A Muslim filmmaker calls out official antisemitism in mosques

The Huffington Post Arabic has an interesting article by a Jordanian film producer named Tareq Baddar.

He writes that he went to pray in a mosque, where the preacher cursed the Jews at the end of the sermon, and talked about all their bad traits, their plots, their being behind all wars, all sins, and indeed all catastrophes in the world. This institutional antisemitism is widespread practice in many mosques, especially in the Middle East, and is woefully under-reported. The targets of these curse are Jews, not "Zionists."

Tareq writes that the preacher forgot that Islam permits Muslim men to marry Jewish women. Therefore, Jewish women can be mothers of Muslims. So how is a Muslim going to a sermon in a mosque supposed to feel when his mother or favorite aunt is cursed?

Also, Baddar writes, the preacher forgot that Qadhafi, Saddam, and other bloodthirsty Arab leaders are all Muslim. Leaders of the Islamic State are Muslims, but they aren't cursed in these mosques, only Jews.

He adds that the sheikh forgot about all the Muslim and Arab promiscuous singers and artists, Arab porn sites on the Internet, even though it is a common theme among preachers that Jews spread promiscuity in order to corrupt Muslim youth.

Baddar even calls these kinds of preachers “plagues."

There were a couple of negative comments to the article, including one that says that we must remember that Jews control the banks, media, Hollywood and casinos and another that couldn't believe that any Muslim was criticizing criticism of Jews.

One other point: when a rabbi is heard, or misinterpreted, as saying anti-Muslim or anti-Arab comments, there is a mad rush by reporters to jump on the story to use this as proof of religious Jewish bigotry. Yet even with this article where a Muslim calls out the antisemitism that is heard in hundreds of mosques every single week, it is published only in Arabic for an Arab audience. In the end, the news consumers only hear about the (very often distorted) words of Jewish religious leaders and nothing about the far worse incitement that is endemic in mosques.  Even this article, by a Western-educated Muslim, was written only in Arabic and will almost certainly not reach outside that universe (I would be very surprised in HuffPo translates it into English.)

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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