[The following review of Matthias Küntzel’s Jihad and Jew-Hatred, published by Telos Press, appeared on November 1, on the blog Irene Lancaster’s Diary. Reproduced here by permission.]
Today sees the publication by Telos Press of the English-language translation of Matthias Küntzel’s Jihad and Jew-Hatred. The publishers have asked me to review it to coincide with the publication date. And I am very pleased to do so. First, some background is needed.
I have spent my life in dialogue with Christians, Muslims and Buddhists. The longest chapter in my book on the Jewish mediaeval scholar Abraham ibn Ezra, Deconstructing the Bible, is entitled “Muslim Hermeneutics.” The first people to purchase the book were the Culture Departments of Iran and Lebanon. In my younger days I took part in Sufi turning sessions, and when I was growing up our family doctor was a Muslim.
Which is why, like a great many people who know something about the Holocaust (in my case first hand information from my parents, who were survivors and also from teaching courses on the subject and visiting areas in Europe where the Holocaust had been perpetrated), I was willing to dismiss Nazi links with people like the Mufti of Jerusalem as motivated purely by political considerations.
However, recent events in Britain have led many of us to believe that politics is never “pure” and is always motivated by psychology and often also by theology, or a “world-view.” It is impossible therefore not to find this book by a leading German scholar in the field thoroughly convincing.
