chapman Billy wrote in
message ...
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"

Based on what he has written in the chess newsgroups, "Isidor Gunsberg"
evidently prefers to draw his 'facts' about Muslims and Islam from some
favourite sources--'A Cry in the Silence' by Brigitte Bardot and
'The Rage and the Pride' by Oriana Fallaci--of extremely dubious value.

"I think the hard-hitting book by Oriana Fallaci has more merit,
but I'm sure that Bardot makes some useful points."
--"Isidor Gunsberg" (11 June 2004, "Kasparov on the War in Iraq!")

Both Brigitte Bardot and Oriana Fallaci are far from being, in knowledge
or in 'objective' methods, scholars of Islam or the history of Muslims.
In fact, Brigitte Bardot was recently convicted by a French court of
'inciting racial hatred' against all Muslims in France on account of what
she had written in her book of which "Isidor Gunsberg" is "sure that (it)
makes some useful points". Oriana Fallaci's book has been denounced by
human rights watch groups, such as the European Observatory on Racism
(based in Brussels) as racist for its 'violent and insulting tone' and
content that's 'explicitly anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-immmigrant'.

"They (Muslims) breed like rats, and they **** in baptismal fonts."
--Oriana Fallaci ('The Rage and the Pride', translated from the Italian)

In response to Oriana Fallaci's book, here's an article, "The Bible of the
Muslim Haters" by Rana Kabbani (who lives in Paris) for 'The Guardian':

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...731076,00.html

Anyone sincerely interested in studying Islamic history and cultures, for both
its favourable and unfavourable points, should find far more authoritative
sources of information than the books by Brigitte Bardot and Oriana Fallaci.

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)

Simon has found some interesting excerpts from books on history.

I once met an American television presenter who was being considered to host
a local television 'special' about the roots of conflict in the Middle East.
But the amount of her ignorance and misinformation was simply overwhelming.
She told me that she believed that the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict
was the inevitable direct result of 'two thousand years of Muslims, from the
top to the bottom, hating all Jews', which completely ignored the facts that
Islam is much less than two thousand years old and broadly had a historical
record, until recently, of tolerance toward Jews than seems better than
European Christendom's.

"On Monday morning, July 18 (1921), Jewish, Christian, and Arab notables
gathered in the courtyard of the Grand Rabbi's official house (in Baghdad)...
The heavy Torah, encased in gold cylinders, was removed from the Ark and
carried first to the Grand Rabbi, who kissed it and then to Faisal, who
repeated the gesture. Next, the future Emir (of Iraq) was presented with a
gold copy of the Ten Commandments and a beautifully bound copy of the Talmud.
....
At the end of the ceremonies Faisal stood up. 'There is no meaning in the words
Jews, Muslims and Christians in the terminology of patriotism', he told the
crowd; 'there is simply a country called Iraq, and all are Iraqis. I ask
my countrymen the Iraqis to be only Iraqis because we all belong to one stock,
the stock of our ancestor Shem; we all belong to that noble race, and there is
no distinction between Muslim, Christian and Jew."

--Janet Wallach (Desert Queen, p. 314)

Here's an interview with Avi Shlaim, an Israeli historian at Oxford University:
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer223/223_...interview.html

"What's been called 'the lachrymose version of Jewish history' is an
Ashkenazi (European Jewish) version of Jewish and Israeli history which
is not supported by the experience of the Jews in Arab countries until 1948.
We come from Iraq. For my parents, Iraq was the Garden of Eden. They were
very nostalgic about it. There weren't any real problems between Jews and
Arabs until the state of Israel was established. So the broad experience
of Jews under Arab rule does not support what has been called 'the lachrymose
version of Jewish history'. ..."
--Avi Shlaim (10 May 2002)

In my view, the existence of a broad (though imperfect) historical record of
tolerance of Jews in Muslim societies is a favourable sign for the future.
If Jews, Christians, and Muslims could live together in comparative peace
before, then why cannot they do so again in the same places?

--Nick