Islam must undergo reforms, and that process must begin immediately.
By Uzay Bulut, EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVE. 31 March 2024
Photo by Tarisco / Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0 Deed
Since the invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and the massacre of around 1,200 people there, antisemitic, pro-Hamas marches have swept both majority-Muslim countries and Western nations.
In London, antisemitic hate crimes are up 1,350% according to police, and pro-Hamas protestors chanted, “Oh Jews, the army of Muhammad is coming.” In the Tunisian city of Al Hammah, hundreds of people were filmed setting fire to a synagogue. In Russia’s Muslim Dagestan region, hundreds of people stormed into the main airport and onto the landing field, chanting antisemitic slogans and seeking passengers arriving on a flight from Israel. In California, a Jewish dentist was killed, and two others injured in a shooting by a Muslim. In Chicago, a Jewish man was attacked by anti-Israel protesters at an October 7 documentary screening in the Logan Square. In Paris, a Jewish man was attacked outside a synagogue; and another was stabbed in Zurich.
In the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region, this genocidal hatred has resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Over 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab countries in the 20 years following the re-establishment of Israel in 1948. Another major exodus of Jews took place from Iran in 1979-80, following the Islamic revolution. Jews had resided in those lands for over 2,500 years. The rising Muslim population in the West has imported the same—and exceedingly violent—Jew-hatred into Western nations. Antisemitic attacks and threats abound since Hamas ignited the war in Gaza by massacring and raping Israelis on October 7. To learn about the theological and historical roots of Muslim antisemitism, I interviewed a prominent specialist and researcher on Islam, its history and theology.
Dr. Andrew G. Bostom is a leading expert on the history and scriptures of Islam. He is the author of Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism and the editor of both The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History. He has also published articles and commentary on Islam in The Washington Times, National Review Online, Revue Politique, FrontPageMagazine, American Thinker, and other print and online publications. More on Bostom’s work can be found at www.andrewbostom.org/blog/.
What motivated you to write The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism?
Two specific discoveries motivated my research culminating in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.
First, since the end of the 12th century, Al Azhar University (and its mosque) have represented the apogee of Islamic religious education, which evolved into the de facto Vatican of Sunni Islam. Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Al-Gameia, the Al-Azhar University representative in the U.S., and imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City at the time of the September 11, 2001, attacks, provided a very concrete and disturbing example of the authoritative Al-Azhar Islamic mindset exported to America. Within three days of the 9/11 jihad carnage, al-Gameia, who according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was “known for his moderate views,” sermonized, as the Tampa Bay Times reported, “calling for peace, healing, and love among people of all religions.” The good Sheikh struck an entirely different chord when he was interviewed for an Al-Azhar University website on October 4, 2001. Gameia returned to Egypt after September 11, 2001, alleging, without any substantiation, that he was being “harassed.” Gameia’s interview (original Arabic; extracts translated here) was rife with conspiratorial Islamic antisemitism, which riffed upon his invocation of what I would later come to understand are the central Quranic motifs of Jew-hatred, while equating Jews and Zionists. Al-Azhar’s representative to the U.S. melded this sacralized anti-Jewish bigotry to virulent calumnies against Americans and threats to the U.S.—whom he imagined as witless “dupes” of the Zionist Jews.
Second, in early 2005, when I was nearing completion of my initial book compendium, The Legacy of Jihad (specifically the section about jihad on the Indian subcontinent), I came across a remarkable comment by the Indian Sufi theologian Sirhindi (d. 1624). Typical of the mainstream Indian Muslim clerics of his era, Sirhindi was viscerally opposed to the reforms which characterized the latter ecumenical phase of Akbar’s 16th century reign (when Akbar became almost a Muslim-Hindu syncretist), particularly the abolition of the humiliating jizya (Quranic poll tax, as per Quran 9:29) upon the subjugated infidel Hindus. Sirhindi wrote, motivated by Akbar’s pro-Hindu reforms, that, “Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.”
