Antisemitism has increased in the Muslim world during modern times. While
Bernard Lewis and Uri Avnery date the increase in antisemitism to the establishment of
Israel, Scholars point to European influences, including those of the
Nazis (see below), and the establishment of Israel as the root causes of antisemitism.
19th century According to
Mark Cohen, Arab antisemitism in the modern world arose relatively recently, in the 19th century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalisms, and it was primarily imported into the Arab world by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamised"). )", painting by
Alfred Dehodencq The
Damascus affair occurred in 1840, when an Italian monk and his servant disappeared in
Damascus. Immediately following it, a charge of
ritual murder was brought against a large number of Jews in the city. All of them were found guilty. The consuls of
Britain,
France, and
Austria protested against the persecution by the Ottoman authorities, and Christians, Muslims, and Jews all played a great role in this affair. A massacre of Jews also occurred in
Baghdad in 1828. There was another massacre in
Barfurush in 1867.
Benny Morris writes that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th-century traveler: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish
gaberdine. To all this, the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan." The Jews will fight you and you will be led to dominate them until the rock cries out: "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, kill him!"Rashid Rida condemned the Jews for their arrogance towards the
Prophets and arraigned them for abandoning religious values for materialism, all of which made them recipients of Divine Wrath, which led to their downfall. He asserted that
Allah decreed Muslims to construct
Masjid al-Aqsa in the ruins of the
Temple in Jerusalem and favoured Muslims to rule the
Holy Lands by implementing ''
shari'a (Islamic law) and upholding Tawhid''. Rashid Rida's anti-Zionism was part of his wider campaign as a towering figure in the
Pan-Islamist movement and would immensely impact subsequent Islamist, Jihadist and anti-colonial activists. He also severely rebuked
Christian Zionists, writing:
Early massacres The massacres of Jews in Muslim countries continued into the 20th century. The Jewish quarter in Fez was almost destroyed by a Muslim mob in 1912. On 1 March 1994,
Rashid Baz, an American Muslim living in Brooklyn, New York, shot at a van carrying Hassidic Jewish students over the Brooklyn Bridge. The students were returning to Brooklyn after visiting their ailing leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who suffered a stroke two years earlier. Ari Halberstam, one of the students, was killed. Others were wounded. Baz was quoted in his confession in 2007 as saying, "I only shot them because they were Jewish."
Relations between Nazi Germany and Muslim countries in 1947 Some
Arabs found common cause with
Nazi Germany against colonial regimes in the
Middle East.
The influence of the Nazis grew in the Arab world during the 1930s.
Egypt,
Syria, and
Iran are claimed to have harbored Nazi war criminals, though they have rejected this charge. With the recruiting help of the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Amin al-Husseini, the
13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, mostly formed by Muslims in 1943, was the first non-Germanic
SS division.
Amin al-Husseini , Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council meeting with
Adolf Hitler (December 1941)
Waffen-SS volunteers with a
Nazi salute. At left is SS General
Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig. soldiers of the
SS "Handschar" reading a
Nazi propaganda book,
Islam und Judentum, in
Nazi-occupied Southern France (
Bundesarchiv, June 1943) The
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Amin al-Husseini, a pupil of
Muhammad Rashid Rida, attempted to create an alliance with
Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy in order to obstruct the
creation of a Jewish homeland in
Palestine, and hinder any emigration by
Jewish refugees from
the Holocaust there. Historians debate to what extent al-Husseini's fierce opposition to
Zionism was based on
Arab nationalism or
antisemitism, or a combination of the two. On 31 March 1933, within weeks of
Hitler's
rise to power in Germany, al-Husseini sent a telegram to Berlin addressed to the German Consul-General in the
British Mandate of Palestine saying that Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere looked forward to spreading their ideology in the Middle East. Al-Husseini secretly met the German Consul-General near the
Dead Sea in 1933 and expressed his approval of the anti-Jewish boycott in Germany and asked him not to send any Jews to Palestine. Later that year, the Mufti's assistants approached Wolff, seeking his help in establishing an Arab
National Socialist party in Palestine. Reports reaching the foreign offices in Berlin showed high levels of Arab admiration of Hitler. Al-Husseini met the German Foreign Minister,
Joachim von Ribbentrop on 20 November 1941, and was officially received by Hitler on 30 November 1941, in Berlin. He asked Hitler for a public declaration that "recognized and sympathized with the Arab struggles for independence and liberation, and that it would support the elimination of a national Jewish homeland", and he submitted to the German government a draft of such a declaration, containing the clause. Al-Husseini aided the Axis cause in the Middle East by issuing a fatwa for a
holy war against Britain in May 1941. The Mufti's proclamation against Britain was declared in Iraq, where he was instrumental in the outbreak of the
Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941. During the war, the Mufti repeatedly made requests to "the German government to bomb Tel Aviv". Al-Husseini was involved in the organization and recruitment of
Bosnian Muslims into several divisions of the
Waffen SS and other units. and also blessed sabotage teams trained by Germans before they were dispatched to
Palestine,
Iraq, and
Transjordan.
