Islamophobie: Schlecht für die Juden

Es gibt schlechte Nachrichten für die Handvoll jüdischer Publizisten, die Islamophobie stützen oder verharmlosen, sowie ihren antideutschen Anhang, während die Positionen etwa von Wolfgang Benz (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung) und des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland gestärkt werden: Eine weitere Studie belegt, dass mit islamophobem Gedankengut auch antisemitische Einstellungen zunehmen. Das ist nicht nur deshalb keine große Überraschung, weil es schon seit einiger Zeit Erkenntnisse darüber gibt, dass Antisemitismus und Islamophobie gerade gleichermaßen ansteigen (ich habe in meinem Blog darüber berichtet). Vor allem zeigt sich, dass, wer eine Minderheit hasst, sich auch bei einer anderen nicht zurückhält – das Problem bei der Islamophobie sind eben nicht die zahllosen friedlichen Muslime, sondern die Fremdenfeinde, deren wachsende Verunsicherung durch eine globale Gesellschaft in immer stärkere Ressentiments umschlägt. Die Parallelen von Antisemitismus und Islamophobie mittels perfider Anfeindungen gegen Benz & Co. tabuisieren zu wollen dürfte damit langfristig scheitern.

Die Washington Post berichtet:

A poll about Americans' views on Islam concludes that the strongest predictor of prejudice against Muslims is whether a person holds similar feelings about Jews.

(…) The poll, conducted in the fall, is the latest large-scale survey to find a high level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a poll in September showing that Muslims are thought to suffer more discrimination than any other U.S. religious group, by a wide margin. Jews were second.

(…) In the Gallup poll, respondents who said they feel "a great deal" of prejudice toward Jews are very likely to report feeling the same level of bias toward Muslims.

(…) In a note accompanying the poll results, Gallup makes the argument that Americans' prejudice against Muslims is at least partly fueled by misinformed beliefs. For example, people who believe Muslims worldwide oppose equal rights for men and women tend to be much more likely to report prejudice against Muslims.

Data from other Gallup interviews that were not part of the most recent poll show that majorities of Muslims in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among other places, say that women and men should have equal legal rights.

Das Anti-War-Blog kommentiert diese Erkenntnisse mit Ausführungen, die sich auch Henryk Broder und sein Klüngel hinter den Spiegel stecken sollten:

While the poll deals with the American rather than the European context, it is a reminder that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have typically gone hand in hand. This is worth remembering when looking at the rise of European far-right leaders like Jean-Marie Le Pen of France and the late Jorg Haider of Austria. Hostility to Muslim immigrants forms the centerpiece of their political stance, but their parties have also tended to espouse anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial — a reminder of their neo-fascist roots.

But this anti-Semitism has quite naturally prevented them from making common cause with neoconservatives and other right-wing Zionists in America, whose militant stance towards “Islamism” (very broadly defined) would otherwise make them natural allies of the European far right. Hence we have seen in recent years that the savvier of the European far right leaders — such as Filip Dewinter of the Flemish separatist party Vlaams Belang (VB) — have dropped the explicitly anti-Semitic elements of their platforms and doubled down on Islamophobia. They realize that by portraying themselves as staunch supporters of Israel and allies in the war against Islamofascism, they can acquire a new set of influential and well-connected supporters in America — the likes of Daniel Pipes, Mark Steyn, Frank Gaffney, etc. (…)

While focusing on Islamophobia rather than anti-Semitism is certainly a savvy move, whether it is sincere is another question. The VB, for example, is a successor to the Vlaams Blok, which disbanded in 2004 after being convicted of “repeated incitement to discrimination”; its fall was precipated by top VB official Roeland Raes’s widely-publicized Holocaust denial on Dutch television. Despite the VB’s claims to have cleaned up its act since the Raes scandal, the Belgian Jewish community isn’t buying it. They maintain that, regardless of whatever philo-Semitic noises the top leadership makes in public, the group has a clear pattern of associating with anti-Semitic and neo-fascist elements. (Right-wing apostate Charles Johnson has in recent years provided the most thorough coverage of the devil’s bargain that the American Islamophobic right has made with the European far right.) Similarly, although Wilders himself does not come from the neo-fascist milieu, there can be little doubt that his base of popular support contains many of the same elements as Le Pen’s and Haider’s.

All this is to say that Daniel Pipes and his compatriots are playing with fire when they embrace Wilders and other European Islamophobes. While the European far right has proven increasingly willing to say the right things about Jews for tactical reasons, all indications are that hatred of Muslims frequently goes hand-in-hand with hatred of Jews.