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Accusation that this article is silly
I don't think we need all this kinds of silly talks; alot of dumb things are written any day.
- How can you have an article on anti-Semitism, and then remove examples of anti-Semitism? These actions that you call "silly" have raised a generation of suicide bombers that believe it is Allah's will to mass-murder Jews. How can you imply that such an signiciant sociological development be removed? RK
- Syrian has claimed in the UN that Jews murder and eat Christian babies for Passover
- Egyptian newspapers claims that Jews lace bubble gum with aphrodisiacs to cause Muslim girls to lose sexual inhibitions
- Egyptian and Palestinian newspaper claim that Jews invented HIV (the virus that causes AIDS)
The article needs to be shortened and needs references a well.-- Di Stroppo
- No, this article does not need to be shortened. In fact, like most Wikipedia entries, it needs people well schooled in this area to expand on it. Wikipedia intends on becoming a full fledged encyclopaedia; its not a mere dictionary. People come to this project to contribute scholarship. RK
- Constructive does not mean just to dump various bits and pieces of information in a text box. We need a well written article that is focused using verified material not just copying gossip and hate. -- Di Stoppo
- I agree, but what does that have to with the well-reseached and indisputable facts here? You seem desperate to hide the beliefs of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Arabs, especially those influenced by the Islamist movement. Quoting the Arab;s own pointof view, in their own words, and giving further references to show how accurate and representative this is is not gossip. In fact, this is precise opposite of gossip. Have you read any texts on this subject? RK
Historical context
I think it would also be valuable to historicize this discussion (as the article on Christian anti-semitism is). I was taught that Muslim Spain was a great time/place for Jews -- quite different from the situation today. I wonder how much Arab anti-semitism was aroused or even created by the rise of modern nationalism (both Arab nationalism and Zionism)? In any event, I think the aticle would be stronger if it could document changing Arab attitudes, as well as differences between official and popular attitudes towards Jews, and the changing contexts for these activities, SR
As SR had pointed out, the terms "Arab" and "Muslim" are not interchangeably. Many Arabs are Christians (maybe 2%, 5%, more?) , a tiny percent are are of the druze faith (though they rarely refer to themselves as Arabs). In the western world a small number of Arabs are likely Unitarians, deists, humanists and atheists. Similarly, a large number of Muslims are not Arab. Perhaps the current title of the entry should be re-titled "Islamic anti-Semitism"? I will not change the name of the entry today, to see if any other useful name suggestions come up. RK
Islam and conquering
I have completely no expertise in this area, but this passage struck me as odd:
- Unlike Christianity, Muslims sought to conquer the world through force of arms, rather than through conversion. As such, when Muslim armies conquered nations, they felt no special need to force Jews (or Christians) to convert to Islam. Members of other religions, however, were forced to convert, or they were killed.
There was never a Christian program to conquer the world. There is one in Islam, but if memory serves the original idea in the Koran was more like conversion than anything else; certainly "world conquering" is a lousy description for the idea.
- Right, I was trying to show a contrast between Christianity and Islam. Christianity never officially sent armies over the planet to convert the world to Christianity. (although individual Kings and Queens effectively did this; but they did so as part of a nationalist agenda, and not a theological one.) In contrast, the Quran commands Muslims to conquer the world for Islam; during Mohammed's life and in the centuries after, that is what they actually did. They succeeded in militarily conquering over a third of the known world at the time. Muslim armies swept over nation after nation. Only massive amount of military force from Christian nations stopped the expansion of Islam. To this day Islamic law requires that Muslims reconquer the lands that they lost (including Spain and Israel.) RK
Also, I think the claim that members of other religions were forced to convert or killed is plain wrong, so I'm removing it. Under Muslim rule in India during the Middle Ages, "dhimmi" status was extended to Hindus; similarly Buddhists elsewhere.
-- CYD
Jews had it better under nuslims that under Christians - well, from that article it seems that it have more or less the same rights (authonomy, right to practicise its religion) as in Poland (and i guess in few other christian countries the same). What were differences? I would either remove that sentence, or add "with exception of... and here listed few (right now i am thinking about one B-) ) countries". Or what were that rights compared to Jewish authonomy in Poland-Lithuania? Had Jews some authonomy in Hungary too?
