Why I Have Written "Jihad and Genocide"
by Richard L. Rubenstein (February 2010)
[1] I began that morning with an enormous sense of satisfaction that I was finally completing my share of a very arduous task. At the time, I had devoted the better part of a career of half a century to research, writing and lecturing on the Holocaust and the terrible phenomenon of genocide.
[2] As I watched in horror, I knew that Islamic extremists, whom I shall henceforth identify as Islamists, had finally succeeded. My horror was intensified, if that were possible, when I watched United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the twin South Tower. Minutes later, I learned that yet another plane had crashed into the Pentagon, and that United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania failing to reach its target, which was apparently either the White House or the United States Capitol.
Within the space of little more than an hour, the United States had experienced the most devastating attack on its homeland in its entire history. The iconic structures of American financial and military power had been successfully assaulted and only the selfless bravery of the doomed passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 prevented a similar strike on the center of American political power.
In 1952, my senior year as a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, I was accepted for admission to Harvard Divinity School. The Holocaust had cast a very long shadow over my decision to continue graduate studies at an historically Protestant institution. The Holocaust had taken place in Christian Europe and was not without the support of important segments of European Christendom. I wanted to understand the history and the present status of the complicated and ambivalent relationship between Judaism and Christianity and Harvard Divinity School seemed like a good place to start.
Ten days after 9/11, President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of the United States Congress in which he sought to make a distinction between the perpetrators of 9/11 and the peace-loving Islamic mainstream. The president declared:
I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith… Its teachings are good and peaceful. And those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying in effect to hijack Islam itself.[5]
Undoubtedly, in a moment of unprecedented national crisis, the president’s first responsibility was to calm a potentially explosive inter-religious situation. Nevertheless, in retrospect one can ask whether his statements or the somewhat similar sentiments expressed by President Barack Obama in Cairo on June 4, 2009 were accurate. In reality, Islamist enmity toward the infidel West, such as was manifest on 9/11, is not a consequence of a small, unrepresentative group “hijacking” a religion whose “teachings are good and peaceful.” On the contrary, the kind of Islamist hostility that drove Islamist terrorists to act on 9/11 and all too many other occasions is deeply rooted in centuries of Islamic tradition. As Professor Mary Habeck has observed concerning Qutb, al-Banna, and Mawdudi, the spiritual mentors of contemporary radical Islam:
None of these theorists could have had any impact in the Islamic world if their arguments had not found some sort of resonance in the religion of Islam.[6]
My first hint that a version of Islam might constitute an irreconcilable menace came in the aftermath of the Six Day War of 1967. As that war approached, my wife Betty and I feared that the Arabs would be able to make good on their promise to drive the Jews into the sea. Ahmed Shukairy, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s first leader, predicted Israel’s “complete destruction” in the coming war” while Hafaz al-Asad of Syria promised to “destroy the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland.”[7]
He was young, energetic, obviously intelligent. His English was excellent. It was all too obvious that he would never agree to peace with Israel under any circumstance. I had no doubt that there were very many more like him. Israel had won a battle, but with young men like that as enemies, it had not won the war. Moreover, I could see no material advantage peace with Israel might bring that would persuade him to work toward it.
[10] Put differently, such Muslims believe they are under an unconditional religious obligation to expel the Jews who, they believe, have forcibly taken possession of a portion of the abode of Islam.
[Islam] requires the Jews to set up their own rabbinic courts and put its whole executive power at its disposal. The shariah (sic), the law of Islam, demands of all Jews to submit themselves to the precepts of Jewish law as interpreted by the rabbinic courts, and treats defiance or contempt of the rabbinic court as rebellion against the Islamic state itself, on a par with like action on the part of a Muslim vis-à-vis the Islamic court.[12]
What al-Faruqi failed to specify was that under such a regime Jews would be dhimmis, a humiliated subject people. Moreover, such a community would have no place for Reform, Conservative or secular Jews. Any rejection of Orthodox Jewish authority would make a person liable to the same punishment as a Muslim in rebellion against shari’a. Put differently, the penalty for non-compliance with rabbinic courts under the conditions of dhimmitude offered by al-Faruqi as a “solution” would be death inflicted not by Jewish but by Muslim authorities. As we shall see, al-Faruqi’s proposal is both moderate and humane in comparison with the “solutions” offered by more radical Muslim leaders.
