History records that after the battle of Medina, the Prophet Mohammed appointed a leading member of the Aws tribe, Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, as an arbitrator over the fate of his Jewish prisoners. Sir Martin Gilbert points out that the appointment "was subterfuge on the part of Mohammed, because he knew what Sa'd's judgment would be" and that "his verdict was predictably severe." "The Jewish men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and the possessions of the Jews divided as spoils among the Muslims." After hearing of Sa'd's judgment, the Prophet Mohammed proclaimed: "You have judged according to the very sentence of Allah above the Seven Heavens!" So began, from then until now, Islam's war against the Jewish people. Or as Sir Martin summates: "Henceforth, Muslims considered this judgement a divine revelation."

The conumdrum facing the world today, especially the Western world, is whether to attribute the anti-Jewish behaviour of Muslims to their nationality or to the religion Islam. Are Arab Muslims naturally disposed to hating Jews, or is it perhaps the fault of their religion? Is Louis Farrakhan an anti-Jewish bigot because he's African-American? Or just maybe has Islam inculcated him with the same vile enmity the Prophet Mohammed himself displayed toward the Jewish people? Are the Arab Janjaweed of Darfur committing genocide against non-Arab peoples because they simply hate non-Arabs? Or is it because the ideology of Islam has convinced these Arab Muslims that the life of the black African Muslim (whether man, women or child) is worth a distant less in the eyes of Islam's god than the life of the Arab Muslim?

Western minds must ask the question: If there were no Islam in the Sudan, would the Janjaweed be committing genocide against the black Africans there? If there were no Islam in the Middle East, would Israel be so blindly hated by the Arab Muslim peoples there? I blame Islam for the genocide being perpetrated against the black Africans of Darfur just as I blame Islam for the terrorism being carried out against the Jews of Israel. Or as the Yiddish proverb so eloquently puts it: "A crooked light casts a crooked shadow."

Canadians are being encouraged by politicians involved in the governance of this great country to behave amiably toward "new Canadians" of the Muslim faith. We are being bombarded, especially our children, with the propagated notion that Canada as a nation is the epitome of "multiculturalism," the erroneous doctrine depicting all religious faiths as equally salubrious. If Canadians are being asked to accept without caveats or complaints Muslim immigrants who have no religious connection to this country, why are Arab Muslims being exculpated by the Western media from all measure of blame for violently repudiating the historical right of the Jews to the land of Israel, a land to which they also hold claim to a religious connection? Why is Islam's anti-Jewish hatred so easy for the Western media to acceot, yet we excoriate Jews for building homes in the land of Israel? Is it because the West has long ago become comfortably accustomed to Islam's anti-Jewish hatred?

Western Muslims who publicly denigrate Zionism and the State of Israel often deny being anti-Jewish, but their hypocrisy cannot be hidden. The Muslim has for so long hated the Jew that the most meretricious denial of this religious malevolence is immediately outweighed by the unmitigated history of Islam: Anti-Jewish hatred has been, from the time of the Prophet Mohammed until now, Islam's engine of war against the Jewish people. Whether employed by hatemongers like "minister" Louis Farrakhan or galloping sophists like Canada's own Mohamed Elmasry, their hatred of the Jew is being used by Muslims today as a seige weapon against not only the Jews of Israel in particular, but against all Jews who defend Israel's right to exist in the Middle East.

Norman Cousins opined that, "The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war." Islam's anti-Semitism has now become, at this point in history, a populist hue and cry in both the Western and Eastern hemispheres, ranging from the common man to the academic. There is no wall of decency too high for its projectile of savage denigration. Iran's overt desire for a nuclear war with the State of Israel and the fact that the entire world blames Israel for this unsustainable situation is proof that Islam's anti-Jewish hatred is entirely efficacious and an engine of war not easily resisted.

Michael Devolin