at international level, the media mostly talks of, that is so said the ‘Islamic terrorism’.

There were terrorist activities even before the 9/11 terrorist attack on America. But the form of terrorism was different from the form of terrorism prevalent now-a-days. Before 9/11, America was known as the spectator of so said Islamic terrorism or at some places it was known that it worked as a helper to organize it. But the event of 9/11 forced America to think that even America can fall victim to own pet snake. So on this day, American President Bush declared to start a worldwide ‘war against terrorism’. After the event of 9/11, America took a vow to uproot the tree of terrorism from the world. Most of the Muslim countries of the world strongly oppose the thought of strong religionist terrorism & call it anti-Islamic. These Muslim countries openly favoured America against terrorism after 9/11. Even the terrorists accused the rulers of these Muslim countries, who opposed terrorism, as anti-Islamic or Pro-American. The terrorists felt that these countries were in favour of America & so they were their enemies. During this period, America tried to tell the world that it is not against the Islam or the Islamic teachings or the Muslims of the world. But it is against those people or of people having that thought, who talk of religious war & misuse name of the Islam & attack the innocent people of the world. But can this claim of America is right that its opponent is not the Islam or the Muslims but only the terrorists?

There is no doubt that sometime ago, Pope Benedict had called all the Islam Literati together & gave hints to establish religious harmony between the Islam & the Christianity. Not only this, Pope even gave a show of this harmony & tolerance by visiting an ancient mosque in Turkey. If there is any disaster in the Muslim countries, may it be from a military action or natural calamity, Pope has always given an appeal from the core of his heart that showed him as a true religious leader. He is in favour of not only Christianity but humanity. Despite all this, there are some events that compel the Muslim world to think a lot.

For example, on the last May 9, an American sergeant, in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, while giving training, fired aiming at Quraan Sharif. The fourth infantry division commander Jaffrey hamaud, beg pardon for this event in Iraq. Not only commander but American President George Bush also gets pardon for this event from the Iraq Prime Minister Noori-Al-Maliki. This was an inciting & painful incident by a commander. Before this lieutenant General William Jeri Boykin called the war being fought against terrorism by America as the spiritual war. He even called the Muslims, Satan. Boykin even said that their God was greater than that of their Allah. And even this American General said that his God was real while that of the Muslims, an idol. The hate spreading activities of the American army officers are not limited, but these are unlimited. In the torture camp being run by America at Guantanamo Bay, the American soldiers tore the Quraan Sharif to pieces & threw it into the toilet, which was an inciting action. After this, the Muslim prisoners in jail, where there may be some terrorists & some innocent prisoners & some accused, they were forced to see it. In another event, a training programme was run to fight terrorism on May1, in Pennsylvania in America. About 120 workers from 30 different government departments took part in it. During this training, an unreal copied structure of a mosque was formed. There, a heavy firing was done on this structure & a demonstration to control terrorism & to have escape from it was shown.

Does the above example prove that the army of George Bush or the American administration under his leadership is girding up their loins against terrorism only & not against the Muslim world or against the Islam? It may be that such inciting activities have not been given consent by Bush or Bush administration. But these anti-Islam messages compel the Muslim world to think that if America is fighting against terrorism or not. But its hateful activities against the Islam & the Muslims are continuing. Such incidents rouse the terrorists to openly oppose America.

So the need arises that just & transparent steps should be taken against terrorism. The terrorism should be limited as a culpable & inhuman action. The Quraan, the Mosques or the Islam has no links with the terrorism & neither there was. As the heavy bombing on the innocent people in Afghanistan & Iraq by the American army or the Bush administration can’t be called an inspiration from the Christ, in the same way, the accidents by terrorists can’t be called the Islamic terrorism or inspired by the Islam.

