Is "Islamophobia" the new anti-Semitism?

[Spengler]

Is "Islamophobia" the new anti-Semitism? on the Spengler Blog


by David P. Goldman


Daniel Luban argued last week in the Tablet webzine that the old anti-Semitism has transmogrified into Islamophobia:

...many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism have been revived and given new force on the American right. Once again jingoistic politicians and commentators posit a religious conspiracy breeding within Western society, pledging allegiance to an alien power, conspiring with allies at the highest levels of government to overturn the existing order. Because the propagators of these conspiracy theories are not anti-Semitic but militantly pro-Israel, and because their targets are not Jews but Muslims, the ADL and other Jewish groups have had little to say about them. But since the election of President Barack Obama, this Islamophobic discourse has rapidly intensified.

The trouble with this analysis is that the group of Americans who have the least favorable opinion of Islam--evangelical Christians--also have the most favorable opinion of Jews. By a margin of 57-24, evangelicals have an unfavorable opinion of Muslims. I reviewed these results in a recent Asia Times Online "Spengler" column.

Enlightened opinion, to be sure, no longer peddles racist slurs against the Jews, just blood libels against the State of Israel. The constituencies most hostile to the State of Israel also are the most Islamophilic. Liberal Democrats have a favorable opinion of Islam by a 66-17 margin, for example, and mainline Protestants (whose organizations seem to think that divestment from Israel is the most important thing to do between now and the Apocalypse) have a favorable opinion by a margin of 51 to 30.

Curious, these liberals. The allegedly misogynistic and homophobic evangelicals don't like the most misogynistic and homophobic societies on earth, while the feminist-and LGT-supporting liberals like them. Maybe the kingdom's coming, or the Year of Jubilo.

It seems misguided, though, to sound the alarm about anti-Semitic impulses lurking behind Islamophobia when the most pro-Israel segment of the American population is the least friendly to Islam.

[CognitiveDistoibance]

Curious, these liberals. The allegedly misogynistic and homophobic evangelicals don't like the most misogynistic and homophobic societies on earth, while the feminist-and LGT-supporting liberals like them. Maybe the kingdom's coming, or the Year of Jubilo.

[Michael]

Most of my Jewish friends are French and, there, there is real concern that Antisemitism, thinly veiled as Anti-Zionism, and Islamophobia could, indeed, become linked as two sides of the same coin.

Anyone who knows France and the French press will know that there is great concern about communautarisme, by which they mean ethnic solidarities and allegiances that threaten to override Republican unity. This concern is deeply rooted in French political culture, going back at least as far as Rousseau's suspicion of particular interests that undermined the general will. Hence, the determination to keep the State and Civil Society, l’espace public and l’espace privé distinct and separate. Religious and cultural activities belong to l’espace privé

When the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, warned that France’s Jews "could find themselves in great danger," and encouraged them to make aliyah, many French Jews were, frankly, horrified. People told me that it would be a disaster, for French Jews, to regress into their own communal identity, which could, in turn, validate that of the Muslim community. They were concerned that “the Jewish community” and “the Muslim community” could be seen as two mutually hostile minorities, separate from the mass of the French nation, especially as 60% of France’s Jews are, themselves, second-generation immigrants from the Maghreb.

Thus, Jewish historian Esther Benbassa wrote to Le Monde(12/18/01) to denounce what she considered to be an over-reaction by Jewish leaders and to reject the dangerous "mirage" that there even is a Jewish community (In the sense defined above). Likewise, adjunct mayor, Henri Israël attacked Jewish spokesmen for encouraging the belief that Jews are guilty of a "sentiment of double allegiance, of double attachment" (Le Monde 1/16/02).

There was a banner at a France-Israel friendship demonstration in 2002 that recalled an incident at a France-Algeria soccer match:

Nous on chante la Marseillaise, on ne la siffle pas – We sing the Marseillaise, we don’t hiss it

Very different sentiments, these, to the UK and American models of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. Rather, they would endorse Teddy Roosevelt’s condemnation of “hyphenated Americans;” they would find the idea of someone describing themselves as “Italian-French,” or “Polish-French” as profoundly shocking.

Of course the United States has, proportionately, a much smaller Muslim community, so the tensions are not as obvious.