The biographical information I could glean about Sirhindi provided, no evidence he was ever in direct contact with Jews, so his very hateful remark suggested to me that the attitudes it reflected must have a theological basis in Islam—contra the prevailing, widely accepted ‘wisdom’ that Islam, unlike Christianity, was devoid of such theological antisemitism. This stunning observation, as well as my earlier discovery of Sheikh Gameia’s antisemitic fulminations, inspired me to better understand Islamic antisemitism, and its potential religious rootedness in Islam’s theology.
Can you briefly describe the Islamic theological roots of Jew-hatred? How do the Quran and traditions of Muhammad [hadith] refer to Jews? Why is antisemitism so widespread within Muslim societies?
Although the Quran’s basic organizing principle across 114 chapters, is simply longer duration chapters to shorter duration chapters, absent any chronological, orienting narrative, the terse fatiha, chapter 1, is a glaring exception to this order. Moreover, pious Muslims repeat the fatiha a total of 17 times daily during their requisite five prayers sessions.
Muslims are directed on their appropriate, righteous path as set forth in the fatiha’s initial six verses, but they are cautioned, at concluding verse 7, to follow “the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor [Islam], not of those who have evoked [Your] anger or of those who are astray.”
Islam’s prophet Muhammad, in a canonical tradition (or hadith), clarified that it is the Jews who evoked Allah’s anger and the Christians who went astray. This clarifying interpretation is reinforced with rare exceptions by over 13 centuries of authoritative classical and modern Quranic commentaries which have glossed verse 1:7.
The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia is a modern compendium of analyses written by 43 Muslim and non-Muslim mainstream academic experts, edited by Oliver Leaman, and published by Routledge. These excerpts from p. 614 serve as a “summary verdict” on how Muslims and non-Muslims, both, are to understand the Fatiha’s last verse:
The Prophet [Muhammad] interpreted those who incurred God’s wrath as the Jews and the misguided as the Christians. The Jews, we are told killed many of their prophets and through their character and materialistic tendencies [usurious 2:275, 4:161; greedy/hedonistic 2:96; envious 2:109; hard-hearted 2:74; liars 2:78] have contributed much to moral corruption, social upheaval and sedition in the world [Koran 5:32–33; 5:64] … [T]hey were readily misled and incurred both God’s wrath and ignominy [2:61; 2:90; 3:112]. As for the Christians … over time they succumbed to the influence of those who had already deviated from the chosen path.
As alluded to by the most authoritative glosses on Quran 1:7, the Quran’s overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews wronged themselves (16:118) by losing faith (7:168) and breaking their covenant (5:13). The Jews (echoing an ante-Nicaean, Marcionite polemic) are a nation that has passed away (2:134; repeated in 2:141). Twice Allah sent his instruments (the Assyrians/or Babylonians, and Romans) to punish this perverse people (17:4-5)—their dispersal over the earth is proof of Allah’s rejection (7:168). The Jews are further warned about both their arrogant claim that they remain Allah’s chosen people (62:6), and continued disobedience and “corruption” (5:32-33; 5:64) Other sins, some repeated, are enumerated: abuse, even killing of prophets (4:155; 2:91), including Isa (Jesus) (3:55; 4:157), is a consistent theme. The Jews ridiculed Muhammad as Ra’ina (the evil one, in 2:104; 4:46), and they are also accused of lack of faith, taking words out of context, disobedience, and distortion (4:46). Precious few of them are believers (also 4:46). These “perverse” creatures also claim that Ezra is the messiah and they worship rabbis who defraud men of their possessions (9:30).
