II have taken on a big challenge for my lecture, namely anti-Semitism in Muslim contexts.
Introduction
The tragic reason for this are two things: firstly, the reactions in Germany to the terrorist attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 in southern Israel, including the brutal murder of over a thousand mainly civilians and a hostage-taking that continues to this day. On the other hand, it is Israel's subsequent military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which began as a legitimate war of defence and, due to its severity, led to tens of thousands of mainly civilian casualties in Gaza and the associated great humanitarian suffering. The conflict is also spreading to Central Europe on several levels. Just a few days before my lecture, there was a knife attack on an orthodox Jew in Zurich by an anti-Semitically fanatical 15-year-old supporter of the terrorist militia that calls itself "Islamic State", which almost ended fatally. In this respect, it is not only anti-Semitic slogans and slogans that have drawn the attention of the German debate to anti-Semitism among Muslims, but also the sporadic but very effective
Violence of the aforementioned kind.
Certain sections of the public are resolutely stating that these phenomena are rooted in Muslim religiosity or even in Islam itself. Where this is articulated in such an undifferentiated way and remains unchallenged, it has at least one effect, namely that anti-Muslim resentment increases and the integration successes of the majority of Muslims are threatened, while extremism continues to spread in the slipstream of this polarisation. We should therefore change our perspective and strategy so as not to deprive the majority of Muslims, who are far beyond extremism, of their sense of belonging to Germany and reinforce hostility towards Muslims while we believe we are fighting anti-Semitism. So what is really going on? And where should we take a closer look? In my presentation, I would like to share some ideas with you based on my own experiences in educational work in schools and Islamic theology. Firstly, let's look at the question of where Muslim-influenced anti-Semitism comes from.
The three roots of anti-Semitism from Muslim contexts
What is specific about anti-Semitism from the Muslim side compared to European-style anti-Semitism? I would like to put forward the following thesis in response: Today's anti-Semitism from Muslim contexts represents a patchwork of three elements that reinforce each other at regular intervals, namely (1) numerous set pieces of 19th and 20th century Christian-European anti-Semitism, (2) anti-Semitism that was subsequently associated with it, and (3) anti-Semitism from the Muslim world. (2) from subsequently linked anti-Jewish elements of Islamic tradition, which are quoted and generalised without context, and finally, as an emotional driving force, (3) from the search for someone responsible for the historically unprecedented defeat of the Islamic world at the hands of Western imperial powers. This defeat begins with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, is associated worldwide above all with British imperialism and comes to a shocking climax in the consciousness of many Muslim and especially Arab circles with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 in an area that for centuries was considered the Islamic heartland. After the Second World War, the USA replaced the British as the symbol of Western imperialism.
All serious authors include the three factors mentioned above in their analyses, but with very different weightings and conclusions. I will now outline my perspective, although for reasons of time I can only briefly touch on the contribution of European anti-Semitism here. This stems from such central topoi as the Zionist world conspiracy motif, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion translated into Arabic by Christians, which despite their lack of authenticity have had an anti-Semitic influence on entire Muslim generations, as well as older anti-Jewish motifs such as the ritual murder legend. It is depressing to hear that there was a very active German Nazi radio station that broadcast specifically in Arabic and Persian and, with a large team, tried for several years to introduce Muslims to an Islamised interpretation of anti-Semitism. The similarity of many anti-Semitic motifs and depictions in both areas stems from such interactions. Michael Kiefer, for example, has vividly illustrated such European and especially Christian influences in his work Antisemitism in Islamic Societies. Before we take a closer look at the other two factors, let us first take a look at the empirical evidence.
