Mick Hartley

Given the level of anti-Semitic discourse in much of the Islamic world, the attempt by various Muslim commentators to claim Islamophobia as the new anti-Semitism should be seen as self-serving boiler-plate. At least you can understand their motivation though. The thinking here, as described by Matthias Küntzel, is less clear:

At a time when Jew haters in the Islamic world have become more assertive than ever, Berlin's Center for Research on Anti-Semitism is concentrating on a different group: the "new enemies of Islam."

Who exactly belongs to this category is not clear from the center's latest publication, the "Yearbook for Research on Anti-Semitism." But the potential danger is supposedly known: "The fury of the new enemies of Islam is similar to the older rage of anti-Semites against the Jews," writes Prof. Wolfgang Benz, the institute's director.

An astonishing claim for a German professor to make, you might think, and a grotesque distortion of history. Perhaps he should undertake a little research into anti-Semitism in the Thirties and the Forties. He's certainly well-placed, living in Berlin.

The Berlin center adopts the neologism "Islamophobia" without any reservation. This term is misleading because it mixes two different phenomena — unjust hatred against Muslims and necessary criticism of political Islam — and condemns both equally.

By accepting this vocabulary, the Berlin center reinforces an unfortunate trend. In May 2005, the Council of Europe — at the urging of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — used the term for the first time, condemning "all forms of intolerance . . . including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia."

Yet this statement did not go far enough for the Muslim Council of Britain. "The fact is that Islamophobia has replaced anti-Semitism," explained Abduljalil Sajid, an imam and leading member of the Muslim Council, a month later at a conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Cordoba, Spain. He described as Islamophobic such statements as "Long live Israel!" and "Muslim fundamentalism is dangerous." Meanwhile, various documents by the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the United Nations have condemned Islamophobia as today's most important and worst form of prejudice.

And they're proposing some changes in German education in line with this new focus on Islamophobia. Like dropping all this stuff about the Holocaust, for instance – which after all has little relevance for today's Muslim immigrants.

In taking up the fashionable vocabulary of Islamophobia and equating hostility to Muslims with hostility to Jews, the center also risks undermining the most important current task in dealing with anti-Semitism: studying and fighting hostility to Jews in the Islamic world, where anti-Semitism has reached an unprecedented level.

For example, one of the authors in the latest Yearbook, Jochen Müller, proposes a "revision of politics and history teaching" in German schools. Because the Holocaust has no "central meaning for migrants from the Arabic-Muslim world," one should consider whether "the colonial period and its consequences" would not be a better subject for "appropriate 'Holocaust education'" among Muslim students in Germany. This is a remarkable idea given the degree of Holocaust denial among many young Muslims.

Another article in the Yearbook, "Hostility to Islam on the World Wide Web," goes even further. Instead of criticizing anti-Semitism among Muslims, the author criticizes those who accuse Muslims of anti-Semitism. That's because such accusations provide "an apparently rationally based argument for rejecting an entire collective," writes Yasemin Shooman, a staff member at the center. Here, attempts to fight "hostility to Islam" threaten to turn into tolerance of anti-Semitic attitudes.

Accusing Muslims of anti-Semitism as the new anti-Semitism. Perfect.

Update: see David Hirsh's criticism of Küntzel's arguments about Islamophobia here – and David T's response here.