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The Jews of Islam

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This book examines the presence and role of the Jews in Islam, with a treatment that spans not only through the text of the Quran, but also an application of the laws and injunctions contained in the the practice of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, by the Islamic jurists.

While the book attempts to dispel the notion of muslims as being intolerant, it does not shy away to bring about a factual realization embodied in texts, particularly historical texts, that formed the basis of records maintained by the islamic governments, particularly during the Ottoman regime.

The role of the Jews, not only as a presence among the muslim communities, but also a treatment of the various traditions that served to be shared and transmitted in both the religions, is treated at length.

While the discussion of Jews as a religious minority forms the basis of the book, it is nevertheless impossible to treat them alone, since Christians and their attitude towards the Jews as well as Muslims, served to demonstrate the intricacy of the social fabric existent between them, interwoven with the many realities that spanned beyond the frontiers of the Islamic state. Growing tensions between Islam and Christianity and the relation and influence it exercised on the treatment of the Jews would amply support the later statement.

Over all, it is a book that offers a much needed outlook on Islam's position on minorities, with ample bibiliography for further research.

A must read!

-- Ali Abbbas

I was always vaguely aware that Jews sometimes got better treatment from Muslims than from Christians. But this book explains the roots in Muslim theology of Muslim/Jewish relations (under which non-Muslim monotheists were tolerated as second-class citizens), and shows how large some Jewish communities were.

I was surprised to learn that in the 15th century, Turkey was so attractive for Jews that Jewish writers wrote about Turkey as glowingly as later writers wrote about America. For example, Isaac Zarfati, a refugee from Germany, wrote: "I proclaim to you that Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking, and where, if you will, all shall yet be well with you . . . Here every man may dwell at peace under his own vine and fig tree. Here you are allowed to wear the most precious garments. In Christendom, on the contrary, you dare not even venture to clothe your children in red or in blue, according to our taste, without exposing them to the insult of beaten black and blue, or kicked green and red . . . O Israel, wherefore sleepest though? Arise! And leave this accursed land forever!" (p. 136)

Similarly, in the 16th century Portuguese refugee Samuel Usque described Turkey as "a broad and spacious sea which God opened with the rod of His mercy as He opened the Red Sea at the time of the exodus . .. here the gates of liberty are always open for the observance of Judaism" (Id.)

But the situation deteriorated in the last several centuries: it is not altogether clear why, and maybe Lewis isn't completely sure himself. Lewis speculates that Jews lost contact with Europe, and thus (unlike Christians in Islamic lands) no longer had trade connections or language skills to offer to the national economy, and were thus more easily persecuted because of their poverty and uselessness. But why did the Jews lose touch with the rest of the world? What went wrong? It is not quite clear.

A side note: the unfavorable reviews of this book attack Lewis for being too pro-Muslim, while the unfavorable reviews of "Semites and Anti-Semites" attack him for being insufficiently pro-Muslim and anti-Israel. If Lewis is getting shot at from both sides, he must be doing something right.

A very enlightening account of not only the Jewish experience in Islamic lands, but also of the overall treatment of non-Muslim subjects within Muslim territories. This historical background is essential to the understanding of present relations between Islam and the West, as well as Israel and its surrounding Muslim neighbours. Lewis writes in a style easy to read, and yet still academically rigorous. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to get beyond current media headlines and dwelve deeper into the roots of contemporary unease between the West and Islam. As for Jews like myself who grew up in Muslim countries, it is essential reading.

It's informative, interesting anthropological material, and well researched, this is certainly a book for those who wish to have a better cultural understanding of an interesting period in history.

[Note: This book is not for those with a black/white, simplistic, Manichean view of the world, Eg: That Islam is somehow essentially "evil", Or for those who view Mohammed as a supervillian of cartoonish proportions]

Not the best of Lewis's work but still interesting...

I am a non-Muslim from a predominantly Muslim country. I grew up learning the traditions and history of Islam with my Muslim childhood friends.