Spread of anti-Semitism among Muslims
Many of the previous studies on anti-Semitism among Muslims hardly take into account the diversity of Muslim milieus, some of which are very contradictory, or divide Muslims into very broad subgroups that are in no way homogeneous. It is therefore not possible to make any predictions about the opinions of Muslim individuals from these studies, but some interesting trends within large groups can be identified. In 2013, Jürgen Mansel and Viktoria Speiser found that 22 % of the young people of Arab origin and 13 % of the young people of Turkish origin surveyed agreed with religiously based anti-Jewish items. On the one hand, this means that in both cases the majority did not agree with the anti-Jewish items. And: more derogatory attitudes were found among respondents of Arab origin, who are ethnically much closer to the Arab Palestinians than the Turks, than among the Turks. Both figures increased significantly when it came to items relating to Israel-related antisemitism, but the ethnically connoted gradation remained: 41.5 % of young people of Arab origin and 25.6 % of young people of Turkish origin now agreed. Such figures relate to anti-Jewish prejudices and not yet to the extreme of eliminatory anti-Semitism, which has far fewer supporters. The comparison so far seems to indicate that Muslims as a whole are more likely to harbour anti-Semitism: The greater their own biographical proximity to the Middle East conflict, the greater the anti-Jewish resentment. Other studies, such as that conducted by the Expert Council on Integration and Migration in 2022, also find agreement in the range of 40 % - 50 % for some items (e.g. "Jews have too much influence in the world") among young people of Turkish origin.
For comparison: In 2020, the Anti-Defamation League found in an international survey that 49 % of Muslims worldwide agreed with anti-Semitic items that predominantly address the alleged global superiority of the Jews. Among Christians, the proportion was also high at 25 %. Among Muslim countries, these values are well above 50 % in many Arab countries and in North Africa, with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - i.e. the regions partly occupied and partly blockaded by Israel - showing the highest values. This correlation is certainly no coincidence. At the same time, there are also Muslim countries with lower values, e.g. Bangladesh in South Asia with 32%, Bosnia-Herzegovina in Europe with 32 % and Nigeria with 16%. Region sometimes proves to be more important than religion.
Anti-Semitism is therefore widespread in the Islamic world, but varies greatly from region to region. The regional or personal proximity to the Middle East conflict therefore also appears to be a decisive factor for the relative strength of anti-Semitism globally. In this respect, anti-Semitism in the Muslim context should always be analysed in its interaction with the perception of the Middle East conflict described above as a current proxy conflict between the Western and Muslim worlds, even if this is of course not the only factor. I would also like to add here that anti-Semitism continues to be a problem in countries characterised by Christianity. For example, the representative Mitte study from 2023 shows that 20 % fully or partially agree with anti-Semitic items in Germany. In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League found 69 % in favour of anti-Semitic statements for Greece and 58 % for Armenia. A good overview of further results of various studies on anti-Semitism among Muslims can be found in the 2023 report by Mediendienst Integration. A more critical presentation of numerous studies, as well as a new qualitative approach, can be found in the dissertation by religious educator Dr Osman Kösen from this year.
It is not yet possible to draw any conclusions about their practical relevance from the high approval ratings. In any case, real anti-Semitic statements or statements by Muslim youths at German schools are much rarer than one might assume from the figures. Nevertheless, the latter point to a need for action, also with regard to studies that take a closer look at the contextual world of perception and discourse of young people. We simply do not know these very diverse young people well enough to be able to derive prevention or intervention concepts from averaged figures or individual quotes. However, I have learnt one thing from many conversations: Public accusations or devaluations of Muslims or Palestinians as backward or generally anti-Semitic may silence many Muslims in public, but, to quote a Muslim ninth-grader from Germany who had listened to such devaluations with his class at a public pro-Israeli lecture after 7 October: "Something like that tends to reinforce prejudices against Jews rather than reduce them." Formulated from the other end: Don't fight anti-Semitism with hostility towards Muslims if you don't want to reinforce it as well. This is not a marginal point. According to the 2019 Religion Monitor, 52 % of Germans perceive Islam as a threat and 41 % distrust Muslims across the board.
Many Muslims, including young Muslims, suffer greatly from this anti-Muslim climate. One example of this that still moves me greatly: in the weeks following 7 October, a Palestinian pupil here in Germany told a teacher he trusted that no one at school should find out that he was Palestinian. When asked by the confused teacher, he explained his wish as follows: "I'm afraid they'll think I'm a terrorist. They often say that all Palestinians are terrorists." This is one of many similar reports from the Muslim side that I have documented, and what they have in common is that those affected are afraid to talk publicly about their situation. I am aware that many Jews in Germany feel the same way, especially since 7 October, although the fear of physical attacks is even stronger here. It is right that the state takes these fears seriously.
