It has been said that antisemitism is the oldest form of prejudice and hatred, predating most major religions.
One of the bravest women I have ever met is Ayaan Hirsi Ali and she has spoken at length in several forums about its deadly rise and what it means.
I met her in 2007 at the Martin Luther King dinner held by the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE) which awarded her the award of International Sisterhood due to her efforts to protect the interests of Muslim women suffering from the demand of vaginal mutilation and forced marriage by Islamic Sharia law. At the time, she was a Danish parliamentarian and an atheist.
Today she is an American citizen, a Christian, and is still on tour at universities warning about the dangerous rise of antisemitism due to what she dubs the 'Islamism’ behind it.
I have written several columns on antisemitism from the perspective of a Catholic’s experience witnessing it from individuals expressing their bigotry confident that I shared this antipathy. I never did because I grew up in the barrio when I had Jewish neighbors who were beyond wonderful.
I went to Catholic school, taught by nuns, who always reminded us that Jesus and the Apostles who founded our faith were Jews, Three popes have written encyclicals warning Catholics not to believe in the false charges against Jews and asserted that this heinous hatred was politically motivated. It is a grave sin for Catholics to engage in pogroms or antisemitic violence but when have Catholics ever paid attention to the pope unless he was as woke as Pope Francis? {May he rest in peace.}
Although my columns may have triggered some hate mail, I was not forced to hide like Ms. Ali because criticizing Islam has been a dangerous act of courage since 9/11.
President Bush made a serious error when he stated after the worst attack on American citizens: "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace."
Perhaps President Bush felt it necessary to say this to prevent attacks on innocent Muslims but what I regard as the result of his words was gross cowardice. So many weak-minded cities and education officials became so afraid of being called Islamophobic that they bent over backwards to show how tolerant they were.
Post 9/11, more than three hundred mosques sprang up around the country. Public schools were now allowing foot washing areas and other Islamic religious accommodations like adding special Muslim holidays to school schedules.
Here in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg allowed an Islamic community center to be built near Ground Zero and when I protested that it was outrageous for the city to open a public Arab school run by a woman with sympathy for Islamic radicals, I was vilified. Even CNN wanted me to explain myself, but they chickened out after my first screening.
Pardon me if I have a problem with Islam being a religion of peace.
It certainly is not very favorable to women. I have Albanian Muslim neighbors and during the recent heat wave, I would watch the man in short sleeves walking with his children wearing shorts followed by his wife wearing a black abaya gown and hijab around her head.
Why any sane American woman would convert to Islam is a mystery to me.
This religion of peace kills anyone who expresses criticism of Mohammed and when a French company posted a cartoon image mocking the prophet, this happened:
On 7 January 2015, two Islamist shooters forced their way into the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing twelve: staff cartoonists Charb, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinski, economist Bernard Maris, editors Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad, guest Michel Renaud, maintenance worker Frédéric Boisseau ...
In 2020, Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was murdered after showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class about freedom of speech.
Many New York publishers refused to publish the cartoon, but the New York Sun (where I worked) did, and the New York Police Department was posted outside our office on Chambers Street, just in case.
When Ms. Ali appears on these campuses to discuss antisemitism, she shows videos of imams and other Muslim officials not only calling for the murder of all Jews but for any country that supports Israel. Please watch and listen to this very heroic woman speak the truth about what is happening today.
I am not sure what other Christian religions teach about Jews, but Catholics believe that God chose the Jewish people to reveal Himself to humanity. They are the chosen people but amazingly many secular Jews are not comfortable with that fact.
One of the most learned Catholic saints, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) made several salient points to point out that Islam does not come from God.
He writes in his work Summa contra Gentiles that supernatural events are signs of divine inspiration which occur throughout Judaism and Christianity. Both the Old and New Testament are filled with this evidence of miracles and supernatural inexplicable events, but Islam has none.
He (Mohammed) did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Mohammed said that he was sent in the power of his arms – which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning. Those who believed in him were brutal men...utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through (Whom)... Mohammed forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms.
Mohammed seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected; he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity." (From the Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, Chapter 16, Article 4, Footnote 1.)
Could this be the explanation why Muslim women are so mistreated?
In any event, St. Thomas Aquinas is in Heaven and cannot be murdered by radical Islamists, but all Jewish people are targets and may the God in Heaven who saved our president protect his chosen people and our nation that He blessed.
Alicia Colon can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com.
Copyright 2025 Alicia Colon
Image: Screen shot from University of Austin video, via shareable YouTube