maff wrote:

David Ewan Kahana wrote:

mcv wrote:

NashtOn <nana@na.ca> wrote:

Islam breeds terror.

Now perhaps, but it wasn't always like that. When Europe was a bunch of
superstitious, infighting xenophobes, the Arab world was enlightened
educated and tolerant. Our math and many of other other sciences
originally started there. When christians conquered Spain, the Jews
fled to North Africa and Turkey, because they had a lot more freedom
there.

Not to agree with NashtOn, but this I believe is inaccurate
about the Spanish Jews.

When the Reconquista was complete and the Jews were expelled
from Spain, some 20,000-40,000 of the most wealthy Arabic
speaking Sephardi Jews were invited by the Ottoman Sultan to settle
in Thessaloniki and to live there as dhimmis. They accepted
and became part of the core of one of the largest Jewish
communities in the high middle ages. There is little doubt
that the Sultan's considerations were monetary as well as
humanitarian. He could count on collecting a considerable
kharaj from the new community and these were people who
certainly brought with them very useful skills.

However, about 200,000 Jews total were expelled by Ferdinand
and Isabella in 1492.

So even 40,000 doesn't come close to the total.

On the order of 20,000 of the expelled were resettled in
Rome with the permission, interestingly enough, of the new
Pope. Some also certainly went to North Africa, but it
appears not that many.

For the rest, the destinations are somewhat less clear, but
the great majority of the exiled Jews seem to have gone
north to Provence despite exhisting prohibitions, while some
went still further north, to the Netherlands. Some few even
ended up in the New World. So the majority of Jews who were
expelled from Spain did not choose to leave Christendom for
Muslim lands, despite the purportedly worse conditions that
existed for them there than under Islam.

The idea that greater freedom existed for Jews in the Muslim
world seems to be a myth which developed in the nineteenth
century. It appears to have very little basis in fact.

To give a flavour of the situation that existed for Jews
even during the so-called golden age of Islam in al-Andalus,
let me quote from a poem written in about 1066 by Abu Ishaq,
a well-known Islamic jurist and poet of Granada. In Granada,
Samuel and his son Joseph ibn Naghrela were both viziers to
the Emir. Ishaq saw this as a violation of Shari'a, as
indeed, it was, and he wrote against the Naghrelas:

"Put them back where they belong and reduce them to the
lowest of the low ... Turn your eyes to other countries and
you will find the Jews there are outcast dogs .. Do not consider
it a breach of faith to kill them ... they have violated our
covenant with them so how can you be held guilty against
the violators?"

The covenant referred to, of course, was the Covenant of
Umar, the first rightly guided Caliph, who layed out what
the treatment was to be for unbelievers during the muslim
conquest of Iraq.

The Naghrelas were both assassinated during the Almohad
persecutions, along with several thousand other Jews of
Granada.

It's nice to dream about golden ages for the Jews in Spain,
and there is some truth to it, in that Jews had at least
some legal standing in Muslim society, whereas they generally
had no guaranteed standing in Christianity. But the reality
was something very different than may be envisioned when we
try to describe things in modern terms. Islam was never
comparable in tolerance to modern Western multicultural states
in any way at all. It drew extremely sharp distinctions in law
between the believers and the dhimmis.

There were epochs in which the dhimmitude laws were less
strictly enforced, but there were times when they were
very strictly enforced, and certainly to the point of oppression.
It all depended on the ruler.

In my view, comparisons of the situation for Jews and
arguments about whether it was worse under Islam or under
Christendom are more or less pointless. The situation wasn't
ever very good in either realm. But we really shouldn't
romanticize early Islam, simply because we are well
aware of how bad the situation sometimes was in
Christendom.

It isn't about Islam.

What isn't about Islam?

It's about why Christians persecuted the Jews for
1,700 years because they were thought to be the killers of Jesus. Have
you found any passages in the Bible that were favorable to the Jews?

As a matter of fact, yes. Here are a few:

Mat 1.1-17 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of
David, the son of Abraham. ....

Mat 5.17-18 Think not that I am come to destroy the law,
or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily
I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall
in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Mat 15:31 Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw
the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and
the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.

Mat 10.5-6 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded
them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into [any]
city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel.

And it is worth noting here that practically every positive figure in
Matthew: Jesus, the crowds, Peter, the other Apostles, the
other disciples, the Galilean women: all of these are Jews.
There is no doubt about it whatsoever. Matthew portrays
many Jews in a positive light.

Even in the Gospel of John we find the following:

John 4.21-22 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the
hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet
at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not
what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

And from the Pauline Epistles we have:

1 Cr 10.32 Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the
Gentiles, nor to the church of God:

Rom. 3.1-2 What advantage then hath the Jew? or what
profit [is there] of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly,
because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.

Rom. 9:4-5 Who are Israelites; to whom [pertaineth] the
adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of
the law, and the service [of God], and the promises;

I am well aware of the anti-Jewish aspects of the gospels,
and of the history of Christian antisemitism. Christian
anti-Jewish feeling had a peculiar vehemence due to the
deicide accusations and the centrality of Judaism in the
faith, which had no equivalent in Islam.

But it would be utterly ridiculous to pretend that
*nothing* in the New Testament is favourable to the
Jews. Indeed there would appear to be no way of
making sense of the New Testament at all without
reference to the Tanakh and other Hebrew writings
that underly it, practically in every line of text.

It would be equally ridiculous to suggest
that Muslim anti-Jewish feelings never existed,
or are without any religious basis, or that the
Qur'an is free of highly unfavourable portrayals
of Jews, Christians, and pagans.

Islam defeated the Jews, the Christians and the
pagans of the Arabian peninsula very early on
in its history, and the Messenger of God
was regarded as the seal of the Prophets.

Islam does not require any more than what
is in the Qur'an, and the Hadiths. It essentially
discards the Jewish and Christian scriptures
in their entirety, preserving only such remnants
as are contained in the Qur'an.

So historically Islam did not regard the Jews or
the Christians as central or critical forces, certainly
not in the way that Christianity regarded the Jews.

This did not prevent muslims from despising both,
since they both rejected the clear signs.

David