"In The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Andrew Bostom explodes the delusional myths with which too many in the West obscure the truth of Muslim Jew-hatred"
-- Bruce S. Thornton

Islam Without Apologetics by Bruce S. Thornton
8 August 2008 [excerpt]

According to received wisdom,

an Islamic faith that once tolerantly coexisted with Jews and Christians has been traumatized by the twentieth century and its destructive ideologies(such as fascism, communism, and nationalism), by the depredations of European colonialism and imperialism, and by the displacements wrought by globalization.

These developments, according to such apologists as John Esposito and Reza Aslan, have given rise to a distortion of Islam,

one manifested not just in “Islamist” terror but also in the virulent anti-Semitism visible today throughout the Middle East and in Europe’s Muslim communities. A religious culture that once embraced the kindred “people of the book”—Jews and Christians—has now been infected by European anti-Semitism, just one more way that Western cultural dysfunctions have damaged the traditions of a proud faith.

The problem with this tale, as Andrew Bostom documents in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, is that it isn’t true.

A physician and professor of medicine at Brown University, Bostom demonstrated a doctor’s fidelity to empirical evidence in his previous book, The Legacy of Islamic Jihad, showing how violence against the infidel is central to Islamic doctrine, theology, and jurisprudence. He now performs a similar service in examining Islamic anti-Semitism, exploding the delusional myths with which too many in the West obscure the truth of Muslim Jew-hatred.

As he did in his earlier book, Bostom provides copious documentation from primary sources—including the Koran, hadith (traditional accounts of Mohammed’s deeds and sayings), sira (early biographies of Mohammed), and other Muslim texts—as well as modern scholarly commentary, including his own introduction, which summarizes his conclusions. His use of such an abundant body of scholarship makes it difficult for critics to dismiss his arguments as biased interpretations of the evidence.

As he writes,

“For the Muslim masses, basic Islamic education in the Qu’ran, hadith, and sira . . . may create an immutable superstructure of Jew hatred on to which non-Muslim sources of Jew hatred are easily grafted.”

Islamic anti-Semitism begins, as do all things in Islam, with the Koran—the immutable, infallible, timeless words of Allah dictated to the Prophet—in which Jews are cursed with “abasement and humiliation” and are “deserving of Allah’s wrath” because they rejected Mohammed. Jews are further characterized as corrupt, treacherous rebels and infidels whose destiny is to be the enemy of the true believers.

Read more of this article.