A Historic Argument

UPDATED, scroll to the bottom of this post

WARNING: This post is irrelevant to the current events, VERY long and would only interest someone keen on history. Scroll to the end of the post to go straight to the chapter on personal insults.

The history of Jews in the Muslim lands started... way before this lands became Muslim. It pretty much ended in the second half of the 20th centuries. Of about 900 000 Jews that lived in the Arab countries in 1948, only Morocco and Tunisia still have numbers that are worth mentioning (5200 and 1000 respectively). The majority of the rest escaped with basic belongings as a result of persecution. There were more Jewish refugees from Arab lands than Palestinian refugees from Israel.

The question is: did it all start with the creation of Israel? Here is the argument I've had with a British blogger (rearranged by issues):

1. Opening Statements

Jokerman: Jews lived in middle eastern countries without the problems their brothers in Europe suffered. Sure it was no haven, but it wasnt any better for the others either, Muslims & Dhimmis; Christians & Jews, really enjoyed more or less the same living.

Shlemazl: It is a legend that Jews lived in Middle Eastern countries without problems. It is true that during the Middle Ages, Jews typically had a better status in the Muslim world than in Christendom. However that just tells how bad Jews had it in Christendom at that time.

2. On dhimmitude

Shlemazl: Dhimmis were excluded from public office and armed service, and were forbidden to bear arms. They were not allowed to ride horses or camels, to build synagogues or churches taller than mosques, to construct houses higher than those of Muslims or to drink wine in public. They were not allowed to pray or mourn in loud voices-as that might offend the Muslims. The dhimmi had to show public deference toward Muslims-always yielding them the center of the road. The dhimmi was not allowed to give evidence in court against a Muslim, and his oath was unacceptable in an Islamic court. To defend himself, the dhimmi would have to purchase Muslim witnesses at great expense. This left the dhimmi with little legal recourse when harmed by a Muslim. Dhimmis were also forced to wear distinctive clothing. In the ninth century, for example, Baghdad's Caliph al-Mutawakkil designated a yellow badge for Jews, setting a precedent that would be followed centuries later in Nazi Germany[ref: Bat Yeor, pp. 30, 56-57; Louis Gardet, La Cite Musulmane: Vie sociale et politique, (Paris: Etudes musulmanes, 1954), p.185-86, 191, 194, 348].

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). [Bat Ye'or, p. 61].

Jokerman: Rhetoric again. In those times, in every part of the world there was discrimination of some sort, what you describe of the jews in the middle east is still mild compared to what happened to them in Europe till the mid 20th century.

The Dhimmis were well content with less, they were indeed second class citizens, subject to both fiscal and social disabilities, and on a few rare occasions to open persecution. But by & large their position was infinitely superior to that of those communities who differed from the established church in western Europe in the same period.They enjoyed the free exercise of their religion, normal property rights, and were very frequently employed in the service of the state, though rarely in the highest offices. They were admitted to the craft guilds, in some of which they actually predominated. Hey were seldom called upon to suffer martyrdom or exile for their beliefs [Bernard Lewis. chapter 5: The Islamic Empire. ]

Shlemazl: George Sale, the English translator of the Koran, wrote one hundred and twenty years ago that Muslims then treated the Jews “as the most abject and contemptible people on earth. The contempt of Jews pervaded everyday behaviour. An Arab who felt he was being treated with contempt by another would say: "Am I a Jew to you?"

Jokerman: How lovely, you pick one word by george sale that suits your version of events & slap it down against other words that would overwhelm it.Sale talks in absolutism, if he was correct, then how & why did you agree they (jews) were treated better in the ME than Europe??

Yes, some arabs would have regarded jews that way, pejudiced people are in every culture, they would have also regarded christians & shiites in the same way.Does not make it right.

