This is... not a surprise. Jews have lived in Islamic countries for centuries, and had very good relations with their Islamic neighbors. In fact, there are many Jews with Arab origins living in Israel today. Unfortunately, after WWII, most Arab countries forced the Jews living there to leave (mostly to Israel).
There are minor Jewish communities in some Islamic states still, but in recent decades this is very rare (there is, obviously, a large minority of arabs, both muslims and christians, living in Israel. Yes, as first class citizens - I'm not talking about the occupied territories, but Israel within the 1967 lines).
More like, get a history book, please. Different things happened in different places, but your summary's not very accurate. (There weren't any Christian countries thousands of years ago, with Armenia converting about 1715-ish years ago, so I'm not sure how anyone – Jewish or otherwise – could've lived in them.)
Could you please expand what is wrong with the comments upper in the thread?
I see the expression I think you referenced logically right: Jews lived for thousand years even if there were other religions there, Pagans (not Christians) included. That is any other faiths.
The first one's fine: no objections there. The second comment is just misleading in so many ways it's hard to pick one.
Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and "Christian countries" is both inaccurate (Jews weren't considered pagans) and overly-simplistic (state religions aren't a solid, fixed thing, especially over large areas before modern communication). While the Arab conquests were significant, not every Muslim country was converted "by the sword": there's even debate over whether the Muslim citizens of the early caliphates were, since such a small group, while large enough to conquer, would surely find it tricky to police the day-to-day behaviour and practices of so many people. (The Mongol Empire didn't manage to eliminate the practice of Islam in the areas under its control, despite ritual washing being punishable by summary execution, so it's plausible that Islam is just that persuasive.)
> Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and "Christian countries" is both inaccurate
That's not what the post said. Just that, before Islam was even a thing, those countries that Jews lived in which these days are considered "Muslim countries" were broadly "pagan" and/or "christian", depending on time and location.
As for your assertion of no christian countries thousands of years ago, where you state yourself "Armenia converting about 1715-ish years ago": That's thousands of years (as in: more than 1000)
> those countries that Jews lived in which these days are considered "Muslim countries"
Is irrelevant, since we're talking about the 11th century. (I can't find a good 11th-century map to point at, but the article describes enough to give the impression of how different it was back then.)
> (The Mongol Empire didn't manage to eliminate the practice of Islam in the areas under its control, despite ritual washing being punishable by summary execution, so it's plausible that Islam is just that persuasive.)
When/where did the Mongol empire ever try to eliminate the practice if Islam? They definitely shed a lot of blood and destruction in the Muslim world, but afaik the point was never to eliminate Islam, but just territorial conquest. The Mongols were famously tolerant of diverse religions within their borders. Many Mongol rulers even converted to Islam.
Of course, history is vast and multifaceted, so you might be talking about a different time/place than I am.
I don't know they ever did try to eliminate Islam, but the particular issue of washing was a conflict between their religious practices. I learned this from https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/hfsnrYC2aGbr1HEehhwrqZ?start=6m3... by Premodernist, which quotes and discusses 長春真人西遊記:
> Now the subtext here, which Li doesn't come right out and say, but is kinda understood for a contemporary: when the Mongols forbade people from washing in the rivers, that means that if they caught you going into the river to wash, they would kill you on the spot; because that was a taboo in the Mongol religious system. Now that was a problem if you were a Muslim who had come under Mongol rule, because Muslims of course do ritual washings before prayers, and in central Asia they would very often just go down to the local stream or river to do the washings. But if a Mongol saw them doing that, they would go over there and strike them down and kill them. And there are accounts – not in this account, but there are accounts in other historical works from the period, particularly from Muslim writers – that talk about, it was not uncommon for Muslims to be killed by Mongols in this way.
right, there was no country called Iraq until recently. What I meant was not a political entity but a region where the modern state of Iraq resides, so you can call it Assyria/Babylon/Roman Empire/Greek Empire/British Mandate. Same for Iran, with countless empires but the region is the same.
I don't think you understand the word colonizer. The Muslims conquered and lived among the people. They created a civilization which non-Muslim minorities were a part of. This is very different from European colonialism that extracted resources from the lands and people they conquered for the exclusive benefit of the Empire.
I think another way to see it is that Zionism is the perfect excuse for struggle.
There are 16m of Jews in a world of 8b people. And, the world was silent while half of the Jewish population was been literally exterminated. Even US was closed to Jews refugees.
When Zionism started "peaceful coexistence" was long since gone.
