ANTI-SEMITISM NOT JUST A CHRISTIAN DISEASE

Anti-Semitism a Christian disease? Not so fast By DAVID A. HARRIS (JPost)
The recent Holocaust denial conference in Iran was beyond the pale, or so any thoughtful person might conclude. After all, the Holocaust is among the most documented events in human history.
Yet, to conclude that this macabre event was an isolated event would be a mistake. For example, in an editorial (December 14), the respected Financial Times declared that the Iranian president, who sponsored what the paper aptly called this "grotesque carnival," is out of step with the larger Muslim world. His blatantly anti-Semitic remarks, the editorial stated, "give the impression that anti-Jewish bigotry is widespread across the Muslim world," when "in historical reality, anti-Semitism is a Christian disease." Not so fast.

The truth is far more complicated. While anti-Semitism historically has been more virulent in European Christendom, leading up to the Holocaust, it has not been absent in the Muslim world. Some Muslim spokesmen would like the world to believe that any hostility is recent and linked to Israel, not Jews. But that is disingenuous in the extreme.

As Hebrew University professor Robert Wistrich noted in a study entitled Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger, "The most basic anti-Jewish stereotype fostered by the Koran remains the charge that the Jews have stubbornly and willfully rejected Allah's truth…. There are some notably harsh passages in which Muhammad brands the Jews as enemies of Islam." These deeply entrenched images of the Jews have caused much grief over the centuries.