8 ms·

This is... not a surprise. Jews have lived in Islamic countries for centuries, and had very good relations with their Islamic neighbors. In fact, there are many

This is... not a surprise. Jews have lived in Islamic countries for centuries, and had very good relations with their Islamic neighbors. In fact, there are many Jews with Arab origins living in Israel today. Unfortunately, after WWII, most Arab countries forced the Jews living there to leave (mostly to Israel). There are minor Jewish communities in some Islamic states still, but in recent decades this is very rare (there is, obviously, a large minority of arabs, both muslims and christians, living in Israel. Yes, as first class citizens - I'm not talking about the occupied territories, but Israel within the 1967 lines).

myth_drannon 3y ago
[flagged]
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  More like, get a history book, please. Different things happened in different places, but your summary's not very accurate. (There weren't any Christian countries thousands of years ago, with Armenia converting about 1715-ish years ago, so I'm not sure how anyone – Jewish or otherwise – could've lived in them.)
  - wslh 3y ago
    Could you please expand what is wrong with the comments upper in the thread? I see the expression I think you referenced logically right: Jews lived for thousand years even if there were other religions there, Pagans (not Christians) included. That is any other faiths.
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      The first one's fine: no objections there. The second comment is just misleading in so many ways it's hard to pick one. Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and "Christian countries" is both inaccurate (Jews weren't considered pagans) and overly-simplistic (state religions aren't a solid, fixed thing, especially over large areas before modern communication). While the Arab conquests were significant, not every Muslim country was converted "by the sword": there's even debate over whether the Muslim citizens of the early caliphates were, since such a small group, while large enough to conquer, would surely find it tricky to police the day-to-day behaviour and practices of so many people. (The Mongol Empire didn't manage to eliminate the practice of Islam in the areas under its control, despite ritual washing being punishable by summary execution, so it's plausible that Islam is just that persuasive.)
      - pgeorgi 3y ago
        > Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and "Christian countries" is both inaccurate That's not what the post said. Just that, before Islam was even a thing, those countries that Jews lived in which these days are considered "Muslim countries" were broadly "pagan" and/or "christian", depending on time and location. As for your assertion of no christian countries thousands of years ago, where you state yourself "Armenia converting about 1715-ish years ago": That's thousands of years (as in: more than 1000)
        wizzwizz4 3y ago
        > those countries that Jews lived in which these days are considered "Muslim countries" Is irrelevant, since we're talking about the 11th century. (I can't find a good 11th-century map to point at, but the article describes enough to give the impression of how different it was back then.)
        pgeorgi 3y ago
        Three posts above the goal post stood at "inaccurate" and "overly-simplistic," now we're at irrelevant. Okay.
      - elevaet 3y ago
        > (The Mongol Empire didn't manage to eliminate the practice of Islam in the areas under its control, despite ritual washing being punishable by summary execution, so it's plausible that Islam is just that persuasive.) When/where did the Mongol empire ever try to eliminate the practice if Islam? They definitely shed a lot of blood and destruction in the Muslim world, but afaik the point was never to eliminate Islam, but just territorial conquest. The Mongols were famously tolerant of diverse religions within their borders. Many Mongol rulers even converted to Islam. Of course, history is vast and multifaceted, so you might be talking about a different time/place than I am.
        wizzwizz4 3y ago
        I don't know they ever did try to eliminate Islam, but the particular issue of washing was a conflict between their religious practices. I learned this from https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/hfsnrYC2aGbr1HEehhwrqZ?start=6m30s&stop=7m36s https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/hfsnrYC2aGbr1HEehhwrqZ?start=6m3... by Premodernist, which quotes and discusses 長春真人西遊記: > Now the subtext here, which Li doesn't come right out and say, but is kinda understood for a contemporary: when the Mongols forbade people from washing in the rivers, that means that if they caught you going into the river to wash, they would kill you on the spot; because that was a taboo in the Mongol religious system. Now that was a problem if you were a Muslim who had come under Mongol rule, because Muslims of course do ritual washings before prayers, and in central Asia they would very often just go down to the local stream or river to do the washings. But if a Mongol saw them doing that, they would go over there and strike them down and kill them. And there are accounts – not in this account, but there are accounts in other historical works from the period, particularly from Muslim writers – that talk about, it was not uncommon for Muslims to be killed by Mongols in this way.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    Many of those places were Christian or Zoroastrian or whatnot way before early Muslim conquests, look it up. And Jews lived there since before year 0
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - myth_drannon 3y ago
    right, there was no country called Iraq until recently. What I meant was not a political entity but a region where the modern state of Iraq resides, so you can call it Assyria/Babylon/Roman Empire/Greek Empire/British Mandate. Same for Iran, with countless empires but the region is the same.
- lots2learn 3y ago
  I don't think you understand the word colonizer. The Muslims conquered and lived among the people. They created a civilization which non-Muslim minorities were a part of. This is very different from European colonialism that extracted resources from the lands and people they conquered for the exclusive benefit of the Empire.
  - mutatio 3y ago
    They were colonizers and practiced genocide. It's a great source of pride that Jews were banished from the Arab peninsula (or forcefully converted). Other branches of Islamic history such as the Ottomams were also colonisers. Don't forget Muhammad himself was a warlord.