You are combining time periods over hundreds of years. Peaceful coexistence ended around 860 (and stated getting worse in 636 with the Siege of Jerusalem), while modern Zionism didn't start till 1840's - around 1,000 years later.
People sometimes talk about how Israel was mostly inhabited by Arabs before Israel was founded, but they neglect to inform that this was because of the numerous massacres against Jews who had been living there for thousands of years.
That's not really accurate. In relatively modern times:
"The official beginning of the construction of the New Yishuv in Palestine is usually dated ... 1882, .... Jewish immigration to Palestine started in earnest. Most immigrants came from the Russian Empire"
Russia is not in Europe.
Going further back Zionism got a strong boost when Rome was the center of power in Europe. This was around 1,700 years before Islam even existed.
And at the actual start of Zionism, the Celts and Carthaginians were important.
Zionism is ancient and it did not start as a result of the Holocaust. It predates virtually all other cultures.
Your "5 minutes of Googling" was a failure. Maybe spend a bit longer next time.
> What? Both culturally and geographically this is false.
Russia is in Asia, not Europe. And Russian culture is quite different from Western European culture (although obviously the further East you go in Europe, and the closer to Russia, the more it becomes similar).
> And the modern Herzl version of Zionism
The "Herzl Zionism" is not different from the ancient Zionism. Not sure what you are talking about with altars and red cows.
Zionism means Jews want to live in Israel, which has been their homeland for over 3,000 years.
For some reason this bothers people, perhaps because Israel has been invaded so many times people try to forget that Israel is the homeland of the Jews, rather than any of the other invaders to the region.
And even if you want to talk about Herzl his idea was not in response to events in Europe, aside from the fact that it started in Russia not Europe, there was no specific event he was responding to. He was just responding to Antisemitism in general.
Some people think Israel was founded in response to the Holocaust, and while the Holocaust accelerated the matter, the return of Jews to their homeland in Israel was a movement that long predated the Holocaust. If not for Arabs and their frequent massacres of Jews, there would have been a LOT more Jews in Israel even before the Holocaust.
During the rule of al-Mutawakkil, the tenth Abbasid Caliph, numerous restrictions reinforced the second-class citizen status of dhimmīs and forced their communities into ghettos.[15] For instance, they were required to distinguish themselves from their Muslim neighbors by their dress.[16] They were not permitted to build new churches or synagogues or repair old churches according to the Pact of Umar.
Is this an accurate portrayal of the good relations you describe or an exception? It's hard to find unbiased accounts of what Jewish-Islamic relations were like pre-israel, especially since both sides have an agenda to push.
There are examples of widespread persecution, but this is incredibly low effort. Al-Mutawakkil (who was Uzbek and Greek, for what it's worth) was a psychopath that didn't represent the general Islamic view. The pressures he placed on Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and even other internal Islamic sects was not a popular view. Christians were regularly teaming up with Muslims to riot against the bad leadership[0].
The idea that it was enforced is even more dubious. The decrees were racist, sure, but unlike his more insane personalized antics (like when he ordered a holy Zoroastrian tree be cut down and shipped to him so he can build his house out of it[1]) the vast majority of the Islamic world didn't agree or support any of it and it was unlikely that any of it was actually enforced. He had little support outside of the Turkic world and a North African militia group, and even that was far and few inbetween.
I'm not sure the articles you cited are enough to prove that all of his decrees went un-enforced but I appreciate the rebuttal and added context. What we can both agree on is there was widespread persecution and the relationship was not as rosy as some would claim.
You seem hell-bent on not compromising with his position despite writing we can both agree. Can you agree that in the more-than-a-millenia of history there were some rosy relationships without widespread persecution too?
Well, the more serious decrees (such as demolition of churches to punish Christian groups) didn't happen[0], so by extension we can assume that the much more minor ones weren't likely enforced either.
But yeah to call it all rosy is definitely rewriting history. All Abrahamic faiths are hyper-aggressive and whenever we've seen politicization of one we see the suffering of other faiths. Of course on differing degrees as different leaderships and empires came and went.
[0] Almost all of these churches were eventually destroyed/taken over later, sometimes centuries later, but not during his lifetime.
I do think that your comment almost understates the relationship: in 1917, an incredible 40% of Baghdad's population was Jewish.