Although as always, Prof Lewis writes well and convincingly (hence the 2 stars) it irks me (....no, in fact it dowright enrages me) everytime a non-Muslim Westerner who has never lived under the Islamic yoke proclaims with great confidence how tolerant Islam is. Having said this, although Prof Lewis tries to be politically correct, thankfully he is not as bias towards Islam as Karen Armstrong, Prof Michael Sells, Edwad Said and John Esposito.

It must be emphasised that Islamic jurisprudence with regards Islam's relationship with Jews is based on how Prophet Muhammad treated the Jews during his lifetime. Muhammad's first real contact with the Jews was in Yathrib (now known as Medina) where he encountered three Jewish tribes, namely Banu Qaynuga, Banu Nadir and Banu Quraiza. The Prophet hoped that the Jews would accept him as the "One". When they did not, he was so enraged that not only did he instruct his followers to stop facing Jerusalem (but to Mecca) when they prayed but he attacked and pillaged all the three Jewish tribes. The first two were expelled after being relieved of their possessions. With regards the last of the three tribes (i.e. Banu Quraiza), he had all the men (about 700) decapitated outside Medina and enslaved their wives and children. Only one was spared because he embraced Islam. The rest of Prophet Muhammad's life was spent fighting 66 offensive wars against pagans and Jews including those at Khaybar [Hence, the contemporary Palestinian war cry "O Jews (Yahud) of Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is coming"]. Two of Muhammad's many wives and concubines (ie. Safiya and Reihana) were Jewish widows whose husbands and fathers, the Muslims killed. One of Muhammad's last instructions were to expel all Jews and Christians (all pagans have been forcibly converted) from the Arabian peninsula. It is clear in the Quran that he who obeys Prophet Muhammad, obeys God (Allah).

For those who are interested in knowing the true history of the Jews (and Christians) under Islam, I would like to recommend Bat Yeor's "Dhimmi" and "Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam" and Ken Blady's Jewish Communities in Exotic Places. Bat Ye'or's books include many texts by well-known Muslim historians and jurists showing the persecutions of and humiliations experienced by Jews (and Christians) during the 13 or 14 centuries under Islam. Although not all Jews were forcibly converted, there were a few occassions where this happened to Jews in a certain locality or community (i.e. Meshed and Isfahan in Persia). Ken Blady's book describes how Jewish communties once flourished in the Middle East and North Africa before Islam and how the Jews were persecuted. It seems that on the eve of the Muslim conquest, most of the world's Jewry were in the Middle East/Persia and North Africa. A great many of those Jews were forcibly converted to Islam and were absorbed by the Persians, Yemenis, Morrocan and Libyan Berbers, Tats, Kurds, Arabs, Afgans/Pathans etc.

As one can see, the difference with Nazism is Hitler killed all Jews including those who embraced Christianity. Islam on the other hand is not "technically" anti-semitic nor is it concerned with genetics. There are good Jews and bad Jews. The good ones are those who embrace Islam.

My last point is although politically correct pro-Islam Western historians always talk about the 1492 expulsion of Spanish Jews, few ever mention about the persecution in Spain by the Almohads where many Jews including the great Maimonides were forcibly converted to Islam. Also, although they talk about exiled Spanish Jews finding refuge in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, they always fail to mention about those Sephardim who emigrated to equally tolerant Christian countries such as South west France (Bordeaux), Holland and England, and how their descendants fared so much better than their counterparts in Muslim countries. On the eve of the creation of Israel, descendants of those Spanish Jews who emigrated to Christian lands consists of many great merchant dynasties in America, Britain, Holland, France and Belgium whereas those in Muslim lands were living in abject poverty without knowing that they would be expelled in a few years time after the creation of Israel. There are or were dozens of Jewish peers in the House of Lords (such as Lord Rothschild and Lord Forte) and many more as American senators. How many Jews are allowed to remain in the Islamic lands? This more or less sums it up for the Jews of Islam.

