Stop equating anti-Semitism with Islamophobia

In the wake of Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Germany was almost immediately engulfed by a surge of anti-Semitism. The public response of Germany’s cultural and political elites was swift. They started writing critical articles and organising programmes to counter the rising tide of ‘hate’. Yet what was striking about this intervention was that it continued a longstanding pattern in which no discussion of the threat of anti-Semitism can pass without mention of the supposedly equal threat of ‘Islamophobia’.

Just two months after last year’s 7 October pogrom, the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper warned of ‘more anti-Semitism, more Islamophobia’. In February this year, Raed Saleh, the parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), called for the ‘fight against Islamophobia’ to be enshrined in the state constitution alongside the fight against anti-Semitism. This summer, the Free University of Berlin announced its condemnation of ‘anti-Semitism, racism, hostility towards Muslims and other forms of discrimination’.

This is odd, given that it is specifically anti-Semitism that has surged since the 7 October pogrom. It began almost immediately afterwards when the now-banned group, Samidoun, celebrated Hamas’s atrocities. Since then, there have been arson attacks on the Jewish Community Centre in Berlin and on synagogues in Erfurt and Oldenburg. Security forces have also thwarted a knife attack on a synagogue in Heidelberg, a terrorist attack by Hamas supporters in Berlin and an attempted assault on Jews in Munich, allegedly orchestrated by Iran.

Jewish and Israeli-owned restaurants have become targets of vandalism or boycott campaigns. In Berlin, the renowned Israeli restaurant, Bleibergs, was forced to close after 20 years. Also in Berlin, DoDa’s Deli had to relocate and Kanaan, an Israeli-Palestinian restaurant, was ransacked. Schalom in Chemnitz now operates under constant police protection.

Jewish kindergarten and primary schools are similarly besieged. At times, many Jewish students have stayed away from classes for fear of being assaulted. Synagogues have tightened security, advising visitors to arrive and leave in groups, to be vigilant, and not to display any visible signs of their Jewish identity.

Every week, demonstrations and rallies take place where participants deny Hamas’s atrocities and celebrate the murderers. They frequently chant, ‘Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews! Muhammad’s army will return!’ – a reference to the slaughter of a Jewish tribe by the founder of Islam. Among the protesters, one finds not only Islamists and Arab nationalists, but also leftists and LGBT activists.

At universities, activists have frequently painted their palms red, evoking the infamous photo of the lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000. Anti-Israel groups have occupied seminar rooms and intimidated Jewish students. Pro-Hamas graffiti has been sprayed on the walls of Humboldt University in Berlin and professors have been threatened.

Public space is now rarely free of anti-Israel sentiment. Customers at a Berlin Starbucks have been harassed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, while businesses on the Sonnenallee in Neukölln were coerced into participating in a pro-Palestinian ‘general strike’, boycotting Pepsi, Coca-Cola and other products deemed ‘Zionist’. In German city centres, anti-Israel graffiti, stickers and posters abound. More disturbing still, the marking of Jews’ homes with Stars of David by ‘Palestinian solidarity’ activists has revived memories of Nazis’ tactics during the 1930s.

Jews and Israelis have not been able to move freely in German cities without fear for several years now. But since 7 October, their situation has become perilous. Reports from the Research and Information Centre on Anti-Semitism (RIAS), as well as personal accounts, indicate a widespread retreat of Jews from public life – a retreat that is largely taking place in silence. People avoid using public transport, refrain from wearing Jewish or Israeli symbols, try not to speak Hebrew and are careful not to reveal their Jewish identity or their support for Israel at work or university.

To understand German Jews’ despair and disappointment, one need only attend one of the rare pro-Israel rallies. These are truly pacifist gatherings. The tone is pleading, not aggressive. ‘Why are we so few? Why does the fate of the Jews not concern our politicians, artists, journalists, activists? Do we still have a future in Germany?’ These are the kinds of things you’ll hear. Yet the German state and large swathes of our cultural and media classes remain silent.

These are truly dark days for Europe’s Jews. In the words of Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association, Jews find themselves in ‘the worst [position] since the Second World War’. Dutch author Leon De Winter believes that European Jewry could disappear by 2050.

