Antisemitism in Islam

[5][6][7] Their quality of life under Muslim rule varied considerably in different periods, as did the attitudes of the rulers, government officials, the clergy, and the general population towards Jews, ranging from tolerance to persecution.

[26] This contract, known as "the Leaf" (ṣaḥīfa) upheld the peaceful coexistence between Muslims, Jews, and Christians, defining them all, under certain conditions, as constituting the Ummah or "community" of that city, and granting freedom of religious thought and practice to all.

[27] Alongside the 200-odd emigrants from Mecca (Muhājirūn) who had followed Muhammad, the population of Yathrib/Medina consisted of the Faithful of Medina (Anṣār, "the Helpers"), Arab Pagans, three Jewish tribes, and some Christians.

[44][45][46][47][48] The spoils of battle, including the enslaved women and children of the tribe, were divided up among the companions that had participated in the siege and among the emigrees from Mecca who had hitherto depended on the help of the Muslims native to Medina.

˹We also guided˺ Ishmael, Elisha, Jonah, and Lot, favouring each over other people ˹of their time˺.Leon Poliakov,[65] Walter Laqueur,[1] and Jane Gerber,[66] argue that passages in the Quran reproach Jews for their refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet of God.

[8] If we look to Islamic tradition for the answer to this question we might come to the conclusion that Muhammad's rivalry with the Jews of Medina led him to develop increasingly hostile anti-Jewish polemic.

He cites the endorsement of pluralism to explain why violent forms of antisemitism generated in medieval and modern Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, never occurred in regions under Muslim rule.

[79] In the 7th century, Khaybar was inhabited by Jews, who pioneered the cultivation of the oasis[80] and made their living growing date palm trees, as well as through commerce and craftsmanship, accumulating considerable wealth.

Specifically, Kramer believes that the twin concepts of the "eternal Jew" as the enemy of God and the "arch conspirator" are themes that are borrowed "from the canon of Western religious and racial antisemitism.

Their ignominy stands in marked contrast to Muslim heroism, and in general, conforms to the Quranic image of "wretchedness and baseness stamped upon them"[19] According to Schweitzer and Perry, the hadith are "even more scathing (than the Quran) in attacking the Jews":They are debased, cursed, anathematized forever by God and so can never repent and be forgiven; they are cheats and traitors; defiant and stubborn; they killed the prophets; they are liars who falsify scripture and take bribes; as infidels they are ritually unclean, a foul odor emanating from them – such is the image of the Jew in classical Islam, degraded and malevolent.

[96][97][98] Jerome Chanes,[57] Pinson, Rosenblatt,[58] Mark R. Cohen, Norman Stillman, Uri Avnery, M. Klien, and Bernard Lewis all argue that antisemitism did not emerge in the Muslim world until modern times, because in their view, it was rare in pre-modern Islam.

[118][119] Forced conversions occurred mostly in the Maghreb, especially under the Almohads, a militant dynasty with messianic claims, as well as in Persia, where Shia Muslims were generally less tolerant than their Sunni counterparts.

[127]Mark Cohen quotes Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, a specialist in medieval European Jewish history, who cautioned that Maimonides' condemnation of Islam should be understood "in the context of the harsh persecutions of the 12th century and that furthermore one may say that he was insufficiently aware of the status of the Jews in Christian lands, or did not pay attention to this, when he wrote the letter".

The former was first promulgated by Jewish historians in the 19th century as a rebuke of the Christian treatment of Jews, and it was taken up by Arab Muslims after 1948 as "an Arab-Islamist weapon in what is primarily an ideological and political struggle against Israel".

Morris quotes a 19th-century traveler: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine.

"Rashid Rida condemned the Jews for their arrogance towards the Prophets and arraigned them for abandoning religious values for materialism, all which made them recipients of Divine Wrath; which led to their downfall.

Rashid Rida's anti-Zionism was part of his wider campaign as a towering figure in the Pan-Islamist movement and would immensely impact subsequent Islamist, Jihadist and anti-colonial activists.

Al-Husseini secretly met the German Consul-General near the Dead Sea in 1933 and expressed his approval of the anti-Jewish boycott in Germany and asked him not to send any Jews to Palestine.

[159] In 1941, following Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup, riots known as the Farhud broke out in Baghdad in which approximately 180 Jews were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were looted and 99 Jewish houses were destroyed.

She quoted Hassan Nasrallah as saying: "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew.

"[202] Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran, declared antisemitism to be a "Western phenomena", having no precedents in Islam and stating the Muslims and Jews had lived harmoniously in the past.

[204] The Saudi mufti, Shaykh Abd al-Aziz Bin Baz, gave a fatwa ruling that negotiating peace with Israel is permissible, as is the cist to Jerusalem by Muslims.

[210][211] A 2017 report by the University of Oslo Center for Research on Extremism tentatively suggests that "individuals of Muslim background stand out among perpetrators of antisemitic violence in Western Europe".

According to the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel, a pro-Israel lobby group in the Netherlands, in 2009, the number of antisemitic incidents in Amsterdam, the city that is home to most of the approximately 40,000 Dutch Jews, was said to be doubled compared to 2008.

[213] In 2010, Raphael Evers, an orthodox rabbi in Amsterdam, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that Jews can no longer be safe in the city anymore due to the risk of violent assaults.

Shortly after the Charlie Hebdo shooting in 2015, Amedy Coulibaly murdered four Jewish patrons of a Kosher supermarket in Paris and held fifteen people hostage in the Porte de Vincennes siege.

According to the Washington Post, government officials and Jewish leaders doubt that figure, because cases with unknown perpetrators and some kinds of attacks automatically get classified as "extreme right".

[238] Neukölln’s integration commissioner, Güner Balci, stated that antisemitism is "widespread in certain Muslim milieus", and criticised the failure of any of Germany’s mosques to condemn unequivocally the violence of the 7 October massacre.

Per Gudmundson, chief editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, has sharply criticized politicians who he claims offer "weak excuses" for Muslims accused of antisemitic crimes.

[252] A 2016 survey of 5,446 adult Britons, part of a report titled Anti-Semitism in contemporary Great Britain that was conducted by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, found that the prevalence of antisemitic views among Muslims was two to four times higher than the rest of the population.