The Root of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Classic Islamic View of Jews, Part II

Hagai Mazuz

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1507/classic-islamic-view-of-jews-ii

In showing that the Arab-Israeli conflict is religious -- and not territorial -- based on texts from the book Kitāb al-Maghāzī ["The Book of Holy Raids"], which documents how the Muslim raids against the Jews in Medina and Khaybar in ancient Arabia were the source of inspiration for the Islamic terrorist organizations, questions arose as to whether we can generalize about Islam by examining just one book. itāb al-Maghāzī, however, is just one of the many religious Islamic source books which contains anti-Jewish material. The most well known Muslim book is the Quran, which itself is filled with vehemently anti-Jewish material. Muslim sources explain that the Quran is a collection of revelations that Allah gave to Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. When Muhammad encountered difficulties, Allah told him how to solve these problems via revelations; Uthman, the 3rd Caliph, collected all of them, and that is how the Quran was created.

The Quran is filled with a large amount of material regarding the Jews, most of which labels them as cold-hearted and evil. From this we learn that Muhammad had a lot of dealings with Jews, as Allah "provided" Muhammed with many verses which deal with them. There are also many verses which deal with biblical stories and the history of the Children of Israel (called Isrā'īlīyāt).

There is also a type of Islamic literature called "The Circumstances of Revelation" (in Arabic: Asbāb al-Nuzūl), that details the circumstances in which Allah revealed each and every verse in the Quran to Muhammad. It is clear from this literature that even in many of the verses in which the Jews and Christians are not mentioned, the Quranic scholars, in their explanation of these verses, tell us that this or that verse was "revealed" because of something the Jews or Christians did.

In the opening chapter of the Quran, for example, in verse 7, we find: "The path which You have blessed (i.e., the Muslims; not those for whom Allah has felt wrath (in Arabic: al-Maghḍūb 'alayhim)) and those who went astray (in Arabic: al-Ḍālin)." The Quranic commentators explain the former as the Jews, and the latter as the Christians. Further, whereas Muslim commentators often give several explanations for many verses, in this case, every commentator agrees with this interpretation. Muhammad uses this imagery to describe the Jews in other places in the Quran as well (Quran: 2:159, 6:64, 58:14). This, according to Muhammad, is because the Jews perverted God's words by altering their meanings (Quran: 2:75, 2:79, 3:87, 4:64. 5:13), and hid the true copy of the Torah (Quran: 2:76, 2:140, 2:159, 2:174, 4:37). According to the Muslim understanding, Jews fabricated many of their laws and customs that were not in the original Torah that God gave them, so it follows that believers should not follow the ways of the Jews.

The Jews became the source of all evil in Muhammad's eyes; and according to Islamic tradition, Allah revealed to Muhammad many verses which condemn the Jews and blame them for a large number of sins, notably religious skeptics (Quran: 5:64); "murderers of prophets" (Quran: 2:91, 3:112, 3:181, 3:183); deceivers; and interest- and bribe-takers (Quran 4:161, 5:42). The Quran also claims that Jews have no equal in their hatred of Muslims (5:82).

Besides the Quran and the Kitāb al-Maghāzī, there is also the Hadith [prophetic traditions], which describes Muhammad's customs and sayings. The Hadith, filling the void of what is missing in the Quran, is also known in Arabic as the Sunna, from which we get the word Sunnis -- those who followed Muhammad's example. Muhammad, for them, is the ideal Muslim whom Sunnis strive to imitate in every way possible.

Together, the Quran and the Hadith form the basis of the Shari'a – Islamic Holy Law. Apart from what is written in the Quran, Hadith literature goes into even greater detail than the Quran does about how and why the Jews are the greatest enemies and haters of Islam.

One Hadith blames the Jews for delaying the redemption of mankind, and explains why the Jews therefore should be killed: "As is it written: the hour (of Judgment Day) shall not arrive until the Muslims fight and kill the Jews. Who are hiding behind stones and trees; and (then) the stones and trees will say: 'Oh Muslim, be the servant of Allah, there is a Jews hiding (behind me). Come and kill him.'" Incidentally, this Hadith appears in Paragraph #7 of the Hamas Charter, and is often cited in mosque sermons and in Muslim theological conferences, most notably in Cairo's al-Azhar University, the most important Sunni seminary in the Sunni Muslim world.

Beyond Muhammad's raids on the Jews of Medina and Khaybar listed in the Kitāb al-Maghāzī, there are many other stories about how Muhammad and his followers dealt with non-Jews. Muhammad and his followers raided many other Arab tribes in the Hijaz, and made the Christian community of Najran (in southern Arabia north of Yemen) into dhmmis (protected people, though discriminated-against). There are also detailed descriptions about how many of Muhammad's followers sacrificed their souls for Allah in the battles against the infidels (a process called istishhād, which comes from the same Arabic root for the word shahīd [martyr], and about how the Muslim warriors shouted "Allahu Akbar" [Allah is the most great] as the swords of the infidels went straight through their bodies on their way to the 72 virgins awaiting them in the special chamber of heroes in Paradise.

The "dhimmitude" mentioned above became the model for the status of the non-Muslims in the Islamic State, who were thereafter to be regarding as inferior and second-class citizens because they are not members of the "true faith" Besides that, these dhimmis were forced to obey the rules of what later became known as the "Pact of 'Umar" (known as Shurūṭ 'Umar), which require them to wear specific garments to distinguish them from the Muslims (the Jews were obliged to wear a yellow star, from which the Nazis took their yellow star), not to build a place of worship higher than Muslim mosques; not to ride on saddled horses; to pay a special tax; to give way to Muslims on the street, and to follow various other laws which humiliate and point out their secondary status in relationship to the Muslims.

There are other important Islamic source books as well; for example, the biography of Muhammad (called the Sīra) which includes a summary of the stories that are mentioned in the Kitāb al-Maghāzī. All of these books are the basis of the Sunna.

After Muhammad's death, the Muslims rode out of Arabia and conquered a vast area extending from Spain to the borders of China: in 100 years, they went from being a small community to an imperial conqueror. The wars fought to capture this huge territory are described in minute detail in a book called "The Islamic Conquest of the Lands" (in Arabic: Futūḥ al-Buldān).

According to Muslim tradition, every land conquered by the Muslims becomes holy (called waqf) and must remain in perpetuity under Muslim control. If, however, some of these lands are taken back by the infidels, Muslims must do everything in their power to re-capture them. Today, there are at least two countries which fit this category: Spain and Israel.

The hostility Muhammad felt towards the Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims continued to be a major topic in medieval Islamic religious literature. This meant that the early hostility Islam felt towards the non-Muslims continued to plague the non-Muslims. Medieval works antithetical to the Jews and other non-Muslims include the descriptions of such Muslim theologians and scholars such as the often-quoted al-Jāḥiz (781-868); Ibn Taymiyya (1260-1327), the intellectual godfather of the Wahhabis of the Arabian Peninsula; and Ibn Hazm (994-1064), who raved against the Torah and the Talmud.

There is, therefore, a whole collection of early and medieval Muslim works which lambast and denigrate Jews, Christians, and a myriad of other non-Muslim peoples – works which are still quoted widely throughout the Muslim world. The heroes of these books are virtually as alive today in the hearts and minds of the Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists as they were at the time that they were written -- which does not bode well for the future of Muslim/non-Muslim relations: what appear to us in the West to be territorial conflicts are, in fact, religious conflicts, which, sadly, do not lend themselves to simple solutions.