[Spengler]

Michael,
The situation of French Jews did not come to my attention until August 2006, when my older daughter and I visited Israel for a family event (I made a point of attending because of the Lebanon war then in progress). It was impossible to find a decent hotel in Tel Aviv largely because the city was overrun by French Jews who were vacationing in Israel rather than on the Riviera. There is in fact a steady trickle of French-Jewish immigrants to Israel, Montreal, and a few American destinations. I could easily see French xenophobia being directed equally at Jews and Muslims, but American circumstances are very different.

[Walter Sobchak]

When Communism collapsed, western leftist intellectuals were bereft. They needed heroes to hold their banner. Further, their anger at the US waxed hot because of its impudence in collapsing the Soviet regime.

The Chinese, who might have picked up the flag, made the terrible mistake of abandoning communism for prosperity.

The Jihadists won the leftist hearts by daring to strike the US in the face. The Jihadists had at least two things going for them. First, they learned early 20th century anti-liberalism from the Nazis and had propagated it through the Muslim Brotherhood and the writings of Qtub. Second, the Soviets had anointed the PLO as a "national liberation movement", just like Ho Chi Minh.

When the Jihadists successfully attacked the US on 9/11, and followed up with attacks on Madrid and London, the left could wait no longer, they had found the new heroes who would destroy the United States, their hated enemy, and avenge the Soviets. The Jihadists were declared to be the vanguard of the proletariat and opposition to them became a thought crime called Islamophobia (following the example of western homosexuals, who had declared that any opposition to their agenda was homophobia). Once so medicalized, thought crimes could be tagged and dismissed without further inspection.

The new equation Islamophobia = Anti-Semitism is just an inversion of the traditional Zionism = Nazism. Under either version, Jihadists, who are rightly loathed and feared by any rational human being, are now the ***VICTIMS*** that Jews used to be. The real Jews are now the enemy, the little Satan. It is a bold propaganda move that utilizes the unfamiliarity of most people with the details of twentieth century intellectual history, to confuse and mislead.

[charleston]

Is 'islamophobia' the new antisemitism?

are the Israelis the new nazis?

is Anne Frank really palestinian?

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/190981.php



Was Jesus palestinian?

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3344541,00.html

UK newspaper: Jesus was a Palestinian

Anti-Israel article claims Christmas is celebration 'of birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem'
Yaakov Lappin

An anti-Israel article, which appeared last week in a British newspaper, the Independent, claimed Christmas was a celebration of the "birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem" (Mary), before launching into an attack on Israel's checkpoints in the West Bank.

New Year Message
Ahmadinejad: What would Jesus do today? / Yaakov Lappin
Iranian president in New Year's message to Christians: 'God willing, Jesus will return with Imam Mahdi and wipe away oppression'
Full story
According to the article, written by British columnist Johann Hari, during Christmas "a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl."

It added: "Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. 'What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured,' she says."

'21st century Marys being terrorized'
The article alleges that Jemal lost her baby due to a "road… blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning."

Quoting Jemal, the article added: "When I see the (Israeli) soldiers I keep thinking - what did my baby do to Israel?"

Hari described Palestinian women as "21st century Marys" who were being "terrorized."

Various commentators have said that elements in Europe hostile to Israel have begun to portray Jesus as a Palestinian, and ancient Judea as a Palestinian entity.

The late Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat often denied that Jerusalem was the site of the Jewish temple, and described Jesus as a Palestinian.

Was Abraham a muslim?


Was there really a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem?

http://www.factsofisrael.com/blog/archi ... print.html

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat "never offered any substantive ideas [for peace], not once" during the 15 days of talks at Camp David in the summer of 2000, former US peace negotiator Dennis Ross said yesterday.

The only thing he did say was that the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans almost 2000 years ago, never existed in Jerusalem as the Jews believe. He said it was located somewhere in Nablus, Ross said.

I thought you said Tablet was a good magazine?

Who is Daniel Luban?

[charleston]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6bARRmEpH8

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/460652.aspx

Public Schools Teach the ABCs of Islam

Several recent studies have shown that American students are alarmingly ignorant about U.S. history and world events.

Experts have attributed the problem to everything from failing schools to substandard teachers.

But what about content?

Who Discovered America?

For instance, did you know that Muslims discovered America? Or that Jerusalem is an Arab city? That's just some of the "history" that students in America's K-12 classrooms have been taught in recent years--with the help of taxpayer money.

A new report by the non-profit Institute for Jewish and Community Research finds that American high school and elementary textbooks contain countless inaccuracies about Christianity, Judaism, Israel and the Middle East.

