Anti-Semitism

The choice between attending or abstaining from September’s Durban IV conference in New York City—the twentieth anniversary of the anti-racism conference that quickly became a confluence of antisemitism—is the newest episode in Europe’s increasingly divided policy toward the Jewish state and combatting antisemitism.

Catholics have a unique and urgent responsibility to confront antisemitism wherever they find it.

A substantial uptick in anti-Semitic rhetoric and attacks has occurred from Los Angeles to New York, and abroad in London and elsewhere.

Earlier this year, the Pakistani supreme court overturned the conviction of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a Pakistani British national who was sentenced to death by hanging for the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl.

The warnings of the US State Department, the Netherlands, and others show quite plainly that times are changing. British foolishness may delay Islamic Relief’s reckoning, but it will not prevent it.

We comfort ourselves, saying, “This is not who we are.” But without deeper reflection, such pat answers are lies, strengthening the “vulgarized knowledge” that allow us to ignore the chasms that threaten to consume us.

The Catholic community has come a long way in its relationship with its Jewish brothers and sisters, but there is more to be done. American Catholics can no longer be passive in our fight against antisemitism; we must be active, and we can start in our Catholic schools.

Cliff Smith explains how InterAction’s “Together Project” is aimed at stifling criticism of five Islamist charities.

Jealousy, love, and punishment are not bad ways of understanding the rise in both government-based religious discrimination and societal religious discrimination, as Jonathan Fox shows in his newest book, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me: Why Governments Discriminate against Religious Minorities.