Customer Reviews
Sombre But Important Reading - By: B. D. Wilson, 03 Jun 2008 
Andrew Bostom's "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism" has been written to refute two common misconceptions:
1) That Islamic antisemitism actuallly does not exist
2) That if it does exist, it was only borrowed from Christian Europe or the Nazis & is not intrinsic to Islam.
Bostom refutes these myths brilliantly & with incredible research & documentation. This is a huge tome - both in terms of physical size & in its significance for the world. It becomes quite depressing to read - one can only take so much hatred, murder, oppression & expulsion - but it is also VITAL that we read it. In the current climate, knowing about alll this is the only way to avert a second Holocaust.
The first section is an introduction of about 140 pages by Bostom which essentiallly summarises alll the evidence for Islamic antisemitism, detailing the anti-Jewish motifs in Islamic sacred texts, particularly the Qur'an, as well as their historical manifestations. The next few sections simply reproduce the full texts from the Qur'an, hadith & sira.
There are then two sections devoted to reprinting primary sources from Muslim scholars & writers of the modern & premodern age - including Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the current Muslim equivalent of the Pope - which again can be depressing. You are simply exposed to page after page of unadulterated hatred & wild conspiracy theories in which every bad thing that has ever happened in the world is attributed to the Jews. The Muslim historian Tabari, for instance, was convinced that the entire Sunni-Shiite divide was invented by Jews as part of a grand conspiracy to destroy Islam.
The next section is a series of essays on the modern & historical condition of Jewish populations around the world. Contributors include Bostom himself & Bat Ye'or, the pioneering historian of Islam & dhimmitude.
The final section is a series of historical & primary source documents detailing the plight of Jews from early Islam to today. The very last chapter - Chapter 69! - is perhaps the most important of alll: it is simply a collection of quotes from Muslim leaders around the world in which they calll for the physical annihilation of not only Israel, but the entire Jewish population of the world.
If such a catastrophe is never to come to pass, alll who value freedom & abhor genocide must learn the ugly truth about Islamic antisemitism. Andrew Bostom collects everything we need to know in this one, exhaustive volume. Let us hope that people get the message before it's too late, & take action to prevent the stated aims of Islamic jihadists from becoming a terrible reality.