(About the Author)
Author Tanveer Jafri is a columnist based in India.He is related with hundreds of most popular daily news papers/portals in India and abroad. Jafri, Almost writes in the field of communal harmony, world peace, anti communalism, anti terrorism, national integration, national & international politics etc.He is a devoted social activist for world peace, unity, integrity & global brotherhood. Tanveer Jafri is also a member of Haryana Sahitya Academy & Haryana Urdu Academy (state govt. bodies in India). Thousands articles of the author have been published in different newspapers, websites & newsportals throughout the world. He is also a receipent of so many awards in the field of Communal Harmony & other social activities.
(Email : tanveerjafriamb@gmail.com )

» American Target- Terrorism or Islam? - Thaindian News

By Alyssa A. Lappen
© 2008 

Particularly since the late, lifelong Muslim Brother, Yasser Arafat, shifted anti-Israel jihad into fifth gear in September 2000, several Middle East and Islamic scholars have repeatedly asserted that 20th and 21st century Islamic anti-Semitism sprang solely from Nazi and European Christian influence.

Even now, Islamophiles like Bernard Lewis preach (as it were) that virulent Jew-hatred is not inherent to Islam – but rather, anti-Semitism migrated to the Middle East with European colonialism. The Quran uses “hard words … about the Jews,” even Lewis admits. Yet under Islamic rule, he claims they were “only rarely subject to persecution” and “their situation was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst. …”

Dr. Andrew G. Bostom’s extensive, scientific and largely unprecedented new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History,” definitively disproves such claims. (Full disclosure: I copy-edited several of these first-time English translations, and proofread many chapters.)

Publication of this landmark book informs self-respecting scholars, they can no longer shamelessly blame Christianity as the sole source of anti-Semitism – or more importantly, that Islam does not and never had its own innate brand of loathing for the Jewish people.

Islam detests non-Muslims generally – whom sharia laws institutionally oppress and tax as underclass “dhimmis” – but inveighs especially intense odium against Jews.

Indeed, Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, a sort of continuum from Bostom’s ground-breaking “Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims,” conclusively proves that profound Islamic hatred for the Jewish people originated with the religion’s founder, Muhammad. Moreover, his companions, successor “rightly guided” Caliphs and Islamic jurists over the next 1,400 years maintained that hateful overarching passion.

Bostom’s evidence is impossible to ignore, waive off or attribute to anti-Islamic bias. Most of the book’s double-columned 766 pages contain primary source material: excerpts from Islamic sacred texts, jurisprudence and historical accounts (by Muslims and non-Muslims alike) across the span of Islamic history.

The opening 171-page review (and 962 citations) breathtakingly maps the roots of Islamic anti-Semitism – within the religion’s unique theological and judicial traditions, and its historical record.

This alone should convince even skeptics that Islamic anti-Semitism began in the 7th century.

The Quran refers to Jews as apes and swine (2:65, 7:166, 5:60), themes that were repeatedly exploited in incitements to murder, including a 1066 “anti-Jewish ode containing the line, ‘Many a pious Muslim is in awe of the vilest infidel ape.’” Letters from the Cairo Geniza, from up to one millennium ago, further explode “the common assumption” that a unique Islamic strain of anti-Semitism was “absent” at that time (950-1250 C.E.). S.D. Goitein’s “A Mediterranean Society” reports two special words coined and much-used in the geniza era to describe Islamic hatred of Jews: “sin’úth, ‘hatred,’ [and] a Jew-baiter being called sóné, ‘a hater.’”

(Column continues below)

All other texts cited also refer to “stubborn malevolence” as the defining Jewish “worldly characteristic,” leading them to reject Muhammad and refuse “to convert to Islam out of jealousy, envy, and even selfish personal interest.” These traits allegedly induce typical Jewish treachery: “sorcery, poisoning, assassination,” archetypes sanctioning “Muslim hatred toward the Jews, and the admonition to, at best, ’subject [them] to Muslim domination,’ as [contemptible, humiliated] dhimmis.”

Having whetted reader interest, Bostom (a scientist and physician recognized nationally for his medical research) leaves nothing open to doubt. In the next five sections – 252 more two-column pages – he unveils the anti-Semitic contents of the Quran and its interpretations (Part 2); Hadith (sayings and deeds of Muhammad, Part 3); Sira (early Muslim biographies of Muhammed, Part 4); and fatwas (religious rulings) and laws prescribed by Islam’s most “luminary” judges, both classical and pre-modern (Part 5) and modern (Part 6).

