Iran stood alone in shame on Friday, (January 26, 2007) for rejecting a United Nations resolution that condemned any denial of the Holocaust. The fact that the resolution was sponsored by 104 countries and was approved by consensus did not matter for the Iranian Islamist regime which is determined to complete Adolph Hitler’s unfinished business.

 

Nobody who understands the Islamist mind and is familiar with Muslim history and sociology was surprised by the Iranian action; Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, just like the Wahhabi masses, represents an ideology that thrives on the hatred of Jews – a common passion that binds all holocaust deniers together.

This evil passion has been responsible for the persecution of Jews for more than two thousand years. The persecution of Jews has taken different shapes and forms but the objective has always remained the same – annihilation of Jewish people. In fact, one of the earliest recorded incidents of persecution against the Jews occurred in 306 C.E., when the church Synod of Elvira banned marriages and community contacts between Christians and Jews.

Islamic anti-Semitism has its roots in the historical rivalry that existed between the Arabs who had emigrated to Medina from Yemen in the aftermath of the destruction of Maarib dam and the Jewish tribes who were living in Medina for a very long time. Prophet Muhammad was invited to Medina by the Arabs of Medina who had converted to Islam. When the Jewish leaders of Medina first heard of the coming of a prophet preaching belief in one God, they were intrigued. They did not immediately accept or reject him, but they wanted to know more (Ibn Ishaq, 192).

Relations began to deteriorate as the Jews discovered Muhammad was not very familiar with their scriptures and traditions. The rabbis taunted him with questions he could not answer (Ibn Ishaq, 351). Consequently the Jews did not accept Prophet Muhammad as a prophet of God. And during the wars that Muslims fought against the Meccan pagans, they suspected that the Jews were in a secret alliance with the enemies of Muslims. This set the stage for Muslim anti-Semitism for all times.

During over 1300 years under Islamic rule, Jews have been tolerated along with Christians as people who had defined religion and discovered prophets of God. Since the Jews did not accept Muhammad as the final authoritative true prophet of God, they were assigned the inferior status of Dhimmis. In Muslim society there are three classes of the population that are inferior and have no rights: slaves, women, and non-believers. The Jews as Dhimmis are much better off than slaves or women, but they are inferior to every Muslim male in the country. For example, in Iran in the 19th century the law read, "A Jew must never overtake a Muslim on a public street. He is forbidden to talk loudly to a Muslim. A Jewish creditor of a Muslim must claim his debt in a quavering and respectful manner. If a Muslim insults a Jew, the latter must drop his head and remain silent." http://www.freeman.org/m_online/aug02/shapiro.htm 

Holocaust denial is the logical consequence of the anti-Semitism that is the main driving force behind Islamism or political Islam. This fascist ideology has historically been controlling Muslim societies ever since the establishment of the caliphate in Islam, making it impossible for ordinary Muslims to learn anything positive about Jews or Judaism. Consequently, in today’s context, Muslims remain the most ill-informed, or misinformed, about the darkest chapter in the history of mankind – the holocaust.

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Tashbih Sayyed is the Editor in Chief of Pakistan Today and The Muslim World Today, President of Council for Democracy and Tolerance, an adjunct fellow of Hudson Institute, and a regular columnist for newspapers across the world. He is the author of eight books, including: History Of The World, Left Of The Center, Pakistan - An Unfinished Agenda, Mohammad - A secularist's View, Foreign Policy Of Pakistan, and Shadow Warriors - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban.