NAZI YELLOW STAR BADGES FOR JEWS USED BY IRANIAN PROFESSOR & HER STUDENTS
TO PROTEST ANTI MUSLIM RHETORIC & ISLAMOPHOBIA
INSENSITIVITY TO JEWS DELIBERATE? SEEMS SO!
ALTHOUGH SHE DENIES IT
College Professor, Students Sport Yellow Jewish Stars to ‘Protest Islamophobia’
Move dubbed insensitive, off track
BY ADAM KREDO
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
A University of San Diego professor and her students have raised eyebrows in the pro-Israel community after they led a protest this week against anti-Muslim rhetoric by wearing yellow Jewish star badges like those used by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.Bahar Davary, an Iranian-American associate professor of theology and religious studies at the school, held the protest with her students on Thursday, according to university officials.While advocating against what they said is a growing trend in anti-Muslim rhetoric, the professor and students wore Jewish stars inscribed with the word, “Muslim.”The accessory was deemed insensitive and off base among some in the pro-Israel world and has prompted Davary to defend her decision.At least 100 students and faculty members on campus have been seen sporting the yellow star badges, according to local reports on the protest.Davary defended her decision to use the yellow badge, saying through a university spokeswoman that it was not meant to draw an analogy between the Holocaust and the current atmosphere Muslims face.“This is a class/campus project to raise awareness against Islamophobia,” Davary said. “It is not intended to make an analogy between the current situation of Muslims in the U.S. to that of Jews in Germany and wider Europe before the Shoah [Holocaust].”“The idea was discussed in my classes of doing a project to start a campus conversation about the anti-Muslim rhetoric rising all around us,” Davary explained.The protest, which was meant as a “learning tool” for students, was not aimed at diminishing the plight of more than six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, the professor said.“We realize that it is a stark symbol that carries a lot of weight and meaning today not only for Jews but for humanity,” Davary said. “That is as it should be, if we are to learn anything from our collective history. The yellow Star of David with the word Muslim written on it is a symbol that my students and I wear with utmost respect for the memory of the Jewish lives lost.”She and her students wore the yellow star “in sympathy with those who lived through the tragedy and survived, and those who still bear the painful memory.”The goal was to raise awareness to the dangers of “marking any group of people as the ‘other,’” she said.However, some said that use of the image comes off as insensitive and promotes flawed thinking about the current situation of Muslims and those Jews who experienced the Holocaust.Jacob Baime, executive director at the Israel on Campus Coalition, an advocacy group that defends the Jewish state on college campuses, slammed the demonstration as highly offensive.“This incident reflects cultural appropriation at its worst,” Baime said. “The industrial slaughter of 6 million innocent Jews by the Nazis is unique in human history. Any serious professor would have the decency to respect the memory of the victims.”Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization that combats anti-Semitism, said, “the imagery is off.”While Cooper understands and agrees with the need to fight anti-Muslim attitudes, he told theWashington Free Beacon that the yellow star badge is “not what I would have chosen” to address the issue.“When we talk about the yellow star, let’s remember who instituted it,” he said. “You had to wear it under penalty of death.”While the Jews of Europe “constituted no threat whatsoever to the German state” in the 1930s, the subject of radical terrorism is real, he said.“When you invoke that symbol you have to also not just use it superficially,” Cooper added, noting that, unlike Muslims in America, Jews of Europe were given no choice. “It wasn’t any crime anyone was guilty of. It was the accident of their birth.”
PROFESSOR DAVARY'S HATE FILLED CREATIVE EXPRESSION
THAT SHE USED TO BRAINWASH HER STUDENTS
ARE WE TO BELIEVE THIS ACCOUTREMENT REPRESENTS THE VICTIMHOOD WE ARE IMPOSING ON INNOCENT MUSLIMS?
THE IMPLICATION, IF WE DON'T BOW TO ISLAM
THE FINAL SOLUTION TO COME FOR JEWS, CHRISTIANS AND ALL OTHER "INFIDELS", IMPOSED BY RADICAL ISLAMOFASCISTS
ISLAMIC VICTIMHOOD???