The Institute examined 28 of the most widely-used history, geography and social studies textbooks in America. It found at least 500 errors.

One book ignored the Jewish roots of Christianity, saying the faith was founded by a "young Palestinian" named Jesus.

Another stated as fact that the Koran was revealed to Mohammed from God.

Yet another said ancient Jewish civilization contributed "very little" to to the arts and sciences.

The Stealth Curriculum

Textbooks like these are used by millions of schoolchildren in all 50 states. Sandra Stotsky--now an endowed chair at the University of Arkansas--has seen some of them firsthand.

Stotsky was a commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999 until 2003. In that role, she helped set standards for students and teachers on the K thru 12 level. Stotsky wrote a book about her experience developing standards and professional development for history teachers called The Stealth Curriculum.

"We heard from a number of groups who were outraged because they didn't want what they called a 'Euro-centric' version of history," said Stotsky. "They literally wanted an Islamo-centric version of history. Which means you look at the world from the perspective of Islam and you don't talk about any negative aspects of Islam."

Islamic Seminar

After the 9/11 attacks, the Massachusetts Board of Education funded a special seminar for K-12 teachers to learn about Islamic history and the Middle East.

The outreach coordinator at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies helped organize the seminar. Stotsky said she was shocked by the teachers' lesson plans that came out of the week-long seminar.

"They ranged from having students make prayer rugs; describe what it would be like to go on a hajj--a pilgrimage; learn and memorize the five pillars of Islam; listen to and learn how to recite passages from the Koran; dress like a Muslim from a particular country.it was, to me, a clear violation of ethics involved in how one would expect children to learn about another culture. That they would literally go through the memorization and the learning of religious beliefs."

"These are unacceptable practices in a public school," she added. "In fact, they would be unacceptable academic practices in any school."

Title VI

Harvard is one of 18 universities that receives government funding under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. To qualify for that funding, the universities are required to conduct outreach to K-12 teachers, helping them to shape lessons for schoolchildren. Elementary and secondary teachers have taken full advantage of the arrangement: after all, they believe they're getting expert insight on Islam and the Middle East from distinguished university scholars.

"You have a lot of politically naive teachers--well intentioned teachers who do want their students to learn more about Islamic history," says Stotsky. "It has not been well covered in most history courses they've ever taken, so they do genuinely want to learn more for themselves and teach their students more."

In some cases they may be getting more than they bargained for: the Saudi government has donated millions of dollars to Middle East Centers at universities that receive Title VI funding.

The Harvard Middle Eastern Studies Center--whose proposed lesson plans for K-12 history teachers originally drew Stosky's concern--is one of them. As CBN News reported earlier this year, the Harvard Center received a $20 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in 2005. Georgetown University--another title VI recipient--also received $ 20 million from the Prince that same year.

It's through these Title VI university centers--all of them government-sanctioned and taxpayer supported--that Saudi-funded materials find their way into K-12 classrooms.

Education or Islamic Propoganda?

"Saudi donations to American universities should be seen in a much larger picture of Saudi promotion of a Saudi point of view," said Daniel Pipes, Director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. "Whether it be Islamic or political, the Saudis have a point of view. And they have been very clever and very generous over the decades to promote that point of view."

Among the textbooks the Saudi-funded Harvard Center recommends for schoolchildren is the Arab World Studies Notebook. The book is published by a New Mexico-based group called Arab World and Islamic Resources , which was founded in 1990 with funding from organizations that include Saudi Aramco, a Saudi government-owned oil company.

'The Notebook'

The Notebook has come under fire for negatively portraying America and Israel while whitewashing Islam. It's been banned by some school districts.

"It's very difficult to find any discussion of ancient Israel--that it actually existed in time as a country,' Stotsky said of the Notebook. "That it had a king, that it had kings. That King Solomon existed, that Jerusalem was established as their capital city. It would discredit even the founding of the state of Israel by claiming that it was imposed by European or Western powers."

One of the Notebook's most controversial claims was that Muslim explorers beat Columbus to the New World. Older versions state that some Native American chiefs even had Muslim names, like Abdul-Rahim. These passages were eventually removed after widespread criticism from scholars and Native American groups. The Notebook's editor, Audrey Shabbas, did not respond to our requests for an interview.

