Interrupting a history of tolerance - Part II

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.

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.