Additional sins are described: the Jews are typified as an “envious” people (2:109), whose hearts are as hardened as rocks (2:74). They are further accused of confounding the truth (2:42), deliberately perverting scripture (2:75), and being liars (2:78). Ill-informed people of little faith (2:89), they pursue vague and wishful fancies (2:111). Other sins have contributed to their being stamped (see 2:61/ 3:112) with “wretchedness/abasement and humiliation,” including usury (2:275), sorcery (2:102), hedonism (2:96), and idol worship (2:53). More (and repeat) sins, are described: the Jews’ idol worship is again mentioned (4:51), then linked and followed by charges of other (often repeat) iniquities-the “tremendous calumny” against Mary (4:156), as well as usury and cheating (4:161). Most Jews are accused of being “evil-livers” / ”transgressors” / ”ungodly” (3:110), who, deceived by their own lies (3:24), try to turn Muslims from Islam (3:99). Jews are blind and deaf to the truth (5:71), and what they have not forgotten they have perverted. They mislead (3:69), confound the truth (3:71), twist tongues (3:79), and cheat Gentiles without remorse (3:75). Muslims are advised not to take the Jews as friends (5:51), and to beware of the inveterate hatred that Jews bear towards them (5:82). The Jews’ ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil’s minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47) if they do not accept the true faith of Islam. The Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113). They will be made into apes (2:65/ 7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hell fires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14-19).
In a brilliant 1937 essay entitled “Juifs et Musulmans selon le ?ad?t” (which I translated into English and included in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism), Rabbi Georges Vajda demonstrated that stubborn malevolence is the Jews defining worldly characteristic according to the traditions of Muhammad and the earliest Muslims. Per the hadith, rejecting Muhammad and refusing to convert to Islam out of jealousy, envy and even selfish personal interest, lead Jews to acts of treachery, in keeping with their inveterate nature: “… sorcery, poisoning (including poisoning of Muhammad himself, by a Jewish conspiracy) assassination held no scruples for them.” These archetypes sanction Muslim hatred towards the Jews, and the admonition to at best, “subject [the Jews] to Muslim domination,” as dhimmis, treated “with contempt,” under certain “humiliating arrangements.” Vajda’s research on the hadith further illustrates how Sunni Muslim eschatology emphasizes the Jews supreme hostility toward Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl—the Muslim equivalent of the Antichrist—and, per other traditions, the Dajjâl is in fact Jewish. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered—everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree. Thus, according to several canonical hadith, Muhammad himself reportedly declared if a Jew seeks refuge under a tree or a stone, these objects will be able to speak to tell a Muslim: “There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!” Vajda also emphasizes how the notion of jihad war “ransom” extends even into Islamic eschatology:
Not only are the Jews vanquished in the eschatological war, but they will serve as ransom for the Muslims in the fires of hell. The sins of certain Muslims will weigh on them like mountains, but on the day of resurrection, these sins will be lifted and laid upon the Jews.
Islam’s major contemporary theological institutions, such as Al-Azhar University and influential mainstream clerics, continue to promote this ‘sacralized’ Jew-hatred to both Muslim religious educators and the Muslim masses. Not surprisingly, the result is a global pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred—including antisemitic violence—evident far beyond the battlegrounds of Israel, Gaza, and Judea-Samaria.
Al-Azhar’s learned, authoritative Muslim theologians issued a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, on 19 October 2023, pertaining to the ongoing conflict sparked by Hamas’ October 7 invasion of southern Israel. Absent of any mention of Hamas’ jihad carnage—murdering, dismembering, torturing, raping, and burning some 1,200 largely non-combatant Israelis, including infants, children, women, and the elderly—the fatwa ruled that all of Israel’s citizens remained legitimate targets for such heinous jihad depredations. This Al-Azhar ruling was celebrated by Al-Qaeda and came on the heels of an earlier official Al-Azhar statement celebrating the jihad depredations of Hamas as “the resistance efforts of the proud Palestinian people.” This latest fatwa by Sunni Islam’s Vatican in fact reflects an “updated” 75-year continuum of similar edicts issued since 1947, sanctioning the jihad genocide of modern Israel’s Jews.
