When Jews were perceived as having achieved too comfortable a position in Islamic society, anti-Semitism would surface, often with devastating results: On December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. The riot was incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as inordinate Jewish political power.
Similarly, in 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in an offensive manner. The killings touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout
Morocco.
(6)
Other mass murders of Jews in Arab lands occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities;
Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews;
Algiers, where Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815 and 1830 and Marrakesh, Morocco, where more than 300 hundred Jews were murdered between 1864 and 1880.
(7)
Decrees ordering the destruction of
synagogues were enacted in
Egypt and
Syria (1014, 1293-4, 1301-2),
Iraq (854-859, 1344) and
Yemen (1676). Despite the Koran's prohibition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in
Yemen (1165 and 1678), Morocco (1275, 1465 and 1790-92) and
Baghdad (1333 and 1344).
(8)
As distinguished Orientalist G.E. von Grunebaum has written:
The situation of Jews in Arab lands reached a low point in the 19th century. Jews in most of North Africa (including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco) were forced to live in ghettos. In Morocco, which contained the largest Jewish community in the Islamic Diaspora, Jews were made to walk barefoot or wear shoes of straw when outside the ghetto. Even Muslim children participated in the degradation of Jews, by throwing stones at them or harassing them in other ways. The frequency of anti-Jewish violence increased, and many Jews were executed on charges of apostasy. Ritual murder accusations against the Jews became commonplace in the
Ottoman Empire.
(10)
By the twentieth century, the status of the dhimmi in Muslim lands had not significantly improved. H.E.W. Young, British Vice Consul in Mosul, wrote in 1909:
The danger for Jews became even greater as a showdown approached in the
UN over
partition in 1947. The Syrian delegate, Faris el-Khouri, warned: Unless the Palestine problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting and safeguarding the Jews in the Arab world.
(12)
More than a thousand Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting during the 1940s in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.
(13) This helped trigger the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries.
Sources:
1. Vamberto Morais,
A Short History of Anti-Semitism, (NY: W.W Norton and Co., 1976), p. 11; Bernard Lewis,
Semites & Anti-Semites, (NY: WW Norton & Co., 1986), p. 81.
2. Bernard Lewis, "The Pro-Islamic Jews,"
Judaism, (Fall 1968), p. 401.
3. Bat Ye'or,
The Dhimmi, (NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985), pp. 43-44.
4. Bat Yeor, pp. 30, 56-57; Louis Gardet,
La Cite Musulmane: Vie sociale et politique, (Paris: Etudes musulmanes, 1954), p. 348.
5. Bat Yeor, pp. 185-86, 191, 194.
6. Norman Stillman,
The Jews of Arab Lands, (PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), pp. 59, 284.
7. Maurice Roumani,
The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, (Tel Aviv: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, 1977), pp. 26-27.
8. Bat Ye'or, p. 61
9. G.E. Von Grunebaum, "Eastern Jewry Under Islam,"
Viator, (1971), p. 369.
10. Bernard Lewis,
The Jews of Islam, (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) p. 158.
11.
Middle Eastern Studies, (1971), p. 232.
12.
New York Times, (February 19, 1947).
13. Roumani, pp. 30-31.