SANCTION FOR GENOCIDE: ANTISEMITISM AND THE EVOLUTION OF EVIL
Abstract: The evolution of antisemitism is analyzed from its start as a religious based
belief to systematic racial prejudice and to a nationalist ideology, emphasizing the
facilitating effect of these changes on the emergence of an eliminationist mentality.
Parallels are drawn between the development of German ideological antisemitism and
modern Islamic antisemitism, and the implications of these similarities for the
emergence and acceptance of a new genocidal mindset.
Key Words: psychology of evil, antisemitism, symbolic universe, doubling, eliminationist
mentality, Islam, genocide
In a previous article on the issue of the psychology of
evil, the Holocaust was used as the most representative example
of contemporary evil; other examples include the Armenian
Holocaust, the Gulag, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfour, modern slavery,
ethnic cleansing, right and left wing totalitarianism and
terrorism. Nonetheless, the Holocaust remains a historical
singularity in its scale, atrocity, and in the degree to which
large number of people that supported it, and participated in it,
felt empowered to discard the ethical and moral rules governing
social interactions. The purpose of the present paper is to try
and follow the factors that made possible this evolution of evil,
and to identify contemporary trends that are similar.
Starting from an evolutionary psychology point of view I
proposed a general model for the average person’s participation
in evil, based on the interaction of several mechanisms that are
adaptive when taken in isolation, but when considered together,
their interaction allows a person to commit deeds that can only
be characterized as evil, while at the same time permitting
him/her to retain a sense of moral probity and conformity with
the prevailing cultural values.
These mechanisms include humankind’s general acceptance of
symbolic reality, which frees thought from the bonds of the
concrete reality and allows the conceptualization of a
transcendental reality; the social construction of symbolic
universes that connect the individual to culture (Berger and
Luckman 1966); the denial of our mortality and the quest for
symbolic immortality which shield us from anxiety and create a
sense of continuity (Becker 1976), as well the interaction of
several psychological mechanisms whose function is to shelter the
individual from guilt or shame and help coping with extreme
situations: obedience to authority (Milgram 1969) numbing,
doubling (Lifton 1986), and self deception.
“The readiness to accept symbolic reality facilitates the
emergence of symbolic universes and replaces survival with the
search for symbolic immortality. In order to share symbolic
immortality, humans accept others’ definition of reality and, by
implication, tend to become subservient to authority (and) to
accept and share the stereotypes that facilitate the use of
violence. Psychic numbing and doubling insulate them against the
consequences (of their actions) and … self-deception (allows
them) to create life stories consistent with the sense of
meaning and history of the symbolic universe they subscribe to.
Free choice is present at every step of the way and individual
responsibility is never eschewed.”(Dan 2007)
One of the keys to understanding the dynamic of a person’s
participation in acts of violence against Jews is the
relationship between antisemitism and the symbolic universe of
the Western and the Islamic worlds. As proposed by Berger and
Luckman (1966), the symbolic universe is generated as a social
construct by the interactions that take place within it and
constitutes the cognitive, cultural, philosophical and
theological frame of reference for the totality of human
experience. “The symbolic universe is conceived as the matrix of
all (objective or subjective) meanings; the entire historic
society and the entire biography of the individual are seen as
taking place within this universe” (Berger and Luckman 1966, p.
96).
The symbolic universe is supported by maintenance
mechanisms, which “ensure its continuity and internal consistency
and act as a safeguard against dissonance” (Bergen and Luckman,
1966). Among the most important such mechanisms are culture,
moral values, religion, mythology, theology, philosophy and
science.
These allow the emergence of a notion of the sacred (Becker
1976), transcending individual existence and mitigating of one’s
sense of mortality by permitting the accumulation of “immortality
symbols” such as fame, power and wealth, which confer the
individual symbolic immortality: not biological but cultural
continuity. The promise of symbolic immortality is an intrinsic
part of our symbolic universe which gives existence its meaning,
being in fact a universe maintenance mechanism.
One of the distinctive Jewish characteristics is the ability
to adjust to many different societies while at the same time
retaining a Jewish identity. The Jews’ contribution to the host
culture, and their perceived level of influence, is generally
disproportionate with their number. Furthermore, this
characteristic did not abate when the Jews converted or became
assimilated; on the contrary one could argue that it became
amplified. Because of their forever adapting yet unchanging
nature and their accumulation of immortality symbols, such as
power and wealth, the Jews are seen as having obtained a measure
of symbolic immortality. Considered from an antisemitic
perspective this is a zero sum game: the Jews obtain their
symbolic immortality at the detriment of other ethnic groups.
Antisemitism is an integral part of Christian identity,
which is an important universe maintenance mechanism of our
(Western European) symbolic universe, so important, in fact that
it can exist paradoxically even in the absence of Jews. For
example, antisemitism persisted in England for 400 years after
the expulsion of the Jews. The very existence of the Jews is a
permanent source of dissonance to Christian religion and beliefs.
Their role is ambivalent and their acceptance in the new faith is
a source of conflict. Thus Christianity, seen as a universe
maintenance mechanism is essentially flawed because it
incorporates a contradiction at its core: the Jews are God’s
chosen people and Jesus is Jewish, but the Jews are guilty of
deicide. In turn, this creates cognitive dissonance.
