Comparative findings revealing disproportionate rates of extreme antisemitism, and antisemitic violence, or violent threats, among Western European Muslims.
By Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, INN
The Dutch CIDI (Centrum Informatie En Documentatie Israel) annual report for 2019 just released Monday 2/17/20, recorded 182antisemitic incidents, its highest number ever registered since 1982, when monitoring began. This figure represented a 35% increase from 2018.
Even the CIDI’s full 99 page Dutch language report, however, provided only limited anecdotal information about a select sample of the perpetrators, rendering a quantitative determination of major (and/or relative) group responsibility impossible to assess. This glaring lacuna was “enlarged” by the report’s absence of background discussion of previously published comparative findings revealing disproportionate rates of extreme antisemitism, and antisemitic violence, or violent threats, among Western European Muslims, including confirmatory data on antisemitic attitudes within the Netherlands itself.
Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders—the Netherland’s most informed and intellectually courageous politician on the subject of Islam—inveighed against the denial of what the report’s findings actually substantiated, during a floor debate on Tuesday 2/18/20. Eschewing the craven, vacuous platitudes of his colleagues, Wilders thundered,
“[I]t is almost nauseating. We’ve been talking about antisemitism, here in the Lower House (of the Dutch Parliament) for ten minutes now. And nobody, really nobody has discussed the biggest cause of antisemitism, which is of course Islam, and Islamization”
Observing that, “we have a million Muslims in the Netherlands right now,” and “Islam is synonymous with Jew-hatred,” Wilders demonstrated, accurately, how “intrinsic” Islamic antisemitism was redolent within Islam’s defining text, the Koran:
“In the Koran its says that Jews are monkeys and pigs (Koran 5:60). That they are bad (5:79). That they cannot be trusted (5:13). That they are liars (2:100). That they are dishonest (3:78).”
Wilders concluded by demanding that his colleagues acknowledge,
“…there is a connection between mass immigration of people from Islamic countries, and antisemitism…If you do not, you are selling politically correct nonsense.”
Hard data on both antisemitic attitudes and non-lethal antisemitic violence, or violent threats provide irrefragable support for Wilders’ contention.
- Data collected during the 2008 “Six Countries Study” (i.e.,The Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, and Sweden) from ~9000 participants (3373 native Christians; 3344 Turkish Muslim immigrants; 2204 Moroccan Muslim immigrants) revealed that 45% of the Muslim immigrants, vs. 9% of native Christians, believed “Jews cannot be trusted.” While such hostility to Jews among “fundamentalist” Christians doubled to 18%, over 70% of fundamentalist Muslims were hostile to Jews.
- Belgian Professor of Sociology Mark Elchardus co-authored a 426 pp. study, “Antisemitism in Brussels’ Schools,” which included data on the views within the young Belgian Muslim community, primarily, 12-18 year-olds, during 2011. A 354pp. follow-up study of Antwerp-Ghent youth was published in 2013. Two thousand, eight hundred thirty-seven (2,837) students in thirty-two Dutch-speaking Brussels high schools were surveyed.
Muslim youth respondents agreed with the following four statements—i.e., antisemitic stereotypes—at disproportionate, 3.7-fold, to 7.0-fold, rates!:
[I] “Jews want to dominate everything” (Muslims, 56.8%; non-Muslims, 10.5%);
[II] “Most Jews think they’re better than others” (Muslims, 47.1%; non-Muslims, 12.9%);
(III) “If you do business with Jews, you should be extra careful” (Muslims, 47.5%; non-Muslims, 12.9%);
(IV) “Jews incite to war and blame others” (Muslims, 53.7%; non-Muslims, 7.7%).
Antisemitic Muslim attitudes were unrelated to low educational level or social disadvantage. The 2013 study of 863 students from Ghent and Antwerp, including 346 Muslim students, confirmed these results. Forty-five to fifty (45-50%) of Muslim students evidenced antisemitic attitudes, versus 10% of non-Muslims, consistent 4.5 to 5-fold excess rates.
- Researcher Gunther Jikeli’s 2011 study yielded concordant results (i.e., to those of Elchardus et al). Jikeli, a Muslim convert, conducted 117 interviews with Muslims from Berlin, Paris, and London, whose mean age was 19 years-old. He provided these critical observations which affirm the centrality of Islam in shaping the antisemitic views of young Muslim adults in Western Europe:
“References to the Koran or the Hadith may also be used with the implication that Allah agrees with this viewpoint…The majority of interviewees displayed resentments against Jews in at least one way or another. Negative attitudes toward Jews were often openly exhibited, at times aggressively so, including calls for violence against Jews and intentions to carry out antisemitic actions. Some even reported that they were involved in antisemitic acts.
“Negative views of Jews have become the norm in some young Muslims’ social circles. Some forms are specific to young European Muslims: anti-Jewish attitudes with direct reference to Islam, Muslim identity, or ethnic identity.