For a detailed analysis of this subject, please see "Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages", by Mark R. Cohen, Princeton Univ. Press, 1994. The intro to the book says "Did Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages cohabit in a peaceful "interfaith utopia?" Or were Jews under Muslim rule persecuted, much as they were in Christian lands? Rejecting both polemically charged "myths," Mark Cohen offers a systematic comparison of Jewish life in medieval Islam and Christendom--the first in-depth explanation of why medieval Islamic-Jewish relations, though not utopic, were less confrontational and violent than those between Christians and Jews in the West."
Website for this book (http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/5421.html)
Title of the article
Why is this article titled "Arab anti-Semitism" and seems to only include information about "Islamic anti-Semitism"? Not all Arabs are Muslims and to suggest so would not be very NPOV. This doesn't seem to follow the logic of the more aptly named, "Christian anti-Semitism". I suggest a change in title to Islamic anti-semitism --maveric149
Shouldn't the "s" in anti-semitism be capitalized? I thought it always was in English and my searches on Google tend to support this. --maveric149
Arab peoples speak Semitic languages
First of all, MANY ARABIC PEOPLE ARE SAMITES! Samites is a common description for the people living or lived around the Palestine/Israel area, Jews, Palestinians, Samarians, Philistees and so on. Israel has tried with bacteriological warfare against their enemies, they have failed because genetically speaking Jews and Arabs are very similar.
Second of all, taking quotes, from a book written about 1300 years ago, and not mentioning their historical context is stupid.
Third of all, the only thing this shows is a deep ignorance towards Arab culture, yes keep the content rename the article to "Jewish racism against Arabs" it would fit.
- Isn't Samite a type of cloth? And if you will read other areas of the Wikipedia, you will see that Arabs are not being singled out -- there are other cases around of articles about anti-Arabism. -- Zoe
- Arabs are not Semites. They are a people whose langauge is Semitic, which is a big difference. Please see the article on atni-Semitism for a discussion of the etymology of the word. It doesn't mean what you imagine it does. RK 12:46, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
Edits and reversions (2002)
RK, about your recent mass reversion - why did you do it? I agree there are questions to be asked about several of the changes, but many of the changes were putting the Qur'an verses in better context (how can that be less NPOV?) and (the editor claimed) correcting the quotes from the Qur'an - can you explain why you reverted these changes as well as all the others? --Camembert 02:08 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)
- There was no effort at all to represent the situation in a historical light, nor any attempt at all to do anything less than present a full-fledged Islamic apologetic. The person made very clear, in a number of places, that Islam really was the one true religion, and every change he made reflected this viewpoint. Very little of what he or she wrote was NPOV. It would be a huge waste of time to through every single change one sentence at a time. If someone wants to make a good faith effort in adding to or improving this entry, they need to at least try to be NPOV. My user-history shows that I am perfectly willing to do the same kind of revert with regards to articles on other faiths; in recent months I (among others) have done precisely the same thing when presented with Orthodox Jewish apologetical rewrites of articles, or Jehovah Witness Christian apologetical rewrites of articles. It doesn't matter if the person is a member of my faith or not. Even when changes are made that make my preferred faith out to be "the one truth" I have removed such claims, simply because I am trying (the best I can) to be NPOV. RK
- I understand that my actions make it look like I am unwilling to accept any changes, but that is not so. We can look through the history of this article, and at our leisure incorporate one change at a time, as long as there some historical scholarship to back it up, or as long as opinions are presented as such. I just would hope that when new changes are made, they don't concern every single paragraph at the same time, and that when changes of major importance are made (as they were) there is something offered in the Talk section to back some of them up. RK
Personal Comment
As a muslim I've always been told to respect all humans and never go against a Jew or Christian sicne they are also followers of the same God. I'd have to definetely say this is fabricated material written by a ignorant individual, and should not be featured as one of the pages in this site. Prophet Mohammad always tells us to love and respect those of other faiths who worship the same God. These quotes are ridiculous fabrications written by misguided people. The Quran has never been interpreted as such or translated in such a manner. Quran verses have always been written in a beautiful poetic manner.
Change of title
I changed the title of the article. The title is undoubtedly neutral now, whether or not it was before. --Ed Poor
Some suggestions for completing the article would be:
- charges of anti-Semitism, i.e., claims by Jews and others that some Arabs are, do, or say anti-Semitic things.