The nature of historical Jewish-Islamic relations is obviously a matter of great political contention (especially now). It varied depending on the politics of the time and place—sometimes rich and peaceful (and indeed better than Europe) and sometimes tragic and violent—but for anyone casually curious, there is a dedicated Wikipedia article that I think is pretty good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...
Describing Arabs in Israel as first-class citizens is a bit starry-eyed, although they're certainly better off than their second-class non-citizen cousins across the Green Line though.
The fact that Israel carried out an intimidation campaign against Iraqi Jews to force them to immigrate is pretty much a mainstream historical discourse.[1]
And I thought that enforcement is a direct retribution because of a certain nation being created in 1948. The relation certainly plunges downhill after that.
I've known Israelis and Arab Israelis. I would NOT call them 'first class citizens', there is discrimination codified into law and most state entities.
Jewish Arab relations historically were ok, not something I’d call “very good”. Some paces better than others, some times better than others. Generally though Jews were still second class citizens in Arab nations.
Probably most people ignore the good relationship between Jews and Arabs because it is not taught or communicated, sadly, often. They participated in math, medicine, astronomy, and philosophy.
Right, while the Christian Europe was amidst a Dark Ages and was torturing and burning Jews and others, Islam was in its Golden Age period. Too bad it was short and Mongol hordes ended it, leaving a significant mark on the Islamic culture.
Just realized we are witnessing at the moment two wars (there are more, but these two just get significant news coverage) by cultures who were scarred by Mongols - Russia and Islamic Empire
The idea of "dark ages" is a myth (pun with the username intended), but if anything it applies to the early medieval age, which is exactly when anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe was... not very common, since persecution of Jews started later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_antisemitism
Yes. And zionism as a global political force is in large part, possibly mainly, funded and promoted by christian zionists, and not by jews.
Comment above implies a dichotomy between arab and jew which is wildly ahistorical.
To an extent the migration of jews to Israel from arab countries post-WWII was done by Israel, infamously the 'magic carpet' from Yemen for example.
As an aside, the urge among zionists to claim that muslims are the worst, OG colonizers is probably related to zionism being an explicitly colonial project, as stated by pretty much every influential early zionist. Cecil Rhodes was begged to help out due to his experience in this area, and the intimate relation between apartheid South Africa and Israel was in part made possible due to this similarity.
It's probably not taught in the US, but it's certainly taught in Israel, but they also include the periods after that when Arabs started massacring and prosecuting Jews.
It's not a single time period, a lot of stuff happened, and the relationship changed - and not because of Israel (history didn't start in 1948).
Israel is tiny and not influential in terms of global education. It is also studied in Jewish schools around the globe but also this is tiny comparing to the world itself.
1000% the current state of Islamo-Judaic relations is because of Israel. I really cannot fathom what alternate reality is otherwise.
How you want to decide who to blame for what is a different story, but the fact is what it is. History didn't begin in 1948, but the formation of Israel (which began before WWII) is what kicked off the current colder than ice relations between the two religions.
You didn't read my comment. The formation of Israel began earlier than 1948. Arabs and Jews didn't begin killing each other out of nowhere. They did it over land disagreements which began because of Zionism which was almost a century old and being implemented well before WWII came around. Please learn history and stop spreading disinfo
That's an ... interesting alternate history. But modern Zionism started in 1882, yet the Genocide of Safed was in 1834.
Reading the article about it it's clear the local authorities did not prosecute Jews as a policy - but, the local population was full of hate for Jews.
You see it over and over when reading the history of the area - the official policy allowed Jews, while the individual people wanted to kill the Jews. Nothing has changed today.
And the hate for Jews was obviously not because of modern Israel, since that didn't exist, not was even thought of.
If you think I'm saying anyone anywhere hating Jews in the modern day is only because of Israel, then we're on different wavelengths. The overall, global decline in healthy relations between the religions largely has its locus in the creation and sustaining of Israel. Just as there are violent clashes there are good interactions, but the current political reality has subdued the latter and increased the former.
It's the same way as the creation of modern Pakistan has substantially decreased good relations between Muslims and Hindus. The idea that either side is wholly evil and the opposite is justified in its hate is completely contrary to everything we know about human beings. The average Hindu is very amenable to growing animosity towards Muslims when he sees his nation's arch rival, an ethno-religious state, send spies over the border, orchestrate bombings, etc. And that's how many in the Muslim world feel about Israel who has also orchestrated bombings, assassinations, etc. in their countries.