Shlemazl: Where does this Maroccan proverb come from: "One may kill as many as seven Jews without being punished. [source]"

Jokerman: I have never heard or read that proverb in my life. But i did read & hear of many anti semitic comments that never existed in arab culture till recently & surprise surprise, the source was from European christendom trasnfered to Christian arabs monks & priests who visited Europe.

3. On pogroms

Shlemazl: Later on there were major pogroms across the middle east.

Jokerman: What Pogroms in the early 19th century exactly???

Shlemazl: Even Koran describes pogroms [discussion on that is provided further under section "4. On Koran and Mohammed". ]

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 [ref Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, (PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), pp. 59, 284].

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. They were regularly followed by pogroms.[Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) p. 158.].

One of the incidents inspired by this bigotry was the massacre of the Jewish community in Basra in 1776, in what is now southern Iraq. In 1785, Ali Burza Pasha led a pogrom against the Jewish community in what is now Libya, killing hundreds. In the city of Algiers in 1805, several hundred Jews were murdered during what was termed the “Black Sabbath” massacre. Algiers was the site of major anti-Jewish pogroms again in 1815 and 1830.

One of the most historically important instances of anti-Jewish violence of the nineteenth century occurred in Damascus, now the capital of Syria, in 1840. It was the Damascus blood libel in which the Jewish community was falsely accused of ritual murder; several members of the community were arrested and tortured for confessions, during which one of the torture victims died. Subsequently, 60 Jewish children were seized and purposefully starved so as to extract confessions from their parents. Some of the hostages survived and were eventually released following protests by the Americans and the Brits.

The anti-Jewish pogroms took place in 1940s in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen. Anti-Jewish threats and pogorms started even before the declaration of Indpendence and the UN vote. They were caused by a combination of nationalistic independence movement, continuation of old anti-semitic traditions no longer consrained by foreign rule and by the creation of the state of Israel. You can read more here.

Many other authors of the day refer to pogroms in the 19th century North Africa. I remember reading Guy de Maupassant, but I don't remember which particular story.

Jokerman: There are no Holocausts or pogroms in the context you imply. Pogrom is killing someone for the sole reason of their race or faith, & no where in the Koran is that mentioned so i would say you are misinformed.

Shlemazl: Let us check our dictionaries. Pogrom: "An organized, often officially encouraged massacre or persecution of a minority group, especially one conducted against Jews."

4. On Koran and Mohammed

Jokerman: Where exactly does the Koran mention Pogroms?

Shlemazl: It was Prophet Muhammad himself who attempted to negate the positive titage of the Jew that had been prevalent earlier. Prophet Muhammad's original plan had been to induce the Jews to adopt Islam. When Muhammad began his rule at Medina in A.D. 622 he counted few supporters, so he adopted several Jewish practices-including daily prayer facing toward Jerusalem and the fast of Yom Kippur-in the hope of wooing the Jews. But the Jewish community rejected the Prophet Muhammad's religion, preferring to adhere to its own beliefs, whereupon Muhammad subsequently substituted Mecca for Jerusalem, and dropped many of the Jewish practices.

Three years later, Arab hostility against the Jews commenced, when the Meccan army exterminated the Jewish tribe of Quraiza. As a result of the Prophet Muhammad's resentment, the Holy Koran itself contains many of his hostile denunciations of Jews and bitter attacks upon the Jewish tradition, which undoubtedly have colored the beliefs of religious Muslims down to the present. [ref. Lewis, Arabs in History, See Chapters 4 and 8].