“In this sense, the use of the term ‘Muslim antisemitism’ is apt… The majority do not distance themselves from a literal interpretation of the Qur’an, and they are thus likely to take hostile passages in Islamic scripture literally”
- ADL (Anti-Defamation League) surveys conducted in Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy, The United Kingdom, and France, during 2015 and repeated in 2019, assessed the prevalence of “extreme antisemitism”, defined as agreement with at least 6/11 antisemitic stereotypes among Christians/non-Muslims, and Muslims. Both surveys revealed a nearly 3-fold increased rate of extreme antisemitism within the Muslim, relative to the non-Muslim populations—
(2015) Belgium: Muslims 68%, non-Muslims 21%;
Spain: Muslims 62%; non-Muslims 29%;
Germany: Muslims 56%, non-Muslims 16%;
Italy: Muslims 56%, non-Muslims 29%;
United Kingdom: Muslims 54%, non-Muslims 12%;
France: Muslims 49%, non-Muslims 17%.
(2019) Belgium: Muslims 58%, non-Muslims 24%;
Spain: Muslims 46%; non-Muslims 28%;
Germany: Muslims 49%, non-Muslims 15%;
Italy: Muslims 43%, non-Muslims 18%;
United Kingdom: Muslims 54%, non-Muslims 11%;
France: Muslims 45%, non-Muslims 17%.
Finally, a lone study of its kind, assessing non-lethal violence and violent threats targeting Jews, was conducted by FRA – European Union for Fundamental Rights, in 2012. Uniquely, it queried Jewish victims about the identity of those who attacked them, or threatened them with violence, asking them to recall their past 5-year experiences:
“Thinking about the incident where somebody attacked or threatened you in a way that frightened you because you are Jewish–who did this to you?”
There was a gross excess occurrence of non-lethal violence, or violent threats against Western European Jews, by Muslims, relative to non-Muslims, collectively, who held designated, “right-wing”, “left-wing”, or “Christian” views:
Belgium—Muslim 56%, Christian 2%, right-wing 0%, left-wing 0%;
France—Muslim 53%, left-wing 18%, right-wing 4%, Christian 3%;
Germany—Muslim 34%, right-wing 11%, left-wing 9%, Christian 0%;
Sweden—Muslim 51%, left-wing 25%, right wing 5%, Christian 0%;
United Kingdom—Muslim 36%, left-wing 14%, right-wing 7%, Christian 6%.
Compared to those with “extremist right wing (or Christian) views”, the excess rate of Muslim non-lethal violence or violent threats ranged anywhere from 3- to 28-fold! Other than in Germany, where the percentages of left wing vs. right wing attacks were essentially equal, left wing antisemitic non-lethal violence or threatened violence also exceeded right wing antisemitic violence, or threatened violence. Non-lethal violent acts or threats perpetrated by those with “Christian extremist” views were negligible, in absolute terms, and even more so relative to “Muslim extremists.”
Moreover, almost two decades of murderous jihadist attacks specifically targeting Western European Jews in France, Belgium, and Denmark independently validate of Geert Wilders’ jeremiad. Indeed, the Islamic atmospherics for 6-months preceding jihadist Hamid el-Hussein’s lethal attack on the Grand Synagogue of Copenhagen, in February 2015, were punctuated by mosque sermons from Denmark’s leading Muslim clerics belching forth the same canonical Islamic Jew-hating themes—including Jews as “apes and pigs”—Wilders identified, and denounced.
Current Al-Azhar University Grand Imam, and Sunni Muslim Papal equivalent, Ahmad al-Tayeb, during an October, 2013 interview, re-affirmed, authoritatively, the canonical Islamic animus which fuels the global orgy of Muslim Jew-hatred, and violence. Riveting on Koran 5:82, al-Tayeb stated brazenly:
“A verse in the Koran explains the Muslims’ relations with the Jews…See how we suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism…Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs. The Koran (5:82) said it and history has proven it: ‘You shall find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews…’”
When no religious or political leader of stature spontaneously excoriated al-Tayeb for his public endorsement of “sacralized” Islamic Jew-hatred, I appealed to Geert Wilders. Alone, then as now, Wilders not only rebuked al-Tayeb’s statements, he extolled Pope Francis’ antithetical Evangelii Gaudium, which drew “the world’s attention to the indebtedness of Christianity to the Jews and their faith,” and contained a “sharp condemnation of the terrible persecutions which the Jews have endured from Christians in the past.”
Wilders Agonistes ended his December, 2013 public letter with this admonition to Francis, which still rings true—and remains unheeded, by a Pope, and many other equally corrupted religious and political leaders recklessly pursuing “Abrahamic Dialogue” with al-Tayeb, and other Islamic supremacists:
“I hope that the Holy Father will help us defend the West’s Judeo-Christian and humanistic civilization, to which even atheists and agnostics owe their freedom and democracy. Nothing will be gained by a refusal to face reality. We must speak the truth about Islam — the largest threat to mankind in this present age.”
The writer is Associate Professor of Family Medicine, The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the author of The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, and, Sharia Versus Freedom—The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism.
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