Talking to Muslim friends, I can’t help but believe that the audacity of today’s anti-Semitism is in part a result of the exploitation of a “victim status,” an underdog sentiment that too many European Muslims have embraced enthusiastically. This is not just the sort of social-science explanation we often hear for hatred, as racism from people who are themselves the victims of racism and discrimination.Yeah, that must be it.
Just kidding. Here's the letter I wrote in response:
Jochen Bittner attributes Muslim-fomented anti-Semitism in Germany to Muslims embracing their "victim" or underdog status in German society. I would suggest that there's a far simpler explanation for the antipathy. Along with their colourful multicultural ways, many of these Muslim immigrants have brought with them the Jew-hate that was commonplace in their countries of origin. And that hatred is a function, at least in part, of core Islamic texts in which "the Jews" are enemy number one, so lowly and bestial that, as the Quran thrice recounts, Islam's founder felt the need to transform them into "apes and pigs." The other part of their hatred, of course, has to do with Israel and the belief that, existing as it does on land claimed in perpetuity for Islam, it has no legitimacy whatsoever. This over-the-top hatred of Jewry and Israel has brought on the current round of Naziesque window-smashing and Jew-bashing in Germany (as well as in other European countries with sizable Muslim populations such as France, Belgium and the U.K.).The bitter irony here is that residual European guilt over the Holocaust has proven to be extremely good for Muslims, because it opened the continent to a tide of Muslim immigration, but has gone horribly wrong for--and has re-victimized--Europe's Jews.
No comments:
Post a Comment