The Middle East Policy Council--a pro-Arab advocacy group in Washington, D.C.--also conducts teacher training programs for K-12 teachers and has promoted the Arab World Studies Notebook as an ideal educational tool.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $1 million towards the Council's teacher training programs last year. The group did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

Stronger Curriculum Standards Needed

Stosky says there needs to be stronger standards for K-12 curriculums to help offset the influence of outside pressure groups. That's traditionally been a job for local governments.

"State governments have not been given the power to set curriculum," she said. "No, this is a local responsibility. It was devised this way by our framers. You know, the local governments, local communities, would develop their own curricula, decide what they would want to teach their children. State governments could assess, as they now do, but they can't prescribe curriculum for local communities. And the federal government certainly can't prescribe a curriculum. That's why we're having a battle over where national standards are going to come from."

The standards Stotsky helped craft for Massachusetts schools include what she calls "politically incorrect but historically accurate" objectives about the Islamic slave trade, Islamic expansionism and treatment of women in Islam.

"What state governments can do--which to me, is the path we were taking in Massachusetts--is to make sure that the standards you create for a subject have been thoroughly vetted by first rate scholars--and a range of first rate scholars," said Stotsky.

Title VI Battle Hits Capitol Hill

The battle over Title VI has also reached Capitol Hill. In August, Congress approved revisions to the Higher Education Act of 1965--which includes Title VI. Universities must now explain how their Title VI funds will be used--and K-12 schools are now required to reflect a wide range of views on global issues in their lesson plans. Whether the Saudi point of view is still among them remains to be seen.

*Original broadcast October 9, 2008.

[Michael]

Michael,
The situation of French Jews did not come to my attention until August 2006, when my older daughter and I visited Israel for a family event (I made a point of attending because of the Lebanon war then in progress). It was impossible to find a decent hotel in Tel Aviv largely because the city was overrun by French Jews who were vacationing in Israel rather than on the Riviera. There is in fact a steady trickle of French-Jewish immigrants to Israel, Montreal, and a few American destinations. I could easily see French xenophobia being directed equally at Jews and Muslims, but American circumstances are very different.

You are right about French xenophobia and, indeed, the narrow provincialism that meant that, before the change in the number-plate system in 2008, there were parts of la France profonde (the equivalent of Middle America), where a car with a 75 (Paris) or 92 (Neuilly) number-plate would attract hostile glares.

Of course, many French people, including politicians and the media, find it comforting to be able to present anti-semitic incidents as inter-communal clashes between two minorities.

Back in the ‘Seventies, people like my friends, professional people or bureaucrats, products of the Grandes Ecoles, were so optimistic about their country and, in particular, its educational system. They were (and are) totally committed to its ideal of laïcité and they had unbounded faith in its capacity to eliminate communautarism (that fertile source of all social ills) and to mould future citizens of the Republic, one and indivisible.

One might have thought that, as Jews, memories of Vichy would have given them some qualms; but no, with them, it was an article of faith that Vichy was not fascist, but counter-revolutionary – the last kick of the Throne and Altar conservatives against the great principles of 1789.

Now, they feel not only betrayed, by the growing anti-Zionism (and covert anti-Semitism) of the Left, which, in their imaginations, was always the old Left of Léon Blum and the Front Populaire but also disillusioned by the failure of the school system to integrate the second generation of immigrants and by the feral youth of the Zone.

And yet, and yet, still, even now, they continue to berate the racism of “Anglo-Saxon” multiculturalism and point with pride to the system’s sprinkling of successes – Ministers like Rachida Dati, Rama Yade and Fadela Amara.

One cannot but love them dearly and admire their generosity of spirit.

[Pastaneta]

You are right about French xenophobia and, indeed, the narrow provincialism that meant that, before the change in the number-plate system in 2008, there were parts of la France profonde (the equivalent of Middle America), where a car with a 75 (Paris) or 92 (Neuilly) number-plate would attract hostile glares.

As one with a 75 number I can vouch for that...

But you have only to go to Pétain to understand French xenophobia. Pétain represented the people who lost with the law of laïcité in 1905, who still saw France as la fille aînée de l'église, who detested the Jacobins and the fruits of the French Revolution. They saw a way to take back power even if it meant allying themselves to les bôches...

La France des lumières was always an urban phenomenon...

