Why would the Arab League care what Catholics did?

That's odd. The Muslims traditionally do not believe that Jesus was crucified. So how could they oppose exonerating the Jews of a deicide that their own tradition says never happened? I am also puzzled when I hear Islamists today refer to Jews as prophet-killers. Which prophet do they mean? I find it strange that they would relinquish one of their major beliefs (that no crucifixion ever occurred) just to have something to blame the Jews for.

Well, the Arab League saw (sees) the Christians as an ally in their war against the Jews. Absolving the Jews of the deepest of sins was certainly not what they wanted to see the Catholics doing. They saw it as a very useful wedge issue. You'll still see this strategy at work today, as groups work to get close to the Christians and push the Jews away.

You'll find Lewis goes into some examination of that issue, Joanne. While previously, the Jews may have been seen as evil (they thought they were crucifying Christ, after all, and Muhammed fought, but defeated them, after all), it was almost a petty, ineffectual evil...pathetic...while for Christians, Jews may have been seen as something worse (they, after all, succeeded in actually killing Christ). Those outlooks were in the process of switching. Suddenly the Jews were no longer the pathetic Dhimmi people of the past, they were busy defeating Arab armies now. That finally made them effectual, even demonic...and worthy of hate.

BTW, Lewis relates that "the spearhead of the attack was of course the Arab Christian churches, and the one Arab government, that of Lebanon, which had some standing in the Christian world. But others took up the cause. President Sukarno of Indonesia made a special trip to Rome to warn the Pope of the dangers resulting from such a resolution, while the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Qadri Tuqan, was reported in the Beirut press as warning that the passage of the proposed declaration would be disastrous, since 'history testifies to Jewish intentions of destroying Christ and Christianity.' Another writer warned that 'the Zionizing cardinals...are the dupes of an incessant power struggle which uses the supposed suffering of the Jews as one of its principle aids."

There's much more that's just too long to type in, including a lengthy quote by one writer explaining why, even though he himself doesn't believe the Jews crucified Christ because of what it says in the Quran, it still matters... basically because one shouldn't go around forgiving the Jews when history shows how perfidious and evil they are by nature.

It's a very sad comment in this day and age that not only do people believe this garbage, it is more accepted than it has been in years.

Consciously working to correct the historic introduction and spread of Hitler's malignant and malevolent form of anti-Semitism needs to be an objective of the current, inter-generational ideological conflict. The cancer can't be eliminated (or even effectively mitigated) without removing the malignant tissue, the mephitic can't be eliminated without removing its source.

(Too, have never read the Vatican II text and am not Catholic but I very much doubt that it uses language suggesting Jews be "absolved" of the "sin of killing Christ," I suspect the language is more in the vein of correcting a set of historical - in some instances genuinely historic - and more contemporary prejudices and some harsher and more pernicious bigotries. E.g., from the Vatican's web site, Anti-semitism: A wound to be healed, pointedly note the fifth or sixth paragraph in where both Ratzinger (now Benedict) and John Paul II are quoted.)

You're right, it doesn't use that specific language. Here is a quote from the relevant section 4 (the longest section addressed to a specific religion) of the Nostra Aetate:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.

Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.

Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.

Yes, though I wanted to emphasize the point made in my first paragraph above a good deal more than the second. Not that the parenthetical note is unimportant.

No question that actively working against the scourge is necessary, and to their credit, as we know, many Christians are doing so. Interestingly, many of the Middle Eastern churches (mostly non-Catholic) are perpetuating the problem (see Sabeel, et.al...) which is, as Lewis points out, where much of the problem was seeded in the first place.

Bought a backload of books today so I went ahead and purchased that volume by B. Lewis as well. It is - of course - a complex and motley historical subject: schisms, theological parsings and construals and misconstruals, honest and far less than honest attempts at substantial comprehensions, inter-necine rivalries and conflicts, ignorance, etc., etc.

(Btw, not to beat a dead horse, but back to the parenthetical point, it isn't simply that the Vatican doesn't use that "specific language," it's a language of an entirely different category and kind altogether. If they had used language denoting "absolution" it would have inherently denoted that it actually had been a historic sin as such, one which required absolution as such. Instead, the prejudices and bigotries being redressed are the prejudices and bigotries of Christians. Other, more universal allusions are also being made, but in terms of that particular blood libel, the Vatican is addressing the sins of Christians, and Christendom much more broadly. That was the emphasis, the point being made, as pertains to the "absolution" wording per se. I wouldn't seek this much clarity if it were merely a theological subject but, obviously, it's a social issue of great import and magnitude and correct comprehensions, of both the problem and viable solutions, are not easily obtained. So I'm not simply obsessing over this.)

Have a great 4th and extended holiday.

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You bet the Arab league would care what the Catholics did.

When the Catholic Church repressed the deicide charge, the Christian communities in the Arab world lobbied the Vatican to soften the language.

The reason was suppressing the deicide charge would help legitimize the Jewish State.

Local Christian communities in the Middle East warned the Vatican that making this change would incite anger amongst the Muslim majority populations.

Mel:

there are a lot of lesser known scholars who question Lewis's contention that anti-semitism originated in Christian Europe and reached its height under Hitler's Nazi regime. I think you could count Bat Ye'or and her examinations of dhimmitude among the dissenting view that Jew hatred has been endemic to Islam ever since Mohammad slaughtered the Jews of the Khayber, accusing them of having violated a treaty with him and even attempting to poison him.

And the Lewis example you cite -- the Arab/Muslim delegation to Vatican II in the 1960s -- seems to undermine rather than support Lewis's contention.

