What jihadists believe about the Jews

While there are of course different degrees of anti-Semitism, the most serious anti-Semitism is the type that sees the Jews as literally the source of all the ills that have befallen a given community, or even the whole world. From time to time at this website I have quoted anti-Semitic statements of this nature. But here is one to top them all, by Sayyid Qutb, the leading theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Al Qaeda and other contemporary jihadist groups are followers and offshoots. If Muhammad was, as I’ve said, a successful Hitler, then it also is not surprising that Muslims hold beliefs about the universality and ubiquity of Jewish evil that seem to transcend anything the Nazis ever claimed. The passage is from In the Shade of the Qur’an, quoted in Andrew Bostom’s invaluable collection, The Legacy of Jihad, pp. 130-131:

History witnessed repeated violations by the Jews of their treaties with the Muslim state in Madinah, as also their scheming against the Muslims. These violations led to the encounters with the Jewish tribes of Qaynuq, al-Nadir and Qurayzah, and also the Battle of Khaybar. Their efforts to bring together all the forces hostile to Islam in an unholy alliance, with the aim of exterminating Islam altogether, are well known.

They have continued to scheme against Islam and the Muslim community ever since. They were instrumental in the chaotic events that led to the assassination of the third rightly-guided Caliph, ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan and to the emergence of division in the Muslim community. They were the main culprits in the conflict that took place between ‘Ali and Mu’awiyah. They led the way in the fabricating of false statements attributed to the Prophet, historical reports and baseless interpretation of Qur’anic statements. They also paved the way to the victory of the Tartars and their conquest of Baghdad and the fall of the Islamic Caliphate.

In modern history, the Jews have been behind every calamity that has befallen the Muslim communities everywhere. They give active support to every attempt to crush the modern Islamic revival and extend their protection to every regime that suppressed such a revival.

What truly takes the cake is that remark about the conquest and destruction of Baghdad. This was indeed the greatest single calamity in the history of Islam, brought about by the Mongol hordes who swept across Eurasia obliterating city after city and people after people. Yet in Qutb’s mind, the Mongol “Storm from the East,” one of the most fearsome events in all history, was caused or made possible by none other than those scheming Jews.

But his other statements are no less amazing. Thus when he says that the Jews “were the main culprits in the conflict that took place between ‘Ali and Mu’awiyah,” he saying that the dynastic struggle that permanently split the Islamic community into Shi’ites and Sunnis was caused by the Jews. It’s as if he were to say, “Every time you have an evil thought, every time you do a bad ting, every time someone does a bad thing to you, every time you feel pain or sorrow, every time something goes wrong in your life, it is the Jews who are doing it to you.”

Howard Sutherland adds:

Would that Qutb’s third paragraph were true! The Moslems would be in far worse shape if it were, and we would all be better off.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 13, 2005 02:55 PM | Send