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June 30, 2015 5:28 pm
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ADL Poll Shows More than Half of Western European Muslims Harbor Antisemitic Beliefs

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avatar by Eliezer Sherman

The French Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket chain was targeted in January by an Islamic extremist, who killed four people. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The French Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket chain was targeted in January by an Islamic extremist, who killed four people. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Though antisemitic attitudes in France, Germany and Belgium have dipped dramatically so far this year, more than half of all Muslims in Western Europe harbor antisemitic beliefs, a survey released by the Anti-Defamation League revealed on Tuesday.

“An average of 55 percent of Western European Muslims harbored antisemitic attitudes. Acceptance of antisemitic stereotypes by Muslims in these countries was substantially higher than among the national population in each country,” said the ADL report.

The survey, which ADL said was the first to document antisemitic attitudes among Western European Muslims, revealed Belgian Muslims to be the most antisemitic, with 68 percent harboring antisemitic beliefs. This is compared to 21 percent overall in the country.

In Germany — where an MP recently came under fire for saying Muslim students should not be made to visit concentration camps like the rest of the country’s students — the number was lower, but still above half, at 56 percent compared to the country’s 16 percent, which was down from 27 percent in 2014.

And in France — where a lone terrorist staged the deadliest attack against Jews this year, at a kosher supermarket — about 49% of Muslims showed antisemitic beliefs, compared to 17 percent of the overall population.

“Most prevalent was the belief that ‘Jews have too much power in international financial markets’ – an anti-Jewish canard affirmed by 70 percent of Western European Muslims,” the ADL said, adding that the European Muslim group showed much less affiliation with ideas critical of Jewish “character,” such as “people hate Jews because of the way they behave” and “Jews think they are better than other people,” than their coreligionists in the Middle East.

While a little more than half of Western European Muslims were found to be antisemitic, this is below the 74 percent of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa region who showed antisemitic attitudes according to ADL’s 2014 survey.

The poll also measured antisemitic attitudes among Western European Muslims in Spain (62 percent), Italy (56 percent) and the U.K. (54 percent).

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