The message of the UN has become the message of Allah, and of his Prophet
How the Durban II conference carries forward Islam’s ancient anti-Jewish program

In my talk on Islam to an ACT for America group in Manhattan last Sunday, I opened by reading the famous war sura, Koran 9:29, in which Allah tells the Muslims to fight the Christians and the Jews, “until they pay the Jizya tax with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” I pointed out that according to the Koran and the hadiths, this war would not reach its culmination until the end of the world. I quoted a hadith:

The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, so that Jews will hide behind stones and trees and the stone and the tree will say, O Muslim, O servant of Allah! There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.

I continued:

1,300 years before Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, Muhammad declared that the perfection of the world would not be reached until that day when all Jews were exterminated, when even the forces of nature, when even the stones and the trees, would work together to rid the universe of the cursed Jews. Hitler never had anything to compare to this.

In my delivered talk (not in my prepared remarks), I then reiterated my theme from VFR that Muhammad was the successful Hitler, that while Hitler, with his uncontained aggressiveness, overreached and destroyed himself in 12 years, it was Muhammad’s genius to construct a sustainable, highly flexible and adaptable program of jihad and Jew hatred that has lasted through the centuries and is going strong still.

I then proceeded to the main subject of my talk, which was the sharia law and how to stop and reverse its spread.

A woman who attended the meeting told me afterward that she thought my comparison of Muhammad to Hitler was too extreme, that I was making it seem that Islam is just about killing Jews, that I was ignoring that Islam has been the way of life for millions of people for 1,400 years, and that Islam couldn’t be all bad. I replied that I’ve often pointed out that Islam has been the way of life for millions of people for 1,400 years and that we shouldn’t think that Islam is only about jihad, but that here I was making a couple of quick points showing the jihadist core of Islam and obviously was not dealing with all of Islam. My concern in this talk and elsewhere is not the meaning of Islam for Muslims, but the meaning of Islam for non-Muslims. Also, as VFR readers are aware, I have often harshly criticized the Judeo-centric approach to Islam which judges Islam solely from the point of view of how it has treated the Jews, ignoring how it has treated other groups. But here, again, I was not giving an overall evaluation of Islam but was bringing out one aspect of it in a brief introduction. Also, since I was speaking in New York City, to a audience consisting mostly of Jews, I felt my emphasis on the anti-Jewish aspect of Islam was fitting.

These considerations did not placate the woman, who continued to say that I sounded like an extremist and that my message would turn people off.

I was reminded of that conversation last evening when I read Anne Bayefsky’s account in the April 20 New York Daily News of the speech by President Johnnie of Iran (that’s my nickname for him, since his real name is too long) at the UN’s “anti-racism” conference in Geneva:

As he entered the grand room at the UN’s Palais Wilson, he was met by a round of applause. And this is what he said.

He began by denying the Holocaust: The “Zionist regime” had been created “on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of holocaust.”

And he continued with a genocidal agenda: “the egoist and uncivilized Zionism have been able to deeply penetrate into their political and economic structure including their legislation, mass media, companies, financial systems, and their security and intelligence agencies. They have imposed their domination to the extent that nothing can be done against their will. As long as they are at the helm of power, justice will never prevail in the world. It is time the ideal of Zionism, which is the paragon of racism, to be broken. The world Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuse religious sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces.”

Johnnie may be speaking modern-sounding language of “political and economic structure,” of power over “mass media, companies” and “financial systems,” of “justice,” and “racism.” In reality his portrayal of Zionism as a force of pure evil, as the vile enemy of humanity, as a loathsome thing that must be extirpated from the world, is simply an updated expression of the Islamic Jew-hatred that has been central to Islam from the start.

And now this Islamic campaign of total hatred against the Jews is being advanced under the secular, liberal rubric of the United Nations. As Bayefsky sadly noted, a handful of countries boycotted the “anti-racism” meeting, but the rest of the UN members sent delegations and they sat and applauded Johnnie’s primitive outpouring.

Meaning that not only is the program to demonize and eliminate the Jews central to Islam, but the non-Muslim world, by welcoming Islam in its societies through immigration, and in its councils through the UN, is facilitating the spread and expansion of that program.

All of which goes to show that the opening of my talk to the ACT for America group, focusing on the Jew-exterminationist aspect of Islam, was entirely appropriate.

Here are Bayevsky’s two articles on the “Durban II” conference from April 20 and April 21:

Durban Diary, day one: Ahmadinejad’s ugly entrance
By Anne Bayefsky
Monday, April 20th 2009, 8:04 PM

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance in Geneva Monday at the UN’s so-called anti-racism conference, Durban II, made the point better than anyone else. The UN’s idea of combating racism and xenophobia is to encourage more of it. Ahmadinejad was the very first speaker as the substantive session opened. Handed a global megaphone by the UN, out flowed unadulterated hate speech.