You are rewriting history. WHY did the creation of Israel have to be associated with bad relationships? After all the Jews purchased all the land they were going to live on, and the partition gave them empty land. And it's not like it was their national land - it was not a country. It was only personal land, and that was exchanged via purchase.
The Arabs responded with anger and a war. The reason is that hate by Arabs long predates this time period. Have a look:
Sorry for the sidetrack, but that is such an incredibly beautiful object, with those delicate etched hyperbolae. So much skill and craft went into making it and you can see that it is a superbly-designed practical tool that was well-used. It's quite humbling to see things like that.
69 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadI see the expression I think you referenced logically right: Jews lived for thousand years even if there were other religions there, Pagans (not Christians) included. That is any other faiths.
Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and "Christian countries" is both inaccurate (Jews weren't considered pagans) and overly-simplistic (state religions aren't a solid, fixed thing, especially over large areas before modern communication). While the Arab conquests were significant, not every Muslim country was converted "by the sword": there's even debate over whether the Muslim citizens of the early caliphates were, since such a small group, while large enough to conquer, would surely find it tricky to police the day-to-day behaviour and practices of so many people. (The Mongol Empire didn't manage to eliminate the practice of Islam in the areas under its control, despite ritual washing being punishable by summary execution, so it's plausible that Islam is just that persuasive.)
That's not what the post said. Just that, before Islam was even a thing, those countries that Jews lived in which these days are considered "Muslim countries" were broadly "pagan" and/or "christian", depending on time and location.
As for your assertion of no christian countries thousands of years ago, where you state yourself "Armenia converting about 1715-ish years ago": That's thousands of years (as in: more than 1000)
Is irrelevant, since we're talking about the 11th century. (I can't find a good 11th-century map to point at, but the article describes enough to give the impression of how different it was back then.)
When/where did the Mongol empire ever try to eliminate the practice if Islam? They definitely shed a lot of blood and destruction in the Muslim world, but afaik the point was never to eliminate Islam, but just territorial conquest. The Mongols were famously tolerant of diverse religions within their borders. Many Mongol rulers even converted to Islam.
Of course, history is vast and multifaceted, so you might be talking about a different time/place than I am.
> Now the subtext here, which Li doesn't come right out and say, but is kinda understood for a contemporary: when the Mongols forbade people from washing in the rivers, that means that if they caught you going into the river to wash, they would kill you on the spot; because that was a taboo in the Mongol religious system. Now that was a problem if you were a Muslim who had come under Mongol rule, because Muslims of course do ritual washings before prayers, and in central Asia they would very often just go down to the local stream or river to do the washings. But if a Mongol saw them doing that, they would go over there and strike them down and kill them. And there are accounts – not in this account, but there are accounts in other historical works from the period, particularly from Muslim writers – that talk about, it was not uncommon for Muslims to be killed by Mongols in this way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Taymiyya
Other branches of Islamic history such as the Ottomams were also colonisers.
Don't forget Muhammad himself was a warlord.
You might want to look into the Roman slave trade.
Rome? Greece? What are you even talking about?
> FWIW slavery is still ongoing, today, in some muslim countries
Also in the USA [1] and EU [2].
Spare us the "europeans are peaceful / muslims evil" angle please.
[1] https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie... [2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00130...
There are 16m of Jews in a world of 8b people. And, the world was silent while half of the Jewish population was been literally exterminated. Even US was closed to Jews refugees.
You are combining time periods over hundreds of years. Peaceful coexistence ended around 860 (and stated getting worse in 636 with the Siege of Jerusalem), while modern Zionism didn't start till 1840's - around 1,000 years later.
Possibly prompted by the Arab massacres in 1834: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed
People sometimes talk about how Israel was mostly inhabited by Arabs before Israel was founded, but they neglect to inform that this was because of the numerous massacres against Jews who had been living there for thousands of years.
"The official beginning of the construction of the New Yishuv in Palestine is usually dated ... 1882, .... Jewish immigration to Palestine started in earnest. Most immigrants came from the Russian Empire"
Russia is not in Europe.
Going further back Zionism got a strong boost when Rome was the center of power in Europe. This was around 1,700 years before Islam even existed.
And at the actual start of Zionism, the Celts and Carthaginians were important.
Zionism is ancient and it did not start as a result of the Holocaust. It predates virtually all other cultures.
Your "5 minutes of Googling" was a failure. Maybe spend a bit longer next time.
Russia is in Asia, not Europe. And Russian culture is quite different from Western European culture (although obviously the further East you go in Europe, and the closer to Russia, the more it becomes similar).
