Islamaphobia is the methodological offspring of Anti-Semitism

In honor of the Daniel Pipes motivated hacking of Imam 'Abdul-Alim Musa's Myspace page I present the following reflection.

Both antisemitism and Islamophobia involve rifling through a diverse array of religious and cultural texts with the aim of extracting those statements which would cast the target in the worst possible light. Both presume to dictate to the Jew or to the Muslim what kind of person they ought to be; the fall back position for both the Islamaphobe or the Antisemite when confronted with Jews or Muslims who fail to typify a stereotype is to claim that these Jews or Muslims are not being true to their own beliefs, are inauthentic, self-hating, etc. Both the Islamaphobe and the anti-semite elevate text over context; they extract the lines they need with no concern for either the surrounding material or the larger tradition in which the text is embedded. The Islamaphobe takes Ayahs of the Quran which counsel against relying on non-muslims for protection and uses them to convict Muslims of intractable otherness and relentless hostility. Likewise, the Antisemite takes theoretical discussions in the Talmud about the proper relations between Jews and Gentiles and uses them to construct a slanderous stereotype of the Jew as petty tribalist, with no moral concern for those not part of his or her tiny nation. Both ignore the rich history of interaction between both communities and the outside world and both omit the underlying universalistic ethical stance of the two communities. It is inconsistent to abhor and excoriate one without taking a similar stance against the other.