Even Professor Lewis' elegant prose cannot redress the serious limitations in this very disappointing book. Organizational lapses - the book is merely a "re-assembly" of lecture material delivered in November, 1981- may explain some of these inadequacies. More importantly, he ignores a voluminous amount of historical data, and his own sound advice to avoid "loaded comparisons". As a result, his analyses are plagued by grossly inaccurate generalizations, and awkward internal contradictions. I have focused my discussion on two egregious, broad reaching examples which best illustrate these major flaws.

Professor Lewis states, "..Persecution, that is to say, violent and active repression, was rare and atypical. Jews and Christians under Muslim rule were not normally called upon to suffer martyrdom for their faith. They were not often obliged to make the choice, which confronted Muslims and Jews in reconquered Spain, between exile, apostasy, and death. They were not subject to any major territorial or occupational restrictions, such as were the common lot of Jews in premodern Europe.." He then adds this somewhat contradictory caveat: "..There are some exceptions to these statements, but they do not affect the broad pattern until comparatively modern times, and even then only in special areas, periods, and cases..".

Professor Lewis frames this debatable premise by ignoring his own advice (about "loaded comparisons"), inviting a comparison between the Reconquista, and presumably, the jihad conquests that preceded the Reconquista. In fact, the first three centuries of Islam in the in the East overlapped the Carolingian rule in Christian Europe (747-987 C.E.), a period recognized by scholars as one when European Jewry experienced a considerable degree of security and prosperity. Muslim chroniclers themselves, in contrast, have described the ongoing jihad conquests during the same period (i.e., the first three centuries of Arab Muslim conquests), which included the destruction of whole towns, the massacre of large numbers of their populations, the enslavement and deportation of women and children, and the confiscation of vast regions. Indeed, between 640 and 1240 C.E., jihad conquests lead to the total and definitive destruction of Judaism and Christianity in the Hijaz (modern Saudi Arabia), and the dramatic decline of once flourishing Christian and Jewish communities in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. In the North African Maghreb, Christians had been virtually eliminated by 1240 and the Jews decimated by Almohad persecutions (including an "Inquisition" for Jewish converts to Islam which antedated the infamous "Spainish Inquisition" by over two centuries).

Muslim Spain itself was a land of constant jihad ruled under Maliki jurisdiction, which offered one of the most severe, repressive interpretations of Islamic law. It was populated by tens of thousands of Christian slaves, and humiliated and oppressed Christian dhimmis, in addition to a small minority of privileged Christian notables. The muwallads (neo-converts to Islam) were in nearly perpetual revolt against the Arab immigrants who had claimed large estates for themselves, farmed by Christian serfs or slaves. Expropriations and fiscal extortions ignited the flames of continual rebellion by both muwallads and mozarabs (Christian dhimmis) throughout the Iberian peninsula. Leaders of these rebellions were crucified, and their insurgent followers were put to the sword. These bloody conflicts, which occurred throughout the Hispano-Umayyad emirate until the tenth century, fueled endemic religious hatred. An 828 letter from Louis the Pious to the Christians of Merida summarized their plight under Abd al-Rahman II, and during the preceding reign: confiscation of their property, unfair increase of their exacted tribute, removal of their freedom (probably meaning slavery), and oppression by excessive taxes. In Grenada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela, and his son Joseph, who protected a once flourishing Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population by the local Muslim community (at least three thousand Jews perished in an uprising surrounding the 1066 assasination, alone).

Professor Lewis also errors when he maintains that the Jews were somehow limited uniquely under European Christendom by being forced to practice usury, for example, which was reviled by Christians. In fact he appears to acknowledge that under the yoke of dhimmitude in Muslim countries, the most degrading vocations were set aside for the Jews, including: executioners, grave-diggers, salters of the decapitated heads of rebels, and cleaners of latrines (in Yemen, in particular, this was demanded of Jews on Saturdays, their holy sabbath). Islamic societies also exhibited their own unique forms of severe oppression of Jews, NOT found in Christian Europe, such as: abduction of Jewish girls for Muslim harems; enslavement (including women and children) during warfare, revolts, or for economic reasons (for example, impossibility of paying the jizya, a blood ransom "poll tax" demanded of non-Muslims); the obligation for a Jew to dismount from his donkey on sight of a Muslim; the obligation in some regions (like the Maghreb) for Jews to walk barefoot outside their quarters; prohibiting Persian Jews from remaining outdoors when it rained for fear of polluting Muslims. With regard to enslavement, specifically, from the Middle Ages, right up until their mass exodus in 1948, rural Yemenite Jews were literally Muslim chattel.