    - selimthegrim 3y ago
      If they were banished from the Arabian peninsula, what were they doing in Yemen in 1948?
  - TacticalCoder 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - g8oz 3y ago
      >>way, way, way before europeans started trading slaves. You might want to look into the Roman slave trade.
    - SomeDaysBe 3y ago
      > Muslims in europe had white people (and black people too) as slaves, way, way, way before europeans started trading slaves Rome? Greece? What are you even talking about? > FWIW slavery is still ongoing, today, in some muslim countries Also in the USA [1] and EU [2]. Spare us the "europeans are peaceful / muslims evil" angle please. [1] https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/united-states/ https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie... [2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-001305_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00130...
teejays 3y ago
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- wslh 3y ago
  I think another way to see it is that Zionism is the perfect excuse for struggle. There are 16m of Jews in a world of 8b people. And, the world was silent while half of the Jewish population was been literally exterminated. Even US was closed to Jews refugees.
- nolongerthere 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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- user982 3y ago
  This was Jerusalem in 1896: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vaIK8wlAl0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vaIK8wlAl0
- ars 3y ago
  When Zionism started "peaceful coexistence" was long since gone. You are combining time periods over hundreds of years. Peaceful coexistence ended around 860 (and stated getting worse in 636 with the Siege of Jerusalem), while modern Zionism didn't start till 1840's - around 1,000 years later. Possibly prompted by the Arab massacres in 1834: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed People sometimes talk about how Israel was mostly inhabited by Arabs before Israel was founded, but they neglect to inform that this was because of the numerous massacres against Jews who had been living there for thousands of years.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    What happened in 636, who was expelled?
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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hdlothia 3y ago
During the rule of al-Mutawakkil, the tenth Abbasid Caliph, numerous restrictions reinforced the second-class citizen status of dhimmīs and forced their communities into ghettos.[15] For instance, they were required to distinguish themselves from their Muslim neighbors by their dress.[16] They were not permitted to build new churches or synagogues or repair old churches according to the Pact of Umar. Is this an accurate portrayal of the good relations you describe or an exception? It's hard to find unbiased accounts of what Jewish-Islamic relations were like pre-israel, especially since both sides have an agenda to push.
- g8oz 3y ago
  And yet this hardly compares to what happened in Europe during the medieval period.
  - hdlothia 3y ago
    It seems like neither the Christian world or the Islamic world have been safe havens for Jewish people.
- someotherperson 3y ago
  There are examples of widespread persecution, but this is incredibly low effort. Al-Mutawakkil (who was Uzbek and Greek, for what it's worth) was a psychopath that didn't represent the general Islamic view. The pressures he placed on Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and even other internal Islamic sects was not a popular view. Christians were regularly teaming up with Muslims to riot against the bad leadership[0]. The idea that it was enforced is even more dubious. The decrees were racist, sure, but unlike his more insane personalized antics (like when he ordered a holy Zoroastrian tree be cut down and shipped to him so he can build his house out of it[1]) the vast majority of the Islamic world didn't agree or support any of it and it was unlikely that any of it was actually enforced. He had little support outside of the Turkic world and a North African militia group, and even that was far and few inbetween. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homs_revolts_(854%E2%80%93855) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homs_revolts_(854%E2%80%93855) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_of_Kashmar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_of_Kashmar
msteffen 3y ago
I do think that your comment almost understates the relationship: in 1917, an incredible 40% of Baghdad's population was Jewish. The nature of historical Jewish-Islamic relations is obviously a matter of great political contention (especially now). It varied depending on the politics of the time and place—sometimes rich and peaceful (and indeed better than Europe) and sometimes tragic and violent—but for anyone casually curious, there is a dedicated Wikipedia article that I think is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Muslim_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...
resolutebat 3y ago
Describing Arabs in Israel as first-class citizens is a bit starry-eyed, although they're certainly better off than their second-class non-citizen cousins across the Green Line though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Racism_against_Arab_citizens_by_Israeli_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Racism_agains...
farseer 3y ago
The fact that Israel carried out an intimidation campaign against Iraqi Jews to force them to immigrate is pretty much a mainstream historical discourse.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bomb...
- bawolff 3y ago
  The source you link to seems to indicate that this is not an accepted historical fact but very much disputed who precisely did what.
- deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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mcmoor 3y ago
And I thought that enforcement is a direct retribution because of a certain nation being created in 1948. The relation certainly plunges downhill after that.
DoItToMe81 3y ago
I've known Israelis and Arab Israelis. I would NOT call them 'first class citizens', there is discrimination codified into law and most state entities.
bushbaba 3y ago
Jewish Arab relations historically were ok, not something I’d call “very good”. Some paces better than others, some times better than others. Generally though Jews were still second class citizens in Arab nations. Here’s a wiki article that captures some the past issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world

