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The Archbishop and antisemitism

Tuesday, 5th February 2008

Credit where it's due. Rowan Williams, who previously I had thought at best a waste of space and, sometimes, a lot worse in his attitiude towards Israel, has made a remarkably strong attack on antisemites and the elision of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Last week he delivered the Wiener Lecture in the House of Lords. The topic was blasphemy, but his focus was also on how societies should be judged by how they treat 'the other', and especially their Jews:

Yet again, we should remember some of the history of anti-Semitism. Some of the passionate polemic against Jewish people in the New Testament reflects a situation in which Christian groups were still small and vulnerable over against an entrenched religio-political establishment; but the language is repeated and intensified when the Church is no longer a minority and when Jews have become more vulnerable than ever.
It is part of the pathology of anti-Semitism (as of other irrational group prejudices) that it needs to work with a myth of an apparent minority which is in fact secretly powerful and omnipresent. It is the pattern we see in the workings of the Spanish Inquisition, searching everywhere for Jewish converts who might be backsliding; it is the myth of the Elders of Zion and comparable fantasies of plots for world domination; it is the indiscriminate attribution (not only by certain Muslims) of all the evils of the Western world to an indeterminate 'Zionism'.
A rhetoric shaped by particular circumstances has become so embedded that the actualities of power relations in the real world cannot touch it. There are many instances where the habit of imagining oneself in terms of victimhood has become so entrenched that even one’s own power, felt and exercised, does not alter the mythology.

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Lee Jakeman

February 5th, 2008 10:12am

I'm used to sudden fits of insanity, but fits of sanity, like this, are rare.

Tiberius

February 5th, 2008 4:45pm

Despite his office, Rowan suffers from human frailty like the rest of us and may be feeling a little isolated by the good sense which comes from Michael Nazir-Ali and John Sentamu.

C Powell

February 5th, 2008 5:12pm

It's about time Rowan stood up for the Bishop of Rochester and forcefully asked Islamic leaders in Britain to condemn - unequivocally - the threats which Nazir-Ali is facing and to state very clearly that (1) Muslims are not exempt from criticism; (2) they have a duty to integrate into this country; and (3) they must do far more to combat the anti-Semitism and anti-Christian beliefs and actions which are all too prevalent in their community. And that if they do not we are entitled to come to our own conclusions as to whether Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance its adherents like to claim.

Ian C

February 6th, 2008 11:22am

I recommend a recent article on the Middle East Forum website for an insight into what we are up against. The author, a serving US Naval officer, recounts the history of America's relations with Islamic countries since the early days of the USA. "Jefferson related a conversation he had in Paris with Ambassador Abdrahaman of Tripoli who told him that all Christians are sinners in the context of the Qur'an and that it was a Muslim's "right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners." Islam gave great incentive to fighting infidels, Abdrahaman explained, because the Qur'an promised that making war against infidels ensured a Muslim paradise after death." If this is what is taught to Muslims in their Mosques and schools, we in the western societies who have taken many Muslims into our own society have a duty to stop it. If we were all informed that this might be happening then we should stand a better chance of withstanding it, not to metion adapting our immigration policies and rules to take account of this fundamentalism at the heart of Islam and those we allow to join us in freedom and democracy.