> And the modern Herzl version of Zionism
The "Herzl Zionism" is not different from the ancient Zionism. Not sure what you are talking about with altars and red cows.
Zionism means Jews want to live in Israel, which has been their homeland for over 3,000 years.
For some reason this bothers people, perhaps because Israel has been invaded so many times people try to forget that Israel is the homeland of the Jews, rather than any of the other invaders to the region.
And even if you want to talk about Herzl his idea was not in response to events in Europe, aside from the fact that it started in Russia not Europe, there was no specific event he was responding to. He was just responding to Antisemitism in general.
Some people think Israel was founded in response to the Holocaust, and while the Holocaust accelerated the matter, the return of Jews to their homeland in Israel was a movement that long predated the Holocaust. If not for Arabs and their frequent massacres of Jews, there would have been a LOT more Jews in Israel even before the Holocaust.
Is this an accurate portrayal of the good relations you describe or an exception? It's hard to find unbiased accounts of what Jewish-Islamic relations were like pre-israel, especially since both sides have an agenda to push.
The idea that it was enforced is even more dubious. The decrees were racist, sure, but unlike his more insane personalized antics (like when he ordered a holy Zoroastrian tree be cut down and shipped to him so he can build his house out of it[1]) the vast majority of the Islamic world didn't agree or support any of it and it was unlikely that any of it was actually enforced. He had little support outside of the Turkic world and a North African militia group, and even that was far and few inbetween.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homs_revolts_(854%E2%80%93855)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_of_Kashmar
But yeah to call it all rosy is definitely rewriting history. All Abrahamic faiths are hyper-aggressive and whenever we've seen politicization of one we see the suffering of other faiths. Of course on differing degrees as different leaderships and empires came and went.
[0] Almost all of these churches were eventually destroyed/taken over later, sometimes centuries later, but not during his lifetime.
The nature of historical Jewish-Islamic relations is obviously a matter of great political contention (especially now). It varied depending on the politics of the time and place—sometimes rich and peaceful (and indeed better than Europe) and sometimes tragic and violent—but for anyone casually curious, there is a dedicated Wikipedia article that I think is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Racism_agains...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bomb...
Here’s a wiki article that captures some the past issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world
Just realized we are witnessing at the moment two wars (there are more, but these two just get significant news coverage) by cultures who were scarred by Mongols - Russia and Islamic Empire
Comment above implies a dichotomy between arab and jew which is wildly ahistorical.
To an extent the migration of jews to Israel from arab countries post-WWII was done by Israel, infamously the 'magic carpet' from Yemen for example.
As an aside, the urge among zionists to claim that muslims are the worst, OG colonizers is probably related to zionism being an explicitly colonial project, as stated by pretty much every influential early zionist. Cecil Rhodes was begged to help out due to his experience in this area, and the intimate relation between apartheid South Africa and Israel was in part made possible due to this similarity.
It's not a single time period, a lot of stuff happened, and the relationship changed - and not because of Israel (history didn't start in 1948).
How you want to decide who to blame for what is a different story, but the fact is what it is. History didn't begin in 1948, but the formation of Israel (which began before WWII) is what kicked off the current colder than ice relations between the two religions.
So all the massacres of Jews by Arabs before 1948 were done via time machine?
> is what kicked off the current colder than ice relations between the two religions.
This is laughably false.
Reading the article about it it's clear the local authorities did not prosecute Jews as a policy - but, the local population was full of hate for Jews.
You see it over and over when reading the history of the area - the official policy allowed Jews, while the individual people wanted to kill the Jews. Nothing has changed today.
And the hate for Jews was obviously not because of modern Israel, since that didn't exist, not was even thought of.
It's the same way as the creation of modern Pakistan has substantially decreased good relations between Muslims and Hindus. The idea that either side is wholly evil and the opposite is justified in its hate is completely contrary to everything we know about human beings. The average Hindu is very amenable to growing animosity towards Muslims when he sees his nation's arch rival, an ethno-religious state, send spies over the border, orchestrate bombings, etc. And that's how many in the Muslim world feel about Israel who has also orchestrated bombings, assassinations, etc. in their countries.
The Arabs responded with anger and a war. The reason is that hate by Arabs long predates this time period. Have a look:
https://www.jewishrefugees.org.uk/2011/01/massacre-of-jews-b...
You are writing as if Israel was some "new change" that made Arabs mad, but that's not the case, it's simply a continuation of what never changed.