I'd say Dexter is partly right about the views and motives of the "local" Middle Eastern Christian denominations who opposed the changes. As the descendants of the earliest Christians, I think the animosity toward Jews stems directly from the Jews' continued rejection of Christ as the Messiah and the hand their ancestors are deemed to have played in the deicide.

i think when Lewis wrote the book, it was a) well before 2000, and b) the people that he mostly dealt with didn't have the edge that the europeans did (certainly up to the holocaust). his purpose was to contrast. i'm not sure he'd write the same book today.

i tend to distinguish btw anti-judaism (we're better cause they're worse, we're honorable because they're shamed, etc.) which is built in to dhimmitude, and anti-semitism, which is paranoid and exterminationist, "i must eliminate you in order to survive."

what both the nazis and the muslims have in common is the experience of jews under modern conditions, where, in principle it's a meritocracy, and jews do alarmingly well as a result. with modern conditions undermining much of the authoritarian style to which ruling elites have been accustomed for the last several millennia, it arouses enormous hostility among the "might makes right" crowd.

the existence of israel has -- and will continue to -- drive traditional anti-modern muslims crazy until they either get rid of modernity and civil society, or they grow up. the intensification of their anti-semitism (and that it now is) since 2000 is due less, i think, to anything specific that israel has done (except, of course "kill" muhammad al durah in cold blood), than the intensification of globalization and the penetration of modern attitudes (including women's liberation!) into their own cultures. as with the nazis, the jews become symbolic carriers of that invasion.

No question that the book is somewhat "quaint" and a bit dated, especially as Lewis talks about the hopefullness of the "peace process" in mitigating some of the anti-Semitism coming out of Arab sources. He corrects a bit in the afterward of the later edition by detailing a lot of the increasing troubles that have occurred since that blog readers will find very familiar. Still, a worthwhile history.

I don't find much incompatibility between Lewis and those emphasizing the concept of Dhimmitude. The Dhimmi laws were always there, Jews and other have always suffered from them (sometimes more, sometimes less), but Lewis traces the history of the infiltration of European Christian style demonization and racial hate into this ripe field that changed its nature and focused it on the Jews.

"i tend to distinguish btw anti-judaism (we're better cause they're worse, we're honorable because they're shamed, etc.) which is built in to dhimmitude, and anti-semitism, which is paranoid and exterminationist, 'i must eliminate you in order to survive.'" rlandes

This is far too coarsely grained a set of distinctions. All anti-Semitism is, ipso facto, exterminationist? All anti-Judaism is born out of a prejudicial and bigoted "we're better cause they're worse, we're honorable because they're shamed" set of attitudes? I don't think so. Finer distinctions are fully warranted, in fact they're essential to a more honest and more probative analytic, which is not at all to disavow the fact that anti-Semitism does, all too obviously and all too commonly, reach truly hateful, murderous and virulent levels. Still, better distinctions are warranted and in fact necessary.

Any weltanschauung which genuinely is such, which is a comprehensive and sophisticated world view, whether it be religious, areligious or decidedly anti-religious, will inherently and not at all necessarily out of any malignant intent (perhaps even to the contrary) contain elements which are anti, against, some of the fundamental elements or tenets of other weltanschauungs. Otherwise they wouldn't be weltanschauungs which are something other, they would be the same, at least so for any practical intent and purpose (which also has some currency, hence some common Judeo-Christian interests, both in terms of some basic religious tenets as well as their social/political import). But generally those differences don't need to be and are not inherently fractious or divisive at the broader (outside of the believing community) social level. Generally those differences, while they will be emphasized within the group, community or "congregation," will not need to be emphasized outside of the group. (E.g., the emphasis upon the trinity within Christian communities, the inherent rejection of such within Jewish and Muslim and other communities.) Even to the contrary, they may well lead to social/political comity, assuming they actually are substantial and substantially sophisticated weltanschauungs which sincerely attempt a profoundly honest, proportioned and impassioned inquiry into the world, reality in toto and comprehensively, materially and immaterially. All of that reflects attitudes and beliefs which will be anti, against, other world views, even while the effect may tend to be benign or even helpful of general goodwill and comity.

But even poorly informed prejudices or bigotries can and do fall within gradations of ill will, malignancy, ignorance, etc. The notion they are all, eo ipso, seeking eliminationist and exterminationist ends is odd, at best. A Johnny Six-Pack who makes an anti-Catholic and/or anti-Semitic remark on occasion may not be the most informed or sensitive soul on the planet, but it hardly means he seeks, much less would applaud, exterminationist interests and strategies.

The gradations, between benign but stupidly informed prejudices and on through to virulent and murderous malformations is almost endless, and therein typical of any continuum, and that's true regardless of the type of bigotry. This is why, in something of an obverse reflection of the more general phenomenon reflected in the excerpted quote, the too studied avoidance of Yuri Slezkine's recent monumental work and set of theses, from within the Jewish community as a whole, a notable and notably too conscious avoidance. It's a clear indication that motives including power politics and power in general is at play, not a sound plumbing of the forces and dynamics which shaped the 20th century and continue to have profound effect today.

(Even the most prominent of, more typically, independently minded blogs have avoided so much as a modest discussion of the theses presented by Slezkine, and this has been parvasive. Something other than substantial and well founded intellectual inquiry and a thoroughgoing integrity is occurring here. Important, indeed pivotal historic and contemporary, themes of very real consequence are being addressed by Slezkine, and they deserve something other than studied neglect or cooptation. Slezkine is providing a valuable and insightful critique of a huge swath of post-Enlightenment modernity, it's well worth an appreciable, honest, forthright and penetrating assessment.)