- Koran statements
- newspaper statements
- 9/11 responses
I'm not taking sides, and I'm not going to write this. You guys are: RK, elian, DanKeshet, et al. -- while I sit back and watch. --Ed Poor
- sorry, I don't have the knowledge for writing about Arab anti-semitism, all I know is that MEMRI is not the place to do research about it (and maybe also not the appropriate site to link to). --Elian
Did someone just change the article back? I'm getting dizzy. Maybe I should just log off for the weekend. Whee! Time off from Wikipedia!! --Ed Poor
- Yes, me (explanation on my talk page), so it's not you getting dizzy ;-) Have a nice weekend! --Elian
Having followed the edit history of this article and reread it, I don't think I will change any jota of this article. If people want to use Wikipedia as a propaganda platform for slandering Arabs, I don't want to stop them, lost in their hatred as they seem. --Elian
Need for critical analysis
I find the changes I made reasonable, I think the article sounds a bit more neutral now.
- The quotation from the Qur'an? Not really, sorry. What this article is missing is a thorough analysis of the development of anti-semitism (how much effect had the creation of Israel?), a critical debate of how much is anti-Israelism and how and if the terms are seperable, a description of the practical institutionalization of anti-semitism (are there any laws in the arab countries which discriminate against Jews, i.e. especially Jews, not just adherents of other religions?). A mere collection of anti-semitic statements of arab jounalists and politicians does not make it an encyclopedia entry. And this is something I can't do, because i don't have the knowledge. I don't want to use ad hominem arguments, but ideally all this should not be written by a Jew, who lacks the necessary distance to discriminate between Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism (this is not directed to Jews in general). --Elian
The quotations written before I excluded them from the original article seemed inexplicit, by replaceing it with a more accurate verse I wanted to show that anti-semitism is a inaccurate interpretation of the Qur'an. The original, inaccurate verses written in the current article led up to these misinterpretations by which the author tried to prove his point. However you certainly seem to make a point. Should we exclude the quotation? --Alireza Hashemi
Responding both to Elian and to Alireza Hashemi:
Everything relating to Jews in the Middle East is so tangled up that even when people are earnestly looking for common ground they often cannot find it. There is too much hostility, both open and disguised.
There are arguments for against so many large and small points, and many of these are intricately inter-related, too.
We can't even agree on what a "Palestinian" is, or whether a Palestinian state exists! These latter two difficulties alone make it just about impossible to write any neutral articles, even when a writer is determined not to take sides.
I don't know how to achieve NPOV in this article. I just know that it's good to try, and that I will keep trying. Please help me, everyone. --Ed Poor
- Hello Alireza, nice that you adopted a user name, it is a lot easier to communicate. Now I understand :-) In fact, I split the article in two and moved everything about Islam to Anti-Semitism in Islam since: first) not all Arabs are Muslims and second) not all Muslims are Arabs. I would suggest to exclude the quotation. If you like, have a look at the article on Anti-Semitism in Islam and try to neutralize it (I inserted some quotes of Ibn Hisham, but there is a lot more to be done). Be careful and prepare for edit wars, though! --Elian
I've attempted to create something that addresses why anti-semitism in the arab newspapers. I've attached it as a link instead of putting it in the article. What is really needed are for people from arab countries to write this.
'Please' specify for the sake of NPOV. It's absolutely trivial to claim that there are anti-Semitic newspapers (a lot of countries do), and specify which newspapers, what governments, etc. I've tried to do begin this in the article, but I implore you to add more.
Removed nonsense
I removed :
"Thanks to the efforts of American pro-Israeli organizations, the world is kept well informed about what this tiny minorty thinks. Their views should correctly be compared to the hate mongering of religious extremist settlers in the West Bank, Gaza and in other places."
I have no thanks to write or say. A lot of not-american and not pro-Israeli peoples and organisations are vigilant about anti-semitism, as they are for any other form of racism.
Ericd 21:28 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)
RK I reverted the previous edit by Quasar. But why do you revert this one ? What is anti-semitic.
Ericd 00:01 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)
Anti-Semitism versus threats to kill Israeli Jews
Some of the examples on the page can be reasonably be classified as anti-semitism, but some cannot. The long section about children on Palestinian TV doesn't contain anything that should be here. It is just the normal propaganda bullshit that occurs in most societies that are at war. So the Palestinians hold as heros people who did violence to their enemies in the past; so what is new? Israel does that too (including people who were terrorists by all reasonable definitions). All countries do that. What we are seeing here is just the standard propaganda device of demonising the enemy so that their legitimate concerns don't need to be listened to. The sentence I just wrote applies both to the Palestinian TV segments reported here and to the person who thought they belong on this page.