He offers yet another self-contradiction when he acknowledges the plight of Jews in Morocco and Persia (Iran) who were in fact confined to living in ghettos.

Finally, Professor Lewis also contends that, "..In the early centuries of Islamic rule, there was little or no attempt at forcible conversion, the spread of the faith being effected rather by persuasion and inducement..".

In fact, enforced conversions were not exceptional, they were the norm. Orders for conversion were decreed under the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks- ranging from Spain and the Maghreb, to Yemen and Persia. Moreover, during jihad, the (dubious) concept of `no compulsion' was meaningless. An enduring practice was to enslave populations taken from outside the boundaries of the Muslim shari'ah. Inevitably fresh non-Muslim slaves or their children were Islamized within a generation, their ethnic and linguistic origins erased. Two enduring and important mechanisms for this conversion were concubinage and the slave militias.

Make no mistake: this book is no apology-manual for the history of the Jews in Islam. Like always, Bernard Lewis presents the facts as he finds them and does not appear to have an agenda beyond that. He does not make the typical straw man argument that many other authors of recent times have made about Islam, that it is anti-semitic, violent, and bigoted, whereas Christianity is a religion of peace because Jesus preached passive resistance and the gospels have many peaceful quotations. To the contrary, he actually claims that ant-semitism never existed in Islam until it was introduced by Christian European colonialists during the 18th century upward.
Lewis defines anti-semitism as: A. The obsessive fanaticism of and about Jews. B. The assigning of Jews of cosmic evil and blaming all of the world's ills on them and C. Holding Jews to double-standards. According to him, persecuting the Jews and disliking them is not anti-semitism, it is a normal (and unfortunate) part of the human condition to dislike and persecute those who are different from us. That being stated, anti-semitism never existed in Islam up until recent times. However, persecution and hatred of the Jews did.
The "dhimmi" laws of Islam are well-known by many at the present time. However, Lewis describes how the dhimmi laws were applied at different times and across different Muslim societies. The Ottoman Turks were by far the best in their treatment towards the Jews. Jews were generally unmolested in their religious activities and had several opportunities to reach high social positions and prestigious professions. The Turks never saw the Jews as dangerous, and often saw the Jews as useful, because of their ties to Europe and their knowledge of European inventions and artillery. However, most Jews were poor and there were a few notable incidents of violent fanaticism that occurred occasionally in Turkey.
The Arabs were "moderate" in their treatment of the Jews. At times they were hostile, viewed themselves as innately superior and often dismissed or debased the Jews. However, under Islamic Spain, Jews were able to reach high positions, notably the famous Rambam. The Persians, on the other hand, were by far the worst in their treatment of the Jews. The Persians treated Jews as an "untouchable" social class, which obviously pre-dates Islam and comes from their caste-oriented neighbor India. The Persians had a plethora of humiliating laws and decrees, such as that Jews could not walk outside when it was raining, because their dirtiness would rub off of them and drip onto the street, thus dirtying the shoes of Muslims. This really sheds led onto the modern quagmire of Iranian-Israeli relations and hostility.
I would also like to add my own insights: One must remember that Islam was never a sect within Judaism, that Mohammed and his early followers were not Jews and that Muslim theology does not believe the Jews were chosen. Christianity, on the other hand, was a sect within Judaism, Jesus and his early followers were all Jews and that Christian theology still believes that the Jews were chosen. There is an inherent anti-semitism within Christianity because of these three points. This however, does not exist in Islam. Islam views Jews (and Christians) as being a flawed version of the one true faith, that are tolerated as natural inferiors, dhimmis. The fanatical obsession with Jews and the assigning them with cosmic evil with introduced to Islam by Christian imperialist interlopers. The Jews became a convenient scapegoat for the miserable condition that most Muslims and that time and still to these times are living in. That last thesis is developed in more detail in some of Lewis' other works, such as "Middle East Mosaic", "The Arabs in History" and some of his videos on Youtube. Lewis ends the book with then end of what he calls the "Judeo-Islamic tradition". Because of the relatively recent introduction of anti-Semitism into the Middle East from Europe, the tradition has come to an abrupt end.

