On the upcoming holiday of Tisha b’Av, which begins this evening, Jews mourn not only the destruction of the First and Second Temples but all instances of persecution throughout the ages. Thus, one of the liturgical poems traditionally recited by Ashkenazim commemorates the burning of the Talmud by church authorities in Paris in 1242. Lawrence Schiffman explains why medieval churchmen came to view the Talmud with such hostility:

The earliest person to polemicize against the Talmud directly was probably Petrus Alphonsi, a Jewish physician and scholar who converted to Christianity in 1106 and was formerly known as Moses Sephardi. . . . The first sections of his Dialogue against the Jews attacks Judaism to a great extent by challenging the Talmud and the ancient rabbis. Whereas previous claims had been that the Jews continued to practice biblical law [while] refusing to accept Christianity, Petrus now claimed that the Jews were following what he said was a new and false law—that of the Talmud.

Somewhat different was Peter the Venerable, the Benedictine Abbot of Cluny (ca. 1092-1156). [Although] hostile to Jews and Judaism, he [nonetheless] wanted to see Jews spared from violence. . . . Peter composed a lengthy polemic against the Jews that included an attack on the Talmud. Peter [was] the first [influential author to make] an attack of this nature, although those who followed him had much more thorough familiarity with the [text itself, at a time] when European Christendom was crystallizing a new spirited opposition to Jews and Judaism. . . .

By the 13th century, Jewish converts to Christianity began to provide much greater [access to] talmudic learning to increasingly anti-talmudic Christian authorities. The first of these converts was Nicholas Donin, who lived in the first half of the 13th century. He argued that the Talmud was intolerable to Christians and that Christian society should destroy it. He set in motion the process that would lead to the burning of the Talmud in France in the 1240s.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”