A year after Israel’s decisive victory during the 1967 war, Al-Azhar convened the 4th Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research in Cairo, which assembled prominent Muslim theologians not only from the Middle East, but Asia, Africa, and Europe. This seminal, if ugly conference, marked the formal abandonment of pseudo-secular Arab Nationalism as a guiding ideological rationale for the simmering conflict with Israel. Published in English as a 935pp. tome in 1970, the conference proceedings were the subject of late historian David Littman’s pioneering analysis, in 1971. Littman summarized the conference’s six key “recurring themes,” as follows:
1) “Jews are frequently denoted as the ‘Enemies of Allah’”
2) “Jews manifest in themselves an historical continuity of evil qualities … as described in the Qur’an”
3) “The Jews do not constitute a true people or nation”
4) “The State of Israel is the culmination of the historical and cultural depravity of the Jews …It has to be destroyed by a Jihad”
5) “The superiority of Islam over all other religions is brandished as a guarantee that the Arabs will ultimately triumph”
6) “It is outrageous for the Jews, traditionally kept by Arab Islam in a humiliated, inferior status, and characterized as cowardly, to defeat the Arabs, have their own State, and cause the contraction of the ‘abode of Islam’”
Al-Azhar’s most recent spiritual leaders, Grand Imam Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (who held that position from 1996-2010), and his successor, the current Grand Imam, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, have each reinforced the ignoble tradition of promoting jihadism and Islamic Jew-hatred directed at Israel, and Jews generally. Both Tantawi and Tayyeb sanctioned homicide bombing of any Israeli Jews, including non-combatant children and women. Grand Imam Tantawi, a leading modern Quranic commentator, has championed the most virulent Quranic themes of Jew-hatred in his authoritative interpretations, including Jews as “apes and pigs” (Quran 5:60) whose immutable perfidy merits eternal debasement (Quran 3:112), even exhorting Muslims to, “use force with them and treat them in the way you see as effective in ridding them of their evil. One may go so far as to ban their religion, their persons, their wealth, and their villages.”
Toward the end of each year, The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center (RISSC) in Amman, Jordan—a pre-eminent avatar of mainstream, “moderate Islam”—issues its annual rankings of “The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims.” This past year’s (i.e., 2023) top ranking was bestowed upon Yemeni theologian Habib Umar bin Hafiz, “one of the foremost scholars, spiritual guides, and preachers within the Islamic tradition today,” whose direct influence extends to “hundreds of millions of Muslims around the globe.” Upon release of the rankings in early October 2023, a report gushed that Habib Umar bin Hafiz “played an instrumental role in shaping the ethical and moral compass” of Muslims worldwide, concluding he represented, “the true essence of the religion [Islam]—one that promotes peace, tolerance, and understanding.” On 10 October 2023, ignoring the precipitating murderous brutality wrought by Hamas just 3-days earlier, and anticipating Israel’s understandable defensive response, bin Hafiz launched into a diatribe against Jews employing standard Quranic motifs of sacralized Jew-hatred, “spreading corruption” (5:33; 5:64), and “propagating falsehood” (3:75; 5:41). He concluded with a genocidal declaration, repeating the canonical tradition of Jew-annihilation attributed to Muhammad himself, and also featured in Hamas’ Covenant, article 7: “When one of them seeks refuge under a tree and stone, the trees and the stones will cry out, ’Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah! Behind me is a Jew, come and kill him.’ This was repeated by the most truthful of people. No doubt that day will surely come.”
Assiduous monitoring of public U.S. Islamic center/mosque websites and social media accounts by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has demonstrated that these normative Muslim institutions regularly condone Jew-hatred and jihad violence against Jews. MEMRI has further observed, “It is notable that in our extensive monitoring (of U.S. mosques), our researchers have not found a single sermon denouncing Hamas or the October 7, attacks.”
Two examples of this preaching are presented in chronological order.
Gambian born Imam Alhagie Jallow, completed his memorization of the Quran while studying in Senegal, and later studied at the Islamic University of Imam Muhammad bin Saud in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He became the Imam of the Masjid Us-Sunnah shortly after his visit to Madison, Wisconsin, in 2009. Less than a week after October 7th (on 10/13/23), he delivered this annihilationist diatribe during a sermon:
The only thing that can bring glory to this Islamic nation is the Jihad, which is mentioned in the Qur’an and the hadiths (traditions) of the Prophet Muhammad. The only thing that can bring honor and glory to this nation is Jihad … Oh Jews, you unjust, criminal, corrupt oppressors – stop! You will all most definitely be killed. The Jews, the aggressors, the evil … You describe them, what they do. By Allah, all of them [Jews] will be killed by Muslims. They all will be executed by Muslims. They will all be killed, this is a divine promise [likely referencing the same hadith in the Hamas Covenant article 7] that will inevitably be fulfilled. This is a promise from Allah and it is going to happen. They will all be killed. They will all be killed, and on that day, the believers will rejoice in Allah’s victory.
