Sunday, February 23, 2014

France: Book on Jewish-Muslim relations denies Jewish right to self-determination

The Encyclopaedia of Jewish-Muslim relations was edited by two French professors.  The book appeared in French and in English (published by Princeton).  Like most academic books.. it also has its own English-language trailer, created by ARTE France.

The "Point of No Return" blog points out that the book has an antisemitic agenda, and that many of its authors are known anti-Zionists.

Point of No Return reports:
The joint editors are a Tunisian professor at the university of Nanterre (Paris), Abdelwahab Meddeb, and Benjamin Stora, a Jewish professor of North African history and author of a history of the Jews of Algeria. The two men have been touring France, North Africa, Israel and Belgium promoting the Encyclopaedia.
(...) 
The underlying premise is that Jews are not a people in their own right. They are Arabs of the Jewish faith. Antisemitism is unknown under Islam. Through the centuries Jews have been tolerated, until the harmonious relations between them and their Muslim brethren were torn asunder by the European colonial powers and 'European' Zionism. Pogroms at the time of Mohammed were inter-ethnic or inter-tribal conflicts; the 1929 massacre in Palestine incited by the Mufti of Jerusalem was nothing more than an anti-colonial rebellion. The Jews are 'imprisoned in a 'European Zionist identity' which is alien to them. 
The Encyclopaedia cloaks superficial criticism of Islam in apologetics. Antisemitic outbreaks are always the fault of fanatics. Jews are to blame for their own suffering; modern antisemitism is a backlash to colonialism and the 'theft' by European Zionists of Arab Palestine. Many of the contributing experts are anti-Zionists. 

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