The sickness bequeathed by the west to the Muslim world

The Iranian president's support for Holocaust denial is a measure of how far the infection of Jew-hatred has spread

Jonathan Freedland Wednesday December 14, 2005

Guardian

There were few memorable moments in the election campaign of 2005, but there's one I won't forget. It came when I was interviewing a group of Muslim voters in Edinburgh, asking how the Iraq war had unsettled their political allegiances. One older man began telling me that he did not blame Tony Blair or even George Bush for the way things had turned out, because they were mere dupes of a more powerful force. The calamity of 9/11 was not all it seemed: the authors of that event were not the 19 hijackers, but more shadowy players, unknown even to Bush. Later, as he gave me a lift to the station, I asked who these secret powers might be. The answer was "rich Jewish people".

I told him that just as there were plenty of lies told about Muslims, so there were lies told about Jews - and that neither of us should accept either. I put the comments to one side, dismissing them as the ramblings of one man.

Again and again in recent years, I've made the same move. I've read the reports of sermons in the Arab world, denouncing Judaism and Jews, and tried to see a wider context.

So I saw the vox pop on Saudi TV asking people on the street whether they would ever shake hands with a Jew - unanimous answer: no - and guessed that perhaps this was an exceptional item, hardly indicative. I read the transcript of an interview with Basmallah, a three-year-old girl, again aired on Saudi TV, who was introduced as a "Muslim girl, a true Muslim". Here's the exchange:

Host: Basmallah, do you know the Jews?

Basmallah: Yes.

Host: Do you like them?

Basmallah: No.

Host: Why don't you like them?

Basmallah: Because they are apes and pigs.

I shuddered to read such a thing. But it was translated and distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, and, like others, I wondered about the group's motives: Memri was founded by a veteran of Israeli military intelligence. (On the other hand, few challenge the accuracy of Memri's translations: unpalatable though they are, the texts Memri finds are all too real.)

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