Imam Umar Mitchell of Masjid Umar Ibn Al-Khattab in Aurora, Colorado taught a Quranic lesson to primary school age children at the Colorado Muslims Community Center, October 22, 2023, outlining for his young audience central indelible, pejorative characteristics of the Jews as depicted in the Quran. He intoned that the Jews are inveterate liars (Quran 2:10; 3:75) who never abide their contracts and covenants (2:61; 3:112; 4:155; 5:13), murdered their prophets (2:61; 3:112; 3:181; 4:155), and even attempted to murder Jesus (actually Isa, a decidedly non-Christian “Muslim Jesus,” 4:157). Imam Mitchell also recounted the Quranic story of Jewish fishermen who were allegedly transformed by Allah into “literal physical monkeys” for fishing on Saturday (2;65; but elaborated in 7:163, 7:164; 7;165; 7:166; again, verse 5:60 refers to the Jews as “apes and pigs”). The good imam concluded that not all Jews are as despicable as their portrayal in the Quran but consistent with Quran 3:113, he asserted only “a couple of them” aren’t.
This rampant, monotonous hateful preaching has had tangible consequences. For two decades the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)’s survey data have indicated that the prevalence of “extreme antisemitism”—agreement with at least 6/11 antisemitic stereotypes—is overwhelmingly more common in Muslim nations and diaspora populations in Europe and the U.S. compared with non-Muslim nations or non-Muslim religio-ethnic groups within these Western societies. Specifically, the world’s 16 most antisemitic nations are all in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) where the prevalence of extreme antisemitism ranges between 74% to 93%. Worldwide, extreme antisemitism is consistently 2- to 3-fold more common in Muslims vs. Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, or those professing no religion. In Western Europe and the U.S., an excess 2- to 4-fold prevalence of extreme Muslim antisemitism persists. The latest ADL survey data from France, for example, where extreme antisemitism approaches MENA levels, indicates that 62% of Muslims (compared with only 15% of Christians) express such extreme Jew-hatred. These ADL data demonstrating disproportionate Muslim Jew-hatred in Western Europe, relative to non-Muslims, have been independently validated by non-ADL survey findings among both Muslim adults and youth. Worse still, Western European data have shown that Muslims are on average at least 2.2-fold more likely to commit antisemitic violence, or make violent threats to Jews, compared to non-Muslims.
Additional polling data also reveal ominous trends since Hamas’ October 7 jihad carnage. A poll conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies sampled 8,000 MENA Muslims and represented 95% of the Muslims in 16 regional nations. The results revealed that around 90% both approved of the October 7th Hamas attacks and rejected Israel’s right to exist. An earlier U.S. Cygnal poll, which oversampled American Muslims, found that 58% agreed Hamas’ October 7th attacks were “justified.”
What can be done to tackle this violence-inspiring hatred?
During early December 2013, Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders boldly ventured where no Western leader had gone before (or sadly, since): openly contrasting Papal ecumenism with the virulent Jew-hatred publicly spewed by Sunni Islam’s Vatican and its Papal equivalents. What is needed are regular pronouncements identifying and condemning this Jew-hatred by Islam’s major teaching institutions. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the organization best suited (and funded) for the task, has till now completely shirked this basic responsibility most essential to its ostensible mission. In the long term, Islam must undergo Vatican II analogous reforms, and that process must begin immediately.
