Jews and Muslims Clash at the Doha Inter-Faith Dialogue Conference

Following are excerpts from the Doha Conference on Inter-Faith Dialogue, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on May 8, 2007. Memri TV clip number 1449:

Raquel Ukeles, a Jewess academic at Harvard University said: "It is difficult for me to persuade the Jews to change their views on Islam, in light of the many books and pictures about the Jews that are widely distributed in the Muslim countries. I myself have seen hundreds of books titled "The Jews in the Koran and the Sunna" or "The Jews throughout History." The authors of these books take the criticism of the Jews in the Koran, which pertains to the conflicts between the Jews of Al-Madina and the early Muslims, and apply this criticism to Jews in every time and every place. Unfortunately, we cannot blame only the extremists for writing these books, because there are even cases of clerics who are considered moderate. For example, it was painful for me to come across the Ph.D. dissertation of Sheik Al-Azhar Muhammad Sayyed Al-Tantawi, titled "The Israelites in the Koran and the Sunna." Even though he wrote this dissertation in the 1960s, he wrote a new preface to the third edition in the 1990s, in which he endorsed the validity and importance of this book.

In this work, Al-Tantawi shows that the Jews have depraved and despicable morals through three studies: The Israelites in ancient times, the Jews at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, and the Jews throughout history, until the creation of the State of Israel. What is the purpose of this analysis?

Sheik Al-Tantawi says: "When I chose the topic of my dissertation - The Israelites in the Koran and the Sunna - my initial purpose was to reveal to the Muslim youth in particular, and to the wise and the just in general, the condition of the Israelites, their history, their morals, their lies, and their despicable deeds, based on what is written about them in the Koran and the pure Sunna of the Prophet, and in the true history."

To those who claim that books of this type do not deal with Judaism as a religion, but pertain to the political conflict with Israel, we say: "Regardless of whether this was true at the beginning (and I do not accept this opinion) the cursing of all the Jews has become a widespread and permitted phenomenon, which has nothing to do with politics. The Jew has become a depraved and miserly murder and traitor, who tries to take over the entire world. We witness these characteristics in cartoons and TV series, and we hear them in sermons, and even on the news.

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