Muslims are the new Jews
From The Independent, also in JTA and Reuters, Britain’s first Muslim minister Shahid Malik has said that many Muslims feel like “the Jews of Europe”:
“I think most people would agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe,” he said. “I don’t mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost – and still is in some parts – to target Jews, many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way.
“Somehow there’s a message out there that it’s OK to target people as long as it’s Muslims. And you don’t have to worry about the facts, and people will turn a blind eye.”
MP Malik speaks to a big truth — a plus ca change truth. Let’s play with this for a sec:
No, Muslims are not having their rights to property or occupation taken away (even if their rights to wear hijabs are under constant threat), even if people do eye them suspiciously. The animosity towards the Islamic bloc countries is rooted also in a fear of East vs. West geopolitical conflict — something the Jews never could claim to have. Further, terrorist acts on a grand scale are also missing from the early 1900s history of Jews and Europe. One might more accurately say that Muslims might be the new Russians. Or the new Communists.
All that being said, does it matter if Islam actually can declare war on the West — or if we just think it has? Jews were accused of running the world, manipulating finances, and so on, which were exaggerations and lies. The “Islam against the West” line is also a bit hazy in the facts area, yes? Islamophobia is a tiny hop, skip and jump away from anti-Semitism, in its pervasive nature, it’s reliance on cultural myths, and appropriation of populist fears. It is a disease of the logic, backed up by credibility and “research.” The target people is different and the trappings are green-tinted not blue, but the portrayal and useage of it is the same.
This statement is more than interesting to Jewschool because it happens to have “Jews” in the article. And this issue is more important than an exercise in backing up or debunking the similarities between Jews and Muslims in Europe. MP Malik’s statement is a hot poker in the butt of the Jewish people asking us if we (and our societies) have not fallen into the same mental traps as our predecessors’ oppressors. And what, other than decrying or debunking the comparison, we’re going to do to prevent the accusation from going any further.
(By the way, the UK’s online resources for members of Parliament are phenomenal — on his overall Parliamentary participation; on terrorism his speeches and votes.)
For the sake of European Muslims, the West should close its mass-immigration doors until we find away to educate the European population who drives these poor people to Car-B-Bqs and fundamentalism and violence. These poor people are clearly acting out from racism, and closing mass immigration doors will let the healing begin.
Also, why don’t people understand that women wearing a veil means, “I love liberal democracy!”?
Gosh DK, you’re so clever! Someone should give you a radio show.
You’re right, of course. Nothing says freedom and democracy like denying a woman the right to dress as she pleases.
Oh, and persecuting people because of their religion.
That’s right, Mark Goldman. Nothing quite screams domestic “repression” like those brutal liberal democracies in Europe. Such persecution.
Saying xyz are the “Jews of Europe” seems to be a European placeholder for ‘generally mistreated but still successful people.’ When I was in Ireland Irish people were forever telling me that the Irish were the Jews of Europe, and I was always like, “Actually, the JEWS are the Jews of Europe…”
“Actually, the JEWS are the Jews of Europe…”
Exactly! It strikes me as a subtle method of detaching Jews from their history of oppression by suggesting that there’s a new whipping boy in town. The circumstances are entirely different, and to suggest otherwise plays into the CAIR narrative.
Agreed. The claim that Muslims are like the Jews of Europe can only be supported by those who haven’t really studied the history of the Jews in Europe.
Muslims are not popularly portrayed in mainstream media outlets as vermin, or as a virus infecting the “pure” blood of white Europeans (as Jews were portrayed). In Europe, the accusations of economic control by Jews were centuries old by the 1930s, as were the blood libel, depictions of Jews as demons, and on and on.
My point is that although Muslims are certainly discriminated against (as are other groups), there is no comparison to the centuries of oppression that millions of Jews suffered in Europe, after having been expelled from their homeland amidst the bloody slaughters by Rome in 70 and 135 C.E.
If the vast majority of Muslims are forced to live in non-Muslim environments for over 1,000 years, and are subjected to every kind of degradation in the process (and are deprived of their current homelands), then we’ll talk.
Ditto regarding the accusations of Nazi-like behavior by Israeli authorities. If Palestinians are paraded through the streets of Tel Aviv and physically humiliated, to the cheers of crowds of Jewish Israeli civilians, this accusation will carry some weight.
Ditto regarding the accusations of Nazi-like behavior by Israeli authorities. If Palestinians are paraded through the streets of Tel Aviv and physically humiliated, to the cheers of crowds of Jewish Israeli civilians, this accusation will carry some weight.
People very often conflate Nazi and Fascist. While most certainly Israel has not rounded up Palestinians with the intent of eradicating them (Nazi-like, so to speak), fact is, Israel does humiliate and oppress the Palestinians on a daily basis.
If the only way to physically humiliate one is to parade them in a huge metro area, I think the words “humiliation” and “oppression” need to be redefined.
I think you all missed the point of the post — the question is “Would you like to wait until Muslims have been persecuted for 1,000 years…or is the lesson of the Holocaust that any oppression of people based on conspiracy theories a warning sign that the worse is yet to come?”
Who said this is connected to any lesson of a Holocaust? Remember, Kung Fu Jew, not all of us are directly descended from Holocaust survivors, and we resent having the Holocaust waved in our faces all the time by Holocaustians on both the Left and the Right.
It has to stop. You have to point to the specific policy you have an issue with, and stop referencing the Holocaust in a vague way instead of making a lucid point.
I wanna see an article or speech by a Muslim leader on how Jews are the new Jews of Islam.
A more accurate analogy would be, the muslims have become the europeans and the europeans have become the Jews of Europe.
What does that make the Jews of Europe you ask? If I had my wish… Israelis.
I am not a metaphor.
Remember when…
Plus ca change, Mobes, plus ca change. Sad, really.
Back in the ’80s in the Bay Area, African Americans began wearing T-shirts that said “It’s a Black Thang. You Wouldn’t Understand.” This was in response to us white folk who kept saying silly things like “We understand and we feel your pain.”
The fact is, I can’t really understand what it feels like to be treated with suspicion because of what I look like (even though I wear a headscarf that people sometimes enjoy staring at) and no one but a Jew really knows what it feels like to be a Jew.
Any kind of expropriation of our experience by anyone else, no matter how well intentioned, is disrespectful. As rokhi put it so beautifully above, “I am not a metaphor.” In fact, I’d love to see THAT on a T-shirt, right below the line that began this discussion.
Thanks, Rachel Batya. Indeed, I’m setting up my cafe press account now, in preparation for my upcoming trip to Vilnius (Vilne). Sigh…
I think Bangladeshis became the new Jews when their Muslim Pakistani brothers murdered 3 million of them in 1971.
rokhi,
A safe journey and a safe return.
It is a disease of the logic, backed up by credibility and “research.”
sorry but the analogy between European anti-semitism and European suspicion of Islam is just ridiculous. the Jews of 1920’s Europe never stated their desire to take over the continent and never committed acts of mass violence to bring about such an aim.
Muslims have done both with some frequency.
Racism is racism, but you’re blind if you can’t acknowledge that European fear of radical Islam has a somewhat firmer basis in reality than did/does European genocidal anti-Semitism.
Your suggestion that the victims of radical Islam in Madrid, London, Paris or Amsterdam suffer from a “disease of the logic” (whatever that means) is pretty odious.
I find that people who draw these weak analogies (Apartheid/Zionism; anti-Semitism/Islamophobia; etc.), aside from evincing a desire to deny or downplay Jewish rights or history, suffer from an even more banal affliction: utter lack of imagination. Just because an analogy is convenient does not make it remotely true.