In 1947, in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, the International Emergency Conference on Antisemitism took place in Seelisberg, Switzerland. Its aim was to combat the roots of the antisemitism still rampant in many countries despite the fall of National Socialist (Nazi) rule. Its objective, within this context, was also to address Christian anti-Judaism and help establish a new relationship between Christianity and Judaism. At Seelisberg, the French Jewish historian and Holocaust survivor, Jules Isaac, admonished his contemporaries to confront Christianity’s antisemitic New Testament theology—especially what the leading New Testament commentaries, and commentators glossed—circulating his book manuscript Jésus et Israël (Jesus and Israel). Isaac argued that,
In the Christian’s eyes, the Gospels are inspired texts. They are nonetheless texts set down by the hand of man, and for that reason necessarily subject to the laws of criticism, textual, literary, historical, which no exegesis, even the most orthodox, may evade.
The 21 propositions, around which Isaac had organized his book, directly inspired the Ten Points of Seelisberg. This statement adjured Christians to recall that Jesus and his first disciples were Jewish, and that Christ’s directive to love one’s neighbor applied to all peoples, including Jews. Christians must therefore refrain from speaking of Jews collectively as “enemies of Christ,” killers of Christ, or accursed by God as punishment for deicide. Isaac, working with willing Christian colleagues (including direct appeals to Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII), thus helped catalyze a movement culminating in the Second Vatican Council, whose deliberations begot the declaration Nostra Aetate (1965), an unprecedented, mea culpa-based document text that would entirely alter Christian-Jewish relations. Vatican II/Nostre Aetate, as illustrated by a sentence from the pronouncement issued October 28, 1965, unambiguously condemned antisemitism, from The Church’s perspective:
Moreover, mindful of her common patrimony with the Jews, and motivated by the gospel’s spiritual love and by no political considerations, she deplores the hatred, persecution, and displays of antisemitism directed against the Jews at any time, and from any source.
Catholic Theologian John T. Pawlikowski, observed in 1996 (from the essay collection, appositely entitled, “Removing Anti-Judaism from the Pulpit”), that the noble ideals articulated in the October 28, 1965 pronouncement were only advanced when The Vatican Council,
… formally launched the process of uprooting the classic theology of Jewish displacement from the covenant in light of the Christ event and replaced it with a theological work based on the notion of the ongoing validity of the Jewish covenant to which Christians have been joined.
The “Phase I cleansing” stage in this overall process, as Dr. Pawlikowski characterized it, involved,
… the removal from mainline Christian educational texts of the charge that Jews collectively were responsible for the death of Jesus, that the Pharisees were the arch enemies of Jesus and spiritually soulless, that Jews had been displaced by Christians in the covenantal relationship with God as a result of refusal to accept Jesus as the Messiah, that the Old Testament was totally inferior to the New and that Jewish faith was rooted in legalism while the Christian religion was based on grace.
Indeed by 1995, current St. Joseph’s University Professor Philip Cunningham’s study “Education for Shalom: Religion Textbooks and the Enhancement of the Catholic-Jewish Relationship,” noted that
… the elements of the patristic anti-Judaic theological system had pretty much been eliminated from the textbooks.
There is no cause, at present, for any optimism that Islam’s major religious teaching centers will soon begin their own desperately needed process to remove canonical Islamic antisemitism from the minbar. However, we must still hope that non-Muslim religious and civic leaders, notably Jews, will overcome their timorous, stifling cultural relativism, and demand such a momentous Islamic initiative as Jules Isaac did of the Catholic Church. Isaac, it must be remembered, refused to be dissuaded by the mealy-mouthed “nonconfrontational” arguments of his era:
I am told that I would do better to devote myself to some constructive task: rather than denounce the teaching of contempt, why not initiate the teaching of respect? But the two ends are inseparable. It is impossible to combat the teaching of contempt and its modern survivals, without thereby laying the foundations for the teaching of respect; and, conversely, it is impossible to establish the teaching of respect, without first destroying the remnants of contempt. Truth cannot be built upon error.
Reform Islam? You’ve got to be kidding! A better idea would be to encourage conversion to a less violent ideology. Too bad Zoroastrianism has been largely stamped out. Maybe Bahaiism, Buddhism, or Confucianism? Imagine the good which could come if the Arab world devoted itself to seeking wisdom rather than compelling submission.