Efraim Karsh and Rory Miller, writing in Commentary, examine the claim by by many Muslim Brotherhood groups that Muslims in Europe have become the “New Jews”, subject to massive discrimination and in danger of genocide. While perhaps a bit sanguine about anti-islamic actions such as arson directed against European mosques, the authors correctly note how Muslim Brotherhood groups have used the concept of “Islamaphobia” for political gain:
For their part, Muslim groups have worked assiduously to manipulate European feelings of guilt over the Nazi past. Radical organizations like the French Union d’Organizations Islamiques (UOIF), the MuslimBrothers in Germany, and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) in the UK have been increasingly able to use the Trojan horse of “Islamophobia” to establish themselves as the dominant voice of the Muslim communities in their countries. MPAC, for example, emerged as a serious player in British politics by launching a campaign targeting “anti-Muslim MP’s” in the May 2005 parliamentary elections. The rising influence of such groups should be as great a cause forconcern as the wave of anti-Semitic violence that has emerged in Europe in recent years.
An earlier post noted how the U.S. Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR) has manipulated statistics in order to assert that Muslims in the U.S are subject to a rising wave of “hate crimes. In fact, as Karsh and Miller observe:
..the majority of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe since 9/11 have been perpetrated by members of the very same Muslim communities now claiming tobe Europe’s “new” Jews. In almost every case of harassment and violence documented by CIDI in Amsterdam, the victims reported that their persecutors were of North African Muslim origin. It is Muslim gangs who have been responsible for many of the anti-Jewish hate crimes across the rest of the continent as well.
Muslim Brotherhood groups, in both Europe and the United States, have exhibited a wide range of anti-Semitic activities including conspiracy theorizing, promotion of anti-Semitic speakers, support of anti-Semitic organizations, and distribution of anti-Semitic materials, while at the same time participating in “interfaith” activities with Jews and Jewish organizations.
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