It is a very different story for Muslims, however. Hundreds of thousands continue to migrate to western Europe from Islamic countries. While Jews retreat from public life and conceal their identities, many Muslims are increasingly asserting their Islamic identity in public, by attending marches, waving flags and wearing face veils. Islamic institutions, such as mosques and Halal shops, have proliferated.

Muslims are not facing the intimidation that Jews now face daily on the streets. There are no demonstrations calling for the destruction of any Islamic nation or protests demonising Palestinians as ‘child murderers’ or ‘genociders’. Nor are there influential initiatives calling for a boycott of Arab institutions or individuals. German city centres are free of anti-Islamic graffiti and posters.

Compare the tolerance towards Islamic identity with the intolerance meted out to Jews and Israelis. In February, artists demanded the exclusion of Israelis from the Venice Biennale. In May, Israeli singer and Eurovision contestant Eden Golan could only leave her hotel room in liberal Sweden with bodyguards. In July, Belgian authorities refused to host a football match involving an Israeli team.

Muslim athletes, filmmakers and artists are spared such indignities and hostilities. Indeed, Muslims move freely throughout Europe, reshaping public spaces such as squares, parks, shopping streets or schools. There is one mosque in Berlin that requires round-the-clock police protection… not from right-wing, anti-Muslim bigots, but from radical Muslims opposed to the mosque’s liberal female imam.

Given that anti-Muslim sentiment is clearly not as significant a problem as anti-Semitism, why is there so much elite focus on Islamophobia?

To answer this, it’s important to understand that campaigns against Islamophobia aren’t really concerned with promoting tolerance towards Muslims. Though the term was first used over a century ago by French colonial officials in Algeria, it acquired its contemporary meaning when Islamic fundamentalists started wielding it against writers critical of Islam, like Salman Rushdie, Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Its main function is to shield Islam, often violently so, from any form of criticism. Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader and the man behind the bounty on Rushdie’s head, even labelled unveiled women as ‘Islamophobic’. As French writer Pascal Bruckner explains, the accusation of Islamophobia represents an attempt to stigmatise or even criminalise any critique of Islam as racist. This, in turn, stifles any discussion of Islamic practices and preaching, even at their most radical. The result is the creation of a legal double standard, where some ideologies and political practices can be criticised, while others enjoy privileged immunity.

Those wielding the charge of Islamophobia as a weapon sometimes even elevate protecting Muslims from offence above human life. In 2015, the Islamic Human Rights Commission gave its ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ award to the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo – just weeks after Islamist terrorists had massacred them for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Worryingly, this idea of Islamophobia is increasingly being institutionalised. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which represents 56 countries, has been pushing for Islamophobia to be criminalised worldwide for several decades. Within the EU, the European Network of Equality Bodies is also pushing for states to adopt the ‘counter-Islamophobia toolkit’, which, among other things, recommends the creation of ‘Muslim spaces’.

The more Islamophobia is institutionalised, the more difficult it will be to discuss any aspect of Islam or Islamism. In Germany over recent weeks, there have been fierce debates over the meanings of ‘caliphate’ and ‘genocide’, as well as the significance of the Islamist ‘Tauhid gesture’. These debates would be near-enough impossible if one side could silence the other by having them punished for Islamophobia.

Islamophobia is simply not comparable with anti-Semitism. Islamophobia amounts to a new form of blasphemy, in which any criticism of Islam is prohibited. Anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews, an ideology that unites German neo-Nazis with radical Islamists and even climate activists. It is a universal language of loathing, a kind of Esperanto of resentment that flourishes in times of crisis. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, the anti-Semite is a ‘destroyer by vocation, a pure-hearted sadist’ who desires ‘the death of the Jews’.

By equating anti-Semitism with Islamophobia, our elites are conflating the hatred of Jews with criticism and mockery of Islam. This conflation undermines the struggle against anti-Semitism. And it empowers Islamic reactionaries.

Mark Feldon works as a journalist, author and translator in Berlin. His book, Interregnum: Was kommt nach der liberalen Demokratie, is available now.