بِسۡمِ
اللّٰہِ الرَّحۡمٰنِ الرَّحِیۡمِ
الصلاة
والسلام عليك يا سيدي يا رسول الله
Understanding
the European Reaction to Islam
The
European encounter with the world of faith and monotheism began with
the conquests of Alexander the Macedon, known as the Hellenistic
period.
Under
Antiochus IV “Epiphanes” religious persecution reached heights of
insanity. The Temple in Jerusalem, which was dedicated solely to the
worship of God, was forced to become a shrine to the pagan Greek
deity Zeus, where an image of the latter was erected. The Temple was
further defiled with the sacrifice of a pig and the sprinkling of its
blood on the Altar.
Antiochus
IV issued other decrees against the Jews, coercing them to eat pork,
work on the Sabbath, cease the circumcision of their sons, and, worst
of all, to participate in the worship of the pagan Greek (false)
deities. Antiochus IV saw himself as “Epiphanes” or “God
manifest”. This truly evil man is regarded as the foreshadowing or
archetype of the coming Antichrist.
His
abominable actions eventually led to the Maccabean Revolt which
succeeded in liberating the land of Judea from Greek Seleucid rule.
There
are many parallels between the abominations of Antiochus IV in the
land of Judea and contemporary religious suppression and persecution
of the Muslims. We have learned of reports from Communist China of
how the Muslim Uighurs are force fed pork, that too in the sacred
month of Ramadan, how Muslim ladies are prevented from observing
veil, the men forced to shave their beards, the demolition of many
Mosques and the “Sinicization” of others. A similar situation
prevails in parts of Central Asia, in the former Soviet Republics.
But
a most worrying trend is Europe’s trajectory toward this kind of
outright ban on the practice of fundamental aspects of Islam and the
broader suppression of Islamic religiosity. The European allergy to
Islam can be understood in its historical conflict with the ancient
Jews, beginning in the Hellenistic period. The same sentiments of
ancient European civilizations like the Greeks and Romans for
devotion to images of false gods, pork, wine, sexual immorality,
nudity, and being uncircumcised continues to animate the modern
European and explains his hostility to Islam and Muslims today.
The
present rise of the “Far Right” in European society and politics
is primarily a reaction to the increased presence and visibility of
Muslims and our conservative religiosity in Europe. The European Far
Right represents only the more extreme sentiments of Islamophobia and
xenophobia which are in fact shared to a lesser extent by even those
White Europeans who are regarded as “progressive”, “liberal”
or otherwise on the Left of the political spectrum. The Far Right
pushes for greater restrictions on the presence and practice of Islam
in Europe. They seek to outlaw the Hijab in particular, since it
represents modesty, purity and a rejection of nudism which European
culture celebrates. The Far Right likewise seeks to proscribe other
fundamental Islamic practices like the ritual hand slaughtering of
animals for Halal food and infant male circumcision.
Tacitus,
an ancient Roman historian, wrote the following about the Jews which
is incredibly insightful for understanding modern European
Islamophobia: “They abstain from swine’s flesh, in consideration
of what they suffered when they were infected by the leprosy to which
this animal is liable. By their frequent fasts they still bear
witness to the long hunger of former days, and the Jewish bread, made
without leaven, is retained as a memorial of their hurried seizure of
corn. We are told that the rest of the seventh day was adopted,
because this day brought with it a termination of their toils; after
a while the charm of indolence beguiled them into giving up the
seventh year also to inaction. This worship, however introduced, is
upheld by its antiquity; all their other customs, which are at once
perverse and disgusting, owe their strength to their very badness.
