Berlin's Center for Research on Anti-Semitism Forgoes Study of Jew-Hatred to Study "Islamophobia"

"At a time when Jew haters in the Islamic world have become more assertive than ever, Berlin's Center for Research on Anti-Semitism is concentrating on a different group: the "new enemies of Islam." Who exactly belongs to this category is not clear from the center's latest publication, the "Yearbook for Research on Anti-Semitism." But the potential danger is supposedly known: "The fury of the new enemies of Islam is similar to the older rage of anti-Semites against the Jews," writes Prof. Wolfgang Benz, the institute's director...

It is certainly necessary to oppose the demonization of Muslims and discrimination against them, which often have racist motivations. The Berlin center, whose research covers prejudices in general, is right to address this issue. The problem lies in the way it is being done. The Berlin center adopts the neologism "Islamophobia" without any reservation. This term is misleading because it mixes two different phenomena -- unjust hatred against Muslims and necessary criticism of political Islam -- and condemns both equally....

In taking up the fashionable vocabulary of Islamophobia and equating hostility to Muslims with hostility to Jews, the center also risks undermining the most important current task in dealing with anti-Semitism: studying and fighting hostility to Jews in the Islamic world, where anti-Semitism has reached an unprecedented level. For example, one of the authors in the latest Yearbook, Jochen Mueller, proposes a "revision of politics and history teaching" in German schools. Because the Holocaust has no "central meaning for migrants from the Arabic-Muslim world," one should consider whether "the colonial period and its consequences" would not be a better subject for "appropriate 'Holocaust education'" among Muslim students in Germany. This is a remarkable idea given the degree of Holocaust denial among many young Muslims.

Another article in the Yearbook, "Hostility to Islam on the World Wide Web," goes even further. Instead of criticizing anti-Semitism among Muslims, the author criticizes those who accuse Muslims of anti-Semitism.... Here, attempts to fight "hostility to Islam" threaten to turn into tolerance of anti-Semitic attitudes.

While the Berlin center concentrates on world-wide "anti-Islamic resentments," its Yearbook says not a word about the anti-Semitism of the Iranian mullahs. Thus, it hardly does justice to the demands for contemporary research on anti-Semitism. Never before has the elimination of the Jewish state been so loudly propagated. Never before has an influential power made Holocaust denial the center of its foreign policy, as Iran has today. Never before has a U.N. forum been misused for an anti-Semitic speech, as it was on Sept. 23 by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier criticized the speech as "blatantly anti-Semitic."