Muslim-bashers like to style themselves as “defenders of Western civilization.” Like all effective lies, there’s a certain grain of truth to their assertion. They do not stand in the Western traditions that support reason, liberty and tolerance. They do, however, recycle themes and motifs that have appeared in previous waves of fear against “witches,” Jews, lepers, Catholics, and others.

A striking recent example is the use of pig imagery.

The following image is from a German-language Islamophobic site (my apologies fro reproducing a blasphemous image, but we need to be frank about political pathologies):

Piglets suckling on a sow bearing the Arabic name of God. Translation of the caption: "Muhammad, from German lands. Fresh on the table."

This disgusting image brings to mind one of the most despicable images in the history of anti-Semitism: the Judensau (Jew’s Sow):

Illustration from a work of Martin Luther, "Vom Schem Hamphoras"

The Judensau appears as a relief carving in many German churches and cathedrals, from the 13th century on. This 16th century woodcut illustration, however, has a special kinship with the 21st century Internet image posted above. The Islam-pig satirizes Muslim veneration for the Arabic name of God. The Judensau picture is for a cover page that mockingly refers to Jewish veneration of the Tetragrammaton, the ineffable four-consonant Hebrew name of God. In both cases, there is the satirical (or sarcastic) juxtapositon of swine imagery with the core of Jewish and Islamic spirituality: reverence for the name of God in a Semitic language.

Note also that the illustration to Luther’s book satirizes Jewish learning as such. It shows a rabbi lifting up the sow’s leg so that his students (wearing the emblems and headgear Jews were commanded to wear in Europe) can suckle from a sow. The idea is that imbibing Jewish religious scholarship is just like suckling on a pig’s teat– a shocking image for both Jew and gentile.

Which bears a certain striking similarity to this image:

Here, Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upon him) is depicted as a pig, with is name in both English and Arabic, writing the Qur’an. Again, We see the use of a hate-image to attack the roots of a religion’s scholarship.

Another example of a Judensau:

Judensau (Jews'-Sow), Wittenburg Cathedral

Jumping back to modern times, the following plastic pig was left in the mailbox of a mosque in Sacramento:

It’s inscribed with the captions “No mosque in NYC” and “MO HAM MED the Pig.”

One should note that German anti-Semites also made use of Judensau imagery in the ’20s and ’30s. A German drinking song, heard in bars and taverns before the assassination of Walther Rathenau in 1922, went:

Knallt ab den Walther Rathenau

Die gottverfluchte Judensau

(Shoot down that Walther Rathenau, the God-damned Judensau).

Also, from the site Zionism and Israel–Encyclopedic Dictionary:

A Der Sturmer cartoon of 1934 symbolizes the alleged power of Jews over the media. The sow pierced by a pitchfork, bears the inscription: Publishing house of Jewish literature. The caption reads: “Although the pig is dead, its piglets are yet to be eliminated. The “piglets” are representations of Albert Einstein , Magnus Hirschfeld , Alfred Kerr, Thomas Mann and Erich Maria Remarque.


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