Antisemitism, like all stereotypes, is unchanged by cognitive
dissonance because every countervailing example is dismissed as
an exception to the rule: Jesus and the Apostles are “good Jews”,
but they are an exception; all the others are bad. Incorporating
antisemitism into Christianity is the strategy through which the
core cognitive dissonance is silenced and internal consistency
restored. “Antisemitism …is more than a set of beliefs and
corresponding attitudes: it is a complex cognitive-emotional
structure linking the individual to cultural and societal values
and playing a role in identity formation and maintenance,
management of aggressive behavior, interpersonal relations and
general worldview… At the individual level, anti-Semitism is self
reinforcing and self justifying, and like a stereotype,
impervious to cognitive dissonance. Like a defense mechanism, it
distorts reality in a systematic way. At cultural level, it is an
integral part of religion. At the small group and societal level,
it is triggered, maintained, and reinforced by two ritualized
behaviors: the passion play, and the blood libel (Dan 2008)
Religious antisemitism also contains its own inhibitory
mechanisms represented in Christianity by the injunctions of
Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard, based on Psalm 59 (“Slay them
not least my people forget”) , and in Islam by the acceptance of
Jews as “people of the Book”. From a social-cultural perspective,
this allowed the issuance of edicts that partially protected the
Jews, such as the papal bull “Sicut Judaeis” (Constitution for Jews)
issued by Calixtus II in 1120 and re-issued numerous times, or
the 1553 “firman” of Suleiman the Magnificent which transferred
the jurisdiction over blood libel cases from local judges to the
jurists of the Sultan. At the personal level antisemitism is an
internalized, normative structure, allowing for continued hatred
and aggression against the Jews, but its social expression is
subject to regulation, being limited by the decrees of the Church
or by the “firman” of the Sultan. As a result, despite the fact
that the logical conclusion of antisemitism requires the
destruction or conversion of all the Jews, religious
antisemitism, in both Christianity and Islam, lead to wide spread
persecution, massacres, mass expulsions, forced conversions,
pogroms and blood libel, but not to extermination or the adoption
of an “eliminationist mindset” (Goldhagen,1996)
However, ideological antisemitism does not contain such
safeguards, and as it will be argued, neither does modern Islamic
antisemitism. They both draw on religious antisemitism, but have
replaced the Jews as a religious entity with the Jews as the
representatives of a race and a political enemy. Religious
antisemitism portrayed the Jews as a threat to symbolic
immortality; racist antisemitism portrays them as a threat to the
biological existence of a nation, while ideological antisemitism
portrays them as bent on world domination.
The antisemitism of Nazi Germany which resulted in the
Holocaust constitutes a new phase in the evolution of evil: the
emergence of a genocidal mentality and its acceptance by an
entire society and culture resulting in modifications of the
ethical value system which made extermination morally acceptable
and facilitated peoples’ participation in it. The thesis of the
present paper is that there are significant similarities between
German antisemitism and modern Islamic antisemitism: taken to
their ultimate conclusions both are a new phase in the evolution
of evil, lacking any safeguards against the emergence of an
eliminationist mindset, and as such constitute a moral sanction
for genocide.
Antisemitism, racism and
ideology
Ironically, the definition of Jews as a distinct race has
its roots in the success of religious antisemitism in Spain and
Portugal. The mass conversions of Jews to Catholicism created the
category of “New Christians” with the subcategories of
“Conversos” (derogatorily “Marranos”) From the point of view of
the Catholic Church, those converted and their descendants were
Christians, and had to be treated as such. The true enemies of
the Church should be considered those who continue to
discriminate against them, asserted no less an authority than
“the defender of Faith”, Cardinal Juan de Torequemada, the uncle
of the future Grand Inquisitor. Historians differ in their
interpretation as to whether the majority of the Conversos were
good Catholics or “crypto Jews”, continuing to practice their
faith in secret. The fact is that even converted and assimilated,
the Jews remained an identifiable group. As the Conversos
continued to prosper and some reached positions of prominence,
popular resentment against them increased, fueled by demagogues
within the Church. Answering to populist pressure the city of
Toledo issued in 1449 the “Sentencia Estatuto”, prohibiting the Jews
and their descendants, convert or not, from holding any public
office “as this causes harm to “old Christians of pure lineage (
a los Christianos viejos lindos)” (Roth, 1995, p.91). As Roth notes this
is the first mention of the “purity of blood.” However, Netanyahu
(1995) traces the origins of racial, as opposed to religious,
discrimination against the Jews much earlier: the Fourth Toledan
Council of 633 prohibits the granting of public office “ to Jews
or those who are of the Jews”, and the “Liber Iudiciorum” of the
Visigoths, (later translated as the codex of Spanish law “Fuero
Juzgo”, adopted by Ferdinand III in 1241), prohibits “Jews,
whether baptized or unbaptized to testify against Christians”
( 1995, p.400). Netanyahu further notes that “the phrase ”those
who are of the Jews” has unquestionable racial connotations…
Indeed, the whole purpose of these laws, as we see it, was to
make clear that in the matter they referred to there was no
distinction between Jew and convert.” (1995, p. 401). This framed
the discussion of Jewish identity and issues concerning the
status of the Jews in society in racial terms, positing
“(two)inseparable relationships (one) between racial and moral
qualities of man and another that imputed to Jews as a race a
predisposition to evil” (Roth, 1995,p. 451)
Substituting faith with race as the source of Jewish
identity changed antisemitism, conferring to the perceived
negative characteristics of the Jews the immutability of a
biological fact. Furthermore, it allows for a false
quantification of one’s Jewishness based on ancestry, as
illustrated by the 16th, 17th and 20th Century purity of blood
statutes.