[Michael]

You are right about French xenophobia and, indeed, the narrow provincialism that meant that, before the change in the number-plate system in 2008, there were parts of la France profonde (the equivalent of Middle America), where a car with a 75 (Paris) or 92 (Neuilly) number-plate would attract hostile glares.

As one with a 75 number I can vouch for that...

But you have only to go to Pétain to understand French xenophobia. Pétain represented the people who lost with the law of laïcité in 1905, who still saw France as la fille aînée de l'église, who detested the Jacobins and the fruits of the French Revolution. They saw a way to take back power even if it meant allying themselves to les bôches...

La France des lumières was always an urban phenomenon...

That is just what I have been told about the Vichy régime, countless times, by my friends, that it was the last gasp of the monarchists and clericalists of the Counter-Revolutionary Old Guard.

I went to a convent school, when I was 5 and I remember a song from her region that an old French nun, Mother Marguerite Marie taught us:

Monsieur d'Charette a dit a ceux d'Ancenis (bis)
Mes amis ! Le Roi va ramener les fleurs de lys
Prends ton fusil Gregoire
Prends ta gourde pour boire
Prends ta Vierge d'ivoire
Nos messieurs sont partis
Pour aller a Paris

Quite recently, I heard some students from the Catholic University, singing the same song in La Roche-sur-Yon.

I told my Parisian friends and they were quite shocked.

[G.B. Vico]

Vive la Vendée!

There is nothing intrinsically anti-semitic in despising Jacobinism and disliking the fruits of the Franch revolution.

[Michael]

Vive la Vendée!

There is nothing intrinsically anti-semitic in despising Jacobinism and disliking the fruits of the Franch revolution.

Indeed there is not. I have, on several occasions, attended a Mass of Reparation on 21st January and I remember a very respectable Catholic magazine, noting, when the actress Catherine Deneuve was chosen as the model for the official busts of Marianne that she was a highly appropriate person to represent la gueuse, which is how they refer to the Republic and its symbol. (That, by the by, was rather unfair: I saw her once, in Le Fouquets and it was a face crying out to be marmorialized (if that's a word))

However, there is an unfortunate tendency for those on the Counter-Revolutionary Right to see Jews, freemasons, protestants and foreigners as the enemy. And, in some places, "foreigner" means anyone not born in the same parish.

I have happy memories of la Vendée where I was very pleasantly entertained at the Institut Catholique d'Études Supérieures. After a glass or two of Armignac, something of the old spirit can be detected. Curiously enough, I also knew a judge of the Cour de Cassation, who was a member of the Charette de La Contrie family and a relative of the former minister, Hervé de Charette. Like so many of the old noblesse, there were libertines and free-thinkers before the Revolution, since when they have been very devout

[Pastaneta]

Quite recently, I heard some students from the Catholic University, singing the same song in La Roche-sur-Yon.

I told my Parisian friends and they were quite shocked.

Well they are now the very minute minority, thanks God...

No, the ancien régime wasn't good. It was a discriminatory antisemitic regime which went against the interest of France in the new age. It was a totalitarian remnant who couldn't adapt (just ask Talleyrand who said on the aristocrates ils n'ont rien appris, ils n'ont rien oublié...)

Between the relics of the ancien régime and the Jacobins, I am for Robespierre and St Just (although my preference would have been Danton... But he lost!)

[Michael]

Quite recently, I heard some students from the Catholic University, singing the same song in La Roche-sur-Yon.

I told my Parisian friends and they were quite shocked.

Well they are now the very minute minority, thanks God...

No, the ancien régime wasn't good. It was a discriminatory antisemitic regime which went against the interest of France in the new age. It was a totalitarian remnant who couldn't adapt (just ask Talleyrand who said on the aristocrates ils n'ont rien appris, ils n'ont rien oublié...)

Between the relics of the ancien régime and the Jacobins, I am for Robespierre and St Just (although my preference would have been Danton... But he lost!)

Actually, I have rather a soft spot for Robespierre - perhaps, the only politician in history who was totally and transparantly honest.

In private life, he seems to have been just what one would imagine; this is how his landlord's daughter described him:

Elisabeth, who was in her mid-teens, talked many years later to the dramatist Sardou. ‘He was so good!’ she said of Robespierre. He listened to all her troubles. He was patient and kind. We used to go for walks and take his dog {Brount) to swim in the river; in season, we picked cherries and cornflowers...

[Spengler]

...and he used this funny machine with a big triangular blade to cut the cherries from the tree branches...