Inter-Cultural Dialogue and Anti-Semitism

Tehran currently hosts an exhibition which is unlikely to go on a successful tour in Western Europe and North America. It displays the two hundred winning entries of the ‘International Holocaust Cartoon Contest’ nearly all of which portray Jews as the long-nosed, greedy, and all-powerful rulers of the world. Jewish organisations should be given credit for not reacting in the same way in which Islamists responded to the publication of the Mohammed cartoons earlier this year, that is, by burning embassies, calling for boycotts, and engaging in violent protests. That doesn’t mean, though, that the incident should simply be shrugged off. As the Iran specialist Ali Ansari noted in a recent interview with Madrid11, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad likes to play it to the Arab street – and anti-Jewish prejudice is what plays particularly well. Indeed, the prevalence of anti-Jewish racism amongst Muslims everywhere is truly shocking. Cartoons, which depict Jews in the same way in which they were portrayed by the Nazis, have been the staple of newspapers in the Arab world. They can also be found in quasi-official literature in Saudi Arabia, and even in schoolbooks in the Palestinian territories. In Britain, a majority of young Muslims believe that 9/11 and even the 7 July bombings in London were orchestrated by Mossad, the Freemasons, or various other Jewish conspiracies. Here, as in the Arab world, Jews are believed to be all-powerful, dominating the world’s media, finance, and – of course – Western governments. Evidence for the allegation that they are all in cahoots – out to subjugate the Muslims – is provided by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Tsarist forgery which has gone through a revival and is reproduced on many Islamist web sites. Even the supposedly moderate Muslims, which the Blair government is keen to empower, engage in vicious anti-Jewish campaigns. During last year’s general election campaign, voters in Bethnal Green were told to vote for George Galloway rather than Labour’s Oonah King – not just because their different stance on Iraq, but mainly because she was a Jew. Labour candidates, who dared to speak out for the right of Israel to exist, were subjected to witch-hunts by Muslim lobby groups, which distributed leaflets saying that no good Muslim could vote for a ‘Zionist’. Even now, the convenient label of ‘Zionist’ – which applies to practically every Jew, since pretty much every Jew supports the idea of a Jewish homeland – is used by organisations like the Muslim Public Affairs Committee to target Jewish councillors, academics, and even shopkeepers. It may be true that we all have to learn a lot more about Islam. But Muslims need to confront their own prejudices too. After all, inter-cultural dialogue only works if it goes both ways.