Tarek Fatah, a Reformist Muslim, Writes about Jewish-Muslim Relations

From Barbara Kay's column in the National Post,

In his new book, The Jew is Not My Enemy, to be released Oct. 19, Fatah summarizes the present situation between Jews and Muslims: Jews hate Islam, and Muslims hate Jews. “Even the most radical Islamist websites [attack Jews viciously but] do not have a single sentence attacking the Jewish faith,” Fatah notes, while even the most rabidly anti-Islamist Jews “rarely attack Muslims, yet have little reservation in deriding Islam and the Koran.”

Even if this observation is true only in general but not universally, it is a pithy insight. But the rest of the column expands the idea (i.e. read the whole thing). Some excerpts:

Tarek Fatah grew up in Pakistan. He does not remember any anti-Semitism in his youth. But on a 2006 visit home, he was revolted by the ubiquity and virulence of the anti-Semitism he met when socializing with even educated and wealthy Muslims. In a posh neighbourhood of Karachi he saw a banner over a grocery store announcing, “Bird flu is a Jewish conspiracy.” He was dumbstruck to hear the store owner’s theory that the “Yahoodis” wanted to destroy the poultry industry of Muslim Indonesia. The owner then pressed a free copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Fatah and told him it would explain everything, including how the 2004 tsunami was a joint venture by the Yahoodis and the United States.

Anti-Semitism spewed forth from every social and media spigot on this visit, from the Karachi Press Club to the upper crust’s charity balls. In Pakistan today, Fatah sadly notes, “expressing hatred of the Jew…is the easiest way to establish one’s intellectual credentials.”

and

Fatah’s basic arguments come down to this: The Koran itself — the sacred text — does not express a shred of anti-Semitism. The Hadith, though, were written by men centuries later, and certain Hadith verses “can best be described as hate literature.” They can and should be revised or dumped. True anti-Semitism — the blood libel and the exterminationism — are imports, Fatah says, from medieval Christian converts to Islam and Western fascism. The convergence of Arab and German enmities permitted Nazi-style anti-Semitism to penetrate and flourish amongst Arabs and then throughout the Muslim world. The Muslim Brotherhood is behind the successful transmogrification of the Jew into Islam’s existential enemy.

Comments

[Gary]

Fatah's argument is disingenuous. No one seriously believes that inter-faith hatred arises from theological differences. When the Qu'ran advises to kill Jews, he's right in that the command is not justified by theological differences on the importance of Moses. It is still anti-semitism and unfortunately, Islam and almost other faiths define themselves by demonizing the "other". I do not think that French Protestants and Catholics killed each other over debates about the appropriateness of a Pope. Their faiths still played an important role in motivating slaughter.