Yet we do know that Jews lived in peace for centuries in the Arabic and Moorish empires. They were persecuted, by far, more in Europe than in the Muslim world.
The current conflict between Muslims and Jews only started
1913 - Nov 8: Sheikh Suleiman al-Taji al-Faouqi [سليمان التاجي] pens a vile hate poem, combining old anti-Semitic stereotypes with Islamic motifs in the influential 'Falastin' [فلسطين] newspaper. Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples. (2021). Germany: Berghahn Books, p. 270. Mandel, N. J...
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The Mellah of Fez
Abode of Moroccan Jews and Center of Their Activities
Mohamed Chtatou
From the blog of Loolwa Khazzoom at The Times of Israel
blogs.timesofisrael.com
Some see antisemitism in the Arab world as a reaction to ‘Israel’s actions’. But antisemitism existed long before Israel was established, when Jews were a vulnerable minority. Zionism, incompatible with the traditional Muslim view of the Jew as inferior, has upset the historical status quo. :
The first thing they ignore is that, while Jews under Islam did not suffer nearly as much as they did under Christendom, there were still some periods of serious persecution.
Jewish Virtual Library summarizes some of the worst cases:
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.
The aftermath of the Constantine pogrom of 1934: 25 Jews were killed
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.
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).
Even so, these persecutions and pogroms did not approach the horror of those under Christian rule, for two reasons: Islam did not have the same antipathy towards Judaism as a religion as Christianity did, and Muslim leaders would allow Jews who were forced to convert to convert back in later generations. At the same time, most Jewish rabbinical leaders in Muslim lands said that conversion to Islam was not considered idol worship and did not require martyrdom; Jews could accept the Muslim declaration of faith without violating Torah law and remain secret Jews much easier than the crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal.
The second thing that the apologists ignore is the pervasive issue of dhimmitude. Jews were legally defined as second class citizens, and usually had to submit to humiliating rules and the jizya tax, in exchange for state protection. By any yardstick, this was official persecution of a minority – apartheid, if you will – limiting how Jews could act, dress, pray, work, travel and interact with Muslims.
Given that Jews didn’t have any better options, they generally accepted this tradeoff, because most Christian countries were worse. Muslims were of course quite comfortable with this class system with Muslims on top, dhimmis in the middle and infidels on the bottom, not to be tolerated at all.
For the better part of a millenium this was the situation of Jews in the Muslim world – second class citizenship that was accepted, punctuated with occasional cases of major persecutions.