Iraq In March 1940, General
Rashid Ali, a nationalist Iraqi officer, forced the pro-British Iraqi
Prime Minister Nuri Said Pasha to resign. In May, he declared
jihad against Great Britain, effectively issuing a declaration of war. Forty days later, British troops had
defeated his forces and occupied the country. The
1941 Iraqi coup d'état occurred on 3 April 1941, when the regime of the Regent
'Abd al-Ilah was overthrown, and
Rashid Ali was installed as Prime Minister. In 1941, following
Rashid Ali's pro-
Axis coup, riots known as the
Farhud broke out in
Baghdad in which approximately 180 Jews were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were looted and 99 Jewish houses were destroyed. of victims of the
Farhud, 1941 Iraq initially forbade the emigration of its Jews after the 1948 war because allowing them to go to Israel would strengthen that state, but they were allowed to emigrate again after 1950, if they agreed to forgo their assets.
The Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and Iraq Forced migrations of Jews and Assyrian Christians between 1842 and the 21st century In his recent PhD thesis and his recent book the Israeli scholar Mordechai Zaken discussed the history of the
Assyrian Christians of Turkey and Iraq (in the Kurdish vicinity) during the last 90 years, from 1843 onwards. In his studies Zaken outlines three major eruptions that took place between 1843 and 1933 during which the Assyrian Christians lost their land and hegemony in their habitat in the Hakkārī (or Julamerk) region in southeastern Turkey and became refugees in other lands, notably Iran and Iraq, and they ultimately established exiled communities in European and western countries (the US, Canada, Australia, New-Zealand, Sweden, France, to mention some of these countries). Mordechai Zaken wrote this study from an analytical and comparative point of view, comparing the Assyrian Christians' experience with the experience of the
Kurdish Jews who had been dwelling in
Kurdistan for two thousand years or so, but were forced to emigrate to Israel in the early 1950s. The Jews of Kurdistan were forced to leave as a result of the Arab-Israeli war, as a result of increasing hostility and acts of violence which were committed against Jews in Iraqi and Kurdish towns and villages, and as a result of a new situation that developed during the 1940s in Iraq and Kurdistan in which the ability of Jews to live in relative comfort and tolerance (that was disrupted from time to time prior to that period) with their Arab and Muslim neighbors, as they had done for many years, practically came to an end. In the end, the Jews of Kurdistan had to leave their Kurdish habitat en masse and migrate to Israel. The Assyrian Christians, on the other hand, suffered a similar fate, but they migrated in stages following each political crisis with the regime in whose boundaries they lived or following each conflict with their Muslim, Turkish, or Arab neighbors, or following the departure or expulsion of their patriarch Mar Shimon in 1933, first to Cyprus and then to the United States. Consequently, although there is still a small and fragile community of Assyrians in Iraq, today, millions of Assyrian Christians live in exiled and prosperous communities in the West.
