Isidor Gunsberg wrote:

This is a canard. The Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and and
Buddhism, were much more hospitable to Jews than were Muslim. Islam
accorded "people of the book" (eg Christians and Jews) a protected
status of being "tolerated", which was known as Dhimmitude. At BEST,
the Muslim treatment of Jews would have been quite similar to the
treatment of blacks in the South, during the "Jim Crow" era. Jews and
Christians were systematically discriminated against. Often, Muslims
engaged in pograms against the Jews. Even during the "Golden Era" in
Spain, life was rather insecure for the Jews.

In Islamdom, Jews generally avoided the depths of persecution that
they had to endure in Christian lands. However, they were also never
able to rise to the levels of status that they could occasionally
obtain in Christendom during the "good times"

Here are a few extracts from "The History of anti-Semitism" by Leon
Poliakov, volume II (From Mohammed to the Marranos).

'The Palestinian sage Johanan ben Zakai spoke otherwise, and he was subtler
and more profound:

'"Why were the Jews exiled to Babylonia? Because their ancestor Abraham had
come from there. It is like a woman misbehaving towards her husband. To
whom does he send her? He sends her back to her father's house".

'Such was the oasis that for nearly a thousand years harbored the principal
center of Judaism, the place where the Talmud was codified in its
definitive form, the place whose influence and prestige were recognised
throughout the Dispersion. The Arab conquest, ..., helped to intensify that
predominance, and although the Seljuk invasions put an end to it three or
four centuries later, an important Jewish colony still survived in
Mesopotamia until our time-until 1950, to be exact.' (page 10)

'In southern Tunisia there were even tribes of Jewish troglodytes who lived
in caves cut into the limestone. All observers have been struck by the
poverty of the North African Jews, and the Arabs regard them with that
traditional disdain which goes back to the era of conquering Islam, when
the special laws were enacted for the dhimmis, or "protected" Jews and
Christians, meaning that they were entitled to the protection of the
Believers but were required to live in abasement.

'... several centuries before Christ, Semitic colonisers, the same ones who
founded Carthage, had imposed on North Africa their culture and also their
language-a language that was much closer to Hebrew than to Aramaic or
Arabic.

'... remarkable magic tablets have been discovered on the site of the port
of Hadrumetum, bearing the name of Jehovah, sometimes invoked alone,
sometimes invoked along with other divinities. ... from earliest times the
Jews came and settled in North Africa in the wake of the Phoenicians,
preparing the terrain for the spread of Judaism. And, consequently, for
Christianity. Thus it is easier to understand why, in the first centuries
after Christ, and before Islam, "in the period which extends from
Tertullian and Cyprian to Augustine, North Africa instructed all the
Christianity of the West."

'For their part, the Fathers of the Church, ..., often mention how ancient
and prosperous were the Jewish colonies of Mauretania, Numidia, and Libya.
Just as in other parts of the World, Judaism spread in these regions at
least as much through proselytism as through immigration-perhaps more. ...
The gradual and silent disappearance of the old Phoenician colonisers can
probably be explained precisely by their conversion to Judaism.

'...we know for sure that in the north numerous Berber tribes eventually
adopted Judaism. The cult of Jehovah was a powerful cohesive and unifying
factor for them at the time of the battles that pitted them against the
Roman Empire. When Christianity became the official religion of the
state, ... the ancient Jewish coastal colonies, ..., eventually faded and
disappeared, as did the various heretical Christian sects. The result was
that Judaism finally survived in North Africa ... among the fierce warriors
of the interior.

'When the waves of conquering Islam began to break over these regions ...
the Judaised Berber tribes put up a long and stubborn resistance to the
Arabs. Their principal stronghold was the Aures mountains, which had always
been hospitable to rebels... According to the historian Ibn Adhari, after
destroying Carthage the Arab general Hassan inquired who was the most
powerful chief in Africa ... "It is a woman named El-Kahina, who lives in
the Aures ... were she to be killed, the whole Maghreb would submit to
you ...".

'... according to a local legend, as late as the seventeenth century, the
Jews of Tilatou exacted tribute from the surrounding Moslem
peoples.' (pages 11 to 15)

'here are the terms and conditions-a dozen of them-of the famous "Umar
pact."