In terms of the overall picture, it should also be noted that both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim incidents have increased significantly since 7 October, although the latter have received little public attention. The more recent incidents have been documented by the Claim Alliance, for example, with regard to verbal and physical attacks on people of Muslim faith and on several mosques and Muslim cemeteries. The great extent to which hostility towards Muslims in Germany in general has increased in recent years can be read in the 2023 report by the Independent Expert Group on Muslim Hostility, which was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Home Affairs. The aim for all of us should be to combat anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim tendencies at the same time and to move away from the intuition of only wanting to take sides in favour of one's own sympathies. There is a great deal of suffering on both sides in the invisible realm and it is precisely through poor mediation by politicians and society as a whole that new potential for hatred arises in several directions, which can fuel each other.
The traumatising defeat at the hands of Western imperial powers
Let us now take a closer look at two important reasons for anti-Semitism in Muslim contexts. Firstly, we will look at the factor of Muslims' awakening to modernity as the big losers, and then we will take a look at the Islamic-religious references. In my observation, the perception of Israel as the spearhead of British and US imperialism is a central reason why the Middle East conflict is the anchor point for critical opinion-forming on Israel among so many Muslims. This same perception is also an important driver of Muslim-influenced anti-Semitism, especially if one has no Jewish contacts and no in-depth knowledge of Judaism or Israel. In order to recognise the significance of the Middle East conflict and the role attributed to Israel as a hostile superpower, a glance at the Turkish or Arabic-language media since 7 October, especially on social media, is sufficient. The Hamas attack of 7 October hardly plays a role there, nor does the ongoing hostage-taking of innocent Israelis, or the authoritarian rule of Hamas, which has exposed its own civilians unprotected to the far superior Israeli military, which is under the aegis of the most right-wing extremist of all Israeli governments since 1948, and even deliberately takes their suffering into account.
Since 7 October, however, there has not only been a lot of ranting about Israeli war policy and its global supporters on Muslim screens around the world, but also a lot of crying and sympathy for the families and children in Gaza. This level is hardly noticed in this country, but in my opinion it moves most Muslims particularly strongly. The images of suffering and destruction, especially in the Gaza Strip, which can sometimes be seen for several hours a day, are almost unbearable. Many Muslims associate these images far beyond the Middle East conflict with the powerlessness and shame experienced on all sides and the feeling of being treated as second-class human beings by the West. They are complemented by renditions of the anti-Palestinian rhetoric since the beginning of the war from the ranks of Netanyahu's government and its international de facto supporters in the war, as well as anti-Palestinian words and actions from radical circles in Israel and worldwide. Added to this is the perception that German politics is very often one-sided and that many media headlines are in favour of the Israeli side. The logic of the interest of many Muslims here is: The Palestinians - that could also be us.
At the same time, however, it is not the case that the Islamic world is interested in Palestinian refugees or that the many Muslim governments have an interest in a conflict with Israel. So where does this deep concern about the Middle East conflict come from? As already indicated: In large parts of the Islamic world, Israel is seen as the spearhead of an intact Western and above all British and now US imperialism. The Muslim Palestinians symbolise the continuing powerlessness and humiliation of the entire Islamic world at the hands of a West that is perceived as unjust and aggressive. I am convinced that it is a tragic coincidence of history and geography that at the end of the defeat of the Islamic world after the First World War, the small Jewish community, of all people, was declared the personification of the overpowering and ruthless enemy called the "West" within a few decades. In other words, precisely those Jews who had been demonised in the "West" for many centuries, and with whom Muslims usually had a relatively stable, often even fruitful relationship until modern times, even if this was not a relationship of equals.
