Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

294 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 1:293
rule, he claims they were “only rarely subject to persecution” and “their
situation was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst.” 2
Andrew G. Bostom’s extensive, scientific, and largely unprecedented
new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn
History, 3 definitively disproves such claims. (Full disclosure: I copyedited
several of these first-time English translations and proofread many
chapters.)
Publication of this landmark book informs self-respecting scholars that
they can no longer shamelessly blame Christianity as the sole source of
antisemitism—or more importantly, that Islam does not and never had its
own innate brand of loathing for the Jewish people.
Islam detests non-Muslims generally—whom sharia laws institutionally
oppress and tax as underclass “dhimmis”—but inveighs especially
intense odium against Jews.
Indeed, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, a sort of continuum of
Bostom’s groundbreaking Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate
of Non-Muslims, 4 proves that profound Islamic hatred for the Jewish people
originated with the religion’s founder, Muhammad. Moreover, his companions,
successor “rightly guided” Caliphs and Islamic jurists, over the next
1,400 years maintained that hateful overarching passion.
Bostom’s evidence is impossible to ignore, wave off, or attribute to
anti-Islamic bias. Most of the book’s double-columned 766 pages contain
primary source material: excerpts from Islamic sacred texts, jurisprudence,
and historical accounts (by Muslims and non-Muslims alike) across the
span of Islamic history.
The opening 171-page review (and 962 citations) breathtakingly maps
the roots of Islamic antisemitism—within the religion’s unique theological
and judicial traditions, and its historical record.
This alone should convince even skeptics that Islamic antisemitism
began in the seventh century.
The Qur’an refers to Jews as apes and swine (2:65, 7:166, 5:60),
themes that were repeatedly exploited in incitements to murder, including a
1066 “anti-Jewish ode containing the line, ‘Many a pious Muslim is in awe
of the vilest infidel ape.’” Letters from the Cairo Geniza, from up to one
millennium ago, further explode “the common assumption” that a unique
Islamic strain of antisemitism was “absent” at that time (950-1250 C.E.).
2. Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (London: Phoenix, 1997), 121-22.
3. Andrew G. Bostom, ed., The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred
Texts to Solemn History (Prometheus: 2008), 766 pp.
4. Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims
(Prometheus: 2006), 759 pp.