Well, no. At most, Judaism aims to shine/be a light unto the world. Islam, on the other hand, has always had the spread--and, ultimately, the primacy--of Islam as its central plank, its raison d'etre. Not that that unpleasant truth is ever mentioned by the likes of Harpoon Siddiqui. He and his ilk have long tried to bookend anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism; in essence, to piggy-back on Jew-hate and age-old conspiracies purveyed about "the Jews." These conspiracies are woven into Islam's religious texts and are thus pervasive in the Muslim world, especially now that there's a sovereign--and decidedly un-Islamic--Jewish state in its midst. And, oh look, in his latest sermon from his Toronto Star bully pulpit, Harpoon has found a usefully idiotic Jewess, philosopher Martha Nussbaum, to help with the piggy-backing:
Nussbaum finds the European and American discourse on the related topics of immigration, integration, hijab, niqab, sharia law, minarets and mosques, including the “Ground Zero mosque,” to be mostly ignorant, irrational, contradictory and malevolent.Time to climb off the Jews' backs, Harpoon. Despite what the misguided Ms. Martha may say, you and the other Zion-loathers have been hitching a free ride on them--on us--for far too long.
In its stupidity and viciousness, anti-Islamism parallels anti-Semitism, she writes.
Just as Jews have long been viewed with a mixture of fear and contempt, and also thought to be unfit for normal citizenship, so are Muslims.
“Muslims, like Jews, are always accused of having a double loyalty, and both are seen to submit themselves to a double set of legal requirements — religious law somehow making them bad subjects of civil law.”
Just as anti-Semites hold that “there is a conspiracy to take over the world and that all Jews are somehow part of it,” anti-Islamists are saying the same of Muslims.
Update: My letter to the Star:
I'd be willing to go along with Martha Nussbaum's contention, one seconded by Haroon Siddiqui, that anti-Islamism is to Muslims what anti-Semitism is to Jews but for one word that tends to fatally undermine their argumnent. That word is sharia. You see, while it has always been a lie--a "big lie," in Nazi propangandist Joseph Goebbels' infamous phrase--to say that "the Jews" are engaged in a sinister plot (one outlined in that Czarist fabrication, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) to seize control of the world, it is also, unfortunately, a lie to say that there isn't a small but significant number of Muslims who are doing their utmost, using both violent and non-violent methods, to ensure that sharia, Islamic law, prevails over all others. To turn a blind eye to these efforts isn't only misleading, isn't only delusional, it is downright dangerous, not only to those of us who are non-believers, but to moderate Muslims who in our time comprise the largest category of the jihadists' victims.
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If Jews are plotting to take over the world, their concept of it is a sliver of arid land, roughly the size of New Jersey, in the Levant. Darn, who knew that such an intellectually gifted people were so bad at geography (or so lacking in ambition)?
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