Pak Tea House » Uncategorized » The Jew is Not My Enemy-by Tarek Fatah (Excerpts-II)
The Jew is Not My Enemy-by Tarek Fatah (Excerpts-II)
Anti-Semitism (hatred for Jewish people) is not a new or unique phenomenon for us Pakistanis. We love to hate the Jews and to blame all our ills on the ugly, hideous, nefarious designs of the Zionist Jews. After all, Jews control the world and it is only because of them that we Muslims are so far behind the rest of the world. It’s all a big conspiracy.
Journalist and Political advocate Tarek Fatah described and analyzed the reasons for this anti-Semitism in his book, “The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling Myths that fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism”. Following are some excerpts from the excellent book by Tarek Fatah.
As I write in this book’s closing chapter, my birthplace had no tradition of anti-Semitism in the late 1940s and ‘50s. Yet, in a visit to Pakistan in 2006, I was taken aback by the ubiquitous hostility towards the Jewish people. I was told incessantly that the Jews “controlled” the United States and that throughout history; the Jews have connived to become the puppet masters of the rest of human race. My host and his friends were among the wealthy and the well-educated elites of the Land. The home where Muslim marginalization was being discussed boasted half a dozen cars in the driveway, a retinue of servants, and a front lawn that was larger than several backyards put together. Yet they talked as if they were plotting the Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd.
“Why are all cab drivers in Chicago Muslim, Why not Jewish?” one friend asked. I pointed out that the net wealth of American Muslims is almost equal to that of American Jews, but it failed to have any influence on the assembled group. I was accused of being brainwashed by the Jews, of being on their payroll. I laughed off what in the Islamic world is the ultimate insult to a Muslim-an allegation of being a Jewish Lackey. I asked my friends if they were aware that Jews had come to the United States as poor immigrants escaping persecution in Europe in the nineteenth century, yet were able to assimilate and, through hard work, made incredible contributions to American Life. I urged them to consider the fact that even though Jews make up just 2 per cent of the U.S population, they form 21 per cent of the Ivy League student body. I pointed out that this 2 per cent of the American population accounts for 38 per cent of Business Weekly’s list of leading philanthropists, 51 per cent of the Pulitzer prize winners for non-fiction, and 37 per cent of Academy-Award winning directors. But they saw in the same statistics the evidence of their conspiracy theories: “That just proves the Jews control the U.S.A.” I was speechless. Instead of recognizing the Jewish community’s hard work and its focus on education, innovation, and entrepreneurship, my friend attributed Jewish success to the fact that they controlled all the avenues to power.
This book is an attempt to answer the question, why do Muslims hate Jews? What is the source of this hatred, and how can we end this cancer before it consumes us Muslims?
In this fight against Muslim anti-Semitism, I am not alone. Muslim voices around the world are making brave attempts in the face of intimidation and slander to fight the rise of jihadi Islamism. My friend and Danish member of Parliament Naser Khedar, the son of Palestinian parents, has spoken eloquently against Islamic extremism, despite several death threats. British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the American Islamic forum for Democracy, the Muslim Canadian Congress, German M.P. Elkin Deligoz, American-Egyptian columnist Mona Eltahawy, Sweden’s Burundi-born minister of integration Nyamko Sabuni, Algerian-born French cabinet minister Fadela Amara, and the Moroccan-born mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, are just some of the prominent Muslims standing up against hate.
Another one of them is Cem Ozdemir, the head of the German Green Party. Of Turkish ancestry, he is the first Muslim to head a major political party anywhere in Europe of North America. In February 2009, Ozdemir told the German Newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau that he was worried by the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism in Germany, and asked Berlin to take anti-Semitic tendencies among its Muslim population seriously. “We must unfortunately acknowledge that there are anti-Semitic mindsets not only in the right-wing or among the so-called left-wing anti-imperialists, but also in the Muslim community-particularly among the male Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish youths” he said. He urged other Muslim-German leaders to draw clear lines and to stress that anyone who displays anti-Semitic sentiments would not be allowed to represent the community. Ozdemir was responding to a study by the German Interior Ministry that found that almost 16 per cent of Muslim students surveyed agreed with the statement “People of Jewish faith are arrogant and greedy for money”.
For Jew-haters like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the question of Palestine is merely an excuse, not the reason. The Islamist hatred of the Jew has little to do with the state of Israel or a supposed love for Palestine. If tomorrow, Ahmedinejad was able to fulfill his threat to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, hatred of the Jew would continue unabated. The only way to end it is to challenge with courage the fundamental myths that sustain Judeophobia.
