Advance praise for A Modern Qur’anic Kampf Against the Jews
“In A Modern Qur’anic Kampf Against the Jews, Andrew Bostom exposes the full breadth of Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi’s record—the late Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, whose writings dripped with hostility toward Jews. Bostom has done more than most to drag this material into the light. Readers should be grateful for the sheer rigor of his work. Read this book with care; it documents a tradition of antisemitism too long ignored.”
—Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now
“In a time when ‘progressive’ antisemitism, conservative antisemitism, and Islamic antisemitism are all rising dramatically, and there are heated debates about the connection between ideology and terrorism, A Modern Qur’anic Kampf Against The Jews becomes especially relevant. Late Al-Azhar University Grand Imam Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi was considered by many as a ‘moderate’ leader of Islam. This book demonstrates how easily he turned the Qur’an into a powerful weapon against Jews and against Israel. And it should concern everyone — Jews, Christians, and even more, Muslims.”
–Natan Sharansky, author of Fear No Evil
“In A Modern Qu’ranic Kampf Against the Jews, Dr. Andrew Bostom, with translator Dr. Atef Ghobrial, present a massive work by late Al-Azhar Grand Imam Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, from the center of Islamic learning, demonstrating that far from offering a practically liberal “alternative” to the harshest aspects of Islam — the apologist’s line — Tantawi reiterated the Qu’ranically correct hatred of Jews, currently poisoning world affairs.”
—Diana West, author of American Betrayal
“Dr. Andrew Bostom has rendered us an invaluable service by arranging for the translation of Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi’s Ph.D. thesis and introducing it in a manner which helps us to judge directly, unmediated by sycophants, cowards, and sundry apologists, the vile antisemitism of this influential figure lodged firmly in the inner citadel of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. There can no longer be any excuse for not seeing what mainstream Islamic scholarship really thinks.”
—Ibn Warraq, author of The Islam in Islamic Terrorism
“Like the men of Issachar, Andrew Bostom understands the times. Bostom provides essential context and unpacks Tantawi’s message, demonstrating not only that his views fall firmly inside the Islamic mainstream, but also that they march in lock step with the contemporary global upsurge of Islamic Jew-hatred. A brilliant, unique and essential resource for understanding the darkening times in which we live.”
—Dr. Mark Durie, author of The Third Choice—Islam, Dhimmitude, and Freedom
“With the publication in English of late Al-Azhar University Grand Imam, and leading Qur’anic scholar Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi’s The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and Traditions, Bostom’s analysis and Ghobrial’s translation have made a significant contribution to understanding the depths of Jew-hatred, and resulting hatred of Israel in this influential interpretation of the Qur’an and Traditions.”
—Professor Jeffrey Herf, author of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World
“A must-read for those who want to comprehend the theological roots of the Islamic war against Israel and Jewish people introduced by one of the world’s most knowledgeable experts on jihadism and Islamic antisemitism. Understanding Islamic antisemitism is key to understanding all other aspects of jihad. Dr. Ghobrial’s translation and Dr. Bostom’s analysis are invaluable services to humanity.”
–Uzay Bulut, veteran Turkey-born journalist covering Islam worldwide
“This translation and Dr. Bostom’s analysis present an influential text by a significant Muslim scholar at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, long the most important center of Sunni Islamic learning. Readers will find it unsettling, but undeniably relevant to the ongoing debate about Islam and antisemitism in the 21st century.”
—Clifford May, Founder and President of The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
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Brief Overview of A Modern Qur’anic Kampf Against The Jews:
Editor and analyst Dr. Andrew Bostom, and translator Dr. Atef Ghobrial have provided the first complete, thoroughly annotated translation and analysis of the late (d. 2010) Al-Azhar University Grand Imam and major modern Qur’anic commentator Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi’s Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna (“The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and Traditions”).
This seminal, if ugly work, first published in 1968, and re-published and re-introduced proudly in 1997 by Tantawi himself, a year after he became Grand Imam—near Papal equivalent of Sunni Islam’s de facto “Vatican”—is the apotheosis of authoritative, modern Islamic antisemitism rooted in the Qur’an and Traditions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad and the earliest Muslim community.
Academic and journalistic apologists have argued Tantawi’s views, by default, including his bilious Jew-hatred (and traditionalist views of aggressive jihad), somehow presented, an “alternative” to, “what…is seen as a rigid and conformist version of Islam.” This pattern of Western apologetics, or frank denial, versus celebratory Muslim triumphalism regarding the unabashed Jew-hating rancor of Tantawi’s thesis—coincident with his ancient-cum-modern embrace of jihad war doctrine—persists with great continued relevance today.
As we demonstrate, the virulent antisemitism and jihadism permeating “Banū Isrāʼīl fī al-Qurʼān wa-al-sunnah,” has deep, living mainstream Muslim historical and doctrinal roots. Moreover, we maintain this venomous doctrine taught throughout the Muslim world with the authoritative imprimatur of major Islamic teaching institutions like Al-Azhar University contributes mightily to the present-day disproportionate pandemic of extreme Muslim antisemitism documented repeatedly by independent surveys conducted for more than two decades, ongoing.
Tantawi’s written exegetic support for aggressive jihad, including jihad terror “martyrdom,” was complemented by public pronouncements sanctioning homicide bombing, particularly against Israel’s Jews, shortly after becoming Grand Imam, March 17, 1996, and reiterated consistently during his tenure. Sanctioning homicide bombings against Israeli Jewish non-combatants was certainly the worst example of Tantawi’s visceral, religiously inspired Islamic Jew-hatred while Grand Imam, but another less directly lethal manifestation of his hateful incitement was his public usage of the Qur’anic epithet for Jews as “apes and pigs,” a direct reference to Qur’an 5:60.
Just over 14-months after becoming Al Azhar Grand Imam, Tantawi, on May 29, 1997, briefly introduced the re-publication of his 1968 Ph.D. thesis. Noting the dissertation “comprises eight chapters and a conclusion,” Tantawi opened that introduction with these words, restating the central purpose of the thesis:
“My main goal for choosing the topic of my dissertation ‘The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and the Sunna’ is to reveal- to Muslim youth in particular and to the rational, reasonable and fair-minded people in general the state of the Children of Israel (i.e., Jews), their history, ethics, lies, depravity and immorality, relying on what has been mentioned about them in the Holy Qur’an, the Sunna and the correct and unequivocal historical facts.”
A particular focus of the analysis in A Modern Qur’anic Kampf Against The Jews is how the canonical Islamic antisemitic motifs Tantawi elaborates at great length from the Qur’an, seminal Qur’anic commentators, and traditions of Muhammad are very briefly interwoven with—indeed form the basis for an authoritative Islamic understanding of—modern, non-Islamic antisemitic sources, such as the Czarist Russian forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Benjamin Franklin’s factitious “prophecy” about the alleged “danger” posed to the nascent United States by its infinitesimal Jewish minority, or the Jew-hating fulminations of Karl Marx, and Adolph Hitler. The analysis concludes with a clarion call to non-Muslim religious leaders, especially Jews, to demand that Islam’s authoritative teaching institutions—starting with Al-Azhar University itself—undergo wrenching mea culpa-based reforms of their canonical Jew-hating, jihadist doctrine.