The real issue of Muslim perception at the dawn of modernity is the globally shaken Muslim identity, which is searching for an explanation for all its suffering. Muslims of various colours, but also Christians from the same regions, found an explanation in the dramatic success of Jewish Zionism, which was associated with the "West", on land formerly under Arab or Ottoman rule - and sought rehabilitation through counter-humiliation, which never succeeded politically and militarily, but ultimately filled the narrative sphere of many Muslim societies with the crudest conspiracy theories and thus created the core of modern anti-Semitism in the Islamic world. This is symbolised by Sayyid Qutb's anti-Semitic pamphlet Our Struggle with the Jews from 1950, for example, and later writings by other ideologues, which contributed to the enemy image of the Jew and to the most abstruse conspiracy theories among many Muslims. However, without the aforementioned political decline of the Islamic world since around 1800, anti-Jewish narratives would never have become identity-forming for such large masses of people. In Islamic history before that, there were a few local pogroms against Jews and literary side chapters about Jewish betrayal of the Prophet Muhammad, but no collective basic narrative of a generally dangerous or overpowering Jew comparable to today's anti-Semitism. Only against the background of the modern multiple defeat of the Muslims, combined with Israel's almost continuous military success against the Arabs since 1948, does it become clearer why other, internal Islamic and sometimes more victimised conflicts within the Islamic world are less moving, indeed in some cases barely known. There was no collective trauma in the Islamic world comparable to the threatening shattering of identity caused by Western imperialism. Nevertheless, the poorly processed identity shock alone does not explain the whole phenomenon. This is because the anti-Semitic elements were quickly charged with an Islamic-religious dimension. We will therefore turn our attention next to the specifically religious dimension.
The decontextualising and uncritical reading of Islamic sources
Many authors who cite early Islam as the main reason for anti-Semitism among Muslims have a picture of the early days of Islam in mind that can be described as a linear escalation model. This is the standard narrative in criticism of Islam today. But Muslim anti-Semites also argue in a similar way. This narrative goes something like this: After an initial phase of Muhammad's tolerance towards the Jews and an initial rapprochement, it became apparent that they did not recognise his prophethood. The disappointed prophet therefore made a U-turn. First, the Jews were defamed in the Koran. Then the Prophet punished them by deliberately escalating his relationship with them. He expelled the Jewish tribes of the Banu Qainuqa and Banu Nadir from Medina and completely destroyed the Banu Quraiza tribe, including through a mass execution of all men. Since then, Jews have only been allowed to live as a humiliated minority in Islamic society. This is the core of the escalation model, for which much is quoted from the Koran and from reports from the early days of Islam. I would now like to show by way of example that this model is a gross oversimplification and needs to be corrected for all sides.
Let us look at Sura 5, verse 13 of the Qur'an, for example. It says in the translation by Bubenheim and Elyas: "For that they [i.e. certain Jews] broke their covenant, We [God] have cursed them and made their hearts hard. They twisted the meaning of the words, and they forgot part of what they had been admonished with. And you will always experience betrayal from them - except for a few of them." Who was the polemical tone of such passages directed at? Contrary to the first impression, it was not directed at all Jews, but only at certain Jews with whom deep hostilities had developed. There are several indications of this. Firstly, it is clear from the previous verse that the Jews described here as cursed are only those who broke a covenant with God in biblical times. However, the verse seems to somehow refer to the present. However, the sentence "you will always experience betrayal from them, except for a few of them" does not address the present reader, but the Prophet Muhammad, just as "you" in the Qur'an always refers to the Prophet Muhammad. But why does the Qur'an establish this relationship between unfaithful Jews from biblical times and the Jews of Medina? The background is the parallels that Islam draws between the Prophet Muhammad and the Jewish prophets: Just as there were Jews who betrayed the prophets of God in the time of the biblical prophets, so there are now in the time of Muhammad. With the term "betrayal", the Qur'an alludes to Muhammad's previous experience that, according to tradition, the Jewish tribes all broke their peace treaty with the Prophet one after the other, be it by attempting to murder the Prophet or by collaborating with the arch-enemies of the Muslims, i.e. the Meccan oligarchy. It was only under these circumstances that the Jews increasingly appeared in the Koran as a symbol of secularisation and hostility. The term "the Jews" usually refers to the leaders of these tribes and sometimes to some Jewish scholars who had disputes with Muhammad, and rarely to all the Jews from Medina, as can be read in much of the exegetical literature.