As Western societies grew increasingly secular, antisemitism
based on race started to displace religious antisemitism, first
in Germany and then in France. (Modern antisemitism is a German
import” wrote Leroy-Beaulieu in 1893, p.25). The emerging new
sciences of ethnology and comparative philology, and the work of
Darwin provided a framework for rephrasing the issue of
antisemitism in the terms of the comparison and competition
between the Semitic and Aryan civilizations. The so called
findings were disseminated in simplified form in the antisemitic
press of the day. For example, Friedrich von Hellwald, the author
of “The History of Culture in Its Natural Evolution“ adopted
cultural Darwinism and saw the evolution of culture as the fight
between superior and inferior civilizations. He was also the
editor of the influential journal “Ausland” and wrote (1872,
p.901) , paraphrasing Ernest Renan " The Jews are not merely a
different religious community, but—and this is to us the most
important factor—ethnically an altogether different race. The
European feels instinctively that the Jew is a stranger who
immigrated from Asia. The so-called prejudice is a natural
sentiment. Civilization will overcome the antipathy against the
Israelite who merely professes another religion, but never that
against the racially different Jew. The Jew is cosmopolitan, and
possesses a certain astuteness which makes him the master of the
honest Aryan. In Eastern Europe the Jew is the cancer slowly
eating into the flesh of the other nations. Exploitation of the
people is his only aim. Selfishness and lack of personal courage
are his chief characteristics; self-sacrifice and patriotism are
altogether foreign to him."
In his 1886 antisemitic tract “La France Juive” Edouard
Drumont describes the Jew as a polar opposite of the Aryan: The
Jew is “of the earth”, cowardly, has substituted violence with
cunning, has the cult of money, is mercantile and miserly, gets
rich at others’ expense, has the temperament of an
oppressor ,lacks any creative faculty and exploits the inventions
of the Aryan . On the other hand, the Aryan is “a son of heaven”,
noble and generous, enthusiastic and heroic, an inventor and
discoverer, honest and confident to the point of being naïve.
( 1886,pp.9-11) Quoting, like van Hellwald, Renan’s ideas, he
writes :”The Semitic race can be recognized almost exclusively
by negative characteristics. It lacks a mythology, an epic,
science, philosophy… a civil life, all in all an absence of
complexity, of nuance, of feelings.” (1886, p.11). Drumont goes
on to describe the physical characteristics of the Jew, foremost
among them the hooked nose, salient ears, and the “soft and
melting hand of the hypocrite or traitor.” (1886, p. 34) Having
thus set the stage, Drumont faces the daunting task of explaining
how the superior Aryan is dominated by the lowly Jew. This
conundrum is solved by a cognitive sleight of hand, using
circular reasoning to make what has to be proven its own proof:
the inferiority of the Jews is proven by the fact that they need
a worldwide conspiracy to maintain their continued dominance.
Since the existence of such a conspiracy is beyond doubt, the
inferiority of the Jews is also beyond doubt. The access to power
is made possible by the underhanded and treacherous methods of
the Jews, who “for centuries have monopolized the profession of
medicine which facilitated their spying by allowing them access
everywhere.” (1886, p.32) As for the relationship between the
Jews and other peoples “The Jew will never be the equal of a man
of Christian race (sic). He creeps at your knees or crushes you
under his heel, he is beneath or above, never by your
side.”(1886, p.22)
I quoted Drumont to some length, despite the fact that his
entire book is a gigantic non sequitur, because most of his ideas
have been adopted wholesale and can be found in Nazi antisemitic
propaganda. Systematizing these ideas, Bering (1992) enumerates
some core antisemitic beliefs: ““Jews are not only partially but
totally bad by nature… their bad traits are incorrigible.” They
remain “essentially alien” to their host societies and “bring
disaster (on them) or on the whole world” Because their bad
nature is a generalized trait, Jews must be seen not as
individuals but as a group. These beliefs facilitate the
depersonalization of the Jews, making them the focus of hostile
projections and justify pre-emptive violence against them,
rationalized as self defense.
One should note that racial antisemitism incorporates the
religious antisemitism, and ideological antisemitism incorporates
racial antisemitism. Thus the Jews are seen at the same time as a
threat to symbolic immortality, as a threat to the existence of
the nation as a biological entity, and a threat to the existence
of society and culture. As German society became an increasingly
closed society, the “pathology and fragility of reason” (Morar
2006) also increased. The degree of distortion of reality
required to adopt antisemitic beliefs expanded with the type of
antisemitism in question: religious antisemitism requires the
belief that the Jews are damned for having killed Jesus, racial
antisemitism requires one to believe that negative and
inheritable traits can be generalized to an entire people, and
that the Jews are a threat to the “purity of blood”, while
ideological antisemitism requires a paranoid distortion of
history and the projection of one’s own genocidal tendencies
onto the Jews by portraying them as seeking world dominance and
being a physical threat to the existence of a nation. For
example, Hitler wrote:” Today…it is the inexorable Jew who
struggles for domination over the nations. No nation can remove
this hand from its throat except by the sword. Only the assembled
and concentrated might of a national passion rearing up in its
strength can defy the internal enslavement of peoples” (1971,
p.651) and Himmler declared that “we had a moral right vis-a-vis
our people to annihilate this people which wanted to annihilate
us.” The qualities of this brand of German antisemitism are
described by Goldhagen : the “hallucinatory image of the Jews;
the specter of evil that they appeared to Germans to be casting
over Germany; Germans’ virulent hatred of them; the “abstract”
character of beliefs that informed the treatment which its
bearers accorded real Jews; the unquestioned nature of these
beliefs; and the eliminationist logic which led Germans to
approve the persecution, ghettoization and extermination of the
Jews.”( 1996,p.89)
These beliefs formed the basis for the Nuremberg laws which
translated ideology into policy and systematically excluded Jews
from society: prohibition of intermarriage and non conjugal sex
with Jews (Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor 9-15-
1935), barring Jews from holding public office, destruction of
synagogues (11-11-1938), dissolving all Jewish businesses ( 11-
23-1938) cutting Jewish homes’ heat and electricity (2-2-1938),
forbidding Jewish children to attend German schools ( 11-13-1938)
forbidding Jews to own radios (9-29-1939) telephones (7-20-1940),
bicycles (5-15-1941), forbidding Jews from using public
transportation (9-18-1941) or public phones (12-26-1941),
mandatory wearing of the yellow star (9-1-1941), prohibition of
friendly relations with Jews (11-24-1941). These laws were
emulated by other states that subscribed to Nazi ideology. For
example in Romania Mihail Sebastian’s “Journal” notes the
confiscation of Jewish property (3-26-1941), forbidding Jews to
own radios (4-20-1941) forced labor for Jews (8-2-1941) mandatory
wearing of the yellow star (9-15-41) confiscation of skis (12-1-
1941), bicycles (8-12-1942) food rationing for Jews (9-10-1942)
and the removing of the works of Jewish authors from bookstores
Nazi posters for the propaganda films “The Jew Süss” and
“Eternal Jew”
Source: The German Propaganda Archive,calvin.edu
Once the Jews were excluded from society, dehumanized and
falsely represented as a multiple threat, all the inhibitions
against using the most extreme measures against them were
neutralized. “The Jewish problem” required a solution. Addressing
this point, Goebbels said in 1944 that “In the case of the Jews
there are not merely a few criminals, but all Jews rose from
criminal roots, and in their very nature are criminal. The Jews
are no people like other people but a pseudo-people welded
together by hereditary criminality…The annihilation of Jews is no
loss to humanity but just as useful as capital punishment or
protective custody against other criminals.”