-- zero
- Agreed, that section should be removed. Not only for the reasons you point out, but also because they would appear to be an attact on the state of Israel - not Jews in general. -- stewacide
Agreed too. Many Palestinians wiew the Israelis as an illegitimate occupying power and terror attacks as a legitimate way to drive them out, yet that does not imply any notion that they are necessarily against Jews per se.
David.Monniaux 08:44, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I strenuously disagree with Stewacide and David Monniaux. Their claims are divorced from reality. The uncontested fact is that in the Arab Middle East, the terms "Israeli", "Zionist" and "Jew" are used interchangeably, indicating a conjoining of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The vast majority of Arabs make no difference between opposing Judaism and opposing the Israeli government. Since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Arabs have interchangeably used the term "Zionists" (Sahyûniyyûn), with "Jews", "Children of Israel" (Banû Isrâîl) or "Israelis". (Stillman, 1986) "The mounting scale and sheer extent of this vehemently anti-Semitic literature and commentary in the newspapers, journals, magazines, radio, television, and in the everyday life of the Middle East have swamped that minority of Arabs who did try to separate their attitudes to Jews from their rejection of Zionism." (Wistrich, Antisemitism, p. 253) RK 16:21, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Even assuming the truth of everything you wrote, your logic is broken. Just because someone does not verbally distinguish "Jew" and "Israeli" that does not mean that an attack they make on Israel is actually an attack on Jews. The four paragraphs in question do not even contain the words "Jew" or "Israeli" in Palestinian quotation. What we have in those paragraphs is an account of Palestinians railing against the people they see as their oppressors. I don't see the slightest anti-Semistism in it and I don't think it belongs in this article. --zero 08:29, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- If you don't see this Palestinian incitement to murder Jews as anti-Semitic, then you are blind and self-deceiving, at best. Suffice it to say that all mainstream Jewish groups clearly recognize this as anti-Semitism. RK 12:22, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Pardon me for thinking for myself, I tell things as I see them and don't look to other people for my opinions. Apparently for you any antipathy towards people who happen to be Jews is antisemitism, but for me the Jewishness has to be a root cause of the antipathy. The fact is that Palestinians would want to kill Eskimos if the Eskimos treated them as Zionism and Israel have. It has nothing to do with the Jewishness of the Israelis. The position you espouse is simply a convenient way to avoid engaging the real issues. They are evil so their cause has no merits. Furthermore, in your paragraph above, as in many things you have written in Wikipedia, you make no attempt to distinguish between the Palestinians (the subject of the paragraphs in question) and "the Arab Middle East" (the subject of your quotations). That is exactly the same sin you are accusing others of.-- zero 13:41, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- What Zero0000 said makes perfect sense, and isn't bigoted in the least. If you can't comprehend the difference between someone hateing Israel and hating Jews (the topic of this article) then just go away.
- For example, the Palestinian Authority inciting their citizens to kill Jews from Israel is completely different from the PA inciting their citizens to kill any Jew worldwide. The first is likely modivated by their understandable hatred of Israel and the occupation. The second, if it can be shown, would infact be an example of anti-semitism as defined here. -- stewacide 01:53, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Absolutely false. The PLO does kill random Jews worldwide. They have never restricted themselves to Israeli soldiers, or even to random Israeli civilians. (For that matter, they also have machine gunned Jewish babies int their cribs in recent years. This made newspapers in the West; did you miss all those stories> This by you is political and not anti-Semitic? What nonsense. In any case, the PA and PLO often makes no distinction between "the Jews" and the "the Zionists". Unless you are accusing them of lying about their own beliefs in their own newspapers, PA funed mosques, and radio stations, you have nothing to back your position up with. Their own words and actions are clear, and it is intellectually dishonest to twist them around to make them into something quite the opposite. RK 02:28, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)
When was the last time a mainstream branch PLO killed random Jews worldwide outside Israel? When was the last time there was a serious act of terrorism worldwide which a mainstream group of the PLO claimed to have carried out ? The world and the PLO have changed since the 1970s. The PLO does not gun down babies in the crib. Maybe an extremist group did it, but that does not represent the PLO. I see this section has descended into a shouting match between the moderates and hardline pro-Israelis. This place is not the place for such biased 'facts' and pursuing your political agenda RK. Hauser
Questions about fairness of the article
Hi,
I don't think this is a completely fair and accurate description of anti-Jewish sentiment in the Arab world (which I take is the topic). Even though the article starts by warning against frequent confusion between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, it soon loses itself in that very confusion. I don't deny the existence of anti-Jewish sentiment in the world and in particular in the Arab world, but I think the facts highlighted here, notably in the section about the PA, demonstrate more anti-Zionist lines of thought than anti-Semitism.
