Matthias Kunztel talks Downeast in our community yesterday

Yesterday a small group of about 65 people came to listen to Matthias Kuntzel. Although his most recent thesis is about the Sunni, salafist muslim brotherhood absorbing nazi type antisemitic iconography to further jihad, he was in town talking specifically about Iranian Holocaust Denial. He spoke for about an hour and a half, and took questions until there were none, another 2 hours.

Dr. Kuntzel was very forthright about Iranian denial being one symptom of the larger war (for them ..his subject of the day limited his talk, but not questions to the Shia nation), but the signifying one. Denial was represented as one tool of the modern jihadi dialectic which is that Islam is the answer, and as HAMAS says, jihad is the only way.

Kunztel sees Iran as a state which will not yield to any negotiation, and despairs of anything but military force being the answer, though he didn't say this until in a small group several hours later. In a fact filled talk one is left with the feeling that Achmadinejad et al absolutely do NOT see nuclear weapons as a deterrent, but as part of the means to eradicate the jews. He quotes a poll which states that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, 26% of the population of Israel would leave.

Andrew Bostom has criticized Kunztel as being shortsighted in his book, ignoring the long history of antisemitic actions by Caliphs and others, so my questions for him were about that. Dr. Kuntzel was very careful in his talk to describe for the audience the Iranian and other responses to the apes and pigs surahs of the Quran, as a means of introducing to the audience the way 'believing' Muslims think, and reason. I was glad of this, for the idea that antisemitism among muslims has its NASCENCE in the Quran (that which cannot be changed) is a particularly egregious idea among the tribe, and one which when mentioned in polite company by the average citizen immediately brands one as a hopeless troglodytic (uh-oh) NEOCON. I found his mentioning this a hopeful moment, since among the listeners were new members of our new chapter of Brit TzedekV'Shalom. None of them seem to have questions, however others of a similar mind, perhaps, did.

Kunztel's response to my asking him about, given his book, did he really eliminate the Quran as the source of antisemitism, was that the Nazis and their methods intensified what various caliphs had arbitrarily applied from the very beginning. Frankly this is my view. It's unfortunately Quranic in origin, the consciences of various muslims are appalled by this racism in what is purported to be a perfect document of a perfect god, some of whom were caliphs, but then others come along and boom, najas, pogroms, expulsions, murders and other fun.

Kuntzel feels that the methods of the Nazis through the muslim brotherhood and Haj Amin al Hussieni was a tool, and that modern Islamism has this at it's core. Modern Islamism, he feels could not have arrived without this. He differentiates between Islam and Islamism. I hope he is right on that. I'm a skeptic, but my mind is open.

Amazingly, we had questioners who tried to 'comment' that Christian fundamentalists were as dangerous here as the Mullahs were there. Kunztel, in a much more polite manner than my mind was racing at, was not having any of it. ANY OF IT.

We had one attendee, who was a pastor (collar on) who commented in that vein displaying a high level of disgust about other american christians, and about our 'so called elections'. Amazing, no? One other questioner commenting that Islam was not a monolith, expressed hope about Sunni denial not being the same (sorry on that one dude), and also that no one could have envisioned the Berlin Wall wall coming down, and the USSR disintegrating, that perhaps this regime would also go away.

Hope? In this? This is a religious war. Kunztel made this abundantly clear. He answers these questioners cleanly.... we could have said in 1938 that Hitler's type of regime wouldn't last too long, but it lasted long enough to make sure 45 million died.

Kuntzel had some very negative remarks after the talk in a smaller group about the Spanish electorate.

A very interesting afternoon, and part of series of lectures downeast out here