Anti-Semitism — Spawned and Nourished by Humanity’s Dark Side
August 21, 2006, 4:08 pm |
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By Bill Narvey
There is increasing concern over witnessing the rise in anti-Semitism to virulent levels within much of the Muslim world. Those concerns are heightened by the fact that there has also been a concurrent and disturbing rise of anti-Semitism in the West.
The question has often been asked, why do so many Muslims hate the Jews? That question however should be asked alongside the question, why do some Christians still hate the Jews?
The answer to both questions is fundamentally the same. The root causes for anti-Semitism are found in the dark side of human nature.
Though Christianity vastly differs from Islam as to historical beginnings and theologies, each have a number of things in common, both in their conception and their histories that give rise to and promotes Jew hatred.
Both religions exhibit a superiority complex. In their foundational writings, both the Gospels and the Koran were penned by those holding the unshakeable belief that their new religion was superior to all others and that each brought the world the true word of God. With the success each religion had in rooting and thriving, both their sense of power and respective superiority complexes grew.
Both religions, from the outset were characterized by rigid structures to preach, teach and inculcate in their followers, a conformist and dogmatic literalist belief in the words, doctrines and ideologies of the Gospel as further defined and refined by other writings and the Koran.
While many Christian Churches and Christians have moved away from the conformity of inflexible literal adherence to the words and doctrines of the Gospels and subsequent writings, a very great many Muslims for their part, have not similarly moved away from the literal teachings of the Koran.
Both Christianity and Islam also have in common a replacement or secessionist theology. Christianity taught that God’s covenant with the Jews was rescinded and replaced by a new covenant with Christians. Islam taught and still does to this day, that it replaces both Judaism and Christianity which religions had not received the true word of God, whereas Islam had received, not only the true word of God, but God’s final word.
Again, replacement theology and ideological variations derive from the superiority complexes that mark both religions.
It is also part of human nature that those who wish to promote their own new vision of the world or religion will do so in part by attacking and denigrating the ideology it seeks to replace, as well as those who hold the beliefs sought to be replaced.
Both the Gospels and the Koran, for different historical reasons attack and demonize both Judaism and the Jews. While the Koran also attacks and demonizes Christians and other non-Muslims, the most vitriolic attacks are aimed at the Jews.
For the first Christians who penned the Gospels and later writers, demonizing the Jews filled two purposes.
The first was to create the new Christian theology and distinguish it from Judaism, its predecessor religion, from which it took much.
The second reason was maliciously self serving and can be understood in the context of the darker aspects of human nature.
As a new and relatively weak religion in a Roman world that itself was intolerant of any views that would be perceived as being rebellious to the Roman order, Christians sought to enhance their chances of survival.
They therefore whitewashed the Romans for the death of Jesus and mendaciously blamed the Jews.
Jews at the time were under the thumb of the Romans and were vulnerable. The Jewish revolts did little to endear Jews to the Romans. It is highly probable that the new Christians saw it was in their best interests to join the Romans in despising the Jews, in the realistic hope that Roman attention and concerns would remain focused on the Jews and not the Christians.
Thereafter, with the rise of Christianity and Christianity’s power in the Roman world and the concurrent weakening and vulnerability of Jews and Judaism, the intolerance of Jews only magnified.
As for Mohammed, while there are some verses in the Koran that arguably speak better of the Jews, most of what Mohammed has to say does not. The Koran speaks of Jews very negatively including calling for Jewish suffering and death and amounts to a pure outpouring of hatred.
The change in Mohammed’s attitude towards the Jews is often attributed to his seeking to attract Jews to his leadership and to Islam and when Jews failed to respond as he expected, he took his vengeance both military by murdering, dominating and enslaving Jews and by filling the pages of his Koran with calumny against the Jews.
It again is part of the darker side of human nature that those who are powerful and whose expectations of others are not met, will not only want their revenge, but they can and they will take it.
Just as Mohammed wreaked his vengeance on the Jews, one can find this also occurring in Christian history. For example, Martin Luther reacted in much the same way as Mohammed when the Jews failed to meet his expectations. Failing to win Jews over to Christianity through kindness, Martin Luther consumed by anger, vented his Jew hatred by viciously attacking the Jews.
In summary, the root causes of anti-Semitism are bound up in the darker side of human nature that has found expression in the superiority complexes of both Christianity and Islam, the historically rigid literalist teachings by the leaders of both religions and the absolute confidence in the righteousness of their beliefs, views and religion that comes with the successes of both religions and the power each has gained thereby.
Old habits die hard and so too does conformist thinking passed down, generation to generation over 2 millennia for Christians and about 1,500 years for Muslims. That is more than enough time for Jew hatred to become ingrained and for many, that ingrained thinking is resistant to the influences of the modern world, including the intellectual influences of logic, reason and the outgrowth of universal humanistic ideologies.
While the dark side of human nature as regards the Jews has lightened considerably for a great many Christians, for a very great many Muslims, the dark side of their human nature as regards Jews is still almost as dark as it was when Mohammed first brought Islam into the world.
