Brotherly Love: What Some Egyptian Clerics Have been Teaching about Jews

Have you noticed that in recent days there are more women with Islamic head coverings, and occasionally the full niqab, in Tahrir Square? It strikes me that way – a definite contrast with earlier days, when the overwhelmingly majority of the women on the square were secularly dressed, resembling the average woman on the average high street anywhere in the West.

Professor Emerita Phyllis Chesler, who’s drawn attention to the trend in an intriguing article (http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/933/cairo-street-scenes) about what she sees as the Islamification of Egyptian women, also notes, based on a study of Cairo University graduation photographs over the past few decades – in the years 1959, 1978, 1995, and 2004, to be precise – that the incidence of head coverings has been steadily increasing. She sees it as evidence of steady Islamification. (Not all the hihabbed women seem to support the opposition forces, however – I’ve seen some on television who support Mubarak, and see http://www.slate.com/id/2283629/).

But, more generally, Phyllis Chesler also points to a poll of Egyptians taken in June 2010:

“Fifty nine percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics….Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion…When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.

When given the opportunity, the crowds on the street are not shy about showing what motivates them. They attack Mubarak and his new Vice President Omar Suleiman as American puppets and Zionist agents. The US, protesters told CNN's Nick Robertson, is controlled by Israel. They hate and want to destroy Israel. That is why they hate Mubarak and Suleiman.”

Not surprisingly, when London-based Kamal Helbawy (one of Al Beeb’s favourite talking heads, and a man with the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood in his very DNA) appeared on Press TV last evening (Tuesday), billed as “ex-Muslim Brotherhood Spokesman,” he could hardly contain his bile regarding the Mubarak regime’s support for Israel and the United States– and of course, despite his ducking and weaving on western TV channels, the Brotherhood is pledged to revoke the 1979 Peace Treaty. See also his remarks here http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2797.htm

Whether the Islamified Egyptian women and other religious opponents of the regime who are now so prominent among the Tahrir Square demonstrators also seek revocation of that Treaty is for the time a matter of speculation.

Here's Rabbi Marvin Hier, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, on the Muslim Brotherhood and its implications for Israel:

I fear, hopefully without foundation, that many of the Islamified may have been exposed to the quite horrendous antisemitism that apparently blights so much Islamic teaching about Jews – there’s the familiar description of Jews as “apes and pigs” and there’s an equally familiar story about a Jewish woman (often described as a prostitute, it seems) who attempted to kill Mohammed with a poisoned lamb shank: there are disturbing videos on You Tube that show Muslim children of the tenderest years repeating these descriptions and indictments of Jews, learned by rote.

So, in preparation for what we may expect if the Egyptian Revolution turns Islamic, let’s remind ourselves of just what some of Egypt’s imams have been teaching about “The Jews “in recent years . Here’s a small selection, but there are plenty more:

Here's Yusuf al-Qaradawi, telling why he's against the Peace Process (the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, who thinks the Muslim Brotherhood is "moderate," should be compelled to watch this one):

“The Jews are the People of Treachery, Betrayal, and Vileness ... that is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard”:

“The worst enemies of the Muslims – after Satan – are the Jews”:

“The Jews are the offspring of snakes and vipers ... It’s our duty to hate the Jews as part of our faith”:

“Jews, the Day of Vengeance is Nearing...”:

“They spread wars, homosexuality, and corruption...”:

“I will devour them with my teeth”:

“It got to the point that the rulers themselves had no solution but to annihilate them....”:

“The Koran tells us to hate them... There are black-eyed virgins waiting for you.... The peak of my happiness ... is to raise a martyr...”:
 

Let’s hope that most Children of the Revolution are indeed true progressives and democrats, and have not imbued that hateful, demented stuff spewed by clerics of this kind, which would take their society back to the Dark Ages and spell great danger for the region.