“This way of thinking has damaged the Islamic religion over the years more than it has served it,” admits Kepel of the French Centre for Sociological Research. He predicts a decline in extremism will give way to a generation of Muslims who will free themselves from Islamic movements, and will open up a new era for Islamic society, which he calls “the era of Muslim democracy.”
Focus: Israel
Ihsan Alkhatib, an immigration attorney and doctoral student of international relations in Dearborn, Michigan, says the issue of Israel has created tension between Arab Muslims and Jews almost everywhere.
“Jewish support for Israel is due to tribal solidarity, regardless of the merits of the case,” he maintained in a recent interview. “The animosity displayed against Jews by the French Arabs or Muslims is also due to tribal solidarity or assabiyeh.”
But Project David’s Charles Jacobs says that understanding the merits of the case is key to understanding the problem. He believes the conflict in Israel is seen by much of the Muslim world as a religious conflict between Islam and the Jews. Jacobs speaks of a campaign in the Islamic world, funded in part by the Saudis, in which anti-Semitic material is distributed through a global network of madrassas and mosques.
“In Europe, the Jewish population has been dwarfed by Muslim immigrants, many of whom blame the Jews for the suffering of the Palestinians,” Jacobs says. “Jews and Jewish institutions have been attacked by Muslims in France, Belgium, Italy and other countries because of this.”
Al-Qatami notes that there have been hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs as well as against Jews in France, particularly following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. She is hopeful that recent actions by the French government, including the formation of a Muslim National Council, will ‘serve to prevent future hate crimes for all the citizens of France.’ But Jacobs says the Jews of France will have to drop their illusions and deal with reality as it is.
“French Jews,” he explains, “are targeted simultaneously by three global ideologies that use ‘Palestinianism’ to express deeply held beliefs and feelings: by Islamic radicalism which sees Jews as non-Muslim usurpers of the Islamic holy land; by leftists whose anti-Zionism articulates an animus toward the West, America, capitalism and globalization; and by resurgent European anti-Semites whose Jew-hatred now comes wrapped in anti-Zionism.”
The Jews of France, he adds, “will need to organize and demonstrate in the streets for the French to live up to their humanitarian ideals. They need to point out French hypocrisy….and they will have to throw every resource into doing what only their best students have done, which is to make Israel’s case, pierce through the walls of lies and deception, and teach themselves and their children how to do it.”