In Karachi on a warm spring day in 2006, as I walked through the city’s posh Clifton district, a banner hung across a street caught my eye. It read, “Bird Flu is a Jewish conspiracy”.
I was dumbstruck. At first I thought that perhaps this was some dark Pakistani humor I had failed to appreciate returning to my birthplace after a gap of seventeen years. However, when I asked around, I found that this view was widespread: Israel, I was told, was to blame for the bird flu because it wanted to destroy the poultry industry of Indonesia, a Muslim nation. When I found a similar banner adorning the entrance of a grocery store, I asked the owner to explain to me the link between Jews and Bird Flu. He handed me a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “Here, take this book gratis-but read it”, he commanded. With an air of supreme confidence he explained that it was not just the bird flu that the “Yahoodis” had used to attack an Islamic country. The tsunami of December 2004 too was a result of a joint effort by the United States and Israel to drown and destroy Muslim nations. I was flabbergasted, and had to be pulled away by a buddy who had the foresight to see the consequence of what might happen if I started arguing with the store owner.
The city and country I had first left in 1978 had changed dramatically. Karachi was both wealthier and poorer. Opulence was reflected in its buildings and SUVs, but its intellectual and artistic heritage had been bankrupted.
While the city’s religious working-class neighborhoods teemed with people eager to move to the West to embrace the American Dream, its upper class secular elites peppered their talk with anti-imperialist rhetoric and an infatuation with Islamism. Among them were families who, after having secured U.S. or Canadian passports, had come back to Islamdom to enjoy privileges they missed in the West.
At a gathering one evening, whisky-drinking admirers of Osama bin Laden lectured me about the five thousand Jews that never reported to work at the Twin Towers on 9/11, while their peroxide-blonde wives looked on lovingly through blue contact lenses, re-arranging coffee-table books on ice hockey, and the strains of Shania Twain–appropriately singing, “You don’t impress me much”–wafted from their children’s bedroom.
The city that had once launched popular uprisings, going back to the great Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946; that had toppled military dictatorships; that had been home to Pakistan’s best and brightest writers, dancers, singers, architects, and atheists; and that once had a healthy Jewish population and synagogues was now a hot-bed of Jew-hatred and pseudo anti-Americanism that defied the most elementary logic. Almost every anti-American millionaire who had not yet acquired a Western passport would spout his share of hatred towards the United States—and then moments later ask me how he could send his son to the States so he could secure a green card and then sponsor the rest of the family.
The hatred of Jews was not restricted to the Karachi Press Club or the charity balls held by the Pakistani upper crust. It was aired on television talk shows as well. At quaint tea parties hosted by the blue-eyed, blonde begum-sahibs in the clubs that have become the hub of the proletariat-mimicking Islamist bourgeoisie of Pakistan, expressing hatred of the Jew, it seemed, is the easiest way to establish one’s intellectual credentials.
Later I leafed through my copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols is a collection of articles concocted in 1895 by the Russian Czar’s secret police in order to depict the growing strength of Marxists as a Jewish Conspiracy. It was first published in Russia in the early 1900s, and claimed to expose a plan by the Jewish people to achieve global domination. It was published again after the 1905 Russian Revolution, when the ruling monarchy, stung by the mass uprising, used it to blame the Jews for instigating the workers’ strikes, peasant uprisings, and military mutinies. The monarchy had also invoked The Protocols when it blamed the Jews for Russia’s defeat at the hands of Japan in 1904. By the time the Czar was overthrown in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, anti-communist Russian exiles made The Protocols an instrument for blaming Jews for that upheaval, too. They depicted the Bolsheviks as overwhelmingly Jewish and allegedly executing the plan embodied in The Protocols.
In the 1920s, the London Times exposed The Protocols as a forgery. The newspaper revealed that much of the material was plagiarized from earlier works of political satire having nothing to do with the Jews.
Today the primary consumer of this forgery is the Muslim World, where The Protocols is cited as an authentic document validating the widespread belief that Jews for both the horrors of communism and the excesses of capitalism, though this irony appears to have escaped the attention of its readers.
Filed under: Uncategorized · Tags: hatred, Jew, Jews, Muslim
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This article is part of a Jewish led Qadiani conspiracy funded by aliens from Mars.