A closer look at the Qur'an also shows that Islam was not interested in a fundamental rift with the Jews. The first thing to mention here is the quite surprising continuation of the Qur'anic verse 5:13 quoted above: "But forgive them [the Jews] and be lenient. Indeed, Allah loves those who do good." So even in the late Medinan suras of the Qur'an there is still the option of reconciliation and normalisation. The inconsistency of the suras on this point becomes somewhat more plausible when one considers that Medina and Arabia themselves were inconsistent: There were Jews there who were hostile to the Prophet and represented a great uncertainty for early Islam, as well as those with whom there was a pragmatically good to friendly relationship before and after the military conflicts. The latter is clearly reflected in verse 5 of the same Sura 5 above. There, on the one hand, the marriage of Muslims to Jewish and Christian women is approved without them having to accept Islam or distance themselves from their Christian or Jewish religion. And the food of other religions - think above all of kosher slaughtered meat - is declared to be religiously permissible for Muslims, just as the food of Muslims is declared to be permissible for other religious followers.
To summarise: The Jews declared "cursed" by the Qur'an are different from those with whom deep marriage ties and table fellowship are permitted. The Qur'anic verses on the former are reactions to hostilities and to Jewish-Muslim co-operation against Muhammad. The Qur'anic verses on the latter are a continuation of the attempt at Abrahamic-based coexistence that was initially attempted in Medina before military conflicts shifted the focus to the security issue and identity clarification.
Such contextualisations are compatible with parts of traditional Quranic hermeneutics, which had already developed concepts of specifying exegesis (Arabic: tachsis) of generally formulated Quranic verses. This is precisely why they are highly relevant today in terms of educational theory and prevention, for example because they can correct anti-Semitic narratives. Example: At the end of a lesson in Islamic religious education, which I was allowed to attend as an instructor, a seventh-grader commented on the topic in question: "Today I learnt that the hatred of Jews that I sometimes hear in my environment is unfounded and comes from a misunderstanding. The expulsion of some Jews at the time of the Prophet had nothing at all to do with their religion, but with their hostile behaviour. If they had been hostile Muslims, they would have been expelled in the same way."
But how does the report of a collective execution of all the men of the Banu Quraiza who had violated the treaty fit in with such a contextualising reading? Either the tribe really was collectively punished very severely for collective treason, as the majority of Islamic tradition holds. Or: This report is a grandiose exaggeration that is not comparable with either the Koran or other reports from the early days of Islam. There have always been Muslim and non-Muslim authors who have surmised this. Perhaps the most systematic source-critical study on this to date was presented in the 1990s by the Islamic scholar Marco Schöller in his study Exegetical Thinking and Prophet Biography. According to Schöller, this and almost all other extra-Quranic accounts of the events with the Jews of Medina are not reliable historical evidence, but rather the result of a complex evolutionary process of texts in which several different versions of almost all events with the Jews were originally handed down. Accordingly, we can find strands of tradition in which the Banu Quraiza were not annihilated, but for the most part expelled, while a much smaller group of Jewish warriors were executed. I have presented the argumentation on this in more detail in a separate essay on the Prophet's military conflicts with the Jews (On the Prophet's military conflicts with the Jews of Medina in: Yaşar Sarıkaya / Mark Chalil Bodenstein / Erdal Toprakyaran (eds.): Muhammad. Ein Prophet - viele Facetten, Berlin 2014, pp. 195-230. reprinted in: PaRDeS. Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies (University of Potsdam), 22 (2016). It is regrettable that Schöller's critique of Islam has not taken note of or even analysed sophisticated and differentiated source criticism, even though this represents the state of research almost 30 years ago.