THE YELLOW STAR OF DAVID DURING THE NAZI PERIOD; MUSLIMS DID NOT SUFFER THEN AND NEITHER DO THEY SUFFER NOW. THE COMPARISON IS INAPPROPRIATE AND INACCURATE:
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE FORGOTTEN OR CHOOSE TO IGNORE HISTORY PRIOR TO THEIR BIRTHDAY:
MOST PEOPLE REMEMBER & ASSOCIATE THE YELLOW STAR WITH THE NAZI PERSECUTION & KILLING OF JEWS DURING THE HOLOCAUST, NOT THE ALLEGED PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN THE 21ST CENTURY OR THE FORCED WEARING OF SPECIAL CLOTHING DATING BACK TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY
EXCERPTS: The yellow badge (or yellow patch), also referred to as a Jewish badge (German: Judenstern, lit. Jews' star), was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments to mark them as Jews in public at certain times in certain countries. Intended or not, it served as a badge of shame.
The practice of wearing special markings in order to distinguish Jews and other non-Muslims (Dhimmis) in Islam dominated countries seems to have been introduced by Umayyad Caliph Umar II in early 8th century.The practice was reissued and reinforced by Caliph Al-Mutawakkil (847–61), subsequently remaining in force for centuries. A genizah document from 1121 gives the following description of decrees issued in Baghdad:
In largely Catholic Medieval Europe Jews and Muslims were required to wear distinguishable clothing in some periods.
AUSCHWITZ OUTERWEAR
SEE:
AND:
Nazi propaganda leaflet: "Whoever bears this sign is an enemy of our people"
JEWISH WOMEN IN NAZI GERMANY
BAHAR DAVARY, IRANIAN AMERICAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY & RELIGIOUS STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
Religious Studies, Islam, World Religions, comparative study of religion
EMAIL: davary@sandiego.edu; Phone: (619) 260-6864
EXCERPTS:
Bahar Davary, PhD, has been a member of the faculty at USD since 2005. She is an associate professor of Religious Studies and an affiliate member of the Ethnic Studies program. Davary offers undergraduate courses on world religions, Islamic faith and practice, diversity courses and Honors courses, as well as preceptorials. She has team-taught a study abroad course Negotiating Religious Diversity in India. At the graduate level she has taught Comparative Religious Ethics at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. She will be team-teaching an Honors course, Women in Confucianism and Islam.
Education
Ph.D., Catholic University of America, Catholic Theological Tradition and Inter-religious Dialogue
M.A., University of Tehran, History of Religion and Mysticism
B.A., University of Tehran, Islamic Theology
M.A., University of Tehran, History of Religion and Mysticism
B.A., University of Tehran, Islamic Theology
Scholarly and Creative Work
Davary’s scholarly research focuses on the interpretation of the classical Islamic canon as well as engagement with the concrete lives and social situations of women in various parts of the Muslim world. Her book Women in the Qur’an: An Islamic Hermeneutic, will be published by Edwin Mellen Press. In “Violence to the Text: Violence through the Text” she argues that the use of specific verses of the Qur’an, as if they were proverbs, violates the tenor of the text as a whole by rendering women as “the other.” In her article “Miss Elsa and the Veil: Shame, Honor, and Identity Negotiations” in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (2009), she furthered the theme of women as the “gendered other,” by focusing on the “veiled other.” In her publication “Muslim and Christian Women: The Image of God and the Common Legacy of Patriarchy” in Pakistan Journal of Women’s Studies: Alam-e Niswan she draw elements from both Christian and Islamic feminist thought in order to point to similarities and differences in their approaches to their respective textual tradition. In “Forgiveness in Islam: Is it an Ultimate Reality?” she addressed an essential element of Islamic ethics that has not been addressed in Islamic academic writings.
Teaching Interests
In the past years, Davary has taught a variety of courses in Religious Studies, including: Religions of the World, Introduction to Islam, Gender and Islam, Muslim Women in Literature, Ecology and the Sacred, Islamic Mysticism, Specific Topics in Islamic Thought. She has also team-taught courses including Religion and Resistance, and Crisis and Cultural Change.
DAVARY'S ISLAMIC/CATHOLIC EDUCATION AND INTERESTS:
VIDEO:
THE ISLAMOFASCISTS ARE NOT BEING PERSECUTED; THEY ARE THE PERSECUTORS & KILLERS, WHILE JUSTIFYING THEIR ACTIONS BASED ON THE KORAN