Congratulations to the writer for unravelling that blind hatred of any race, creed is just that; blind; ‘unwilling to perceive – not determined by reason or control’ as the dictionary tells us.
What does Quran say about Jews?
TF is a yo-yo… after criticizing Irshad Manji’s book “The trouble with Islam” as a book written by Jews and for the Jews, he could not handle the flack and to clear his “conscience” wrote the book under discussion. The book is a compilation of innuendos and is short of scholarship. A number of “facts’ can be challenged and dismissed. Had he read the work of Professor Juan Cole, Professor Khalil and several other experts, he may not have written this book. Clearly he is trying to redeem himself and to remain useful to the hands that feed him. In a way he is asking for forgiveness for his own views of Jews without differentiating between the Zionism and Judaism.
@Hammad
Love your perfect comment
@MilesToGo
there are multiple verses, the ones favoured by our clerics are the ones that are anti-Jewish..
@Anwar
It would have been better if you commented on the post in question rather than going on a tangent and criticizing Tarek Fatah. Whatever he is, whoever he is, we are concerned about this book and the issues it discusses, not TF’s personality. You are adding to the conspiracy culture, not against it.
to AM
1)
We have to ask what motivations a writer has.
2)
If you mix honey (even in big quantities) with poison or poison (even in small quantities) with honey then it is the poison (even in small quantities) that determines the outcome. So it is with your so-called multiple-verse holy-book from Arabia.
3)
When will self-deceit come to an end among muslims?
AM – I defined TF in the very first three words based on years of reading his work – the remaining comment was very focused on the scholarship. If someone at PTH had done the homework, this silly post would not have appeared here…
So is Allah anti Jewish ?
What are the chances Anwar has read the book? He epitomizes so many among Pakistan who hold passionate views about books they have never read, nor would they ever read. Nowhere else but in Pakistan would someone have the audacity to review a book before reading it and not even hiding the fact they have not touched the book.
Sad reflection of a society.
Tarek
Tarek, I did read but could not go beyond quarter mark.
[That pretty much proves TF's assumption-Mod] Perhaps you can read the reviews of your own work on Amazon[That confirms another stereotype-Mod]. My observations are not different than those except that I have read your past work diligently. Even a cursory look shows that post 9/11 work is regurgitating the discredited Bernard Lewis and Faud Ajami. In a way that was opportunistic at best in service of the White man. If you had read the critique of Professor Juan Cole, you may not have associated with Iranian president the miss-translation that even the right wing media is now avoiding – however you continue to push it as a divine revelation. The same is true for the Protocols of he Elders… other than Egypt, I doubt if it is known in other majority Muslim countries[You have clearly not been in Pakistan for long, dear. Zaid Hamid and like minded retards have mentioned this "Holy Grail" countless times on popular media-Mod]. You are simply harping peripheral issues as facts for mud slinging only and a number of critics have pointed it out to you however you have forced yourself in the corner where you are left with no choice other than to reinforce your own opinion.
For even a better perspective of how Jews an Muslims always got along well, I highly recommend that you read Tom Reis’s book “The Orientalist.” Better yet, read the works of Professor Asad and also Edward Said whom the neocons have been working hard to discredit.
I have come across a number of Jews in life – one of flight instructor was Jew, my colleagues are Jewish, my professors included Jews and now my students also include Jews but I have only good feelings to reciprocate. I have attended a number of desi Muslim gatherings and I never found a hint of what you describe in your book as a widespread disease. What you have simply done is to turn what is in the fringes into a mainstream problem[You are trying to disprove TF based on your personal observations? Logical Fallacy Alert-Mod]. If you care to read Haretz or Jerusalem Post you will notice that within Israel, there are strong Jewish groups who are staunchly against Zionism – Under your definition, they too are anti-Semites?
Finally, since there is no compulsion in religion, and since it is bothering you to the core, you can unload your Muslim baggage any time… You will also find a welcoming mat rolled for you at the Benador Associates.
I sure hope I do not have to waste anymore time on this
.
”For Jew-haters like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the question of Palestine is merely an excuse, not the reason. The Islamist hatred of the Jew has little to do with the state of Israel or a supposed love for Palestine. If tomorrow, Ahmedinejad was able to fulfill his threat to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, hatred of the Jew would continue unabated. The only way to end it is to challenge with courage the fundamental myths that sustain Judeophobia.”
.
What nonsense!