Lifton coined the term “controlling image” for the highly
symbolic, emotionally loaded metaphors that distill the essence
of a culture and help to both motivate and rationalize behavior.
He interviewed several Nazi doctors who carried out the selection
process at Auschwitz, as well as medical experiments on the
prisoners. Lifton described the relevant controlling image that
facilitated the emergence of an eliminationist mindset as
“killing in the name of healing” – a rationalization helped by
equating the very existence of the Jews with the symptom of a
disease that threatens the well being of the national organism.
The doctors were shielded from the psychological consequences of
their actions, such as guilt and shame, by believing themselves
the agents of a higher authority to which they readily submitted
(Milgram 1969), and by psychological doubling,”the division of
the self in two functioning wholes so that a part self acts as an
entire self” (Lifton 1986, p.418)., He named these two selves
“the Auschwitz self” and “the prior self”. “There is dialectic
between the two selves in terms of autonomy and connection. The
individual Nazi doctor needed his Auschwitz self to function
psychologically in an environment so antithetical to his previous
ethical standards. At the same time, he needed his prior self in
order to continue to see himself as humane physician, husband,
father. The Auschwitz self had to be both autonomous and
connected to the prior self that gave rise to it.”(1986, p.419)
The use of doubling allowed the doctors to give meaning to the
Auschwitz experience and to function within it free of guilt.
This process does not eliminate conscience, but transfers its
requirements: within the Auschwitz self, for instance the
criteria for good would include discipline, loyalty, duty, and
the controlling image of “killing in the name of healing”
facilitated conceptualizing the extermination of human beings in
those terms. For example, due to the near starvation diet,
Auschwitz prisoners who worked could be expected to survive
approximately 12 weeks. The ID number tattooed on the prisoners’
arm allowed the guards to keep track of the prisoners’ time in
Auschwitz, and those who had survived for more than the expected
period of time were executed, because it meant that either they
avoided work or stole food. Within the Auschwitz self this action
could be rationalized as an issue of fairness, enforcing the
rules and getting rid of parasites.
Much of the criticism of Goldhagen stems from the fact that
he supposedly subscribed to the notion of German collective
guilt. For instance Wehler (1998) questions the existence of a
specific German brand of eliminationist anstisemitism and asks
”how deeply was antisemitism rooted in the thinking of millions
of Germans, and to what extent did it make possible and foster
the process that started with social discrimination and led, via
psychological harassment, active persecution and pogroms to a
comprehensive Final Solution?” (1998, p.96)
The answer is self evident: obviously sufficiently deep in
enough Germans to carry out the Holocaust, and sufficiently deep
in the rest of the Germans to tacitly approve of it or be silent
about it. That is why I believe that focusing on intentionality
(willing versus unwilling Germans) misses the mark. The issue is
the existence of a well known, very public, culturally shared
ideological and legal framework that permeated the entire society
and made it possible to justify and support the extermination of
the Jews, a framework that connected the individual to
transcendental values. In other words, for Nazi German society,
ideological antisemitism was a symbolic universe maintenance
mechanism which facilitated the emergence of an eliminationist
mentality. In an obscene congruence, psychological mechanisms
evolved to help the individual cope with extreme situations
protected those who carried out the genocide from the
psychological consequences of their actions, and self deception
allowed those who passively acquiesced in it to convince
themselves that there was nothing they could have done, and that
in any case they did nothing wrong. Goldhagen’s charge hit a raw
nerve because it exposed the fallacy of trying to formulate an
explanation of the Holocaust based on the participation of
limited groups, rather than considering it a society wide
phenomenon.
