Comment by reissbaker
1 year ago
Jews were legal second class citizens and were treated terribly, e.g. being banned from wearing shoes in Morocco, and when the ban was overturned, so many Jews were murdered in riots that the community asked for shoes to be banned again.
https://twitter.com/TaliaRinger/status/1738328128999575931
And it's not just Morocco; Yemen for example had official state policy of kidnapping Jewish orphans to forcibly convert them to Islam. Baghdad massacred Jews starting in the 1820s, long before Israel existed. The Damascus affair was in 1840: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair
Dhimmi status is bad! It's not as bad as being pagan in Muslim countries historically, where you could just legally be killed if you didn't convert to Islam. And at times it was better than Europe, which more-frequently murdered its Jews. But it was bad, and it was bad long, long before Israel. There's a reason Mizrahi Jews form the right-wing base in Israel — it's not because it was good.
>Dhimmi status is bad!
Except that doesn't seem to the be the case in the context of the time for specifically the Jewish communities living in Muslim-controlled regions? Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi - "Generally, the Jewish people were allowed to practice their religion and live according to the laws and scriptures of their community. Furthermore, the restrictions to which they were subject were social and symbolic rather than tangible and practical in character. That is to say, these regulations served to define the relationship between the two communities, and not to oppress the Jewish population." There's a section on Jews on that page that seems unanimous in the view that while dhimmi status was not as good as being a muslim citizen, it was a better than what they had either before the Muslims took over or what they had available elsewhere. It's weird to label what is generally an improvement in living conditions/social regard as stemming from deep-seated discrimination.
Per atrocities - of course there were atrocities committed against Jews. Just as there were atrocities committed by basically every long-lived group against every long-lived group in their territories. No one is stupid enough to say that Muslims have never persecuted Jews, just as they wouldn't say that Christians have never persecuted Jews, or that Muslims never persecuted Christians, or that Christians never persecuted Muslims, or that those groups never persecuted themselves in schisms and internicine warfare. But the impression that Islam is fundamentally and necessarily opposed to the practice of the Jewish faith is fairly contradicted by even the history of dhimma. As the first paragraph of that Wikipedia page states; 'Dhimmī... is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection. The word literally means "protected person", referring to the state's obligation under sharia to protect the individual's life, property, as well as freedom of religion, in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the jizya tax, in contrast to the zakat, or obligatory alms, paid by the Muslim subjects. Dhimmi were exempt from certain duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation.'
On the other hand, look at how the Jews were treated during the Islamic Golden Age in Spain; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_i... ("The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, intermittently, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished."). It's hard to square that with the idea that there is this deep-seated hatred among Muslims towards Jews as the GP stated.
My point is that conflict between the two sides is not inevitable, nor is this idea of extreme latent anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim world really true. Purges and persecution that people bring up are probably not caused by ancestral hatred, but rather the same thing that causes every society to suddenly fall into itself in violence and accusation; uncertain economic conditions, unstable political environments, natural disaster, epidemics, war, idiotic rulership, etc.
Except that doesn't seem to the be the case in the context of the time
I think not being allowed to wear shoes and being murdered in mass riots when the Sultan allows you to wear shoes is bad. To my eyes there is very little difference between the level of hatred then and now, it's just that the power dynamic has changed, so I think blaming the Muslim world's anti-Semitism on Israel's existence (like the OP did) isn't really based in historical fact. There was anti-Semitism long before Israel existed, and it's not like it was getting better prior to its establishment — the stuff in Yemen was happening through the 20th century, under Ottoman rule (and plenty of other bad stuff, e.g. "Dung Gatherer" laws requiring Jews to perform latrine servicing for Muslims).
This does not address any of the points I raised. You're just reiterating what you already wrote. Here's an abbreviated summary of the history;
1. Jews exist in a region.
2. Muslims take over. Conditions improve for the Jews.
3. Time passes.
4. Muslim civilization declines.
5. Internal strife and conflict. Among others, Jews are blamed.
6. Commenters 1000 years later; "This was caused by incipient hatred of Jews by Muslims."
This does not explain why conditions improved when Muslims originally rose to power in various regions. Again, the persecution of minority population is an expected result of the decline of civilizations. From the Wikipedia article your Twitter source is quoting, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Moroccan_Jews: "Morocco's instability and divisions also fueled conflicts, for which Jews were frequent scapegoats. The First Franco-Moroccan War in 1844 brought new misery and ill treatment upon the Moroccan Jews, especially upon those of Mogador (known as Essaouira). When the Hispano-Moroccan War broke out on September 22, 1859, the Mellah of Tetuan was sacked, and many Jews fled to Cadiz and Gibraltar for refuge. Upon the 1860 Spanish seizure of Tetouan in the Hispano-Moroccan War, the pogrom-stricken Jewish community, who spoke archaic Spanish, welcomed the invading Spanish troops as liberators, and collaborated with the Spanish authorities as brokers and translators during the 27-month-long occupation of the city." This is a nation in decline, lashing out at every perceived cause of trouble, like plague-stricken Europeans slaying cats and dogs and flagellating themselves.
Here are some other quotes from that article;
"The golden age of the Jewish community in Fez lasted for almost three hundred years, from the 9th to 11th centuries. Its yeshivot (religious schools) attracted brilliant scholars, poets and grammarians. This period was marred by a pogrom in 1033, which is described by the Jewish Virtual Library as an isolated event primarily due to political conflict between the Maghrawa and Ifrenid tribes."
"The position of the Jews under Almoravid domination was apparently free of major abuses, though there are reports of increasing social hostility against them – particularly in Fes. Unlike the problems encountered by the Jews during the rule of the Almohads (the Almoravids' successor dynasty), there are not many factual complaints of excesses, coercion, or malice on the part of the authorities toward the Jewish communities."
"During Marinid rule, Jews were able to return to their religion and practices, once again outwardly professing their Judaism under the protection of the dhimmi status. They were able to re-establish their lives and communities, returning to some sense of normalcy and security. They also established strong vertical relations with the Marinid sultans. When the still-fanatic mobs attacked them in 1275{note; no source for this on the Wikipedia page, no link; unable to find what this is referring to}, the Merinid sultan Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Abd Al-Haqq intervened personally to save them. The sovereigns of this dynasty benevolently received the Jewish ambassadors of the Christian kings of Spain and admitted Jews among their closest courtiers."
This is not what I would expect of a civilization that is fundamentally racist towards Jews. I would not expect, for example, a Louisiana governor in the 18th century to appoint a black man to be his advisor, yet we see Jews in the position of vizier in Morocco. This does not square.
Racism is not the most useful lens to view this relationship through. The culture of the Middle East is low-trust compared to post-Enlightenment Western societies. There remain sharp social divisions based on old tribal allegiances in even developed nations there (unsurprising, perhaps; there remain living people who remember that this tribe used to be slavers and that tribe killed our uncle and so on). Lashing out at neighbors who one thinks are being treated too favorably has little to do with race or religion, in my experience, and more to do with envy. It is the narcissism of small differences writ large and exacerbated by actual stakes.
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Knowledgeable, level-headed and sensible comment- thanks.