Was there any need for ‘sympathizing’ with the Jews at the cost of Muslims?? Jews have done well, no doubt, but they have done more bad as far as the Middle East crisis is concerned. [That is your personal opinion-Mod]
.
Iran is not against Jews but it craves for its domination in the Muslim world… through Shiaism.
.
For TF there was no need to be apologetic or accusative as far as Jews and Muslims are concerned. It seems he finds nothing wrong with the Jews…how come??? Hitler must be turning in his grave aspiring to shoot out another Holocaust!![If you read the whole book, you would get your answers-Mod]
An ‘Ode’ to the Liberals..here pro-Semitics.
.
Some people in the East have zest
for bringing in liberalism of the West
to countries wrought with hunger, disease and all
which are economically and materially at a fall
where religion is intermixed with the laws
where there Constitutions bear exclusive clause
that nothing repugnant to the majorities faith
shall be done beyond what its stipulates layeth
where the majority unanimously crave for religion
to be the governing force of their regime or region
by dint of dictatorship, monarchy or democracy
that being their motto, rule, law or fancy
whatever be the reason behind it but it’s a fact
that democracy warrants their each and every act
Somewhere their laws are enforced with justice
elsewhere they are sadly violated in practice
Where lies the fault then? In enforcement of these laws
Or creating a fuss over the unfortunate democratic flaws?
There does seem something wrong with the enlightened minds
who lack the vision to see beyond the blinds
such folks are like untruthful students of a college
who curse the discipline yet wish for learning pledge
they are like unruly weeds spreading out in a rose garden
impeding the growth and blooming of their goodly haven
they are men who want more than what they deserve
their ideas Quixotic rife with nothing in their fold to serve
unfaithful, untruthful, biased, timid and insincere
they hunt with the hounds and run with the deer
ignorant and aspirant of having their own way
the way of their whimsical thinking least to say
these faithless creatures who vie for neighbor’s wife
who look for something which they don’t practice in their life
who are like monkeys who are wont to mimic humans
who are like lame ducks pretending to hatch like hens
they are nothing more than eunuchs posing as men
frivolously somersaulting elves in their dreary den
treacherous and dishonest to their own belief
undeserving asking for an undeserving relief
calling those who stick to their faiths as conservatives
posing like foreigners but living among natives
Great hypocrites are these ingrate undeserving fools
slave to their own notions, minds scratched with foreign tools
insincere to themselves, unfaithful to their own clime
like a bad poem lacking in substance rhythm and rhyme
To be liberal is good fir those living in a controlled environment
for people acclimatised to laws laid down by the government
those attuned to the cultural, political and ethical norms of the land
where the rules so say where the law of the land stands
If when in Rome do as the Romans is right
the liberals should restrain and sun their ideas bright
for the brightness differs from source and place
a candle lit before the sun will show no grace
Liberals are those who liberal do in word and deed
which are neither repugnant to the laws or creed
O desirous of liberalism! The only way for your wish to be fulfilled
is to first deserve it without breaking the oath you have milled
Liberalism is either of the ways two
you cannot eat it and have it too!
Do we really have tarek here?
This is a pleasant surprise!
Is it Tareq or Tareeq??? His tareeq views sound very much unlike Tariq…
http://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/?ui=2&ik=3db4468d10&view=att&th=136fc9bf311c7f64&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P-bxrdi24GsEpcU5OyVyiXf&sadet=1335696439723&sads=fxSO16IgozoZpw7ui9-OEt_AzOw&sadssc=1
Dear Moderator,
Injecting opinion in the middle of a sentence de-contextualizes it and is an intellectually dishonest practice. Feel free to add a rebuttal as a separate comment. Perhaps you are a new moderator but be warned that this type of moderation is not done anywhere. You may inadvertently attribute your opinion to others that may jeopardize the professional reputation of the person who originally posted. Please delete what you inserted in my posts and refrain from repeating it again on PTH.
Thanks
The author has raised a number of objections which he perceives to be orignating from muslims and in his case from Pakistani muslims. I have got news for him, he should improve his thinking calibre which unfotunately has been infecting mostly the socalled muslims intellectuals from India.
Arabs are as semit as the jews are, though the ploy of anti-semit has been patented and mostly used by the jewish people in Europe for centuries. There is no historic evidence that jews were discriminated, suppressed or subjected to viloence or holocaust at the hands of muslims. Their suffering at the hand of Europeans is ully documented. Yes, they have been very good business people, obsessed with amssing wealth and have always been at the helms of financial institutions and therefore the monarchs and the kings, the barons and the nobility, who conucted wars within or outside the country were always dependent upon the rich jewry in the land which advanced loans to support all the wars emanating from Europe for the colonisation of the outer world.
