July 26, 2015 Faith Matters

“Muhammad is a Pig,” Shout Hardline Jews at Arab Palestinians in Old City

The Haram Al-Sharif or the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome and the Rock mosque continue to be flashpoints as hard-line and increasingly extreme actions by some Jewish groups inflame tensions and passions in the Old City in Jerusalem.

Today, it was reported that hard-line Jewish groups were involved in agitating the very fragile peace that exists in the Old City in Jerusalem. Flare ups continue in the Old City and there have been numerous cases of flashpoints where Palestinian Arabs have stated that they feel that the army and police arrest them during skirmishes and when there are physical assaults against them in the Old City.

Just to add to the sense of deepening grievance, Palestinian Arabs in the Old City were taunted by hard-line Jewish groups to shouts of ‘(Prophet) Muhammad is a pig.’

The taunts are even more shocking given that Jews, like Muslims, have a red line when pork is mentioned and by associating pigs with Muhammad, the insults were anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic in nature. Any such comments against Jews would rightly be deemed to be anti-Semitic, yet shockingly, these hard-line groups simply do not seem to care.

What is also interesting to note from this video is the lack of action taken by the police to stop the intimidation and anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic slurs. They are simply repeated on a number of occasions and the perpetrators are allowed to walk off, or at least as far as the video shows.