, Betty and I attended international conferences at which he was also present. We were impressed with his urbanity, sophistication, and broad knowledge of world affairs. Normally, we sat with him and his wife at dinner, as we often did with Professor Faruqi. One evening, Zaki Badawi interrupted our train of conversation by unexpectedly bringing up the subject of Israel. “They’ll really have to go, you know,” he informed me. His wife, an English convert to Islam, added, “Like the Crusades.” There was no point in arguing with him. Other Muslim scholars had told me the same thing, but none had his standing or authority.
[14] By the time I came to know him, I had no doubt that the Arab-Israeli conflict was as much a religious as a political conflict with a genocidal outcome should the Muslims prove victorious.
[16]
When the war ended in May 1945, all of Europe had become a charnel house for the Jewish survivors. Unwelcome in the countries of their birth, an estimated 250,000 found shelter under miserable conditions in Displaced Persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Their number was augmented by Eastern European survivors who, when they attempted to return to their homes, often found that they were returning to deadly pogroms.[17] Apart from all national and religious sentiments, the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine, was the only community that unconditionally welcomed the majority of both the survivors of the Holocaust and the Jews from Arab lands who were forcibly expelled by government action and mob violence in the post-World War II years.[18]
My neighbor, the faceless one, said:
“Don’t let yourself be fooled with illusions. Hitler has made it very clear that he will annihilate all the Jews before the clock strikes twelve, before they can hear the last stroke.”
I burst out:
“What does it matter to you? Do we have to regard Hitler as a prophet?”
“I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in any one else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, all of his promises, to the Jewish people.”[21]
Hitler kept his promise until the total collapse of the Third Reich. Today, there are leaders throughout the Islamic world who are once again making the same promise. There are also those in the West who ignore the renewed expression of those promises and urge Israel to come to terms with the very people who pledge publicly and unconditionally to destroy them. For Israel to follow such counsel would be suicidal. If the Holocaust has any meaning for Jews it is that they must believe those who promise to destroy them especially when they actively seek, as does Iran, the weapons with which to do so. They at least are telling the truth and intend to keep their promise if they can.
The Gaza war of 2009 gave Israel yet another taste of what to expect from the United Nations and the so-called international community if it agrees, as many are urging them, to a two-state solution without the safeguards spelled out in the Roadmap. Without those safeguards, sooner or later Israel would find that its people are subjected to rocket attacks and other forms of aggression coming from groups within the newly independent Palestinian state. In divided Jerusalem rockets could be launched from Arab neighborhoods a few blocks from their Jewish counterparts. Palestinian authorities would, of course, deny that they are responsible, but the rockets would continue sometimes sporadically, sometimes rapidly. If Gaza is the model, the Israeli government would try to refrain from retaliation until its own population had enough and demanded action. When the effort to put an end to the attacks finally comes, the provocations would once again be ignored by the so-called international community and Israel would be subject again to virulent demonization not only from angry Muslims but from the media and left-wing academic circles throughout much of the Western world. During the Gaza war of 2009 there were calls for another Holocaust and the restarting of the gas chambers in the street demonstrations in many of the cities of the Western world, as well as in sermons, cartoons, and other propaganda especially in the Arab media. Ironically, a dishonest peace would be worse than honest recognition that the conflict cannot be resolved under present circumstances.
Having spent most of my career writing and teaching about the Holocaust, I now find myself once again confronted by sworn enemies of the United States and Israel who have promised to exterminate my people. With knowledge gained over many decades, I feel I have no option but to take these people at their word.
[1] Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth, Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003).
[2] Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 201-203.
[3] I am grateful to Professor Roth for his e-mail of 21 Mar. 2009 in which he helped to clarify our correspondence.
Transcript of President Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001” CNN.com./U.S.
Jihad Watch, 17 May, 2007, (13 June 2009).
[7] Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 78.
[11] The proceedings of one such conference, a Jewish-Muslim dialogue held in Cordoba, Spain, are to be found in Charles Selengut, ed., Jewish-Muslim Encounters: History, Philosophy and Culture (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2001).
[14] Nevertheless, there was one genocide to which Zaki Badawi was indifferent. I was informed by a British friend who had been active in raising the awareness of the British public about the mass murder in Darfur that when he sought the support of Zaki Badawi, the latter responded that he had no interest in the sub-Saharan victims as they were in really polytheists and not Muslim.
French Official: Israel’s Establishment a Historic Mistake
[17] Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006).
Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries,” Middle East Quarterly, Vol. II, No. 3, Sept. 1995
[19] Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 17.
Turkey Wants U.S. ‘Balance,’” New York Times,6Apr. 2009, < Richard L. Rubenstein Jihad and Genocide (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010) To comment on this article, please click here. If you have enjoyed this article and want to read more by Richard L. Rubenstein, please click here.
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