The persistence of antisemitism in France is very frightening. Particularly, disturbing is that antisemitism continues to express its in the form of sheer physical violence. Muslims throughout the world have asked that non-Muslims accept and be comfortable with Muslim women wearing the hajib in public. And that has indeed happened here in France. A Muslim wearing the hajib is much more akin these days to a woman simply wearing a headscarf. The hajib is adorned with flair throughout France—and not just in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods. The sense of alarm on the part of non-Muslims, if ever there was one, has all but disappeared. This holds for both Christians and Jews alike.
At this point in time, Jews in France simply hope that the day will come when they will be treated in a like manner when it comes to wearing a yarmulke. That is, the hope is that a Jew walking down the street wearing a yarmulke will attract no more attention than a Muslim woman walking down the street wearing the hajib. Not yet, however. Saturday night (21 June 2008), a Jew named Rudy Haddad who was wearing a yarmulke was attacked by a group of people of North African descent. And this sort of aggression against Jews has happened in the past. The case of Halimi in 2006 is the most poignant of these. By the way, does anyone think that these aggressors of North African descent were Christians or Hinduists?
Nowadays, it is not uncommon for a person to make an assessment as to how well a Muslim woman’s hajib fits the rest of her attire. Jews in France hope that one day, this is the only concern that a Jew wearing a yarmulke will have. What happened to Rudy Haddad is painful reminder that in France this hope is yet to be realized.
Of course, I understand that this sort of thing does not happen every day. However, I do not recall ever hearing of a story where a Muslim woman wearing a hajib was attacked by Jewish women or, for that matter, Jewish men.
I have spoken to a reality on the part of Muslims and a hope on the part of Jews. And therein lies the problem of what I shall refer to as the public square of social justice in France.
While the Jew and the Muslim are both equal before French law, there is another kind of equality with respect to which Muslims and Jews of France are not yet equal. This is what I call the equality of the public square of social justice.
I have an explanation for this disparity that may trouble some. Yet, it needs to be said.
The synagogue is a place of worship. It is not an environment where Jews fuel hostilities towards Muslims. Both in France and in the United States, I can think of very few times when a rabbi has had much to say about Muslims. The synagogue is simply not a place for recruiting Jews to be subjected to anti-Muslim indoctrination.
This could be purely a temporal matter. For the Torah does not have anything at all to say about either Muslims or, for that matter, Christians. In the Holy Quran, however, Jews are explicitly mentioned by their very name at least 21 times.
This brings me to what is most important. What we in fact know is that mosques have served as a very deep, deep source of antisemitism and that mosques have been used a recruiting ground for Muslims who will play a militant role in the demise of the Jewish people.
Therein lies the source of the disparity between French Muslims and French in the public square of social justice. There is a very powerful social institution, namely mosques, which continue to nurture antisemitism. Synagogues do not nurture anti-Islam sentiment.
Various social organizations have called upon the French government to concern itself with the recent hostilities against Jews in France. And to his credit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has denounced the recent act of aggression. If I am right, however, the problem lies not with the French government, but with a very different institution, namely mosques.
Once upon a time, it was “fashionable” for Catholics to be antisemitic. After all, everyone knew that “Those bastards, the Jews, had killed Christ”. Nothing has made more of a difference in how Catholics think about Jews than the very fact that the Catholic Church enormously distanced itself from this point of view. Indeed, Pope John Paul II referred to Jews as the “Elder brothers of Christians”. Jews may still be unhappy with various aspects of the Catholic doctrine. That said, what is absolutely undeniable is that the Catholic Church has changed mightily—and for the better—in its attitude towards Jews.
What we need is a like change on the part of Islam. Let me be clear here. I do not think for a moment that all Muslims are antisemitic. But, of course, in order to have racial hostility on the part of a group, it does not need to be the case that each and every member of the group embraces that hostility.
It is no longer a part of the public Catholic identity that blaming Jews for killing Christ is unacceptable. What we need is for it to become a part of the public Muslim identity that hostility towards Jews is unacceptable. Undoubtedly, there are some Muslims who think just that. Unfortunately, there are sufficiently many who think just the opposite. Accordingly, being hostile towards Jews remains a part of the public self-identity of Muslims taken as a group. Or so it is in France and much of Europe.
This, in the end, tells us what we all know, namely that justice at its best comes from the heart. And religious institutions have played a most fundamental role in cultivating the sentiments of the heart, and so the sentiments that prevail in the public square of social justice. By comparison to the United States, the number of Muslims in France is considerable, namely a fifth of the population. Accordingly, until Islam accepts the moral responsibility changing the hearts of its adherent, there will never be true equality in the public square of social justice between the Muslim and the Jew—at least not in France and perhaps Europe more generally.
It is, of course, important to call upon the government of France to concern itself with aggression of any kind. However, there are no laws more potent and efficacious than those written upon the hearts of human beings. And that, in the end, is France’s problem. There has been a steadfast—nay, defiant—refusal on the part of so many leaders of Islam to change the hearts of its adherents to accept Jews as moral equals.
In the attempt to exterminate the Jews, Hitler claimed to have been doing the work of the Lord. Now, Imams and other Islamist claim to be doing the work of Allah in their endeavor to annihilate Jews. There is no difference in what both claim to be dong. Accordingly, it is not possible for Christian claims of this sort to be evil and Muslim claims of this sort to be morally acceptable. We have refused to be unequivocally clear about this; and many in the Muslim world have masterfully exploited this ambivalence.
In their relentless open-mindedness towards the Muslim religious tradition at its most hostile level, liberals have been none others than harbingers of evil.