Iran Although Iran was officially neutral during the Second World War,
Reza Shah sympathized with Nazi Germany, making the Jewish community fearful of possible persecution. Although these fears did not materialise, anti-Jewish articles were published in the Iranian media. Following the
Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941,
Reza Shah was deposed and replaced by his son
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. However,
Kaveh Farrokh argues that there is a misconception that antisemitism was widespread in
Iran during Reza Shah's reign. After the
Fall of France during the time that
Reza Shah was still regent, the head of the Iranian legation in
Paris,
Abdol Hossein Sardari, used his influence with Nazi contacts to gain exemptions from Nazi race laws for an estimated 2000
Iranian Jews living in Paris at the time. The legation also issued Iranian travel documents for the Iranian Jews and their non-Iranian family members to facilitate travel through Nazi occupied Europe to safety.
Egypt In
Egypt,
Ahmad Husayn founded the
Young Egypt Party in 1933. He immediately expressed his sympathy for
Nazi Germany to the German ambassador to Egypt. Husayn sent a delegation to the
Nuremberg rally and returned with enthusiasm. After the
Sudeten Crisis, the party's leaders denounced Germany for aggression against small nations, but they retained elements which were similar to those of
Nazism or
Fascism, e.g., salutes, torchlight parades, leader worship, and antisemitism and
racism. The party's impact before 1939 was minimal, and its espionage efforts were of little value to the Germans. During World War II,
Cairo was a haven for agents and spies throughout the war.
Egyptian nationalists were active, with many Egyptians, including
Farouk of Egypt and prime minister
Ali Mahir Pasha, all of whom hoped for an Axis victory, and the complete severance of Egyptian ties with Britain.
Islamist and Jihadist groups Antisemitism, alongside
anti-Western sentiment,
anti-Israeli sentiment,
rejection of democracy, and
conspiracy theories involving the Jews, is widespread both within
Islamism and
Jihadism. Many
militant Islamist and
Jihadist individuals, groups, and organizations have openly expressed both antisemitic and anti-Zionist views. However, even outside Islamist circles,
anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist conspiracism are widespread phenomena in both the
Arab world and the
Middle East, and it has seen an extraordinary proliferation since the beginning of the
Internet Era.
Hamas has widely been described as an
antisemitic organization. It has issued antisemitic leaflets, and its writings and manifestos rely upon antisemitic documents (the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and other works of European Christian literature), exhibiting antisemitic themes. In 1998, Esther Webman of the Project for the Study of Antisemitism at
Tel Aviv University wrote that although the above is true, antisemitism was not the main tenet of Hamas ideology. In an editorial in
The Guardian in January 2006,
Khaled Meshaal, the chief of Hamas's political bureau, denied antisemitism on Hamas's part, and he said that the nature of the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict was not religious but political. He also said that Hamas has "no problem with Jews who have not attacked us". The tone and casting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of an eternal struggle between Muslim and Jews by the
Hamas Covenant had become an obstacle for the movement to be able to take part in diplomatic forums involving Western nations. The movement came under pressure to update its founding charter issued in 1988 which called for Israel's destruction and advocated violent means for achieving a Palestinian state. A new charter issued in May 2014 stated that the group does not seek war with the
Jewish people but only against Zionism which it holds responsible for "occupation of Palestine", while terming Israel as the "Zionist enemy".
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a
Shiite scholar and assistant professor at the
Lebanese American University has written that
Hezbollah is not
anti-Zionist, but rather
anti-Jewish. She quoted
Hassan Nasrallah as saying: "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli." Regarding the official public stance of Hezbollah as a whole, she said that while Hezbollah, "tries to mask its anti-Judaism for public-relations reasons ... a study of its language, spoken and written, reveals an underlying truth." In her book
Hezbollah: Politics & Religion, she argues that Hezbollah "believes that Jews, by the nature of Judaism, possess fatal character flaws". Saad-Ghorayeb also said, "Hezbollah's Quranic reading of Jewish history has led its leaders to believe that Jewish theology is evil." However, during the
2008–2009 Gaza War, tensions between the two communities increased and there were several dozen reported instances of Muslim violence such as arson and assaults. French Jewish leaders complained of "a diffuse kind of antisemitism becoming entrenched in the Muslim community" while Muslim leaders responded that the issues were "political rather than religious" and that Muslim anger is "not against Jews, it's against Israel". On 28 July 2006, at around 4:00 p.m.