"The city of Medina, some 280 miles north of Mecca, had originally been settled by Jewish tribes from the north, especially the Banu Nadir and Banu Quraiza. The comparative richness of the town attracted an infiltration of pagan Arabs who came at first as clients of the Jews and ultimately succeeded in dominating them. Medina, or, as it was known before Islam, Yathrib, had no form of stable government at all. The town was tom by the feuds of the rival Arab tribes of Aus and Khazraj, with the Jews maintaining an uneasy balance of power. The latter, engaged mainly in agriculture and handicrafts, were economically and culturally superior to the Arabs, and were consequently disliked.... as soon as the Arabs had attained unity through the agency of Muhammad they attacked and ultimately eliminated the Jews" [Lewis, Arabs in History, p. 40].
As for pogroms in Koran, check out this: "... some you slew and others you took captive. He (Allah] made you masters of their [the Jews'] land, their houses and their goods, and of yet another land [Khaibar] on which you had never set foot before. Truly, Allah has power over all things" [ref. The Koran, Surah 33, v. 26-32, Dawood translation].

Jokerman: Now, the battles or as you say pogroms, you quote " when the Meccan army exterminated the Jewish tribe of Quraiza." First of all, that sentence is fundamentally flawed!! What page did BL write this? what Meccan army? Meccans did not fight any Jewish Tribes!! You mean Madinite surely, & the Quraydha tribe was not exterminated, defeated yes but not exterminated. Exterminate: to kill all creatures or people in a place or all of those of a certain kind or race.Let me give you a more detailed yet brief account of that struggle. The nature of struggle between the jewish tribes of Yathreb(Madina) & Mohamed was political not religious. Jews dominated the arabs economically & politically, both sides had ties & intermarried even, till the arrival of Mohamed. He saw how relations were good & sought to bolster it more by adopting some of their religious customs. Jewish tribe leaders resented how their influence shifted to Mohamed, they rejected him which was fine by now. Mohamed wrote what is considered an agreement/treaty between the 2 sides, Arabs (now muslims) & Jews to each have their own laws, respect each other & not to make alliances that would threaten the other. Tensions later surfaced when the Qaynuqa’ clan killed an arab over a market dispute & escalated in violation of the agreement. Mohamed surrounded their fort for 2 weeks & then they were kicked out in the end. No battle or pogrom here.

Banu al Nadhir clan 2 years later conspired to kill Mohamed, they were besieged & also kicked out after paying some money. No pogrom again or fighting.

When the Meccan army surrounded Yathreb (Madina), banu Qurayza ,instead of defending their city with the arabs, chose to join the Meccans as a Trojan horse. When this alliance lost, Qurayza were besieged for a month & then asked for the ruling of an arab with ties & allegiance to them, he ruled against them, that their able men to be killed. The numbers are not exact but vary from 400 to 700, out of a clan that would’ve been average 10,000.That was not a pogrom or extermination, these jewish tribes relocated to other nearby areas & lived peacefully, till Omar in the 18 Hejra ordered them along with Christians to the Levant area, as he feared religious loyalty will be a problem in the battles with the Romans. Far worse incidents happened to arab tribes who later resisted the authority of first calipha abu bakr, notably the banu Tamim who were slaughtered in a way that qurayza jews themselves didn’t suffer. It was not a religious conflict but a purely political one.

The Quran verse you mention, does not speak as you imply of pogroms, it was revealed in the aftermath of the Qurayza incident. if you read it, its descriptive of what happened not a decree. Don’t mix between verses that ordered muslims to fight those who fight them & with what you mistakingly call pogroms. Don’t generalise a verse by twisting its meaning or intention like scholars do, to take certain words literally without the verses context & circumstances will confuse more.

One must distinguish between Mohamed punishing the Jewish tribes for reason of breaching the agreement & between punishing them for being Jewish.Pogroms are killing someone for nothing other than their faith or race, like the Holocaust, where Jews were killed for being Jewish & not for any crimes they committed. What you say is vicious regarding Qurayza, was understandable as they were combatants & were out to destroy those whom they had an agreement with.

Yet, your last sentence is correct, many muslims prejudice against jews is stemmed from quranic verses but because they too ,mistakingly,are selectively generalising the verses that attack certain jews & their actions & forget the other praising verses, not addressing them in their context of time & place frame.