I spent a summer in Palestine, and it's true that people there call Israelis "Jews", but not in a racist/intolerant sense. They have their share of racist people, like every one else, but they say "the Jews" because that's what they always said, before the creation of Israel. Habits are slow to fade, especially this one because some people still would rather not accept Israel as a reality.
Anyway, I really think the section about the PA is mostly inappropriate and misleading if not altogether irrelevant. I don't think the PA would be acting any differently if the Israelis were Christian or even Buddhist for that matter. It shows an apology of violent armed struggle, and foolish propaganda, but against Israel, not against Jews.
All this goes to underscore the self identification of the Jewish people with Israel as one entity, which most non-Jewish people in the world don't make or at least don't understand.
GJ
This article is crap, and I don't even need to look at the history to tell who wrote most of it. Examples of what I mean:
- Genuine anti-Semitism is extremely prevalent in the Arab world
The Arab world includes three hundred million people, distributed from Morocco to Oman (so sayeth our article; is this statement is based on polls conducted throughout the entire region? Or is it just a subjective opinion from someone who can probably neither read nor speak Arabic?
- Many Arab newspapers . . . either deny that the Holocaust ever took place, or state that it was massively exaggerated"
How many? 10%? 30%? 50%? 99%? Do any systematic, quantitative studies exist?
- Educated Arabs and Muslims do not accept such views, and like Americans, they correctly saw these claims to be yet another conspiracy theory.
The POV should be obvious—even if you think, as I do, that this belief is a nutty conspiracy theory.
- However, a great many within the Arab world viewed this terrorist act as a conspiracy to make the world hate all Arabs, and therefore people perceived to be enemies of the Arabs must really be to blame.
How many? There are polls to back up this statement, I assume.
- This is despite the fact that an actual Mossad conspiracy to carry out major terrorist attacks against the United States in the hope that Arab terrorists would be blamed would be an insanely risky course of action for Israel.
POV by omission: we could also mention the fact that a war between the US and certain Arab countries could be of immense benefit to Israel—but this isn't the place to debate conspiracy theories.
Then there's the debate over the PA's war propaganda (see above), but I doubt that will be resolved any time soon. . . Anyway, I'll see what I can do for this article, but I am not sanguine about its prospects. —No-One Jones 20:13, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Good points - in particular, the polls... If a statement about a population's views can't be backed up numerically, it's unlikely to belong here. I've fixed no. 3 already, but much remains to be done. - Mustafaa 20:50, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Anti-semitism, or Miso-Judaism?
"Arab anti-Semitism" is not really an accurate term since Arabs are themselves Semites. A more appropriate term would be "Arab miso-Judaism". -- Spleeman 04:14, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- No. We will not play these word games. In the English language the word "anti-Semitism" was invented to mean the htared of Jews, and of Jews alone. It has always held this meaning, and the only people who dispute this today are those who try to hide the existence of anti-Semitism. Further, there is no such word as "misoJudaism". Please see the Talk archives on this specific subject in the Anti-Semitism article; this issue has been talked to death a dozen times, and a firm consensus already exists on useage. RK
- That's fine with me -- I don't really care very much either way to be honest. I was simply trying to point out that "miso-Judaism" might be considered more accurate in a technical, linguistic sense. Please do not insinuate that by bringing up the topic I am playing "word games" or trying "to hide the existence of anti-Semitism". If the issue has already been discussed, then that's that. It's settled. There's no need to be rude or to brow-beat me about it just for mentioning it. -- Spleeman 23:50, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I think it would be a good idea to note in the anti-semitism "etymology and usage" the basis of the word. Semitism is an article, but I don't believe semite is (looked, semetic people is). Semetic doesn't refer to a group of people speaking a language it refers to a group of people from the north coast of Africa to Iran (i believe, that is why i'm on a discussion page) Not trying to complain, it just seems that this needs to be sorted out by people in "the know". Also, it seems that you need to research to find this info, it doesn't pop out at you. Anti-Semitism is a misnomer, maybe putting that in the article would clear things up. JoeHenzi 09:20, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- This precise issue is discussed in the article on anti-Semitism, but maybe it needs to be expanded. RK 12:46, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
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