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Interrupting a history of tolerance - Part II

By Riaz Hassan - posted Friday, 3 August 2007


The exclusion of Palestinians from their own land was and is the root cause of their anti-Jewishness and paradoxically led them to embrace the ideology of anti-Semitism. This narrative of exploitation, dispossession and humiliation is also the cause of resentment and anger in other Muslim lands, although understandably the details differ.

Palestine - and the plight of Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - is the single most important factor in the incorporation of anti-Semitism in the contemporary Arab Muslim consciousness and, in particular, in the agenda of modern Islamist movements.

Thus, the genesis and character of Palestinian and Arab anti-Semitism are grounded in existential conditions and not in the impulses of Islamic theology. Islamic values are largely co-opted as a sacred motif for mass appeal and mobilisation.

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In short, the growth of anti-Semitism in the Arab Muslim world, an unfamiliar ideology during much of Muslim history, can be traced to a number of causes: the imperialist challenge and the nationalist response; the rise, in a time of violent and painful change, of a new intolerance that exacerbated all hatreds and endangered all minorities; the rise of the Nazi ideology that elevated the extermination of the Jews and anti-Semitism to a national goal of the Nazi state; the Nazi success in exporting propaganda to the Arab Muslim lands, exploiting their resentments; and the Zionist settlement of Palestine, leading to the establishment of Israel and the succession of Arab-Israeli wars.

The Israeli-Arab-Palestinian war, which continues unabated, has highlighted the economic, political and military impotence that generates an unprecedented sense of humiliation among the Arabs. The US-led “War on Terror,” widely viewed in the Muslim world as a “War on Islam,” adds to the humiliation.

The causes of anti-Semitism within Islamist movements thus lie largely in the prevailing political, social and economic conditions and the conflicts arising from them. Islamic symbols are co-opted as a sacred motif for the political mobilisation of the resistance efforts.

See Interrupting a history of tolerance - Part I.

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First published in YaleGlobal on July 24, 2007.



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About the Author

Riaz Hassan is Australian Professorial Fellow and Emeritus Professor at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia and Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies of National University of Singapore. His most recent books are: Islam and Society: Sociological Explorations (Melbourne University Press 2013) and, Life as a Weapon: The Global Rise of Suicide Bombings, (Routledge January 2014).

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