Islam and antisemitism
There is considerable dispute among scholars as to whether
antisemitism in Islam is a recent phenomenon, imported from
Europe and amplified by the creation of the state of Israel and
the ensuing conflicts, or, far from being a modern phenomenon, it
is part of Islam from its inception. This is not my area of
expertise, and a discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of
this paper. However it appears clear that one can find evidence
of antisemitism in the Qur’an itself, in Qur’anic commentaries,
as well as in historical data. What the scholars seem to debate
is the relative degree of antisemitism and the relative wellbeing of
the Jews under Christian and, respectively Muslim rule; the harsh
reality of their life under either cannot be refuted. For example
Maimonides wrote in his 1172 “Epistle to the Jews of Yemen” after
fleeing from Cordoba to avoid the Almohads’ persecution: “The
nation of Ishmael…persecute us severely and devise ways to harm
us and to debase us…None has matched it in debasing and
humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have. We
have not done, as our sages of blessed memory instructed us,
bearing the lies and absurdities of Ishmael. We listen, but
remain silent…In spite of all this, we are not spared from the
ferocity of their wickedness. On the contrary, the more we suffer
and chose to conciliate them, the more they chose to act
belligerently toward us.”(Translated by B. Cohen)
Maimonides’ words stand in stark contrast with the idyllic
images of Jewish life in the Golden Age of Moorish Spain or later
under Ottoman rule that one finds in the works of other authors.
As Bostom and Ibn Warraq (2008) indicate, evidence of negative
attitudes toward Jews can be found in the Qur’an, in the Hadith
(the collection of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and of
things that were said in his presence), and in the Sirat (early
Muslim biographies of Prophet Muhammad.) The Jews are described
with two terms “Banu Isra-il” meaning “Children of Israel” and
“yahud” with its variations meaning “Jew”. As a general rule
remarks referring to “Banu Isra-il” are positive and those referring
to “yahud” are negative.
The Qur’an decribes the Jews as cursed (2:61) “And
humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were
visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved
in Allah’s revelation and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was
for their disobedience and transgression.” (For the sake of
consistency, all the quotes are by M.W. Pickthall translation
“The Glorious Qur’an” listed in the book referenced below. For
more comprehensive quotes, please see chapter 2 of “The Legacy of
Islamic Antisemitism, Prometheus Books, 2008, Andrew Bostom Ed.
which provides the complete text of each relevant verse in three
different translations of the Qur’an) “Those of the Children of
Israel who went astray were cursed by the tongue of David and of
Jesus, son of Mary. That was because they rebelled and used to
transgress.”(3:112). The Jews are a people that has passed away
(2:134) repeatedly punished by Allah by sending the Babylonians
and the Romans against them (17:4, 17:5) and dispersed by Allah
(7:168). They have broken their covenant “Then because of their
breaking of their covenant and their disbelieving the revelations
of Allah, and their slaying the prophets wrongfully, and their
saying: our hearts are hardened-Nay, but Allah set a seal upon
them for their disbelief, so that they believe not save a few.”
(4:155). The Jews misinterpret and distort “Some of those who are
Jews change words from their context and say: “We hear and
disobey; hear thou as one who heareth not” and “Listen to us!
distorting with their tongues and slandering religion. If they
had said: “We hear and we obey: hear thou and look at us” it had
been better for them, and more upright. But Allah hath cursed
them for their disbelief, so they believe not, save a few.”
(4:46). The Jews are liars (2:78) who willfully distort the word
of Allah (2:75) and whose hearts have been hardened and have
become like the rocks or worse (2:74) and are the servant of the
Devil(4:60). Unless they accept Islam they will be turned into
apes and swine (2:65, 7:166; 5:60), and will burn in the fires of
hell. “Lo! Those who disbelieve, among the People of the
Scripture and the idolaters, will abide in fire of hell. They are
the worst of created beings.” (98:6, also 4:55, 5:29 and 58:14-
19).
As a general rule, the “Hadith” contains more negative
references to the Jews than the Qur-an. Here are a few examples,
excerpted from M.M. Khair‘s translation of the “Sahih Bukhari”
quoted in Bostom’s 2008 book:
Vol.3, bk.47, no.786: “Narrated Anas bin Malik: A Jewess
brought a poisoned (cooked) sheep for the Prophet who ate from
it. She was brought to the Prophet and he was asked,”Shall we
kill her?” He said “No”. I could see the effect of the poison on
the palate of the mouth of Allah’s Apostle.” (2008, p.229)
Vol.4,bk.52,no.176: Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar: Allah’s
Apostle said, “You (Muslims) will fight the Jew till some of them
will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray) them saying “O
‘Abdullah (slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so
kill him.” (2008, pp. 229-230)
Vol.2,bk 23, no 414: Narrated ‘Urwa: Aisha said,”The Prophet
in his fatal illness said, ‘Allah cursed the Jews and the
Christians because they took the graves of their Prophets as
places for praying” Aisha added, ”Had it not been for that the
grave of the Prophet would have been more prominent but I am
afraid it might be takes (as a) place for praying.”(2008, p.229)
Vajda (1937, 2008) classifies the material in the Hadiths
that refer to Jews in three categories: those which regard Jewish
customs, those which describe the behavior of the Jews towards
Muslims and the Prophet, and those which describe the attitude of
Moslems towards Jews. He writes “the more Muhammad advanced his
career in Medina, the more his resentment of the Jews grew…since
the Jews, not content with disappointing his expectations of
seeing them rally unreservedly to his cause, riddled him with
sarcasm (and) cast doubts on the authenticity of his prophetic
mission” (1937, 2008, p. 240) The Jews are followers of the Dajjal
(the Muslim Antichrist), who is Jewish. Furthermore, the Jews and
Christians will be exchanged for the Muslim sinners who are
burning in hell, and “the sin of certain Muslims will weigh on
them like mountains, but on the day of the resurrection, these
sins will be lifted and laid upon the Jews” (1937, 2008, p.246)
As Vajda and others have remarked, the Hadiths also contain
passages that describe the Jews in a positive light, but the
preponderance of references to Jews is negative. Maimonides
alluded to a possible reason for the anti Jewish sentiment:
“Since they could not find any proof whatsoever in all of the
Torah, nor any verse or allusion they might latch onto, their
only recourse was to say that we have changed and altered the
text of the Torah and deleted that man’s name (Muhammad) from
it.” (Epistle to the Jews of Yemen)
I believe that the above passages prove that Islamic
attitudes toward Jews parallel those found in Christianity: while
being recognized as “People of the Book”, they are also seen as
being cursed by Allah, rejecting and distorting his message and
possibly causing the death of his Prophet. Just like in the case
of Christianity, the ambivalence regarding the existence and
acceptance of Jews is a source of conflict and generates
cognitive dissonance, albeit less of it.. Islam, perhaps the most
important maintenance mechanism of the symbolic universe based on
it, incorporates a contradiction at its core and uses
antisemitism to silence cognitive dissonance and restore internal
consistency
.Because the Qur-an says that the Jews are cursed with
“humiliation and wretchedness”, they have to pay ”jizya” or poll
tax, and like al non-Muslims have the inferior status of “dhimmi”.
