An interesting article you might want to read in full. The beginning details that universities have become very sensitive about cultural appropriation and gives examples of this issue in action. Doesn't seem to apply to Jews though, not in this instance anyway.
So, I guess it's clear where the Ms Hamid et al got their incredibly insulting idea from:
Badge of shame for University of San Diego professor
.....[A]University of San Diego religious studies professor, Bahar Davary, out of concern about growing anti-Muslim rhetoric in the USA decided to have her students and other faculty members wear around the USD campus a yellow Star of David marked with the word “Muslim” as well as a crescent moon symbol associated with Islam in order to “invite a conversation” (as Professor Davary indicated in the Times of San Diego article).
While I am all for “starting conversations” about important subjects, and for combatting racism, bigotry and unlawful discrimination, it is deeply offensive that Professor Davary and some of her colleagues at the University of San Diego elected to engage in such blatant cultural appropriation. As Professor Davary should know (as a professor of theology and religious studies), the yellow badge (or yellow patch), also referred to as the “Jewish badge,” called in German the
Judenstern(
literally, the “Jews’ star”), was a cloth patch or armband that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments to mark them as Jews, and as a “badge of shame” at certain times in different countries
since the year 700 A.D.
The yellow badge of shame, or yellow Star of David, that Professor Davary elected to appropriate to help make her point, has a long and terrible history that is unique to the Jewish people, which in and of itself makes Professor Davary’s actions offensive and insensitive. Anti-Muslim bigotry certainly deserves condemnation as do all forms of xenophobia and bigotry. And legitimate concerns about Islamist extremism and Islamist-based terrorism should never be used as an excuse for vilifying or discriminating against Muslims.
This important point, however, does not give anyone the license to appropriate Jewish history (let alone to try and invoke in the minds of many people the industrial-scale genocide that Nazi Germany inflicted on Jews during WWII).
Moreover, while many people today solely associate the yellow badge or Star of David with the Nazis and the Holocaust, the yellow badge of shame was first required for Jews to wear by Umayyad Caliph Umar II in the early 8th century in Baghdad in order to separate and distinguish Jews from the Muslim majority. The practice was reissued and reinforced by Caliph Al-Mutawakkil (847–61A.D.), and remained in force for centuries thereafter throughout the Middle East by Muslim dictators in order to oppress and shame Jews as “Dhimmi.”
It is also a historical fact that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, was a big supporter and fan of Hitler, and that sadly much of the Muslim world today is a veritable hotbed of anti-Semitic propaganda, incitement to violence and agitation. In most Arab countries today, Jews are routinely demonized and defamed, and the ancient Jewish communities in almost all Muslim areas throughout the Middle East and North Africa were subject to vicious pogroms, discrimination and expulsion from 1941 through 1952. In Algeria, the closest thing in the Arab world today to a functioning democracy, and where there are almost no Jews left due to rampant state sanctioned pogroms and discrimination from the 1930’s through the 1960’s,
the Algerian Army on November 1, 2015 – in honor of Algeria’s Revolution Day -marched to repeated chants of “
Oh Arab, oh sons of Arabs, march on, march on, and turn your guns towards the Jews, in order to kill them, slaughter them, and skin them!” [see
here].
In many places in Europe today (where one sadly cannot even blame the demagoguery of dictators or the state control of the media), Jews cannot walk the streets while displaying any Jewish symbol (such as the Star of David) or even traditional Jewish attire, for fear of harassment and even assault (primarily by young Muslims). In France and Belgium over the last 10 years many Jews and Jewish institutions have been targeted for violence, and sadly many Jews have been murdered solely because of their religion, all by people claiming inspiration to commit these heinous acts in the name of Islam.
Thus, while it is plainly wrong to tar or target all members of a religion for the actions of some of their co-religionists; and statements that call for the “banning” of Muslims or ascribing any particular evil to Muslims are simply abhorrent, the history of the yellow badge of shame and the fact that it was first devised and used for centuries by Muslim dictators in order to demonize and discriminate against Jews makes the cultural appropriation by Professor Davary even more appalling. And if Professor Davary really wants to “start a conversation,” than that conversation should include an honest discussion about the terrible role that Muslim dictatorships have had throughout history in perpetuating vile, vicious, and mendacious Jew hatred and discrimination (which sadly continues in most Muslim dictatorships and in many Muslim communities in Europe to this very day)....
Badge of shame for University of San Diego professor
