Islamic–Jewish relations

[1] Muslims regard the Israelites, to whom Jews and Samaritans trace their ethnic ancestry, as an important religious concept; they are referenced around 43 times in the Quran, excluding individual prophets,[2] and in many accounts of hadith.

[5] Although the origins of Judaism go back to the time of the ancient Hebrews, it is considered to have started becoming a distinct religion in its own right in the Kingdom of Judah, where it developed as a strictly monotheistic outgrowth of Yahwism.

[9] Hebreaic and Arabian peoples are generally classified as Semitic, a racialist concept derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient Hebrews.

Modern historians confirm the affinity of ancient Hebrews and Arabs based on characteristics that are usually transmitted from parent to child, such as genes and habits, with the most well-studied criterion being language.

They agree on the events of Moses' infancy, exile to Midian, plagues and miracles, deliverage of the Israelites, parting of the Red Sea, the revelation of the tablets, the incident of the Golden Calf and the 40 years of wandering.

[16] In the course of Muhammad's proselytizing in Mecca, he initially viewed Christians and Jews (both of whom he referred to as "People of the Book") as natural allies, sharing the core principles of his teachings, and anticipated their acceptance and support.

The community defined in the Constitution of Medina had a religious outlook but was also shaped by the practical considerations and substantially preserved the legal forms of the old Arab tribes.

[23][24] Mark Cohen adds that Muhammad appeared "centuries after the cessation of biblical prophecy" and "couched his message in a verbiage foreign to Judaism both in its format and rhetoric.

The Rabbi was from Banu Nadir and fought alongside Muslims at the Battle of Uhud and bequeathed his entire wealth to Muhammad in the case of his death.

[40] Traditionally Jews living in Muslim lands, known (along with Christians) as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religion and to administer their internal affairs but subject to certain conditions.

[42] A common misconception is that of the requirement of distinctive clothing, which is a law not taught by the Qur'an or hadith but allegedly invented by the Abbasid Caliphate in early medieval Baghdad.

[58] Another such case includes Avraham Sinai, a former Hezbollah fighter who, after the Israel–Lebanon War ended, fled to Israel and converted from Islam to become a religious and practicing Jew.

Iran's Jewish community is officially recognized as a religious minority group by the government, and, like the Zoroastrians, they were allocated a seat in the Iranian parliament.

Formal exchanges between the three religions, modeled on the decades-old Jewish–Christian interfaith dialogue groups, became common in American cities following the 1993 Israeli–Palestinian Oslo accords.

Back in Egypt, he was interviewed on an Arabic-language Web site, charging that the "Zionist media" had covered up Jewish responsibility for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

[citation needed]Since 2007, the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, led by Rabbi Marc Schneier and Russell Simmons has made improving Muslim–Jewish relations their main focus.

The Reverend James Parks Morton, president of the Interfaith Center of New York, who attended the service, called Imam Al-Gamei'a's subsequent comments "astonishing."

Imam Fawaz Damra calls for "directing all the rifles at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews."

In Los Angeles, there has been a formation of an interfaith think tank through the partnership of neighboring institutions the University of Southern California, The Hebrew Union College, and Omar Foundation.

As Islam developed it gradually became the major religion closest to Judaism, both of them being strictly Monotheist religious traditions originating in a Semitic Middle Eastern culture.

As opposed to Christianity, which originated from interaction between ancient Greek and Hebrew cultures, Islam is similar to Judaism in its fundamental religious outlook, structure, jurisprudence and practice.

The two faiths also share the central practices of fasting (see Yom Kippur and Ramadan) and almsgiving, as well as dietary laws and other aspects of ritual purity.

Sacred texts of both religions ban homosexuality and forbid human sexual relations outside of marriage[77] and necessitate abstinence during the wife's menstruation.

The Islamic Hadith and Jewish Talmud have also often been compared as authoritative extracanonical texts that were originally oral transmissions for generations before being committed to writing.

In this work Saadia treats of the questions that interested the Mutakallimun so deeply—such as the creation of matter, the unity of God, the divine attributes, the soul, etc.—and he criticizes the philosophers severely.

Maimonides endeavored to harmonize the philosophy of Aristotle with Judaism; and to this end he composed the work, Dalalat al-Ḥairin (Guide for the Perplexed)—known better under its Hebrew title Moreh Nevuchim—which served for many centuries as the subject of discussion and comment by Jewish thinkers.

While seeking thus to avoid the troublesome consequences certain Aristotelian theories would entail upon religion, Maimonides could not altogether escape those involved in Aristotle's idea of the unity of souls; and herein he laid himself open to the attacks of the orthodox.

[82] Saadia Gaon's commentary on the Bible bears the stamp of the Mutazilites; and its author, while not admitting any positive attributes of God, except these of essence, endeavors to interpret Biblical passages in such a way as to rid them of anthropomorphism.

This salutary inspiration, which lasted for five consecutive centuries, yielded to that other influence alone that came from the neglected depths of Jewish and of Neoplatonic mysticism, and which took the name of Kabbalah.

[83] The children and women were subsequently taken by Muslim soldiers; one of these, Safiyya bint Huyayy whose husband Kenana ibn al-Rabi had also been killed, was taken by Muhammad as his wife.