Bernard lewis writes brilliantly, as he with his knowledge in the topic. But what i noticed that to actually know the truth, which is naive, one has to read many objective books by unbiased writers which is a near impossible task to achieve.
Nonetheless, i would like to draw attention that many muslims dont know the true nature of the clash between the jews & the prophet, which was basically political. In the works of arab historians, it showed that the jews who lived in yathrib (medina) were more or less in control of the city, as the 2 arab tribes, al Aus & Khazraj were fighting eachother. Clash came when the prophet united the arabs & regained control gradually of the medina, thus regaining their pride much to the worry of the jewish tribes there, who had power lost. The usual thing happens, jewish tribes start to contact the meccans, at war with muslims, & plot their demise which leads to an inevitable confrontation. A reader wrote that 66 battles were waged by the prophet although arab historians count only 9 battles that the prophet personally waged. The khyber incident was a seige, which lasted a few weeks then due to a agreement renege, only 70 jewish fighters were killed, not 700! Unfortunately much of the informations were exaggerated, one has to compare when the prophet entered Mecca, his main rivals who fought him for so long, peacefully. Meccans were spared though they were pagans.
Later some would multiply the numbers as happened with many other battles, like the exaggerated accounts of what the mongols did overtaking baghdad & ending the Abbassid dynasty.
Ibn Khaldun in his Muqadimah brought this issue up, by questioning the numbers comprising armies that fought battles with muslims. He concluded that many tales did not simply add up, & i can see his point.
At the end, all i can say was, there were areas that jews lived with freedom, & other areas where they were mistreated, like wise christians & some muslims too. No one is saying it was a Multi faith Utopia or a religious paradise, but non muslims had rights along with slaves at a time when it wasnt so tolerant in other parts of the world. One has to bear in mind what happened during the spanish inquisition for example & the pogroms that have no exact similarity in middle east history.

This book is about the Jews lived in Muslim countries. It is not about any certain Jew or famous personalities. Whole story is in general terms. I found the history during the early periods of the Islam very short and on the surface. Key relationships were not elaborated.Most of the information, may be because of availability of the sources was regarding the Jewish community in Ottoman Lands around 15 to 17th centruries. Information about the Jews in other countries is almost non existent but impression was given to make an opinion that it was not as good. There is a section in the book that talks about paralells between Judaism, their way of life and Islam to imply that Islam simply is an extention of Judaism but I find no correlation between their life in muslim countries which the book is supposed to be about and their religion for Muslims did not differentiate Christians or jews, they were both considred monotheist.Over all it is an easy reading but not satisfying for me for it lacked systematic and concrete points.

How the world changes in a very short time! I am certain that had Bernard Lewis written this work today its emphasis and message would be slightly different. The Islamic today has been infested with a vicious kind of anti- Semitism which it learned in part from Nazi Europe. It has developed a kind of ideological hatred of Jews which there as Lewis indicates have been signs of in Islamic history but which did not generally become the dominant note in most societies. The inferior dhimmi status accorded the Jews allowed them to for long periods of time live in relative peace in many Muslim lands. As Lewis indicates they were never truly given equal status, and Islamic society retains always the dominance of Muslims, but they at least could go about their business fairly well. Now it is all changed. The Islamic world is doing its best to be Judenrein. Its way of speaking about Jews and acting toward them (The hatred demonization hystical suicide- bombing, the sheer murderousness)come from a very dark place in the human soul. Lewis in his recent books has I believe been a bit more critical, emphasized a bit more these negative signs in Islam which unfortunately have become dominant today.