'There were six essential conditions:

'The dhimmis shall not make any use of the Koran in jest and shall not
falsify its text.

'They shall not speak of the Prophet falsely or contemptuously.

'They shall not speak of the cult of Islam irreverently or derisively.

'They shall not touch a Moslem woman nor seek to marry her.

'They shall not attempt to lead a Moslem from his faith nor make any attempt
against his property or his life.

'They shall not give succor to the enemy nor harbor spies.

'Breaking any of these six conditions would nullify the treaty and deprive
the dhimmis of Moslem protection.

'There were six more conditions that were regarded as desirable; violation
of these was punishable by fines or other penalties, but did not nullify
the treaty of protection:

'The dhimmis shall wear the ghiyar, a distinctive sign, which was ordinarily
yellow for Jews, blue for Christians.' (Note: for the Arabs of that time,
the colour yellow did not have the perjorative sense that it later had in
Europe.)

'They shall not ring their bells nor read their books aloud, nor what they
tell of Ezra and the Messiah Jesus.

'They shall not drink wine in public nor display their crosses or their
swine.

'They shall bury their dead in silence and not allow their lamentations or
sounds of mourning to be heard.

'They shall not ride horses, neither thoroughbred nor common; they may,
however, ride mules or asses.

'To these twelve conditions, so revealing of the mixture of scorn and
benevolence which characterised the Moslems' attitudes towards the
unbelievers, must be added a thirteenth, which was absolutely basic: the
dhimmis must pay tribute in two different forms, the Kharaj, which was the
land tax ..., and the jizya, a poll tax to be paid by adult men "wearing
the beard". The famous jurist Mawerdi commented: "It was demanded with a
degree of contempt, for it was payment demanded of the dhimmis for their
infidelity; but it was also a gentle demand, for it was renumeration paid
for the shelter we gave them".

'Thus, a sort of organic symbiosis developed between conquerer and conquered
that, with a few passing exceptions, made it possible for Jewish and
Christian districts to exist peacefully and prosperously in all parts of
the Islamic Empire until our time.' (pages 36-37)

'It would be wrong to conclude from all this that the status of the Jews
under Islam was always flourishing. In the eastern part of the empire there
were sporadic persecutions, directed at both the Jewish and the Christian
dhimmis. The best known, and perhaps the cruelest, was that of the Fatamid
caliph Hakim, who in 1012 had all the churches in Egypt and Palestine
destroyed and prohibited the practise of all religions other than Islam. It
is significant that the only way the Moslem historians could explain this
decision was to attribute it to a sudden madness of the Caliph. In the
Western part of the empire ... .In the twelfth century, first under the
Almoravides dynasty and then under the Almohades, there were fierce
persecutions from which, ..., the Jews often escaped by taking refuge in
Christian territory. .... It has been established, ..., the Shi'ites were
responsible for many of the persecutions we know about, such as those of
Yemen (one of which, around 1172, inspired Maimonides to write his
epistle, ...).' (pages 74-75)


Turning now to Moorish Spain.

'Generally speaking, the Christians under Moslem domination-the
Mozarabes-participated fully in all aspects of civilisation. ... They do
not seem to have had to wear any special insignia, ... the Mozarabes were
rarely persecuted.

'It was the same with the Jews. ... The poet Sa'id sang of Andalucia as the
land "where children and Jews are polite and honest instinctively." ...

'Born into a rich family in Cordova, Hasdai ben Isaac ibn Shaprut, the Abu
Yusuf of the Arab chroniclers, ... Abd-ar-Rahman III, the prince who assmed
the title of caliph ..., made him part of his retinue .. and availed
himself of the ability and prestige of his doctor for confidential and
diplomatic missions. In this capacity Hasdai ibn Shaprut became involved in
the disputes of the Christian kings of the north of the peninsular. ...

'... Spanish Judaism flourished ...' (pages 90-92)

'Abu-Ibrahim Samuel ben Yosef Halevi ibn Nagrela, to call him by his full
Arabic name, was born in Cordova in 993 to a rich Jewish family. .... he
gained the confidence of king Habbus. Remarkably, he was appointed to
command troops .... (page 93)

'... in 839 it was Saragossa where Bodo, the emperor's deacon who converted
to Judaism, took refuge and was circumcised.' (page 96)


Regards,

Simon.