In the name of Allah, the Merciful to all, the Compassionate

A story broke out a few days ago about Bus ads linking "Islamic Jew-hatred" with Adolf Hitler, rolling through the streets of Washington, DC.

The text on the ad reads: "Islamic Jew-hatred: It's in the Quran. Two-thirds of all US aid goes to Islamic countries. Stop racism. End all aid to Islamic countries,"

 

I am not going to argue about financial aid to Islamic countries. Everybody knows that in Islamic countries, this aid goes only to despots and dictators, who will be toppled by their own people if left alone. I am sure the ones behind the ads are aware that this claim is just propaganda to make gullible people feel hatred toward Muslims.

But my argument is the fact that some groups are ready to invest in propaganda like this indicates that they believe it will influence people’s minds, and that there is an audience who will take this as truth.

Why would such a cheap and trivial propaganda find any audience? Why can you find such gullible people in the 21 century, the era of internet and information explosion?

To show you that this is a false claim, I will just bring one example of evidence:

A few months ago, in “The Telegraph” I read that Spain's government has approved a draft bill that will allow descendants of those Sephardic Jews who were expelled in 1492 to seek dual citizenship.

The story in “The Telegraph” goes like this:

More than five centuries after Spain's Jews were forced to flee, convert to Catholicism or face execution without trial, their descendants are being invited to return and take up dual citizenship…

An estimated 300,000 Jews resided in Spain before the infamous Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century, when the "Reyes Catolicos" reconquered Spain from its Arab rulers and ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country.

So Spain’s government clearly confesses that when Spain was ruled by Muslim rulers, 300,000 jews were living there, and when Catholics conquered that land, jews had to convert or immigrate from the land. In fact in Europe, jews could only survive in the lands ruled by Muslims.

Do you know where these jews migrated after that?

They migrated to Africa and the Middle East, where Muslims were welcoming as always.

If the myth of Islamic Jew-hatred was right and it was in the Quran, why did jews have to escape from Christians and immigrate to Islamic countries?

One more thing I forgot to mention about Spain is that if a Muslim wants to immigrate to Spain, he or she has to convert to Christianity. It means the mindset of the current rulers of the land is the same as their ancestors.

History usually has repetitive patterns, and if something happened before, it may happen again. If I were a jew, I would never return to Catholic Spain. For jews, living in an Islamic country is still their best bet.

But what does the Quran really say about jews?

There are several verses in Quran about jews and Christians. There are criticisms and advices, but Quran is always fair about them.

For example the verse 3:75 says:

Among the people of the Book there are some who, if you entrust them with a heap of gold, will return it to you. But there are others of them who, if you entrust them with a single dinar, will not return it to you.

And when in the verse 3:112 says that the cause of all the misery inflicted on them is they get used to disobeying the Almighty God and killing his messengers; in the next verse, it says:

Yet they are not all alike. Of the People of the Book there are some who stand by their covenant; they recite the word of God during the night and prostrate themselves before Him.

The verse 3:199 says:

Some of the People of the Book believe in God, and in what has been revealed to you and what was revealed to them. They humble themselves before God and do not sell God's revelations for a trifling price. These shall be rewarded by their Lord…

Did you feel any Jew-hatred from these verses? Not at all!

Even when in the verse 5:51, Quran recommends Muslims not to take the Jews and Christians as strategic allies, in situations where Muslims need to count on their trustworthiness; this advice is taken by almost everybody else. Everybody tries to avoid a dangerous situation in which you have nothing more than a hope that your allies keep their words. For western countries, dictators in Muslim countries are more of a proxy, than a strategic ally.