The phenomenon was astonishing. The UN provided a platform for a virulent anti-Semite on the anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler. In the name of fighting intolerance, they translated his words into six languages and broadcast them around the world. As he entered the grand room at the UN’s Palais Wilson, he was met by a round of applause. And this is what he said.

He began by denying the Holocaust: The “Zionist regime” had been created “on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of holocaust.”

And he continued with a genocidal agenda: “the egoist and uncivilized Zionism have been able to deeply penetrate into their political and economic structure including their legislation, mass media, companies, financial systems, and their security and intelligence agencies. They have imposed their domination to the extent that nothing can be done against their will. As long as they are at the helm of power, justice will never prevail in the world. It is time the ideal of Zionism, which is the paragon of racism, to be broken. The world Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuse religious sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces.”

As he spoke, the European Union countries that had not withdrawn earlier finally stood up and walked out. But they didn’t really understand what had just happened at all, for when he was finished, all but the Czech Republic went right back in.

Ten countries have now boycotted this second Durban hatefest: Canada, Israel, the United States, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. The rest of the world remains inside, providing legitimacy to a forum for hatemongering. They are under the impression that there is no lasting damage being done here either to the credibility of the institutional host or to the cause of protecting human rights. They are wrong.

And the real victims of human rights are all the poorer for it.

Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, editor of eyeontheun.org and a professor at Touro College.

Durban Diary, day two: The outrage continues
By Anne Bayefsky
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
April 21, 2009

On Tuesday, the UN’s racist anti-racism conference “Durban II” rammed through a final declaration three days before its scheduled conclusion. On Monday Iranian President Ahamadinejad had opened the substantive program by denying the Holocaust and spewing anti-Semitism. A day later UN members rewarded Iran by electing it one of three Vice-Chairs of the committee which adopted the final declaration.

The committee meeting was chaired by Libya and lasted fifteen minutes. No discussion of the merits of the Durban II declaration was tolerated.

The document reaffirms the 2001 Durban Declaration which alleges Palestinians are victims of Israeli racism and mentions only Israel among all 192 UN member states. It also multiplies the anti-Israel provisions, using the usual UN code, by adding yet another rant about racist foreign occupation.

Not surprisingly, such a manifesto encouraged the racists and anti-Semites which had pressed for its adoption. Speaking on Tuesday the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Faysal Mekdad, alleged “the right of return” of Jews to Israel—Jewish self-determination—was “a form of racial discrimination.” He also objected to the “Judaization of Israel” and to the “ethnic cleansing … of 1948.”

Palestinian Riyad Al-Maliki claimed that “for over 60 years the Palestinian people has been suffering under … the ugliest face of racism and racial discrimination … ” and said an Israeli government “declaration … regarding the Jewish nature of the state is a form of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Al-Maliki was delighted with the result of the conference and gloated by reading excerpts from the 2001 Durban Declaration that he was pleased to see had been reaffirmed.

The remnants of the European Union which remained inside the conference—in particular France and the United Kingdom—entirely ignored their many promises not to accept anything which singled out the Jewish state. Though these Europeans undoubtedly enabled the hatemongering, their excuses in the coming days are predictable.

The rest of the week has been set aside for speechifying. Europeans can be expected to point to the miniscule mentions of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and pretend anti-Semitism is unrelated to the demonization of Israel in the very same text.

Their behavior is as chilling as the behavior of the UN itself. UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay issued a press release following Ahmadinejad’s speech in which she complained: “I condemn the use of a UN forum for political grandstanding. I find this totally objectionable. Much of his speech was clearly beyond the scope of the Conference.”

Ahmadinejad’s speech was not political grandstanding. It was anti-Semitism. The problem with Holocaust denial is not the scope of the conference. The problem is that it is a form of anti-Semitism. A Durban II Declaration which continues to demonize Israel—and therefore fosters the murder of Jews in the here and now—is not legitimate because it feigns concern over Jews murdered in the past.

April 21st was Holocaust Remembrance Day. Its message, however, was totally lost on the United Nations.

Bayefsky is a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, editor of eyeontheun.org and a professor at Touro College.

[end of Beyefsky article.]

- end of initial entry -

A reader writes:

Well, as the woman referenced, I guess we disagree. Your point is a good one, but I think you might have inserted a phrase,

“Of course Islam is not only about Jew hatred and jihad, but IN THAT RESPECT, Muhammed exceeded Hitler because he fashioned something that could sustain that hatred for 1400 years instead of 12.”

Something like that.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 23, 2009 12:00 PM | Send