Jews Are Really Khazars But We’ll Mistreat Them Like Real Jews

By Yahara Kussemek, Professor of Islamic Thought

It’s been a widely accepted notion in the Muslim world and beyond for some time now that the people who call themselves Jews today, mostly of the European variety, descend not from the ancient tribes of Israel, but from ninth-century converts in the Khazaria region where Europe meets Asia. As a consequence, none of the arguments in favor of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land apply to them, because we Muslims have decided that doesn’t make them Jewish. Just in case, though, we’re going to give them the same treatment we’ve given Jews for centuries: keep them under our boot, and they better not dare get any dangerous ideas that they shouldn’t be second-class subjects.

Like Islam, Judaism has always been accepting of converts – though Islam has always shown more aggressiveness in pursuing conversion of the masses, by force if necessary. In principle it should make no difference what nation or faith the convert held beforehand; once the conversion takes place, poof, that’s the person’s new status. In principle, therefore, the idea that European Jews have Khazar DNA and not, like their Mizrahi coreligionists, Levantine genes, should make no difference; a Jew is a Jew, and the Qur’an’s statement that the Holy Land is the Jews’ birthright should apply equally to them as to “pureblood” Jews. But that’s not how we’re going to do things.

It all comes down to power and politics, as you might expect. If we grant that the Jews of Khazaria became full-fledged Jews, that carries dangerous implications for maintaining Jewish dhimmi status – they’re Jews, regardless of ancestry, and worthy of controlling Palestine by divine decree. We can’t have that, though, because that would remove Jews from the rightful place we’ve assigned them in Islamic society, i.e. the bottom. It also means the Muslims who’ve fought so hard to prevent Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land have violated the Qur’an, and suffered humiliating defeat in the process – and that’s just too much to bear.

Better to be sure and both deny their Jewishness and invoke their Jewishness to justify our attempted genocide of them. I therefore propose a new twist on an old Islamic turn of phrase that will help us crystallize the dual nature of today’s so-called Jews. A battle cry, if you will, that captures an ancient message pregnant with meaning and portent: Khazar Khazar ya Yahud.

(h/t Charlie in NY comment on Elder of Ziyon, via Irene)

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