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Antisemitism in Islam: Difference between revisions
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According to many modern, critically-oriented and source-skeptical historians of Islam, it is likely that Muhammad himself was not hostile to Medinan Jews. These historians argue that many verses in the [[Qur'an]] (which is generally considered a source contemporary to Muhammad) that directly address the fate of Muhammad's contemporary Jews are rather tolerant and that truly violent intolerance would have been unlikely to emerge from the highly cosmopolitan environment of pre-Islamic Arabia. This, they argue, contrasts sharply with the much later [[hadith]] sources which are frequently intensely vitriolic in their address of Jews and record such events as the expulsions, persecution, enslavement, and [[The Massacre of the Banu Qurayza|execution of Medinan Jews]] en masse. Historians who incline towards this line of reasoning argue that this content found in the hadith was only invented later by Muslim authorities as polemical material to employ against Jews and Judaism. Not all historians are convinced by these arguments, however, as indirect mention of the Jews in the Quran itself is often highly critical and at times straightforwardly insulting. This debate is, however, a strictly academic one, and mainstream Islamic scholars stand firmly by the narrative found in the hadith literature. | According to many modern, critically-oriented and source-skeptical historians of Islam, it is likely that Muhammad himself was not hostile to Medinan Jews. These historians argue that many verses in the [[Qur'an]] (which is generally considered a source contemporary to Muhammad) that directly address the fate of Muhammad's contemporary Jews are rather tolerant and that truly violent intolerance would have been unlikely to emerge from the highly cosmopolitan environment of pre-Islamic Arabia. This, they argue, contrasts sharply with the much later [[hadith]] sources which are frequently intensely vitriolic in their address of Jews and record such events as the expulsions, persecution, enslavement, and [[The Massacre of the Banu Qurayza|execution of Medinan Jews]] en masse. Historians who incline towards this line of reasoning argue that this content found in the hadith was only invented later by Muslim authorities as polemical material to employ against Jews and Judaism. Not all historians are convinced by these arguments, however, as indirect mention of the Jews in the Quran itself is often highly critical and at times straightforwardly insulting. This debate is, however, a strictly academic one, and mainstream Islamic scholars stand firmly by the narrative found in the hadith literature. | ||
==Islamic | ==Islamic, Western/Christian, and modern antisemitism== | ||
Any notion of Islamic antisemitism must be distinguished, through both comparison and contrast, from the | Any notion of Islamic antisemitism must be distinguished, through both comparison and contrast, from the form of antisemitism which has, and in a few places continues to, oppress Jews in the (usually Christian) West. The English term of antisemitism is usually used to refer to the Western hatred of Jews by Christians which, at least historically, was deeply rooted in Christian religious beliefs about the status of Jews as a people responsible for the murder (deicide) of God in the form of Jesus Christ. There was also the idea of the failure of the Jews to embrace the New Testament and the new covenant with God advanced by Christians. These two ideas, coupled with historical allusions to the religious failures of early Jews according the Old Testament and stereotypes about Jews (such as their financial cunning and exaggerated physique) which accreted in the centuries after Jesus' demise, worked together to constitute a uniquely acute and religious hatred of the Jewish people which in some ways, if not formally than practically, almost amounted to a Christian religious doctrine. | ||
What can be termed "Islamic antisemitism" is in part similar and in part different from the legacy of antisemitism found in the West. Islamic antisemitism shares in common with its Christian counterpart a vague reliance on the religious failures of the ancient Hebrews as recorded in the Old Testament (and later the Quran) as well as on the failure of Jews to convert, en masse, to the follow-up religion (in this case Islam). Islam, however, lacks such an acute and and loaded accusation against the post-Islamic Jews as the Christian charge of deicide. Consequently, the Jews are perceived as having historically disappointed God but not as being uniquely sinful to an extent as extreme as deicide. Still, some would argue that where Islam lacks such a loaded accusation against the Jews, it more than compensated in its depiction of Muhammad singling them out for persecution in the hadith literature. Whereas Jesus' victimhood to the Jews motivates Christian antisemitism, Muhammad's (perhaps mythical) victimization of the Jews motivates Islamic antisemitism. | |||
=== Defining Semites === | |||
Technically, Arabs, Ethiopians, and Assyrians can be described as Semitic people, however in the context of "Anti-Semitism" it is commonly understood to refer to people who identify as Jewish. | Technically, Arabs, Ethiopians, and Assyrians can be described as Semitic people, however in the context of "Anti-Semitism" it is commonly understood to refer to people who identify as Jewish. | ||