Related: Arab/Muslim World, Islam, Society, Anti-Semitism, Judaism, Christianity
August 21st, 2006 at 4:13 pm
It is very tempting to say that anti-Semitism is genetic — but that would be an easy way out. Unfortunately, Jew hatred is widespread because it continues to be socially conditioned into children — a product of, as you say, “humanity’s dark side.”
August 22nd, 2006 at 2:50 am
Actually, Christianity’s roots and development are far from “characterized by rigid structures to preach, teach and inculcate in their followers, a conformist and dogmatic literalist belief in the words, doctrines and ideologies of the Gospel . . .” That sounds like American Evangelism—a very, very late development in Christian history and one that is, after all, a peasant’s religion of simple truth and dogmatism.
Christianity was always undergoing changes from the beginning. Remember, it was, and is, a “universalist” religion, not tribal, so different customs and beliefs and rituals entered into it. Christians never got “their act together,” Constantine notwithstanding. The turbulent history of Christianity continues to this day; not the least 600 years ago, when Europe was torn apart by a radical new version of the faith. To my knowledge, Islam has not undergone any such parallel transformation or refutation of previous dogmas.
All this is not to say that Jew-hatred hasn’t been a part of Christian culture and history. Sad to say, it’s been the most virulent by far in the entire history of the Jewish people (and THAT is saying something!). How to explain this? Don’t know. Yet one can point to a constant in Christianity: Jew-hatred (which may prove your point). As far as the Jews are concerned, Luther did nothing but give Protestants another excuse to hate the Jews.
It was during the rise of science, rationalism, and the quest for democratic government in the 18th century when Jews finally had a chance to breathe. Not surprisingly, in sync with European nationalist tendencies in the 19th century, Zionists were thinking “it’s time to move out of the neighborhood.” Which judgment proved tragically prescient in 20th century Europe.
It has been argued that Jew-hatred among Muslims is a European colonial import (oh, the irony!). I’m no expert, but the assumption that the Jews and Arabs always hated each other since Hagar is just a myth. As we all know, some Christian anti-Jewish tropes, like the blood libel, are now being touted by Muslims. Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” for example, played very well in the Muslim world.
The real war we are fighting is not Jew versus Muslim or Christian versus Muslim. That is how the enemy sees it. The war we wage is between religious fanaticism on the part of extremist Muslims and those who value rationality, an open and free society, emancipation of minorities (think Jews above all), and separation of church (or synagogue or mosque) and state. These are the values that were birthed in the 18th century and are the only hope against the scourge of hate and fanaticism—including the secular craziness of Marxism and its variants, also at times deeply imbued with Jew-hatred, and the obvious perversions of ersatz religion and nationalism such as Hitler’s cult of pure race and the “Volk.”
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:36 am
My recollection of history is that even at the time of the writing of the accepted Gospels and until they were canonized as the only Gospels to form the New Testament, there was fractionalism within Christianity. Other Gospels being unearthed figuratively and literally are evidence of that lack of uniformity in Christian thinking at the time. That said, the different views of Christianity held by Christians was not starkly black and white.
The Catholic Church that emerged as the leader of Christianity liberally adopted much of the political structure of the Romans for itself.
The Schism of Nicea in 325 A.D. convened by Constantine to bring about a unity in Christian thinking as to belief and principles resulted in the Nicean Creed, which included the edict that all who did not accept those beliefs, and that meant Christian heretics to non-Christians, were to be cursed.
With conformity and unity of belief and power now consolidated in the Catholic church, the Catholic Church wielded that power over Christians, just as any powerful head of government of the day.
Eventually as we all know, some Christians came to resent the power of the Catholic church over them and broke away to form their own denominations with somewhat different views. The core beliefs of Christianity, in spite of some variation in beliefs, has remained strong. Part of those core beliefs have to do with those denigrating statements of Jews in the Gospels including Jews being Christ killers and so Jew hatred in Christianity is being sustained to this day in some Christian Churches and some Christians.
As for your comment that Muslims have not always hated the Jews, there is only some truth to that I think.
Much of the early history of Muslim - Jewish relations until the latter centuries, has been one of dominance and submission. Muslims had no need of hate towards Jews for in Muslim lands, Jews were subjugated. Even in Andalusia, where a myth of excellent Muslim - Jewish relations were established is not nearly as rosy a picture as myth would have it. The Koranic edicts against the Jews probably did not give rise to Muslim passions as hot as hatred for it was enough for Muslims to believe in their superiority over the Jews as a matter of fact and the Jews had no power to disabuse them of that notion.
With Jews coming to the land of what would become Israel and not only flourishing, but using a Muslim workforce to achieve their success, Muslims saw Jews as more successful then them, more powerful economically and using Muslims to do that.
This is in my view what led from Muslims seeing and experiencing Jews as a lesser people to experiencing Jews who were capable of things that just could not be in accord with the dictates of the Koran and the Muslim perceptions of Jews that were in accord with the Koran.
Muslim perceptions vis a vis the Jews turned to hatred and that hatred is very much alive today.
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:36 am
The schism within Islam — nominally between Sunni and Shiite — has caused untold bloodshed as we are witnessing in Iraq, and seems to have rather innocuous roots: