‘Islamophobia’ Phobia Subverts Combating Antisemitism By Andrew Bostom

Muhammad Tantawi

Jihad Watch : Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, and its mosque, founded in 972 A.D., have represented the authoritative, Vatican-like  pinnacle of Sunni Islamic religious education since the beginning of the late 13^th century,

Mamluk reign in Egypt. At a recent March, 2025 Ramadan event in front of Al-Azhar’s mosque, celebrating its founding, Muslims were reminded of the words of the famous 16^th century Egyptian Muslim scholar al-Haytami (d. 1567), “There is no spot on the face of the earth that has gathered as many scholars and righteous people as Al-Azhar.”

An ugly, but equally important “reminder” to another gathering of Muslims in front of Al-Azhar—and Muslims worldwide—occurred recently on “the 7^th night of the blessed month of Ramadan,” Thursday, March 6, 2025. Sheikh Reda Al-Sioufi chose not to recite any Qur’anic reference to Ramadan (see Qur’an 2:183; 2;184; 2:185). Instead, the good Sheikh intoned, gratuitously, a Ramadan-unrelated central Antisemitic verse from the Qur’an, 5:82, which opens by telling Muslims, “You will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers [to be] the Jews.”

The insidious persuasive power of Qur’an 5:82 to animate Muslim hatred of Jews has been acknowledged by Muslim and non-Muslim observers, alike, across a millennium, since the mid-9^th century A.D. This is unsurprising given how Muslims have been taught to understand 5:82 by Islam’s leading Qur’anic commentators, both classical and contemporary, including the major modern Qur’anic scholar, and late Al-Azhar University Grand Imam—Islam’s near “Papal equivalent”—Muhammad Tantawi (d. 2010).

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