The most degraded out of other races, scorning their national
beliefs, brought to them their contributions and presents. This
augmented the wealth of the Jews, as also did the fact, that among
themselves they are inflexibly honest and ever ready to shew
compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the
hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart, and
though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they abstain
from intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is
unlawful. Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference
from other men. Those who come over to their religion adopt the
practice, and have this lesson first instilled into them, to despise
all gods, to disown their country, and set at nought parents,
children, and brethren. Still they provide for the increase of their
numbers. It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant. They
hold that the souls of all who perish in battle or by the hands of
the executioner are immortal. Hence a passion for propagating their
race and a contempt for death. They are wont to bury rather than to
burn their dead, following in this the Egyptian custom; they bestow
the same care on the dead, and they hold the same belief about the
lower world. Quite different is their faith about things divine. The
Egyptians worship many animals and images of monstrous form; the Jews
have purely mental conceptions of Deity, as one in essence. They call
those profane who make representations of God in human shape out of
perishable materials. They believe that Being to be supreme and
eternal, neither capable of representation, nor of decay. They
therefore do not allow any images to stand in their cities, much less
in their temples. This flattery is not paid to their kings, nor this
honor to our Emperors.” (The
Histories,
Book V)
The
selectivity of Tacitus in mentioning certain things about the Jews
for criticism reveals the ancient European mentality that persists
today. Out of all the Jewish dietary restrictions he mentions only
pork, as pork, till this day, is beloved to the European and an
integral part of their diet. Any culture or religious community that
eschews pork is immediately alien and even worthy of ridicule for the
European. The European knows deep down that the pig is a filthy
animal and hence why it is considered profane for both Jews and
Muslims. Antiochus IV deliberately chose the pig as his animal of
choice to have sacrificed at the Temple in Jerusalem, undoubtedly
deriving glee from the knowledge that it would hurt and provoke the
religious sentiments of the Jews. We see a disturbing parallel today
in the sadistic hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims in the West
in the common form of leaving a severed pig’s head at the entrance
of a Mosque.
Next,
Tacitus mentions “frequent fasts” and today fasting is
predominantly associated with Muslims rather than any other religion
in the world because of the communal fast of Ramadan. Fasting is now
totally an alien concept to the European who has abandoned every
trace of spirituality and acts entirely for material benefit only.
The collective fast of Muslims for an entire month annually is
therefore hard to ignore for those Europeans who are in close
proximity to Muslims. For the European it is an uncomfortable
reminder of the different philosophies and lifestyles of the two.
Tacitus
perceived the institution of rest on the Sabbath as springing from
the alleged indolent nature of the Jews. The European considers
himself a hard worker in contrast to other cultures, especially those
that are found in warmer climates whom he regards as lethargic. The
so-called Protestant work ethic is considered a critical factor in
how Western civilization achieved material ascendancy. Figures in the
Far Right often point to Muslim presence in Europe as an economic
burden. They accuse Muslims of parasitic behavior, notably, living
off of social welfare benefits while not actively seeking employment.
The fundamental Islamic practice of offering Salah five times daily,
along with fasting in Ramadan and taking time off on Friday
afternoons to attend the weekly worship service at the Mosque (peak
hours of labor for Europe), are simply incompatible with the European
lifestyle and culture that emphasizes work over worship.
Tacitus
goes on to talk about the Jewish tendency toward separation or
apartness from non-Jews, manifested in practices such as dining
separately. Muslims in Europe are perceived by the native European
the same way. The tendency toward ghettoization and resistance to
integration with the broader society are points of criticism toward
Muslims that unites both the Right and the Left. Some European
countries, especially in Scandinavia, are actively instituting
policies that coerce assimilation of Muslims. These policies are
particularly directed toward children and the youth. While those of
the Far Right in Europe want the physical exclusion of Muslims, by
means of their deportation and barring further entry of migrants to
the continent, those on the Left seek to aggressively assimilate
Muslims into European culture through insidious means, among which
are the encouraging of intermarriage, something Islam forbids.
Tacitus
said that circumcision is a rite intended to distinguish and
therefore cement apartness. In this he was certainly correct. While
in the European political arena infant circumcision is condemned as a
violation of the right to “bodily integrity”, the European
aversion to circumcision stems from the fact that it represents yet
another notion of spiritual purification and holiness. There is an
element of envy that the European and other uncircumcised cultures
have toward religious practices whose purpose is to distinguish and
set apart or make holy. Circumcision is one of those practices, but
so is the practice of female veiling, abstaining from pork and
intoxicants, eating only Halal food, fasting, ablution, avoiding
contact with dogs, etc. Several European countries have attempted to
ban infant circumcision, and may yet succeed in doing so in the near
future.
Tacitus
mentions the iconoclasm and lack of patriotism among the Jews in
conjunction with each other. Indeed, both of these phenomena are
deeply associated with Muslims and currently are major points of
criticism toward Islam not only in the West but throughout the world,
especially India. The Islamic rejection of idolatry and iconography,
the visual depiction of the Divine in an animate form, is a stark
contrast to the European heritage in the Arts. On the other hand, the
establishment of Mosques, with their distinctive minarets and
architecture, transforming radically the European landscape, is
considered a monument to foreign conquest and domination. Tacitus
expressed the same anxiety with regard to Jews multiplying their
numbers. Anxiety about Muslims, who generally have higher fertility
rates and are therefore growing in population exponentially, has
replaced that which the Europeans once had about Jews. It is from
this anxiety where we now hear terms like the “Great Replacement”.