Goitein (1970) wrote that “Christians and Jews were not citizens
of the state, not even second hand citizens. They were outsiders
under the protection of the Muslim state, a status characterized
by the term dhimma, for which protection they had to pay a poll
tax specific to them. They were also exposed to a great number of
discriminatory and humiliating laws.”
Maoz (1975) describes the life conditions under Ottoman
rule: “They were inferior subjects in the Muslim-Ottoman state
which was based on the principle of Muslim superiority.. Their
testimony was not accepted in the courts of justice, and in the
case of the murder of a Jew or Christian by a Muslim, the latter
was not usually condemned to death. In addition… they were
forbidden to carry arms…to ride horses in towns or to wear Muslim
dress. They were… often subjected to oppression, extortion and
violence both by local authorities and by the Muslim population.
The Jews in Ottoman Palestine and Syria lived under such
ambivalent and precarious conditions for a number of centuries”
(quoted in Bostom, 2008 ,p.87).
Below you can see a painting by A. Dehodenq: The Execution
of a Moroccan Jewess, Sol Hachuel, for apostasy in 1834. Her
death was narrated by Eugenio Maria Romero in 1837, indicating
that even in the middle of the eighteens century Jews in Moslem
lands were put to death for apostasy.
Bat Ye’or (1985) characterized the dhimma status as having
“the general character of a system of oppression, sanctioned by
contempt and justified by the principle of inequity between
Muslims and dhimmis.. Singled out as objects of hatred and
contempt by visible signs of discrimination, they were
progressively decimated during periods of massacres, forced
conversions and banishments.” ( quoted in Bostom, p.171)
The historical record of Jewish life under Islamic rule is
also replete with violent incidents, although it can be argued,
fewer and less violent than those that took place under Christian
rule.: Caliph Haroun al Rashid orders all Jews to wear a yellow
belt, and Christians a blue one ( 807); Caliph Al-Hakim bi Amr
Allah orders Jews to wear a heavy wooden golden calf, and the
Christians a heavy wooden cross around their necks, and both to
wear distinctive black hats (1008-1013); there are forced
conversions (1016 Kairouan, Tunisia, 1107 Morocco, 1148-1212
during the Almohad rule in Andalusia, 1165 and 1198 Yemen, 1323
Marrakesh, 1678 Yemen) mass expulsions (1066 Granada, 1107
Morocco, “Surgun” (forced exile) of whole Jewish communities
under Ottoman rule, 1934 Afghanistan), massacres (1032 Fez, 1066
Granada, 1090 Granada,1790-1792 Morocco, 1805 Algeria, 1840
Damascus, 1840 Rhodes, April 1920 Jerusalem pogrom, May 1 -4 1921
Jaffa riots, August 23 1929 Hebron massacre, 1941, Bagdad Farhoud
pogrom) and blood libel cases ( 1545 Amasya, 1840 Damascus, 1840
Rhodes).
By and large, Islamic antisemitism appears to have been much
less connected with the concept of the Jews as a different race.
The ideas of racist antisemitism seem to have been a Western
European import, which had arrived with colonialism, and had
found a fertile soil with the advent of Zionism. On the other
hand, the separation between religion and policy, between church
and state which characterizes modern Western European states does
not exist and does not make sense in Islam. Furthermore, I think
that the separation of church and state is the legal expression
of a moral principle that permeates Western democratic societies
and value systems: pro-social acts in the name of religion are
seen as acceptable, but antisocial acts are not. We admire Mother
Theresa but loathe the 9/11 hijackers. This perspective is
missing in Islam, since the mentality of jihad can be used to make
violent actions in the name of religion morally acceptable. That
is why in Islamic culture the transition from religious
antisemitism to ideological antisemitism was a natural one. This
new, more radical trend was represented by Sheikhs Izz al-Din al-
Quassam and Hajj Amin el-Husseini. “Both these leaders relied
upon the ideology of jihad, with its virulent anti-infidel (i.e.
anti-Jewish, anti-Christian and anti-Western) incitement, to
garner popular support.” ( Bostom, 2008, p. 92) Al-Quassam
encouraged the use of violence against Jews and founded “The
Black Hand” secret society whose goal was to target Jews for
terror and murder. Al- Husseini became the mufti of Jerusalem and
was an ardent Nazi sympathizer. He urged the killing of all Jews,
not only Zionists, and incited the 1941 Farhoud pogrom in
Baghdad. After an unsuccessful coup attempt, he sought refuge in
Germany and recruited Bosnian Muslims for the SS. “The mufti’s
objectives for these recruits –and Muslims in general- were made
explicit during his wartime radio broadcasts from Berlin, heard
throughout the Arab world: an international campaign of genocide
against the Jews For example, during his March 1 1944 , broadcast
he stated ”Kill the Jews wherever you find them This pleases God,
history and religion.” (Schechtman, 1993, quoted in Bostom, 2008,
p. 95) According to Wanner (1986) the mufti garnered the support
of Himmler and Eichmann and engaged in an active letter writing
campaign, urging the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania
to cancel exit visas granted to Jews, resulting in the revocation
of 80.000 visas by Romania and 400.000 visas by Hungary.