In Part 2, one 12-page chapter contains 55 anti-Semitic Quranic verses, each translated three times to avoid confusion or denial of their toxicity. For the “Children of Israel” the Quran mandates God’s anger, as expressed in their “abasement and poverty;” curses “by the tongue of David, and of Jesus, son of Mary;” and their hastening “about the earth to do corruption there.” The Jewish people, moreover, are accursed as liars, confounding the truth, murderers of their prophets, perverse creatures and thieves.

Haggai Ben-Shammai’s 1988 essay on Quranic literature and interpretations notes that they likewise cursed Jews through history, frequently citing the very passages Bostom quotes in the previous chapter. For example, that describing Jews as cursed disbelievers, “laden with God’s anger” and having “abasement and poverty pitched upon them.”

Bostom, in Part 3, continues exposing traditional Islamic enmity for Jews, with a brief collection of 45 accounts from the voluminous Hadith. These include some of its most odious passages, accepted “narrations,” as reported by three revered Islamic sources – Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim and Sunan Abu Dawud – characterizing Jews as the ultimate of thieves, murderers, liars, idolaters, accursed and fully worthy of God’s primordial anger.

Indeed, every Jew who does not convert to Islam, Muslim reports Muhammad as saying “shall be but one of the denizens of Hell-Fire.” (Book 1, no. 284)

A Jewish woman, Bukhari reports, murdered Muhammad when she “brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who ate from it.” (Vol. 3, book 47,. no. 786) He also records Muhammad saying, Muslims “will fight the Jews ’til some of them will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying, ‘O ‘Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him’.” (Vol. 4, Book 52, no 176) The Hamas Charter prominently features the latter Bukhari tradition in Article 7 – and contains many more unadulterated Quranic passages and Hadiths too.

Next, Bostom features one of his collection’s crown jewels – a 1937 Georges Vajda essay on Jewish and Muslim relationships in the Hadith (translated from French for the first time). Vajda worked from hadiths reported by 12 accepted Islamic sources – including seven primary source volumes published from 1279 to 1333, in Cairo or Bulak, and two published from 1904 to 1915 in Leyden, Germany.

Vajda attributes discovery of the hadiths’ animating principle to Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher (the first non-Muslim permitted to study at Cairo’s al-Azhar). Cementing “prescriptions and recommendations regarding the customs of non-Muslims” is what “boils down to a single word: khálifúhum, meaning ‘do not like them.’” Vajda brilliantly excavates the remarkable effects of that dislike on daily Jewish life in Muslim lands through the centuries.

Based on hadiths, Jews were forced to wear ankle boots rather than sandals, mustaches rather than beards, and various other identifiers (including unmatched-colored shoes in Yemen, and yellow patches in 13th century Iran). Hadith encourages Muslims to curse rather than greet Jews, moreover, since Jews reportedly address others with “al-sám ‘alaykum [may poison be upon you], a word that is glossed by ‘death’ or ‘disgust, annoyance.’” Several hadiths accuse Jews of falsifying their holy Torah to erase Muhammad’s name. Significantly, the Hadith describes the Dajjâl – the Antichrist – as Jewish; its Islamic apocalyptic traditions also envision 70,000 saber-waving Jews vanquished beside the Dajjâl during Islam’s last bloody triumph over all non-Muslims and the establishment of a universal Islamic empire.

In Part 8, Bostom assembles 24 essays detailing the dire conditions and atrocities that Jews suffered under Muslim rule during many eras, in many regions. Part 9 concludes the book with nine documents and eyewitness accounts attesting to effects of the overwhelming hatred evidenced earlier.

U.S. legislators and policy makers – and journalists, Middle East and Islamic scholars – take note: As Stanford University’s Victor Davis Hanson observes, conclusions adduced from Bostom’s tome may surprise critics as much as this “vast literature of Middle Eastern Islamic antisemitism” confounds all attempts “to refute his carefully compiled corpus of evidence.”

Exposed: Innate Islamic loathing for Jews