Pacific Time, the
Seattle Jewish Federation shooting occurred when Naveed Afzal Haq shot six women, one fatally, at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building in the
Belltown neighborhood of
Seattle, Washington, United States. He shouted, "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel" before he began his shooting spree. Police have classified the shooting as a
hate crime based on what Haq said during a
9-1-1 call. In 2012, the Palestinian Authority
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, citing
Hadiths, called for the killing of all Jews. In
Egypt, Dar al-Fadhilah published a translation of
Henry Ford's antisemitic treatise,
The International Jew, complete with distinctly antisemitic imagery on the cover. In 2014, the
Anti-Defamation League published a global survey of worldwide antisemitic attitudes, reporting that in the Middle East, 74% of adults agreed with a majority of the survey's eleven antisemitic propositions, including that "Jews have too much power in international financial markets" and that "Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars."
Saudi school books A May 2006 study of
Saudi Arabia's revised schoolbook curriculum discovered that the eighth grade books included the following statements, Heads of American publishing houses have issued a statement asking the Saudi government to delete the "hate". According to the
Anti-Defamation League's November 2018 report, Saudi government-published school textbooks for the 2018–19 academic year promoting incitement to hatred or violence against Jews. The Antisemitic material remains in the Saudi text books, as of November 2019.
Reconciliation efforts In Western countries, some Islamic groups and individual Muslims have made efforts to reconcile with the Jewish community through dialogue and to oppose antisemitism. For instance, in Britain, there is the group
Muslims Against Antisemitism. Islamic studies scholar
Tariq Ramadan has been outspoken against antisemitism, stating: "In the name of their faith and conscience, Muslims must take a clear position so that a pernicious atmosphere does not take hold in the Western countries. Nothing in Islam can legitimize xenophobia or the rejection of a human being due to his/her religious creed or ethnicity. One must say unequivocally, with force, that antisemitism is unacceptable and indefensible."
Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran, declared antisemitism to be a "Western phenomenon", having no precedents in Islam, and stating the Muslims and Jews had lived harmoniously in the past. An Iranian newspaper stated that there has been hatred and hostility in history, but conceded that one must distinguish Jews from Zionists. According to the
Anti-Defamation League, CAIR has also been affiliated with antisemitic organizations such as
Hamas and
Hezbollah. The Saudi mufti, Shaykh Abd al-Aziz Bin Baz, gave a fatwa ruling that negotiating peace with Israel is permissible, as is the pilgrimage to Jerusalem by Muslims. He specifically said: Martin Kramer considers that as "an explicit endorsement of normal relations with Jews". In 2004
Khaleel Mohammed said, "Anti-Semitism has become an entrenched tenet of Muslim theology, taught to 95 per cent of the religion's adherents in the Islamic world," a claim immediately dismissed as false and racist by Muslim leaders, who accused Mohammed of destroying efforts at relationship building between Jews and Muslims. In 2010, Moshe Ma'oz, Professor Emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at The Hebrew University, edited a book questioning the common perception Islam is antisemitic or anti-Israel, and maintaining that most Arab regimes and most leading Muslim clerics have a pragmatic attitude to Israel. According to professor
Robert Wistrich, director of the
Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), the calls for the destruction of Israel by
Iran or by
Hamas,
Hezbollah,
Islamic Jihad, or the
Muslim Brotherhood, represent a contemporary mode of genocidal antisemitism. According to the
Pew Global Attitudes Project released on 14 August 2005, high percentages of the populations of six Muslim-majority countries have negative views of Jews. To a questionnaire asking respondents to give their views of members of various religions along a spectrum from "very favorable" to "very unfavorable", 60% of
Turks, 74% of Pakistanis, 76% of
Indonesians, 88% of
Moroccans, 99% of
Lebanese Muslims and 100% of
Jordanians checked either "somewhat unfavorable" or "very unfavorable" for Jews. ==Islamic antisemitism in Europe==