Does the author realy want to know from where the antisemitism emanate from, then he need not look ino the empty cabinets of the muslim Nations but among the Europeans and the American hierarchy.
Is it on account of the muslims that the jewish labour leaders now call themselves as atheists? Is it on account of the muslims that Ariel Sharon conceded to the jewish journalist that nothing is worst in the world than being born as a jew, somewhat along these lines?
The question in his mind is a multimillion dollar question? He should use his senses and ask how come that jews always appear to get the blame for everything what is wrong, from financial disasters to wars? How deep is the anti-semit among the non muslims? Watch the growth of the parties to the right in Europe, who are racists and discriminatory against minorities and openly declared anti-semit. let me give him a tip, leaving jews aside any political entity which is anti-muslim today, or anti-Islam is chronicaly infected with anti-semit!!
Rex Minor
to rex
You are off the mark. We have to talk of anti-jewishness of TODAY, not of what europeans/christians did many decades or centuries ago – and the present day anti-judaism is mainly done by muslims. Muslims use palestinians to hate jews – not that the muslims love palestinians.
The word semite has no meaning at all today. One has to talk in today’s categories. Arabs are not jews, islam teaches arabs and muslims to hate jews, kuran is anti-jewish, anti-jewish behaviour is dominating the muslim world TODAY.
Don’t wallow in some past mud. Speak out honestly what is happening today.
Ahem,
You are no different from the author, a sad product of occupation, first by the muslim invaders for centuries and later by the colonial European power. The author is no friend of jews either, by design or ignorance he has provided a dis-service against the regular jewish people in his country of residence. There are no anti-semit among the muslims per say(The genie of antisemit is as real today as it ever was, ask a jewish person, but admittedly today muslims are becoming more vocals aginst the criminal acts of the zonists who unequivably support the apartheid practices of the Israeli leaders in Palestine.
Israel atomic power endangers
an already fragile world peace
because what must be said
may be too late to morrow
and because- burdened enough as germans
we may be providing material for a crime
that is foreseable , so that our complicity
will not be expunged by any
of the usual excuses
and granted, I have broken my silence
because I am sick of the west’s hypocricy
and I hope too that many be freed
from their silence, may demand
that those responsible for the open danger we
face renounce the use of force…….
This is the translation of the poetic text recently published by the Guardian news paper in Britain, of the German nobel prize lariot in literature Mr Grass, a citizen of the German republic who has been described as antisemit by the Israeli leaders and have banned the author’s entry into Israel. No, the author is not a muslim either.
Rex Minor
rex you are a sad product of islamic-arabic fascism and imperialism. If muslims are not anti-jewish then why was Daniel Pearl killed in Pakistan? Why did the pakistani terror group kill a young jewish man and his wife (they left behind a 2 year old son and they were killed right in front of the child’s eyes) in Mumbai in 2008?
Allah will convert Jews into pigs.
Ahem,
You are the devil’s advocate? You reckon, we have the answers for everything? How come the Professor of constitutional law is committing extra judicial killings outside his borders? How come that their drones are killing children and women in Pakistan? How come that the Israeli Govt. deliberately killed thousands of Gaza children, and is practicing despicable apartheid against the Palestinians in the Palestinian land? And how come that the Africans practiced apartheid in South Africa and kept Mr Mandela in prison for more than 20 years in prison, and today the exPresident of the apartheid Govt claims that Mr Mandela is his friend? And lastly, how come the most peaceful Indians used violence against their only non-vilolece preacher, the great philosopher of his times, namely Mahatma Gandhi?
I have no answers for all these events and perhaps you have them. Daniel Pearl should have stayed put in his country and not ventured to go to Asian continent, and Mahatma Gandhi should have migrated to Canada to live a peaceful life and perhaps you should be going to Himalayas and consulting with the Dalai Lama for meditation to seek answers to the above questions. There is no logic in facts or events and this you should have learned in your school education. Or do you see any ogic for Mr Brevik killing several hundred fellow countrymen in Norway. If you are not living in the USA then you are lucky since the odds are that Americans are more ikely to meet the natural death, and instead being killed by the neighbour, and this is not a joke.
Rex Minor
today
an antisemitic is not someone who hate jews but who is hated by jews.
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