Anti-Semitism in the New Testament and the Quran
Question
Shalom, Following the October 7th attack in Israel I have become more active in my Jewish faith. I had fallen away for several years but after what happened there, I have been slowly recovering my Jewish identity and practices. I went to school to study the world’s religions with a stress on my own, but lately as I’ve gotten more into my religion, I’ve started to see some very antisemitic things found in the Christian Gospels and in the Muslim Surrahs that are flat out disturbing. My question is this, where the New Testament and the Quran written to bring hatred against us? I ask this because I’ve seen not just Muslim calls to destroy our people but to a lesser extent I’ve been seeing Christian groups calling for our extermination as well. Today rabah.
Answers
Are they written to encourage anti-Semitism? Probably not. But they are rife with anti-Jewish sentiments that are difficult to ignore. It seems to me that the answer to your question very much depends on who you are asking. There are masses of Muslims and Christians who see nothing anti-Semitic about what is written in their holy texts, and they relate to the Jewish faith with great respect. However, there is enough there to fuel the fundamentalists and stoke the fires of anti-Semitism worldwide.
Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team