The anxiety over a radical demographic shift is therefore the main
motivation for the Far Right’s opposition to immigration.
The
admitted lack of patriotism among Muslims toward their host
countries, which stems from Islam’s teaching of universal
brotherhood of Believers and loyalty to God above the loyalty to any
state or government, is of particular concern to the European, for
whom nationalism or patriotism is quite literally a religion.
Apart
from Tacitus, another individual who expressed in writing the answer
to the mystery of European anxiety and hostility toward the Jew was
Hitler. The predominant narrative in explanation of European
antisemitism is that it is primarily a racial anxiety. To admit that
Hitler’s antisemitism was in fact sparked by his observance of a
stark cultural difference between Jews and Germans would force
contemporary Europeans to re-evaluate their criticism of Islam and
Muslims. That, of course, is something very inconvenient and
uncomfortable for the European who has deluded himself into thinking
that antisemitism is wrong because it is a form of racism, whereas
Islamophobia is perfectly fine because it is a negative reaction to
the cultural differences of Muslims that is devoid of any racial
component.
Hitler
was not born an antisemite but became one in his formative years
living in Vienna. He himself has explained what initiated his journey
in the direction of hatred for Jews: “Once, as I was strolling
through the Inner City, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a
black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first
thought. For, to be sure, they had not looked like that in Linz. I
observed the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at
this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my
first question assumed a new form: Is this a German? As always in
such cases, I now began to try to relieve my doubts by books. For a
few hellers I bought the first antiSemitic pamphlets of my life.
Unfortunately, they all proceeded from the supposition that in
principle the reader knew or even understood the Jewish question to a
certain degree. Besides, the tone for the most part was such that
doubts again arose in me, due in part to the dull and amazingly
unscientific arguments favoring the thesis. I relapsed for weeks at a
time, once even for months. The whole thing seemed to me so
monstrous, the accusations so boundless, that, tormented by the fear
of doing injustice, I again became anxious and uncertain. Yet I could
no longer very well doubt that the objects of my study were not
Germans of a special religion, but a people in themselves; for since
I had begun to concern myself with this question and to take
cognizance of the Jews, Vienna appeared to me in a different light
than before. Wherever I went, I began to see Jews, and the more I
saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the
rest of humanity. Particularly the Inner City and the districts north
of the Danube Canal swarmed with a people which even outwardly had
lost all resemblance to Germans.” (Mein
Kampf,
Fairborne Publishing)
In
this anecdote, what first brought the Jews to Hitler’s attention
was their foreign appearance. Not necessarily a difference in racial
facial features but in dress and style as Hitler begins his
description of a Jew’s clothes and hairstyle, namely, the black
caftan and hair locks. Ironically, today’s European is relatively
more socially at ease with someone who is the most distant to him
racially, the Black African. Despite the stark racial difference the
cultural gap between the two is narrower, they may even likely share
the same religion, although in the case of the European he is today
only nominally Christian. But when it comes to the Muslim, the
European is uncomfortable in his presence especially if the Muslim is
visibly religious. A Muslim lady in a black burqa with a niqab or a
Muslim man with a full beard and wearing a skullcap and thobe will
probably elicit the same reaction in the mind of a native European
that Hitler had when he first saw a visibly Orthodox Jew all those
years ago in Vienna. For Hitler, the Jew of Vienna in his raw form,
unlike the assimilated Jew of Linz, made him question whether the Jew
could truly be German.
After
the defeat of Germany in the Second World War, Europeans,
particularly Germans, were shamed because of the Holocaust and
antisemitism quickly became shunned. For many decades the Far Right
was politically dead, only able to operate on the margins or
underground. However, with the recent appearance of Muslims through
mass immigration the Far Right in Europe has been able to resurrect
itself in finding a new target. Whether it is antisemitism or
Islamophobia, the psychology behind either hatred and anxiety is
essentially the same. But the Far Right in Europe makes common cause
with Zionism in order to slickly repudiate any charge that it is
simply re-manifesting the old antisemitism of the 20th
century and repackaging the narrative this time to target another
foreign community. The Far Right narrative has also been repackaged
to justify its Islamophobia by apparently championing the cause of
feminism and arguing that Islam is a threat to the rights of both
women and homosexuals. So we see today that Jews, women, and
homosexuals are increasingly in the ranks of the Far Right in Europe,
however ironic that may be, as they all perceive Islam as a threat to
their interests, a perception the European Far Right has masterfully
exploited.
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