Fatah's Screwy "Doables"

Barbara Kay has read Tarek Fatah's new book The Jew Is Not My Enemy (original title: My Enemy, the Jews) and falls hard for his smooth yet fatuous arguments:

...Fatah's basic arguments come down to this: The Koran itself -- the sacred text -- does not express a shred of anti-Semitism. The Hadith, though, were written by men centuries later, and certain Hadith verses "can best be described as hate literature." They can and should be revised or dumped. True anti-Semitism--the blood libel and the exterminationism -- are imports, Fatah says, from medieval Christian converts to Islam and Western fascism. The convergence of Arab and German enmities permitted Nazi-style anti-Semitism to penetrate and flourish amongst Arabs and then throughout the Muslim world. The Muslim Brotherhood is behind the successful transmogrification of the Jew into Islam's existential enemy.

None of these hate engines are inherent to Islam, Fatah insists. They should be extirpated from Islam, and a pluralist, democracy-friendly Islam reinstated.

A scholar by avocation, Fatah is a longtime journalist. His writing is crisp, fat-free and reader-friendly. His chapter refuting the story of Muhammad's AD 627 massacre of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe, commonly adduced as proof of Islam's inherent Jew hatred, is particularly interesting. In Martin Gilbert's and other accounts, 700 Jews were taken to the Medina marketplace and slaughtered under the supervision of the Prophet himself. Fatah claims this is a legend, and that there is no evidence to back up the story.

I am not equipped to pronounce on the soundness of Fatah's argument, but I am equipped to judge the quality of a book's rhetorical energy. Fatah's deconstruction of the Banu Qurayza "legend" reads like a detective story ripped from today's headlines.

If there is to be a solution to curbing Islamism's anti-Semitism, Fatah concludes, it lies mainly with Muslim intellectuals, clerics and politicians on one side -- and Israel on the other. A viable Palestinian state would help matters: "Not that Islamist Judeophobia will disappear, but the oxygen that nourishes it will be cut off." The task for Israel is not easy, he says, "but compared to what the Muslim world must do to get its act together, it is simple and doable."...

Doable, is it? About as doable as, say, "extirpating" the hate from a text that is considered uncreated and sheer perfection.

It is hard to fathom how a smart cookie like Barbara could swallow such utter bollocks. One can only assume that when she says she's not equipped to judge the book's soundness she really means it, and that she hasn't read Islam's foundational sources in which Jew-trashing and Jew-slaying are a cornerstone. No less an authority than Sam Solomon--a former imam who converted to Christianity--says in his book Al-Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity & the Jews (which may not be written as "crisply" as Fatah's, but which, unlike his, tells it like it was--and is) that Islam is obsessed with Jewry, and that as much as 60% of the Koran is devoted to them (us): how crappy, unworthy, lowly and, yes, demonic we are. While Fatah may want to rewrite history and wish away the Judenhass and eliminationism written right into Islamic teachings--as in much the same way in his previous book, he sought to wish away sharia, Islam's law (another losing battle)--his efforts to sanitize a bloody history that yet inspires and motivates the faithful must be seen as disingenuous at best, duplicitous at worst. As for the former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine placing the onus on Israel to "fix" the Palestinian "problem"--given that the problem originates in Islam itself, that's just plain nuts.

Update: A cold blast of reality re which came first, Israel or Muslim enmity, from the anti-The Jew Is Not My Enemy, Al-Yahud:

The emnity is the driver of the political conflict over "land"

Since the enmity toward the Jews is a religious decree--and thus an immutable or non-argumentable requirement for every Muslim, emanating from deep doctrinal roots (dogma) as based on the revelations claimed to have been given by Allah to Muhammad--the "enmity" can now be seen to be the driver of the political conflict over the "land" between Israel and the Palestinians, rather than the "cause." So that the mere thought of having the "hated" Jews living on what is claimed to be Muslim land is the ultimate insult to Islam, not just to the Palestinians.

With this in mind, even if the Israelis were at peace with the Palestinians--based on the foregoing--aren't all Muslims commanded by Qur'anic injuctions and the Hadith to continue to execute Allah's eternal decree of "enmity" toward the Jews? And if so, how could one negotiate from the premise of a divinely inspired and commanded enmity?

You want to field that one, Mr. Fatah?

Update: You know that scripture that hasn't "a shred" of anti-Semitism? Here are but a few passages from said book that pretty much leave that assertion in shreds:

Wretchedness and baseness were stamped upon them [that is, the Jews], and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was for their disobedience and transgression. (Qur'an 2:61)

Jews are those who were cursed and transformed into apes and swine. (Qur'an 2:65, 5:60, 7:166)

The Jews corrupted the scriptures... (Qur'an 4:46)

And for the evildoing of the Jews, We have forbidden them some good things that were previously permitted them, and because of their barring many from Allah's path. And for their taking usury that was prohibited for them, and because off their consuming people's wealth under false pretense. We have prepared for the unbelievers among them a painful punishment. (Qur'an 4: 160-61)

Jews are igniters of fire of war... (5: 64); are corrupters on earth... (5:62, 17:4); conceal truth with falsehood... (2:42); are liars... (3:183-184); are cowards... (2:93-96); are lovers of transgression and sin... (5:62); are the worst of Allah's creation... (8:55-56, 98:6).

And those are our good qualities.