Shlemazl: "punishing the Jewish tribes for reason of breaching the agreement ". Sorry, but this is bullshit:

a) it's only Mohammed's side and
b) its not "punishing the Jewish tribes" its "exterminating the Jewish tribes".

Your definition of pogroms does not agree with the dictionary. Everyone had their reasons whether it were protocols of Zion Elders or blood libel or other invented reasons.

Jokerman: shlemazl - It is evident you are ignorant with the history of that period. The only bullshit i see is your desperate & feeble attempt to label these incidents as pogroms when they were not, even the word exterminate is an exaggeration.

Shlemazl: I resign to your superior knowledge. Sorry I got the words so wrong, particularly the "p" word. I'll try to watch my language carefully. Wonder how you achieved this wonderful insight into what actually happened? Perhaps you were there watching Mohammed's troops doing a little killing and plundering of local Jewish tribes (is this better wording?) in a justified response to a provocation?

I would be totally off the mark if I were to even suggest that in 626 Mohammed personally led a defensive campaign against all Jews in Arabia. He justly accused them of corrupting the Scriptures, killing the prophets, and rejecting the Messiah. He would know. Allah told him that perfidious Jews corrupted their own scriptures and killed their own prophets. He plundered Jewish settlements in Khaibar, and killed ninety-three Jews in the process. He also captured 600 Jewish men from Banu-Karaiza and demanded that they convert to his religion. When they refused, he put them to death, and sold their women and children into slavery.

Jokerman: Mohamed did not accuse the jewish tribes in madina of corrupting the scriptures, he accused in one incident their "Rabbis" of concealing a punishment, when they (yathreb jews) brought forward to him 2 jews who committed adultery & he asked them what does the penal code in the Torah say, they said they are to be beaten up & ride back to back on a donkey in the alleys so people could see them & swear at them, as a form of humiliation. A young student then told him that it wasn't true & their penalty is death by stoning. Now it's the Quran that refers to something different, incidents that happened in ancient times where the writers of the scriptures would add words & say this is what God said, but it does not mean in any way that.

Mohamed himself did not compel any jew to convert, the Quran says explicitly" there is no compulsion in religion".

Read about the verses that speaks well of hebrews & israelites. How Solomon was the most powerful & wise.

Yes there were those who were enslaved but again, that action was normal in those days, & not all were enslaved as some were free to go to other areas. You cannot exclude the nature of the crises between the Jewish Tribes & Mohamed in that incident. It's not as if he woke up one day & said, oh hell, lets get rid of them.

Mohamed Himself married a jewish woman, Saffiyah Huyayi, who many muslims belive she converted to Islam at once but that is not true. Accounts of other women & other wives who taunted & called her "jewess" & jew daughter, in which He told her to hit back at them by saying she is the daughter of Aron, Moses is her Uncle & Mohamed is her husband, to shut them up by showing her great status & lineage. She was claimed to be a descendant of Aron's bloodline (this argument is weak as far as I am concerned because Saffiyah's whole tribe has been annihalated by Mohammed just prior to the marriage and she was his booty - shlemazl).



5. On ghettos

Shlemazl: 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. [Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) p. 158.].

Jokerman: What Ghettos in the 19th century North Africa are you refering to? Ghettos in the Middle East are not the same as European Ghettos. Jews were in many european countries confined or forced to live in certain areas, that was not the case in Middle eastern countries till the period after 1948.

Shlemazl: I know you are not going to like the word ghetto, but what am I supposed to call it if the Jews were restricted to enclosed quarters such as the mellah in Morocco, the hara in Tunisia, or the qa`at al-yahud in Yemen or simply Jewish quarters in Egypt. This was a rather late development compared to Europe, but there is enough historic evidence by visiting travellers to demonstrate that these ghettos were every bit as bad as their European analogies.

Jokerman: Did you visit those Ghettos or read about them? because i know that jews werent forced to live in an area exclusive only for them, but the jewish quarter which is infact Jewish alley, was just a name because it had more jewish inhabitants than others.

