Journey into Europe

By Akbar Ahmed

It was a cold night in November 1938. Hard men with hatred in their hearts and bats in their hands set about smashing shops belonging to Jews. At the end of the night, some 267 synagogues were destroyed, the windows of 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses were shattered and several Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. At least 91 Jews were killed in the mayhem. Up to 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Glass from smashed storefront windows lay strewn across the streets. That night of infamy is notorious in history as Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass.”

Kristallnacht was a turning point on the path to the concentration camps and the Holocaust, at the end of which 6 million Jews would be killed, creating what has been acknowledged as one of the most murderous episodes in history.

Today, we appear to be heading that way again — this time with Muslims instead of Jews.

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Lindenwood University Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Raymond Scupin has published his review of the Journey into Europe film in the November 2015 edition of the Journal of International and Global Studies.  You can read the review here.

The terrible and tragic violence in Paris is France’s 9/11, commentators are saying. The reaction must ensure that the many precious lives lost and the suffering of the injured are not in vain. The scale of the tragedy should concentrate the mind to find a strategy to check and defeat the Islamic State. The first step is to understand the roots of the crisis, which lie both in the soil of France and far from it in the deserts and mountains of the Middle East and North Africa.

Behind the current uneasy relationship between Muslim immigrants in Europe and the host countries looms the history of European imperialism — a fact that is often overlooked in the analysis. Imperial Britain and imperial France between them ruled much of Africa and Asia and thus dominated three great civilizations: Indian, Chinese and the predominantly Muslim. Imperial attitudes reflected the racism of the era and the belief in Western superiority. Take the example of Winston Churchill, the “grand old man” of British imperialism in its most unrepentant form. Churchill made no secret of his racial opinions — the Hindus were a “foul race” for him — especially those who would challenge the world order. He reserved his choicest phrases for none other than the great Mahatma Gandhi himself. He called Gandhi the “half naked fakir,” and once said notoriously that Gandhi, “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant. ”

Churchill, a European of the late 19th and early half of the 20th century, was echoing the supreme arrogance of his time, which saw Europe as the mother continent of civilization itself. Yet a mere half-century after his passing another British prime minister, also of Churchill’s Conservative Party, expressed a dramatic reversal in the relationship between Britain and India. Prime Minister David Cameron hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on his first official visit to Britain on Nov. 12. The two made a trip to a new statue of Gandhi in London. Cameron followed Modi exactly in paying homage to Gandhi by walking up to the statue with his hands joined in the Hindu sign of supplication and bowed his head deeply, almost touching Gandhi’s feet, while he scattered flowers in tribute. Churchill would have been turning in his grave.

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Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, left, and Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, right, join hands in a moment of true admiration during their November 12 dialogue at American University on countering religious violence. Photo by Joseph Marcus, American University School of International Service.

This past week, Paris, one of the great Western capitals, was rocked by a terrible tragedy. On a Friday night, 129 innocent people simply enjoying an evening out died at the hands of extremists who believed they were killing in the fight to avenge their people and “their” God. It was the worst attack in France since World War II, and it has left Europe feeling under siege.

As we across the pond stand in solidarity with Paris and mourn the innocent victims of such hatred, how can such ruthless violence even begin to be checked? Thanks to a recent high-profile Jewish-Muslim dialogue though, a top Jewish scholar and a top Muslim scholar may have given us just the lesson or two needed to help humanity move forward.

On November 12, American University (AU) had the honor of welcoming Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the U.K., for a dialogue with Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at AU and the former Pakistani High Commissioner to the U.K. and Ireland, for a dialogue on countering religious violence. Named “two of the leading scholars of religions, two of the most exciting thinkers of our days and also two amazing spiritual leaders,” by moderator Professor Michael Brenner, the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies at AU, this dialogue not only talked the talk of Jewish-Muslim relations, but walked the walk.

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Ambassador Ahmed responds to the 11/13 Paris attacks in this exclusive BBC interview here.

Please note the interview has been translated into Spanish, and the original English interview is currently not available–we recommend using the Translate feature of your web browser.