The Jew is Not My Enemy Read Free

contemporary Islamic history.
    I am neither Arab nor Jew. I am an Indian born in Pakistan whose Hindu ancestors in the Punjab converted to Islam in the nineteenth century. My heritage was deeply interwoven with that of the Sikh religion and Hinduism’s ancient wisdom. The Islam of Punjab had no room for hate. The three faith communities were woven together by a common culture, cuisine, and clothing, and by a humour that could defuse the most intense altercation. Yet in 1947 – Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs - we managed to break a thousand-year-old relationship in a frenzy of bloodletting that killed a million people in a matter of six short months. How then could I, a child of a maniacal religious massacre, afford to hate the “other”?
    As I write in this book’s closing chapter, my birthplace had no tradition of anti-Semitism in the late 1940s and ’50s. Yet, in a visit to Pakistan in 2006, I was taken aback by the ubiquitous hostility towards the Jewish people. I was told incessantly that the Jews “controlled” the United States and that throughout history the Jews have connived to become the puppet masters of the rest of the human race. My host and his friends were among the wealthy and well-educated elites of the land. The home where Muslim marginalization was being discussed boasted half a dozen cars in the driveway, a retinue of servants, and a front lawn that was larger than several backyards put together. Yet they talked as if they were plotting the Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd.
    “Why are all cab drivers in Chicago Muslim, why not Jewish?” one friend asked. I pointed out that the net wealth of American Muslims is almost equal to that of American Jews, but it failed to have any influence on the assembled group. I was accused of being brainwashed by the Jews, of being on their payroll. I laughed off what in the Islamic world is the ultimate insult to a Muslim – an allegation of being a Jewish lackey. I asked my friends if they were aware that Jews had come to the United States as poor immigrants escaping persecution in Europe in the nineteenth century, yet were able to assimilate and, through hard work, make incredible contributions to American life. I urged them to consider the fact that even though Jews make up just 2 per cent of the U.S. population, they form 21 per cent of the Ivy League student body. I pointed out that this 2 per cent of the American population accounts for 38 per cent of
Business Week’s
list of leading philanthropists, 51 per cent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for non-fiction, and 37 per cent of Academy Award–winning directors. But they saw in the same statistics the evidence of their conspiracy theories: “That just proves the Jews control the U.S.A.” I was speechless. Instead of recognizing the Jewish community’s hard work and its focus on education, innovation, and entrepreneurship, my friends attributed Jewish success to the fact that they controlled all the avenues to power.
    That was the moment I decided I had to write, to right the wrong. I mulled over the subject for more than a year, talked to a few Islamic scholars, met a couple of rabbis, and read well over a hundred texts of history and theology, but in the end decided to give up. “You will end up antagonizing both the Jews as well as the Arabs,” my wife counselled. “This is not your fight, and no good will come of it.” I reluctantly hung up my gloves.
    Then, in November 2008, came the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, in which Pakistani jihadis murdered hundreds, among them a rabbi, his pregnant wife, and other members of a local Jewish community centre. I was horrified. Why would a group of Punjabi villagers seek out a Jewish centre in a densely populated part of Mumbai to massacre Jews? It is unlikely they could ever have met a Jew, let alone have a grievance with him, yet they had been brainwashed by their Islamist handlers to the extent that they were willing to die to kill a few Jews. What had the Jews