Consequently most of the Hungarian Jews were exterminated. Hitler
considered the mufti the representative of the Arab liberation
movement which he saw as a”natural ally.” Hirszowicz (1966),
states that the mufti also “emphasized that the Germans and Arabs
had common enemies: bolshevism, Britain and the Jews. Hitler
assured the mufti that Germany’s uncompromising war against the
Jews included active opposition to the Jewish national home in
Palestine and that her objective was the destruction of the
Jewish element residing in the Arab countries.” (1966,p.218)
Karl Jung commented on the convergence between fascism and
Islam” We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new
Islam. He is already on his way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion
in Germany is Islamic. They are all drunk with (their) wild god.
That can be the historic future.” (1939, vol. 18, p.281) Speer
(1970) wrote in his memoirs that Hitler talked wistfully about
the more vigorous Islam which he considered more suitable for the
Germans than the “flabby and meek” Christianity.
The racial hatred and imagery of Nazi ideological
antisemitism have been adopted wholesale by modern Islamic
antisemitism, as can be seen in antisemitic imagery present in
the TV shows, in literature, in the cartoons published in the
Arabic press, in the frequent invocation of the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion as a historical document, in the use of blood
libel, and the diatribes directed against Jews in general, as
opposed to Israelis or Zionists.
Similarity of themes in Nazi and Arabic cartoons: The Jew
and Ariel Sharon as ogres. Source: The German Propaganda
Archive,calvin.edu,and bornavol.blogspot.com
Blood Libel theme in Nazi and Arabic cartoons. Source: The
German Propaganda Archive,calvin.edu, and jewpi.com
At the same time, a genocidal mentality seems to be emerging
and to gain acceptance. For example, Hassan Nasrallah, secretary
general of the Hezbollah is quoted in FrontPagemagazine.com on
December 1, 2006 as saying “If we searched the entire world for a
person more cowardly, despicable and week in psyche, we would not
find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli..If
they (the Jews) all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble
of going after them worldwide.” (2006, quoted in
Bostom,2008,p.145)
Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Yacoub, stated on Al-Rahma
TV on January 17, 2009, (al translations are from MEMRI):"We must
believe that our fighting with the Jews is eternal, and it will
not end until the final battle...You must believe that we will
fight, defeat, and annihilate them, until not a single Jew
remains on the face of the Earth.”.
On a the same station, on January 17, 2009, Egyptian cleric
Sheik Said Al-'Afani stated:”[The Jews] are the accursed people,
who incurred the wrath of Allah. They are the offspring of snakes
and vipers, the slayers of our Prophet Muhammad, whose death was
a consequence of his being poisoned by a Jewish woman... We
should know that the Jews are the slayers of the prophets…the
Jews are behind all the ruin and destruction in the world…The
Jews were behind World War I and World War II. When the American
commander said that Japan had agreed to the terms of surrender,
Rothschild the American – or rather, Roosevelt the American – was
told by the Jewish loan sharks to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The Jews were behind the English Revolution. The Jews
were behind the French Revolution. The Jews were behind the U.S.
Civil War in 1869-1866 [sic]. The Jews were behind the French
coup of 1815. The Jews were behind the war between France and
Prussia. The Jews were behind the rise of Communism. Karl Marx
was a Jew. The Jews instigated war by means of sex. The Jewish
Mathilde inspired Johnson to carry out the 1967 war.”
Palestinian preacher Ibrahim Mahdi declared in a sermon:
"Oh beloved of Allah... One of the Jews' evil deeds is what has
come to be called 'the Holocaust,' that is, the slaughter of the
Jews by Nazism. However, revisionists [historians] have proven
that this crime, carried out against some of the Jews, was
planned by the Jews' leaders, and was part of their policy.”
Bostom (2008) quotes Husayn Fadlallah, senior clerical
authority for Hezbollah who “repeatedly refers to anti-Jewish
archetypes in the Qur-an, hadith and sira: the corrupt,
treacherous and aggressive nature of the Jews, their reputation
as killers of prophets, who spread corruption on earth; and the
notion that the Jews engaged in a conspiratorial effort against
the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Fadlallah argues that ultimately”
either we destroy Israel or Israel destroys us”’(2008, pp.144-145
Finally, Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais , the leading imam of the
Grand mosque of Mecca, stated in a April 19 2002 sermon:” Read
history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are
the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring,
infidels, distorters of [others'] words, calf-worshippers,
prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race
whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs.”
I believe that these examples, which were necessarily
limited because of consideration of space (for a much more
comprehensive approach, the reader is directed again to Bostom’s
book), constitute sufficient proof that the eliminationist
mindset is an integral part of modern Islamic antisemitism.
Furthermore, far from being an isolated modern phenomenon, this
mindset appears to be the logical outgrowth of religious and
historical prejudice, and the present day propagandists takes
pains to make references to history and to the Qur-an and the
Hadith. The anti-Jewish prejudice demonstrated by these quotes
has precisely the hallucinatory, delusional quality Goldhagen
identified in the antisemitism of Nazi Germany, and the advances
of the Taliban in Pakistan and the strides that Iran makes toward
acquiring nuclear capability bring the means to carry out
genocide within the reach of extremists. Noting that two of
Iran’s presidents have spoken openly about destroying Israel,
Goldhagen warns that “it would be folly for the world to treat
the Iranian leaders’ words as anything but an articulation of
their intent.”(2005)
Just as the executioners who carried out the Holocaust
needed the tacit approval of the majority of the Germans to carry
it out, the present day genocidal regimes need at least passive
acquiescence from the rest of the world. The Pew Global Attitudes
Project Report from September 2008, indicates that the
“unfavorable view of Jews (and Muslims) is increasing in Europe.
