A CANCER GROWING IN THE ISLAMIC BODY POLITIC :

Anti-Semitism Is Deepening Among Muslims (SUSAN SACHS, April 27, 2002, NY Times)

[A]nti-Semitic imagery is now embedded in the mainstream discourse concerning Jews in much of the Islamic world, in the popular press and in academic journals.

The depictions are not limited to countries that are at war with Israel but can be found in general-interest publications in Egypt and Jordan, the two countries that have signed peace agreements with Israel, as well as in independent religious schools in Pakistan and Southeast Asia.

Arab leaders, for their part, have long rejected the accusation that their state-controlled press, universities and television stations promulgate anti-Semitic views. Islamic history, they say, contains nothing like the anti-Semitic horrors that occurred in Christian Europe, and Islam as a religion accepts many of the revelations embodied in Judaism.

The use of Nazi imagery, the newspaper caricatures of Jews with fangs and exaggerated hook noses, even the Arab textbooks with their descriptions of Jews as evil world conspirators — all of that, Arab leaders often insist, reflect a dislike for Israelis and Zionism but not for Jews and Judaism.

Yet in many Muslim countries the hatred of Jews as Jews, and not only as citizens of Israel, has been nurtured through popular culture for generations.

Now the question is can a generation of Muslims who have been raised on such hate-filled perversions and filth be redeemed? Recalling what had to be done to Nazi Germany to purge it of eliminationist anti-Semitism gives one little cause for optimism in this regard. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 27, 2002 8:05 AM