BONN (April 22, 2009) – The Islam expert and Vice-Chairman of the Institute of Islamic Studies, Albrecht Hauser, in view of the most recent statements by the Iranian president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, at the United Nations conference against racism which took place in Geneva in April 2009, warns about an increasingly growing and more openly promoted anti-Semitism in the Islamic world and also among Muslim youth in Europe. Ahmadinejad described Israel as, among other things, the “cruellest and most racist regime” that was founded “under the pretext of Jewish suffering”. In Albrecht Hauser’s judgement, anti-Semitic tendencies in the Islamic countries, as well as also among Muslim youth in Europe, have increased in the last decades in the course of the Near Eastern conflict. Here, the old anti-Jewish hate images and inflammatory anti-Semitic texts from Europe about a so-called worldwide Jewish conspiracy frequently are taken up and combined with the religiously and historically nurtured Muslim feeling of superiority toward the Jews.

The Accusation of a Crusader-Zionist War Against Islam

The influential Islamistic thinker Sayyid Qutb had alleged already in the twentieth century that the Jews were waging a Crusader-Zionist war against Islam, and were responsible for such corrupting influences as the emancipation of women, individualism, and secularism. Texts such as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, or Hitler’s Mein Kampf, enjoy great popularity to the present day in many Islamic countries. Islamistic circles indirectly welcome and support the National Socialist “final solution of the Jewish question”. In recent decades, Hamas and Hesbollah, which in most cases are active as social institutions as well as also terrorist combat units, have taken up Qutb’s theories and portrayed the conflict in the Near East in their, above all media-driven, propaganda as a kind of inevitable final struggle, and repeatedly have described in unmistakeable terms the destruction of the state of Israel as their final goal. Further indications of a growing and deeply rooted anti-Semitism are the strong social acceptance of old European theories of ritual murder and conspiracy, and anti-Semitic caricatures in Arabic print media.

Muhammad and the Jews: From Theological Critique to Embittered Hostility

An attitude toward the Jews ranging from critical to hostile is found already in the Koran and early Islamic history. After Muhammad at first had endeavoured to win recognition of his message among Jews and Christians and his missionary claim had been rejected overwhelmingly by them, he attacked the Jews all the more energetically, verbally, but also militarily, the more his power in Medina increased. He charges them with unbelief and mockery of the divine message, with arrogance, egoism, and reliance upon power and wealth. The charge of the falsification of Scripture is directed toward the Christians as well as also against the Jews. In Sura 5:82, the Jews, along with the polytheists, are described as the greatest enemies of the faithful. According to Sura 5:60 and Sura 7:166, God punishes the Jews for their refractoriness by changing them into “swine and apes”. Moreover, in the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda of numerous Islamistic scholars and activists, reference is made to the personal model of Muhammad. As the political, military, and religious leader of the Muslim community, he let the conquered Jewish tribes either be killed, expelled, or sold into slavery. The reduction of the Jews’ social status to the role of so-called protected wards was sanctioned already by Muhammad in the Koran.

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