The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism

"The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History" is a 2008 book by Brown University professor of medicine Andrew Bostom. It is a “collection of sources, Islamic and others, which testify to the long and sorry history of anti-Semitism in Islam.” [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1210668642954]

Benny Morris writing in The New Republic calls Bostom's book "important and deeply discouraging." [The Darker Side, Benny Morris, The New Republic, September 10, 2008, pp. 35-39] Morris discusses a great deal of material that Bostom has omitted, concluding that in many ways the anti-Semitism of the Muslim world is even worse that protrayed in the Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. [The Darker Side, Benny Morris, The New Republic, September 10, 2008, pp. 35-39]

According to Hebrew University professor Raphael Israeli, “the author delves in considerable detail into the main sources of Islamic jurisprudence - the Koran and the Hadith, complemented by the Sirah (the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad), where an abundance of references, usually not complimentary but rather derogatory, are made to Jews, collectively known as Israi'liyyat (Israelites' stories). This is a trove of anti-Jewish stereotypes that have become the Shari'a-based uncontested "truth" about the People of the Book. Those accounts are invariably cited in sermons during Friday prayers, thus assuring their universal diffusion among Muslim constituents and the constant poisoning of the souls of young and adult Muslims alike, something that renders their fundamentally negative attitudes to Jews and Israel unchangeable.” [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1210668642954]

Bill Warner writes that "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism," is an “historic work. It is a complete encyclopedia of both the doctrine and practice of Islamic Jew hatred. Jew hatred is Bostom's usage and it is accurate.” [ [http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BB310B4D-5D1E-431C-8C3E-B6085913B59A FrontPage Magazine ] ]

In the book, Bostom provides the first English translation of certain writings of Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, the Grand Imam Bostom claims to be the nearest Muslim equivalent to the pope. Bostom marshals such text as evidence for the prevalence of anti-semitism in mainstream interpretations of Islam. [ [http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/04/23/pope-benedict-xvi-grand-imam-tantawi-and-the-jews/]

The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle praises the book for making its case with exhaustive use of original sources, "Anti-Semitic passages from the Koran, the hadith (collected anecdotes about the Muslim prophet Mohammed’s life), the sira (early biographies of Mohammed). Anti-Semitic essays, speeches and excerpted book passages by Muslim scholars, theologians and thinkers from the Middle Ages to the present. (and) Scholarly, witness and journalistic accounts of Muslim persecutions of and discrimination against Jews over more than 1,000 years." [New books probe reality of Muslim anti-Semitism, Leon Cohen, Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, July 17th, 2008, [http://www.jewishchronicle.org/article.php?article_id=10346] ]

Web page

http://www.andrewbostom.org/

References