Shlemazl: [The Jews of Morocco, by Ralph G. Bennett]: "... Ghetto living was no less deplorable here than elsewhere... In 1438, the first Jewish ghetto or mellah, as they are called in Morocco, was created in Fez. By the early nineteenth century, this oppressed population would be confined to mellahs in all major cities by the ruler Mulay Sulayman (1792-1822)."

And further... "Meanwhile, the Jewish community in general became the scapegoat for the Muslims whenever they disagreed with European actions. Not only did many Jews die in pogroms, but also in major epidemics, worsened by the fact of their confinement in urban mellahs." Sorry he used the forbidden P word.

Points of personal nature totally irrelevant to the subject of the discussion:

Note: these points were diluted among the relevant arguments.

Jokerman: Shlemazl - Rhetoric again.

Shlemazl: Let us check our dictionaries. Rhetoric: "Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous". As you requested I gave you very specific references to several very specific pogroms in the Arab world. What else can I do?

It is your comment and unsubstantiated personal assessments of my views that fall under the definition of rhetoric because you did not support them by ANY facts.

Jokerman: If you want to convince yourself Mohamed treated the jewish tribes viciously, you are free to do so, like Anti Semites who convince themselves Holocaust didn’t happen.

Shlemazl: "punishing the Jewish tribes for reason of breaching the agreement". Sorry, but this is bullshit.

Jokerman: It is evident you are ignorant with the history of that period. The only bullshit i see is your desperate & feeble attempt to label these incidents as pogroms.

Shlemazl: I resign to your superior knowledge. Sorry I got the words so wrong, particularly the "p" word. I'll try to watch my language carefully.Wonder how you achieved this wonderful insight into what actually happened? Perhaps you were there watching Mohammed's troops doing a little killing and plundering of local Jewish tribes (is this better word than extermination?) in a justified response to a provocation?

Jokerman: I had debated anti semites before & found them idiots who haven't the slightest idea what they are saying, they are terribly ignorant in history. when one confronts them with history refuting their claims, they start to scratch their heads & mumble. Many generalise too, in the same way you did, thats why i find both your method & theirs very much the same yet on opposite sides. You regard arabs exactly the same way anti semites regard jews. The same discussions almost, from ludicrous allegations such as nazis did not kill jews but the zionists did it, to the illogical protocols that is their favourite quote source.

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This is all I am going to quote. If you got here having read the whole thing... I just don't believe it. Still, it was mostly fun and you can read the whole discussion here and here if you are totally crazy, like me.

I don't mind being called ignorant, but... Where the hell did his last statement come from and why did he have to bring racism and Holocaust into the discussion which up until that point was largely reasonable and based on reputable historic sources or original text? All I was doing was proving my original premis that "it is a legend that Jews lived in Middle Eastern countries without problems".

Why do some people feel obliged to make these comparisons?


UPDATE

BEAJ provided further information on "how Jews provoked Mohammad" and on Mohammad's Jewish wife [source]. It is stated "Among the Jewish women there was one who was chosen by Muhammad as wife. It was Safiyya bint Huyayy, daughter of the killed Banu Nadir chief Huyayy ibn Akhtab and widow of Kinana ibn al-Rabi, the treasurer of Banu Nadir, whom Muhammad's followers first tortured, demanding to reveal the location of the hidden treasures of his tribe, and then beheaded." [ Ibn Hisham. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya (The Life of The Prophet). English translation in Stillman (1979), pp. 145–146]. Poor woman must have loved Mohammad so much!

I've asked Mrs Shlemazl to review this post, which put me at a disadvantage because she's never supported me in an argument. Well, there is always the first time. Her conclusion: "You supported your view by quotations and he supported his view by more views. He is well spoken, but unreasonable. Once it became clear to him that he was wrong, he took his ball away by calling you a racist." I think I agree with her. I must have eaten something...