Quote: Respect vs. Jealousy

Quote: Respect vs. Jealousy


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On one hand, Muslim community leaders told me that they respect the role Jews made for themselves, admiring the access Jewish leaders have and the influence and relative wealth the community has come to accumulate. On the other hand, there was jealousy. "I want to catch up with Jewish groups organizationally," one Muslim leader told me in southern France. This leader spoke to me about "a competition of memories" with Jews.


This leader's concerns centered on Muslims' perception of their comparative disadvantage in Europe vis-à-vis the Jews. He told me about real societal discrimination against Muslims in employment, religious observance, and in general daily life -- not at all the responsibility of the Jewish community. Yet despite their perception of their status, it is the support Jews in southern France exhibit toward Israel that they claim as the real reason for their present situation.


This leader expressed complaints that Jews came as "colonialists" with other Europeans to North Africa, received French citizenship, and then moved to France. Muslims, on the other hand, lived in French-speaking North Africa and also immigrated to France but were denied the same level of acceptance. These same Jews, I was told, now unfairly "appropriated" the history of the Holocaust, which intimates that it was not their history to claim. Now "we Algerians suffer from it," I was told.


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Source: American Thinker