From 2004 to 2008, the percentage of the population holding an
unfavorable opinion of the Jews went from 21% to 46% in Spain,
from 27% to 36% in Poland, form 25% to 34 % in Russia, from 20%
to 25 % in Germany, from 11% to 20 % in France, while it remained
steady in Britain ( 9%to 9%) and in the US (8% to 7%). In the US
77% have a favorable view of the Jews; in Europe that percentage
ranges from a high of 73% in Britain to a low of 37% in Spain.
For comparison in the Muslim countries, in Indonesia 10% have a
favorable opinion of the Jews, in Turkey 7%, in Pakistan 4%, in
Egypt and Jordan 3% and in Lebanon 2%..
The reaction of the Western world to acts of religious
intolerance, such as the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie by
the Ayatollah Khomeini for “The Satanic Verses” and the
subsequent attacks against the publishers and translators of his
book, the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan, the murder of
Theo van Gogh, the threats against Ayan Hirsi Ali were muted to
say the least.. The protests against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-
Posten which on September 30, 2005 published cartoons deemed
offensive to the prophet Muhammad, are a case in point.
Disproportionate and staged reactions of intolerance and incited
violence made 100 victims worldwide and were followed by hand
wringing, intimidation and self censorship. Major US, Canadian
and British publications refused to publish the cartoons, citing
the desire not to offend, and the potential for violence. More
recently, in August 2009, Yale University Press decided to delete
the reproductions of the cartoons from the book “The Cartoons
that Shook the World,” by professor Jytte Klausen. At the same
time, antisemitism is more and more acceptable, masquerading
under the guise of anti-Israeli criticism. As Nathan Sharansky
put it “Israel has become the world’s Jew.” Here are a few
representative examples, illustrating how wide spread the
acceptance of equating Israel with the Nazis has become, and the
extent to which such imagery incorporates antisemitic
stereotypes:
Antisemitic cartoons Above: China and Brasil.
Below: Russia and the US.
Source:tomgrossmedia.com
On May 23, 2001, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published a
cartoon of Clio, the muse of history affixing Hitler’s moustache
on Ariel Sharon. The daily La Vanguardia published a cartoon
showing a building labeled “Museum of the Jewish Holocaust” near
a building under construction labeled “Future Museum of the
Palestinian Holocaust” . In Greece, in April 2002, the daily
Eleftherotypia depicted an Israeli soldier as a Nazi officer and
a Palestinian civilian as a Jewish concentration camp prisoner,
under the title “Holocaust 2” In April 2002, the Italian daily La
Stampa published a cartoon of an Israeli tank, identified by the
star of David, pointing its cannon at the baby Jesus who says:
"Surely they don't want to kill me again, do they?" In Corriere
Della Sera, another cartoon depicted Ariel Sharon holding a rifle
and sitting on Jesus’ tomb, who is unable to rise.
As Tom Gross (2005) states, it is striking how openly the
Western press, so careful not to give any offense to the Arabs
when covering the events of Darfour for example, is displaying a
blatant anti-Israeli bias which can only be explained by
antisemitism. ”The libels and distortions about Israel in some
British media are by now fairly well known: the Guardian's
equation of Israel and al Qaeda; the Evening Standard's equation
of Israel and the Taliban; the report by the BBC's Middle East
correspondent … on how "the Israelis stole Christmas.” Gross
notes that French courts have ruled that the writers and
publishers of the newspaper “Le Monde” are guilty of “racist
defamation” against Jews and Israel for the opinion piece
“Israel-Palestine : The Cancer.” Violence against the Jews is
constantly downplayed or excused, while at the same time, as
Gross (2001) writes “The systematic building up of a false
picture of Israel as aggressor, and deliberate killer of babies
and children, is helping to slowly chip away at Israel’s
legitimacy”
These examples are meant to illustrate that the genocidal
mentality that exists in certain Islamic nations today is
accompanied by a widespread acceptance of antisemitism and a de-
legitimizing of Israel. Far more that the statistics suggest, at
the time when a nuclear weapon may soon be in the hands of
suicidal/homicidal fanatics, the image of the Jew as the focus of
evil in the world is gaining acceptance, and the idea that an
“Israeli Problem” exists that requires a “Solution” is making
headway. At the same time, legitimate self defense on Israel’s
part is invariably described as aggression or disproportionate.
This dynamic is eerily reminiscent of the one that existed in
Nazi Germany. The structure that permitted the emergence of evil
at a national scale is reproduced at a global scale. There are
groups committed to the destruction of the Jews, ready to carry
out genocide, that complain constantly of Israeli aggression
against them. The countless one-sided UN resolutions are the
global counterpart of the Nazi anti-Jewish legislation, aiming to
make Israel a pariah nation. The conventional thinking was that
the Holocaust is a historic singularity, a horror of such
dimensions that, as Elie Wiesel suggested, we may lack adequate
words to discuss it, but today there are groups- and nations-
which approve of it and consider it a model for action, and which
also believe that the world tacitly supports them. We ignore them
at our own risk.
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Peter Dan, PhD in Personality and Social Psychology from the City University of New York, isa practicing School Psychologist in New York City, and an Adjunct Professor at Long IslandUniversity graduate program in School Psychology.
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