Muslims made me Islamophobic.
Islamophobia isn’t the problem. Muslim antisemitism is.
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A few weeks ago, I was in the United States, playing tennis with a friend at a public park.
Between points, I glanced over toward the grassy area beside the courts and saw a group of Muslim women — most of them wearing hijabs — sitting together on picnic blankets. They were chatting, laughing, enjoying the day.
And I felt it: an immediate, gut-level reaction as sharp as it was unwelcome:
I hate you — because you hate me and my people.
Then I thought, if I were visibly Jewish (wearing a kippah or a Star of David), I know I’d be taking a risk in many Western cities today. The question is: Were those Muslim women in the park feeling unsafe because they were visibly Muslim?
These are not the kind of thoughts you’re supposed to admit to. Not in polite company. Not in a society obsessed with tolerance-as-performance. But these thoughts were there, undeniable. And they didn’t come from nowhere.
When I was growing up in Los Angeles, Muslims were nowhere near the radar of Jewish life. We didn’t talk about them as part of my Hebrew School’s curriculum. Rabbis didn’t sermonize about them. Jewish summer camps made no mention of them. We had our own holidays, our own history, our own culture. Muslims were simply other people living their own lives.
Even the adults in my life didn’t talk about Muslims with suspicion or animosity, neither before nor after 9/11. If anything, we were taught to lump all people into the same moral equation: People are people. Judge individuals, not groups.
But then came the images I can’t unsee: Muslims in Western cities tearing down hostage posters of kidnapped Israelis, smirking as they ripped down the faces of our stolen children, women, men, and elderly.
Muslims marching openly under the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah (terrorist organizations whose charters explicitly call for the annihilation of Jews) while chanting “Globalize the intifada!” (a purely anti-Jewish genocidal chant) on the streets of the very countries that gave them the unprecedented right of free speech.
Muslims screaming “Death to the Jews!” and “From the River to the Sea!” in the centers of Western capitals, their voices amplified not by a few fringe extremists, but by masses.
Muslims attacking Jews — verbally, physically — on sidewalks, in schools, outside synagogues.
Muslim doctors and nurses in Western countries broadcasting online that they would eagerly refuse to treat Jewish patients, as if their professional oath meant nothing when it came to us.
Muslims claiming that October 7th didn’t happen at all, or that it was some kind of Israeli conspiracy, even though Palestinian terrorists live-streamed everything as they carried out the massacres, rapes, pillaging, and destruction in Israel.
Muslims inciting others to harass and kill Jews.
Muslims smearing the Holocaust or pretending it never happened (or didn’t happen in the way everyone knows it did), such as longtime Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who has claimed that Adolf Hitler ordered the mass murder of Jews because of their “social role” as moneylenders. (Nevermind that Abbas received a PhD from the Soviet Union’s Institute of Oriental Studies after defending his thesis, “The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945.”)
All of this Muslim antisemitism isn’t some academic theory or political perspective. This is lived reality. And no amount of gaslighting can erase it.
The word “Islamophobia” has been twisted into meaning “irrational hatred of Muslims.” But fear and hatred aren’t always irrational.
When I was 5 years old, I was living near the epicenter of the 6.7 magnitude earthquake in 1994 Los Angeles. For years after, the slightest tremor made my chest tighten and my hands sweat. Was that irrational? Or was it the human brain learning from danger?
If someone is attacked by a dog, we don’t shame them for being wary around dogs. If someone gets food poisoning from sushi, we don’t tell them to eat more raw fish to prove they’re open-minded. We understand the cause-and-effect nature of fear.
Why, then, is it “irrational” to develop a fear of a group when significant numbers of its members are openly hostile toward your people?
And, for all the conspiracy theories that Muslims spread about Jews supposedly running the world (or some variation of that), why is it that Muslims now make up a quarter of the world’s population and control roughly a quarter of the world’s countries? If global domination were really the game, the scoreboard suggests that those spreading these rumors about Jews might just be the guilty ones.
What’s happening today isn’t some strange aberration.
For over a millennium, Jews living under Islamic rule were treated as dhimmis — second-class citizens who could live only by accepting humiliation, special taxes, and legal inferiority. Yes, there were “peaceful” periods, but peace often meant quiet submission, not equality. Pogroms, massacres, and expulsions were not rare exceptions; they were features of Jewish life under Islamic empires.
We weren’t equal neighbors in the Ottoman Empire. We weren’t equal citizens in Arab lands. My grandparents’ generation didn’t leave Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Turkey, and Egypt because they got bored and wanted a “change of scenery.” They left because Muslims forced them out.
This hostility is not only historical; it’s ritualized. In “pro-Palestinian” marches around the world, we hear Muslims chant, “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud, jaish Muhammad sa ya’ud.” It means: “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, Muhammad’s army will return.” — a reference to the 7th-century Battle of Khaybar, when Muhammad’s forces conquered the Jewish oasis of Khaybar in Arabia, killed its men, and enslaved its women and children. The chant is not subtle; it’s a threat. It’s a promise of repetition.
And it’s not whispered in some fringe corner of the internet. It’s shouted through megaphones in Paris, Berlin, London, Melbourne, and New York. It’s broadcast as a proud battle cry by people who live in democratic societies, where the Jews they are threatening are their neighbors.
When you’ve heard this chanted in cities that supposedly pride themselves on inclusivity and coexistence, you understand that this isn’t about borders, policies, or “Zionists.” It’s about Jews. All of us.
I know of no Jew who will read an article critical of Muslims and then feel inspired to go harm Muslims, or cheer those who do. I know of many Muslims who, after reading something negative about Israel (true or not), will feel justified in harming Jews — or openly celebrate when someone else does.
