Posted on 10/03/2010 7:02:26 PM PDT by Inappropriate Laughter
The Middle East is a tinder box and sparks fly whenever the shared history of Muslims and Jews is on the table for discussion. The recent furor over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero in New York City showed just how intense the raging public debate can become. And whenever the debate arises, the focus is almost always on the plight of the Palestinians and the West’s mistreatment of Muslims.
While most Canadians are painfully aware of the Palestinian struggle, much lesser known is the Mideast refugee crisis that accompanied the 1948 birth of Israel. That crisis involved the forced exodus of over 800,000 Jews from their centuries-old homes throughout the Arab world. These thousands of exiles sought refuge from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Aden, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
Martin Gilbert’s latest book, In Ishmael’s House, sheds new light on the often neglected history of Jews in Muslim–ruled territories. The book’s title derives from Old Testament biblical tradition where Jews and Muslims are said to share a common ancestry as descendants of sons of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. In this epic story, we discover a host of distinctly different Jewish communities, some of which existed 1,000 years before Islam. Living as a minority, they too faced persecution and marginalization in Muslim societies over the past 1,400 years.
The noted Jewish scholar Gilbert, famous as the official biographer of Winston Churchill, has produced a polished, elegantly written, exhaustively documented history of the Jews living under Islamic rule. It is a worthy addition to his amazing catalogue of over 80 published books, including a few outstanding historical atlases of the modern world.
Gilbert and Princeton University’s Bernard Lewis, author of the international bestseller What Went Wrong? (2002), are the leading Western experts on Middle Eastern studies. While Lewis probes into the history of Islam, Gilbert tends to specialize in the history of the world wars, the Holocaust, and the Jewish experience.
In Ishmael’s House masterfully reconstructs a largely forgotten story. While Muslims are fond of recalling how Jews once lived in peace among them, this book presents a starkly different perspective. His emphasis is on the conditions that kept the Jews as second-class citizens, or dhimmis, even when they were not subject to outright persecution.
Gilbert’s book does much to revive the facts of the earlier Jewish struggle. He traces the subjugation of the Jews back to 628 AD and the Muslim prophet Mohammed’s victory over Medina’s Jews at the Khaibar Oasis. It was Khaibar, according to Gilbert, that marked the beginning of dhimmitude under Sharia law. Although non-Muslims were offered protection, it was conditional upon accepting "a state of subjugation and fealty."
The Jews were also treated as a tribe apart in Muslim societies. In the early 700s, Omar Abd al-Azziz introduced the Covenant of Omar under which the Jews were clearly segregated in Muslim communities. Under this regime, dhimmis were protected, but they were also forbidden from building synagogues, riding horses or employing a Muslim.
The Jewish struggle continued into the 20th century and then Arab hostility grew much worse. Well before Israel’s creation, Jews were targeted as enemies. In 1910, mobs ransacked 5,000 Jewish homes in the now Iranian city of Shiraz. The Yemeni leader Imam Yahya enforced a lapsed public decree in 1922 aimed at converting Jewish orphans to Islam. In 1936, Nazi influence was so entrenched in Iraq that Jews were restricted in access to public schools, banned from teaching Hebrew and denied freedom of the press.
Anti-Semitism was rife throughout the world after the creation of Israel and even worse following the Six Day War of 1967. By the 1970s, over 800,000 Jews had been exiled from Arab countries, their property seized, a loss valued at $100-billion or more.
The large majority of Jewish exiles settled in Israel. Their claims and appeals at the United Nations were debated but eventually rebuffed. In the 1970s, the UN turned against Israel, culminating in the 1975 General Assembly resolution condemning Zionism as "racism and racial discrimination."
Gilbert’s book pays tribute to Canadian Jewish leaders who continued to champion the cause. Former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and human rights lawyer David Matas are singled out for their efforts to secure compensation for the Jewish exiles.
In Ishmael’s House will be a contentious book. It is funded by Winnipeg’s Asper Foundation, a private foundation known for its staunch support of Israel. Even though the number of Jews displaced by Arabs in the 20th century roughly equals the number of Palestinians displaced by Israel, the popular media is filled by graphic images of the sad plight of the Palestinian people. In his dedication, Martin Gilbert makes a stirring plea for Muslims and Jews to live in "mutual tolerance, respect and partnership." Reading this book might just help to build bridges of understanding, keeping that faint hope alive.
Paul W. Bennett is director of Schoolhouse Consulting, Halifax. www.schoolhouseconsulting.ca
I’m glad to see this, because whenever Islamic apologists start their BS about how Jews and Christians were treated Oh! Ever so well! under Islamic rule for Oh! Ever so long! I think “you are full of crap. I just don’t know how to prove it.”
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The UN has been a pool of never ending cess since its inception.
Of course the displaced Jews were unsuccessful in obtaining any compensation for Moslim inflicted losses.
Islam Delenda Est - because of what Islam is.
Be sure to ask how the Mohammedans established their rule over the ME and North Africa. That is th etruth about the Mooselimbs.
Bookmark
Excellent-I’ll make sure to read it.
Compelling review.
ping
if you can’t get the book right away, wiki has an abreviated timeline of dhimmi-hood (such as mandating the wearing of bells, different colored shoes and clothing, specific signs around the neck, forced payment of jizya, etc.) under it’s “yellow badge” entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge
(scroll down slightly to “Timeline”)
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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B..b..b..b..but I saw this Very Nice Looking rabbi on PBS on Sunday who said that the reason there was conflict between the Jews and Muhammed in Medina was that the Jews were oppressive and didn’t want a new religion to go alongside theirs. He said it was all resolved only a few years later (and, yeah, he forgot to add HOW it was resolved). He actually asserted that the so-called Islamic hatred of the Jews is simply a misinterpretation of the difficulties that Muhammed had in Medina, that Muslims respect and have no problems living with Jews.
The PBS program really was a masterful piece of farcical propaganda. The theme was that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all simply different revelations of the same God. It actually went as far as to compare Christians believing Jesus is The Word to the Koran being considered by Muslims “the word” and insinuating that they are called the same thing because they are both God’s word.
There are so many great books and not enough time to read them. I have one of Gilbert’s books - it’s on Israel.
I’m a big fan of observing what people do over what they say. Fact is almost all Middle Eastern Jews moved out after WWII, which tells me it wasn’t the peaceful life Muslim propagandists make it out to be.
Bookmark for the bookshelf
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