Conclusion
What else can be done? Much is already being done: Jewish-Muslim educational projects and encounters, academic and civil society attempts to build bridges and combat discrimination, and in the background always the hope that we have not yet said everything that needs to be said and thought everything that needs to be thought. Nevertheless, instead of presenting these projects, I would like to conclude with a few more personal remarks in order to remain true to my thesis that a great deal depends on our way of looking at the Middle East conflict. By "we" I mean everyone: non-Muslims and Muslims, people close to Israel and people close to Palestine. Please feel free to agree or disagree with me. I am of the opinion that there was a long phase in the middle of the 20th century in which it was plausible from an Arab perspective to fundamentally question the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the UN partition plan of 1947 and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 on what was once Arab or Ottoman territory, even if historical Palestine had become a mandate territory. However, history subsequently created facts, some of which were painful and in any case changed everything that had gone before, as in many other places in the world after wars. At the latest one or two generations after 1948 and after numerous recognitions of Israel, including by Muslim countries, it is no longer a wise option to conduct fundamental debates on Israel's right to exist. Israel will remain, just as other states and borders that were created after wars have remained. Everyone knows this. On the basis of such a rational concession, the Palestinians' urgent call for more justice has a better chance of being fulfilled in practice than through the terror logic of Hamas, which has committed the Palestinians to unprecedented misery with 7 October.
However, it would be wrong to demand a rethink from people close to Palestine alone. At the same time, the relativisation of the suffering of the Palestinians by voices close to Israel, which sometimes borders on cynicism, must be problematised. It is not enough to condemn the anti-Palestinian racism of influential radical right-wing ministers in Israel. The sometimes disproportionate violence of the Israeli military in Gaza, which many critics say Netanyahu needs for political survival and which destroys many Palestinian livelihoods every day, must also be condemned more clearly and counteracted. Not primarily because this violence benefits the popularity of Hamas, even if this is true, but primarily because it dehumanises Palestinians in the most undignified conditions. "What else can Israel do to save the hostages?" is not a plausible argument. The families of the Israeli hostages and those in solidarity with them in Israel have clear ideas about what needs to be done and are taking these to the streets: Negotiate purposefully instead of seeking military expansion of power at the expense of the hostages. These hostages' families are being condemned by Netanyahu's government for their disloyalty. And they are being ignored by politicians around the world who claim to be on the side of the hostages.
Asymmetries or not, the conflict is being driven by the wrong people on both sides. We should practise naming the Israeli hostages held by Hamas and the destroyed lives of Palestinian families and children in the same breath, empathising and crying with them both. If everything in us resists this, then perhaps there is something wrong with our moral compass. And we should be able to be angry at the same time, both at those responsible in Hamas and in the Netanyahu government. Only by looking at both sides can we soften the hardened fronts somewhat, if that is our goal.
But is that possible? And is it possible? Hardly anyone has ever demonstrated this in such clear and wise words as the Israeli Elana Kaminka, whose son Yannai died at the age of 20 as a soldier on 7 October while defending Kibbutz Zikim. I would like to conclude my talk with a few sentences from a speech she gave last year in memory of Yannai, who loved Turkish coffee and was a friend of long personal conversations. She gave this speech before thousands of innocent young Yasins and Aishas were killed by the Israeli military on the other side of the border fence in Gaza, contrary to her plea. We would all do well to listen to people like Elana Kaminka in time, instead of short-sighted militarists. At the same time, it is empathetic yet strong voices like hers that are most effective in shaking anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli resentment. She said:
"I understand only too well how terrible 7 October was - I lost my beloved first-born son. There is nothing more painful than that. I don't forgive any Hamas terrorist who murdered children, women and innocent people. But it is easiest to slide into an escalation of hostilities when each side sees only its own pain and ignites an uncontrollable conflagration.
This same faith prompted me to write a letter to the [Palestinian] neighbours of our community... to share my pain with them and acknowledge their fears. I concluded with the following words:
Dear neighbours, it hurts, it hurts so much, but I wanted to tell you that when I experience this pain, I also see you. My heart is open to you. I do not blame you for the actions of Hamas, and I hope that this terrible situation will lead our peoples to finally learn how to live together in mutual respect, so that there will be no more parents - Israeli or Palestinian - mourning their children. There is no other way."
May our hearts be open to all.