And yet, public discourse is dominated by fears of “Islamophobia.” That’s not equality; that’s selective empathy. If you speak up about Muslim antisemitism, you’re told it’s “not all Muslims,” as if that nullifies the pattern. If you feel fear walking past a pro-Hamas march, you’re told you’re being paranoid. If you point out the antisemitism embedded in certain Islamic texts or sermons, you’re told you’re being racist.
Western leaders and intellectuals bend over backwards to protect Muslim communities from scrutiny, even when members of those communities openly call for Jewish death. They will not confront the problem because they are afraid — afraid of being called bigots, afraid of riots, afraid of losing votes.
I don’t believe all Muslims hate Jews. I’ve met kind, decent Muslims who reject antisemitism entirely. (Ironically, most of these Muslims live in Israel and would rather be an Israeli citizen than a citizen of any of the 49 Muslim-majority countries.)
But here’s the truth that polite society won’t admit: It doesn’t take all Muslims to hate Jews. If only 10 percent of Muslims are openly antisemitic, that’s still millions of people. That’s enough to dominate the streets. That’s enough to spread intimidation. That’s enough to make Jews feel unsafe.
You don’t need all dogs to bite for people to fear stray dogs. You don’t need all earthquakes to destroy cities for people to fear tremors.
In Western societies today, more and more Muslims are presenting an unspoken proposition to the public: It’s either us or the Jews. They frame it in political language — “solidarity with Palestine,” “standing against genocide” — but beneath the slogans is a tribal demand: Choose a side.
And because Muslims now outnumber Jews by a huge margin in many Western countries, they know that pure numbers give them leverage. Politicians count votes. Media outlets count clicks. Universities count enrollment and tuition. If you’re a Western leader or institution, it’s easier (and safer) to appease the larger group, even if it means throwing the smaller one under the bus.
That’s the manipulation. The pressure isn’t about justice; it’s about intimidation. It’s about making the choice feel inevitable: Side with us, or we’ll brand you as an enemy too.
Fine. If they want to turn this into an “us versus them” game, then let’s actually examine who’s brought more value to Western societies. Who’s contributed more to science, medicine, literature, business, law, technology, music, philanthropy, civil rights? Jews, who are less than 0.2 percent of the global population, have won over 20 percent of Nobel Prizes, founded some of the world’s most important companies, and played pivotal roles in advancing democracy, human rights, and modern medicine.
Meanwhile, Muslim-majority countries, collectively representing over a billion people, have contributed comparatively little to modern scientific or technological progress. Many export oil, not ideas; religious fundamentalism, not innovation. And in Western cities, Muslim political activism far too often centers not on improving their host countries, but on importing old-world conflicts and resentments.
If the choice is really “us or them” because that’s the game Muslims want to play, then Western societies need to be honest about which group has consistently enriched them and which group, in far too many cases, has treated the West as a platform for their own grievances.
Here are a few facts: It’s not the Jews storming through cities chanting for the eradication of Muslim countries. It’s not the Jews attacking mosques or Muslim-owned businesses. It’s not the Jews calling for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — where the Muslim side gets no state of their own.
It’s not the Jews circulating conspiracy theories that Muslims secretly run the world. It’s not the Jews lionizing terrorists who target Muslims. It’s not the Jews disrupting universities and vandalizing public property with the rationalization of “resistance by any means necessary.” It’s not the Jews making Muslim places of worship require extra security at all times. It’s not the Jews colonizing the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia.
It’s not the Jews who submit to holy scriptures — of which more than 10 percent is blatantly anti-Muslim.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a woman from Egypt talking about her time growing up in Gaza:
“I was born and raised as a Muslim in Cairo, Egypt, but I grew up as a child in the 1950s in the Gaza Strip. And the reason I was in Gaza was because, at that time, Gaza was part of Egypt. I attended Gaza elementary schools, where we learned hatred, vengeance, retaliation. Peace was never an option.”
“We recited poetry every day in school wishing upon ourselves to die as martyrs … to go kill everybody and die as a martyr. In mosques, the sheikh would say at the end of every sermon, ‘May God destroy the Jews and the infidels and even the Christians and non-Muslims,’ and he would call non-Muslims the enemy of Allah.”
Meanwhile, I don’t know of any Jews who woke up one day and thought, “You know what would make life more interesting? Developing deep-seated theological animosity toward an entire faith.”
I didn’t start this. Israelis didn’t start this. Jews didn’t start this. But we’d be fools to pretend like it hasn’t happened — and is still happening with greater propensity. We’d be imbeciles to keep ignoring the crystal-clear writing on the wall because God forbid you “insult” a Muslim.
And that’s the part that polite society can’t handle. Because polite society wants victims to be noble, endlessly forgiving, and committed to some idealized vision of coexistence. Polite society wants me to say: “I love you, even if you hate me. I want to live alongside you, even if you don’t want to live alongside me. I won’t defend myself, even if you decide to attack me.”
But I’m done lying to make other people comfortable. I’m done pretending that decoys (“Palestine,” BDS, “anti-Zionism”) aren’t there to blind us from seeing the reality: Too many Muslims today are modern-day Nazis.
And if you’re Jewish, know this: Our fear and anger are not irrational. They’re survival instincts.
To have a phobia is to have an irrational fear of something. I don't think it is irrational to fear the virulent antisemitism in the Muslim community. Remember, the Jews who actually existed in Muslim majority countries long before the advent of Islam were ethnically cleansed from those countries. It didn't happen because they were loved or respected.
It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. It's not islamaphobia when they openly say they are going to kill you. Fear and loathing are the appropriate responses.