Anti-semitism in the Islamic community

Religious bigots exist in most faiths. Monotheism in particular encourages bigotry by its very nature: Our God is the only God! Your version is a travesty of the true faith. Persecute!

I dislike religion for many reasons but this inevitable tendency towards intolerance and violence is surely one of the most hateful characteristics of the Abrahamic faiths.

As the wonderful Tom Lehrer in his song, National Brotherhood Week, put it:

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews

They certainly seem to over at London Muslim. LM's latest post has produced a particularly worrying outbreak of lies and falsehoods which can only serve to encourage the continuation of the nasty streak of anti-semitism that lies at the heart of Islam.

Following a post on the worrying increase of racial violence against Africans in Jerusalem, LM asks very reasonably why the world's media are not publicising this as they do the violence perpetrated by Muslims. However, someone has then posted in the comments section a list of "Quotes from the Torah - unbelievable!". The quotes (such as When the Messiah comes every Jew will have 2800 slaves.
Simeon Haddarsen, fol. 56-D) are all referenced and appear genuine.

In fact, the "quotes" are from an anti-semitic leaflet published by a Christian fundamentalist called Van Hyning in the early 20th century.

Van Hyning’s leaflet was widely reprinted, excerpted, added to and quoted from or referenced throughout the 1950s and 1960s by such publications as The Cross and the Flag, Common Sense, andThunderbolt. In the early 1970s the Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith continued to distribute a free tract quoting most of these lies. Rarely quoted today, these fabrications continue to be the foundation of many claims that Judaism is anti-Christian.

 That the leaflet is being used today by some Muslims to incite hatred of Jews is worrying... but not, I'm afraid, surprising.

Holocaust denial on Islamawareness.org

Many's the time that I hear there is no anti-semitism within the Islamic community. Indeed, in a previous post I recounted how "Kevin" had educated me in the distinction Allah draws between the racial and religious Jews and how there is no anti-Jewish race sentiment in the Qur'an (before listing the ahadith and Qur'anic verses that leave one under no illusion about what Mohammad thought of the Jews who had rejected his message). Those disturbing ayahs and hadith that mischievous islamaphobes keep on quoting are just aimed at the Jewish religion then... so that's all tickety-boo.
It doesn't take long, however, if one visits even mainstream Islamic sites, to come across some pretty worrying stuff.
Islamawareness.org, one of the most popular and mainstream Muslim sites on the web with pages for the ummah from Azerbaijan to Switzerland, has a delightful section linked on it's site called Jew-Watch which collates articles and news feeds specialising in stories that supposedly highlight zionist crimes and atrocities (the title Jew-watch must be some awkward mis-spelling then, huh?).
A favourite leitmotif of this section is Holocaust denial - although the articles are dressed up as "research" and "history", of course.
Here's a title from one of the articles to give you a taste of the sickening content ....

Down Sizing From EIGHT million to 30,000 dead Jews

It reminds me of a conversation about freedom of speech I had with "Kevin" a while back. I was trying to explain how important the liberty to express oneself was and how it was something of which we should be proud in the free, non-Muslim western world. "Kevin", without hesitation, asked why we couldn't deny the Holocaust then. 

Until that moment I hadn't really considered that he, an intelligent and well educated westerner, might have been contaminated by Islamic anti-semitism...