Ibn Hazm, who lived in Muslim Spain in the 11th century, is best known today for his literary achievements. But like many Jewish and Muslim writers of his day, he was also a scholar of Aristotelian science, a theorist of religious law, an interpreter of sacred texts, and a political activist. His thinking led him to a literalist, exclusionary interpretation of Islam that inspired the persecution of Jews and Christians in 12th- and 13th-century Spain, and for this he is much admired by Salafists today. Reviewing a new collection of essays, Paul Heck writes:

The studies in this volume illustrate the close connection between Ibn Hazm’s writings and his politics. While one did not flow automatically from the other, his life was one of earnest—even zealous—activism, both political and intellectual. One could characterize his activities on the whole as a twofold struggle for the rule of Islam over Andalusia and for the truth of its beliefs over all other religions. He lived during the twilight of the Umayyad Caliphate and the beginnings of its fragmentation into city-states. He was also disturbed at the presence of Jews and Christians in well-placed positions in Muslim Spain and the willful neglect of its rulers to enforce God’s decree, revealed in the Quran, that the people of the book occupy a place of lowliness in the Abode of Islam. The image we have of [medieval] Andalusia today is one of interreligious harmony, but the picture painted here is rather different.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.