Bill Warner Reviews Bostom's "The Legacy Of Islamic Anti-Semitism"

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism
By Bill Warner
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, May 16, 2008

Andrew Bostom's new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, is a historic work. It is a complete encyclopedia of both the doctrine and practice of Islamic Jew hatred. Jew hatred is Bostom's usage and it is accurate. The word anti-Semitic refers to the Semitic language group, which includes both Arabic and Hebrew. No one hates the Hebrew language, so the term is a misnomer.

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism is a reference book that is divided into eight sections with two grand divisions—sacred texts (doctrine) and history (the result of the doctrine).

SACRED TEXTS

Dr. Bostom does not use brilliant essays as a logic to persuade the reader. He lets Mohammed and Islam tell the story by using the actual source documents. So in the first half of the book we get to see how the Koran, the Sira (the life of Mohammed) and the Hadith (the Traditions of Mohammed) lay out a complete doctrine of Jew hatred.

Mohammed used the Jews as a proof of his prophet-hood. At first, Mohammed is portrayed as the last in the line of Jewish prophets. Noah, Moses, Abraham and even Jesus are used to establish that all of their work pointed to the arrival of the true prophet. Mohammed is portrayed as the “real” Jew and the Koran is the real Torah (Jewish scripture). Of course, Yahweh is the same as Allah, the real Yahweh.

In summary, while in Mecca, Mohammed stole Yahweh and the Torah.

Then when Mohammed moved to Medina, he found a town that was half Jewish, unlike Mecca, and the Jews did something that they would not repeat over the next 1400 years. The Jews stood up to Mohammed and denied his Koran. When Mohammed could not persuade the Jews of his prophet-hood, he showed the world that the sword is mightier than the Jewish pen.

In about a years time, as the Jews refused to help each other, Mohammed kidnapped, raped, enslaved, tortured, assassinated, robbed and mass murdered the Jews who denied him. His dying words were to get the Jews and Christians out of Arabia.

Hitler was a student of Islamic Jew hatred, but Mohammed was the master. Jews are still found in Germany, but not a single one is in Arabia.

All of this accounting is taken from Islam's sacred texts; the actual source material doctrine of Islam found in the Koran, Sira and Hadith.

THE HISTORY OF JEW HATRED

Well, that was then and this is now, right? Nobody really believes sacred texts, do they? Well, as the last half of the work shows, Muslims believe every single syllable of the sacred texts and follow the example of the perfect pattern of Islam, Mohammed.

The historical documents show that Jew hatred is seamless from Mohammed forward to the present.

Bostom lays out a massive documentation of 1400 years of Jewish suffering as dhimmis under Islam. In the process he annihilates a favorite Jewish myth of how great Jews had it during the Islamic "Golden Age". Islam's so-called Golden Age was built on slavery and dhimmitude of Jews and Christians. Why was that so Golden for Jews and Christians?

Again The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism does not argue about the Golden Age, but lets its victims speak the truth buried under the fantasy history of Islam's glory. The historic truth is a grinding humiliation of the Jews, who have been so spiritually crushed that they are defenders of their oppressors.

Another Jewish myth is that modern Islamic Jew hatred came from the Nazis and those terrible Christians. Part of this myth is how well Islam treated the Jews before modern times. Bernard Lewis, the patriarch of Jewish scholar-dhimmis, actively preaches this historical lie today. Dr. Bostom lets historical documents show that Islam has been violently involved with Jew hatred since 622-623 AD when Mohammed attacked the Jews of Medina and Khaybar.

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism is overpowering in its detail. The historical documents that give the details of Jew hatred go on and on and on. The history lessons start right after Mohammed's death and go forward, continuously, up until today. Dr. Bostom lets Islam speak for itself and it is a very ugly story.

THE READERS

What is tragic about this book is that it is a powerful medicine that the patient will not swallow. The message in this book is the only key to saving Israel. Antisemitism shows the very foundation of Israeli thought and doctrine of war is wrong. Antisemitism shows that it is jihad, not intifada and it is Muslims, not Palestinians. Jihad is not a war between nation states. Israel is in a state of dhimmitude and is fighting and losing the wrong war. Israel cannot beat Mohammed because they will not declare war on Mohammed. Hamas and the PLO are not the enemies; Mohammed is the enemy. Hamas and the PLO are his children.

The only way to win a war is to know the enemy and Israel and the Jews do not have any idea of who the enemy is. The most valuable strategic strike would be to give every rabbi, the ADL, the Jewish Federation, the ACLU and Jewish professor a copy of Bostom's The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, a weapon of mass instruction. At the very least, the ignorant rabbis who say that Muslims and Jews worship the same god would be silent. It would be too much to expect them to deny the “truth” of the Koran, a document of Jew hatred.

The question that every Jew must now answer is: “How do you, as a Jew, justify your ignorance about the doctrine and history of Islamic Jew hatred?”

SCHOOLS OF SCHOLARSHIP

Dr. Bostom is a member of the Foundational school of Islamic scholarship.

The other two schools are the Islamic believer school and the Academic school. The Academic school accepts Islam's claims of being a great religion and does not question the validity of the Koran, Sira and Hadith. Academia is in a state of dhimmitude--fearful and subservient, uncriticially accepting Islam's claims of being a great religion and daring not to question the validity of the Koran, Sira and Hadith. Moreover, the dhimmitude of the Academy now extends to the views and actions of the media, the government, and the primary and secondary schools.

The Academic school is incapable of skeptical thought and rarely uses the source texts, instead it commonly uses derivative works. It does not present the suffering of the dhimmis and enslavement of kafirs. The Academic school is one long apologia for Islam.

The Foundational school uses the source texts for doctrine and history. The suffering of the kafirs and dhimmis is clearly recognized. Some other members are Bat Yeor, Ibn Warraq, Robert Spenser, Serge Trifkovic, and the Center for the Study of Political Islam.