Spoerl / The Levantine Review Volume 2 Number 1 (Spring 2013)
Bernard Lewis,[1] Yehoshafat Harkabi,[2] David Patterson,[3] Bat Ye’or,[4] Mark Durie,[5] Itamar Marcus,[6] Neil J. Kressel,[7] and Jeffrey Herf[8]—tracing its roots further back in Islamic history. In addition, the media analysts of the Middle East Media Research Institute and Palestinian Media Watch have assembled a massive and growing body of anti-Semitic material from Muslim sources.[9] Moreover, recent polling data from the Pew Research Center shows very high levels of anti-Jewish prejudice across the Muslim world.[10] Muslim anti-Semites have certainly borrowed freely from Western anti-Semitic works such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,[11] but, as the aforementioned scholars show, they have also mined the Islamic tradition itself for raw materials with which to craft anti-Semitic propaganda. A full understanding of Islamic anti-Semitism thus requires not only a survey of current events, but an understanding of the Islamic tradition and its treatment of Jews.
This article will examine just one important component of the Islamic tradition in this regard, namely, the earliest extant biography or sira of Muhammad, the Sirat Rasul Allah or The Life of the Prophet of God by Muhammad Ibn Ishaq Ibn Yasar, generally known as Ibn
- ↑ Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999); The Jews of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
- ↑ Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel, trans. Misha Louvish (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972).
- ↑ David Patterson, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
- ↑ Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam, trans. David Maisel, Paul Fenton, and David Littman (Rutherford NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985), Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, trans. Miriam Kochan and David Littman (Madison NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002).
- ↑ Mark Durie, The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude, and Freedom (N.P.: Deror Books, 2010).
- ↑ Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Deception: Betraying the Peace Process (Jerusalem: Palestinian Media Watch, 2011).
- ↑ Neil J. Kressel, “The Sons of Apes and Pigs:” Muslim Anti-Semitism and the Conspiracy of Silence (Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2012).
- ↑ Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).
- ↑ Middle East Media Research Institute: www.memri.org; Palestinian Media Watch: www.palwatch.org.
- ↑ For recent polling data demonstrating extremely high levels of anti-Jewish bias in Muslim countries, see the Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project Report, July 21, 2011, “Muslim-Western Tensions Persist,” especially pp. 42‐3; http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2011/07/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Muslim-Western-Relations-FINAL-FOR-PRINT-July-21-2011.pdf
- ↑ Menahem Milson, “A European Plot on the Arab Stage: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Arab Media,” Middle East Media Research Institute, May 20, 2011, www.memri.org.
