Comment by reissbaker
1 year ago
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.
Not quite.
“In 638, Palestine came under Muslim rule with the Muslim conquest of the Levant. One estimate placed the Jewish population of Palestine at between 300,000 and 400,000 at the time.[87] However, this is contrary to other estimates which place it at 150,000 to 200,000 at the time of the revolt against Heraclius.[88][89] According to historian Moshe Gil, the majority of the population was Jewish or Samaritan.[90] The land gradually came to have an Arab majority as Arab tribes migrated there. Jewish communities initially grew and flourished. Umar allowed and encouraged Jews to settle in Jerusalem. It was the first time in about 500 years that Jews were allowed to freely enter and worship in their holiest city. In 717, new restrictions were imposed against non-Muslims that negatively affected the Jews. Heavy taxes on agricultural land forced many Jews to migrate from rural areas to towns. Social and economic discrimination caused significant Jewish emigration from Palestine, and Muslim civil wars in the 8th and 9th centuries pushed many Jews out of the country. By the end of the 11th century the Jewish population of Palestine had declined substantially.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora
You make it sound like they were treated like equals and then only discriminated against many centuries later in a decline. But really, history shows us that they were initially treated well for a few years as they had just been conquered (a classic historical power solidification move) but were then treated terribly the entire rest of the time under Muslim conquest.
>By the end of the 11th century the Jewish population of Palestine had declined substantially.
Holy shit that's burying the lede. Do you know what happened in Palestine, specifically Jerusalem, at the end of the 11th century?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade
"On 15 July 1099, the crusaders made their way into the city through the tower of David and began massacring large numbers of the inhabitants, Muslims and Jews alike. The Fatimid governor of the city, Iftikhar Ad-Daulah, managed to escape.[16] According to eyewitness accounts the streets of Jerusalem were filled with blood. How many people were killed is a matter of debate, with the figure of 70,000 given by the Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir (writing c.1200) considered to be a significant exaggeration; 40,000 is plausible, given the city's population had been swollen by refugees fleeing the advance of the crusading army.[17]
The aftermath of the siege led to the mass slaughter of thousands of Muslims and Jews which contemporaneous sources suggest was savage and widespread and to the conversion of Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount into Christian shrines.[18][19]
Atrocities committed against the inhabitants of cities taken by storm after a siege were normal in ancient[20] and medieval warfare by both Christians and Muslims. The crusaders had already done so at Antioch, and Fatimids had done so themselves at Taormina, at Rometta, and at Tyre. However, it is speculated that the massacre of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, both Muslims and Jews, may have exceeded even these standards."
And yes, the various Muslim powers at the time were in steep decline; if they weren't, they should easily have been able to defeat an army as poorly organized as the First Crusade was. The fact that just before the crusaders arrived, every powerful leader in the region died is basically the closest they came to actual divine intervention.
1 reply →
I don't think you can excuse anti-Semitism in the last 200 years because 1000 years ago there was less anti-Semitism, or conclude that because 1000 years ago was less anti-Semitic that "racism is not the most useful lens to view this relationship through;" after all, European anti-Black racism was much better 1000 years ago, too (a Black military commander was not even particularly unusual in the 1600s, as evidenced by Shakespeare!), and your Louisiana example is from the same time period that the Muslim world's anti-Semitism was running rampant, too. Your theory of economic decline being the reason for anti-Semitism doesn't hold water for the examples I gave of the Ottoman Empire, whose precipitous decline came in the 20th century, yet whose anti-Semitism arose in the 19th century. [1] Scholars don't blame the Ottoman anti-Semitism on economic malaise, but instead point to it being imported by Christian Arabs from Europe:
Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries.[38] According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized").
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ott...
You realize that the evidence you bring up actually proves the argument I've been making, don't you?
>Scholars don't blame the Ottoman anti-Semitism on economic malaise, but instead point to it being imported by Christian Arabs from Europe
So this was not a latent feature of Islam or Muslim culture, but an import from a more anti-Semitic culture (of course, the word Semitic here is not quite correct, given that Arabs are also Semites - I don't know why that word is preferred when the actual meaning being conveyed is anti-Jewish). The original poster I was responding to said this;
>the issue of anti-Semitism long pre-dates the establishment of Israel
Perhaps that poster only meant that anti-Jewish sentiment rose in the region a few decades previous, but the most common way I have heard of that belief, it comes from a "clash of civilizations" mindset that holds that the region has been rabidly anti-Jewish for many centuries.
Also, to your point that the Ottoman Empire only began declining in the 20th century, see https://www.britannica.com/topic/decline-of-the-Ottoman-Empi...: "But the grandeur of the Ottoman Empire did not last, and Süleyman’s rule was followed by a slow and arduous decline that spanned nearly four centuries."
3 replies →