World War Jew and Confronting Islam
Unlike earlier eras, contemporary hostility toward Jews and Israel is happening simultaneously around the world — in the Middle East, Australia, Europe, North America, South America, Africa, India and online. We are witnessing what is effectively World War Jew, an unprecedented series of physical and political attacks that blend genocidal anti-Zionism with worldwide antisemitism.
Antisemitism historically has taken many forms – such as Nazism, racism, Christian, nationalist, rightwing, leftwing, and Muslim. But today, antisemitism comes primarily and most dangerously, though hardly exclusively, from Muslims. Moreover, social media platforms have radically amplified antisemitic narratives, creating a worldwide propaganda flood which heavily favors the voices of 500 million Arabs and another 1.5 billion Muslims around the world, relative to the roughly 16 million Jews.
What drives contemporary Islamic antisemitism is not simply the Hamas-Israel war. It needs to be recognized clearly that still today Islamic law and historical Muslim policies toward Jews present fundamental challenges to the capacity of Muslims to make peace with Israel and Jews worldwide.
Classical Islamic jurisprudence developed a hierarchical framework of religious coexistence in the Islamic world for non-Muslims where Jews, Christians and others were granted so-called “protection” under the dhimmi system, but which in effect was analogous to life for African Americans during the post-civil war Jim Crow era – Jews and other dhimmis under Islam were separate, oppressed, humiliated, discriminated against, unequal legally, forbidden to have weapons, often subject to physical attack and forceable conversion, and periodically victims of pogroms.
The meaning of the word “dhimmi” refers to “protected people”; of course, that begs the question of why dhimmis need special protection. While this arrangement allowed Jews to live and practice their religion to varying degrees, dhimmi practices are in essence legalized bigotry; this framework positioned Jews precariously as tolerated subjects rather than equals.
While some modern scholars and pundits assert that antisemitic Islamic views are no longer consequential, they in fact do continue to infect Muslim political rhetoric, education, and media. In many settings, such as in Palestinian and Iranian schools, this has produced the teaching of hateful and inflammatory characterizations of Jews, and not merely as political adversaries, but as religiously suspect, morally flawed, and unworthy of living in the Jewish state of Israel.
Moreover, classical Islamic legal thought does not recognize the legitimacy of permanent non-Muslim sovereignty over land formerly governed by Muslims. To many if not most Muslims, that applies to Israel. Although, again, many may assert that this view is outdated, its persistence in ideological movements today strongly contributes to Muslim resistance to recognizing Israel’s legitimacy. As a result, the conflict with Israel is framed by Muslims not solely as a territorial or national dispute, but as a religious struggle where compromise would violate Muslim law.
A realistic comprehension of ongoing Islamic hostility toward Jews leads to an understanding that a durable Muslim peace with Israel and Jewish communities globally requires a modern reinterpretation of Islam by Muslims which explicitly rejects religiously grounded antisemitism and includes a theological affirmation of Jews as equal humans.
Obviously, such will not be easy to achieve. The “cold” Israel peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, already decades old, demonstrate that all too clearly. But the first step in overcoming a problem is to identify it.
The task of achieving Islamic reconciliation with Jews cannot be avoided if there is ever to be true peace between Jews and Muslims. Such a religious recalibration has happened before: After the Holocaust, Christian antisemitism was largely delegitimized by Christians themselves who came to realize that their religious antisemitism was not only cruel and unjustified, but that it contributed significantly to the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the mass murder of six million Jews.
For many obvious reasons, questioning the religious beliefs of others is avoided in polite company. Yet today, that taboo must be set aside because the ongoing threat of Islamic antisemitism needs to be confronted on religious grounds in order to remove the ideological motivation of Islamic terrorists and which blocks Palestinians and other Muslims from accepting the existence of Israel.
In war, fighting only defensively fails to defeat an enemy aggressor. The battle needs to be taken to the source of the aggression and in this case of World War Jew, that is Islamic antisemitism. Yet to change Muslim beliefs is not something that non-Muslims can affect alone. Peace requires Muslim leaders to come forward and renounce Islamic antisemitism while also advocating for Palestinian and Islamic reconciliation and peace with Israel and Jews. Sadly today, such Muslim voices and leaders are virtually impossible to find.
Responses to Muslim antisemitism need to go beyond what Jewish organizations and various governments around the world are proposing, appropriate as they are – more gun legislation, security guards, condemnations of terrorism at funerals, and security fences around all Jewish institutions. As the issue of Islamic antisemitism has not been a meaningful focus of Jewish and Israeli advocacy, serious efforts need to be initiated to establish dialogue with Muslims with the goal of religious peace. Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others need to clearly, publicly, and boldly declare that Islamic antisemitism must end.
While the odds of success seem long, directly confronting the roots of Islamic antisemitism could be a win-win strategy. If moderate Muslim leaders come forward, prospects for reconciliation and peace will be advanced. If they do not, we will have a clearer understanding of the goals of Muslims and their leaders in America and around the world.