myth_drannon 3y ago

[flagged]

wizzwizz4 3y ago
More like, get a history book, please. Different things happened in different places, but your summary's not very accurate. (There weren't any Christian countries thousands of years ago, with Armenia converting about 1715-ish years ago, so I'm not sure how anyone – Jewish or otherwise – could've lived in them.)
- wslh 3y ago
  Could you please expand what is wrong with the comments upper in the thread? I see the expression I think you referenced logically right: Jews lived for thousand years even if there were other religions there, Pagans (not Christians) included. That is any other faiths.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    The first one's fine: no objections there. The second comment is just misleading in so many ways it's hard to pick one. Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and "Christian countries" is both inaccurate (Jews weren't considered pagans) and overly-simplistic (state religions aren't a solid, fixed thing, especially over large areas before modern communication). While the Arab conquests were significant, not every Muslim country was converted "by the sword": there's even debate over whether the Muslim citizens of the early caliphates were, since such a small group, while large enough to conquer, would surely find it tricky to police the day-to-day behaviour and practices of so many people. (The Mongol Empire didn't manage to eliminate the practice of Islam in the areas under its control, despite ritual washing being punishable by summary execution, so it's plausible that Islam is just that persuasive.)
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      > Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and "Christian countries" is both inaccurate That's not what the post said. Just that, before Islam was even a thing, those countries that Jews lived in which these days are considered "Muslim countries" were broadly "pagan" and/or "christian", depending on time and location. As for your assertion of no christian countries thousands of years ago, where you state yourself "Armenia converting about 1715-ish years ago": That's thousands of years (as in: more than 1000)
      - wizzwizz4 3y ago
        > those countries that Jews lived in which these days are considered "Muslim countries" Is irrelevant, since we're talking about the 11th century. (I can't find a good 11th-century map to point at, but the article describes enough to give the impression of how different it was back then.)
        pgeorgi 3y ago
        Three posts above the goal post stood at "inaccurate" and "overly-simplistic," now we're at irrelevant. Okay.
    - elevaet 3y ago
      > (The Mongol Empire didn't manage to eliminate the practice of Islam in the areas under its control, despite ritual washing being punishable by summary execution, so it's plausible that Islam is just that persuasive.) When/where did the Mongol empire ever try to eliminate the practice if Islam? They definitely shed a lot of blood and destruction in the Muslim world, but afaik the point was never to eliminate Islam, but just territorial conquest. The Mongols were famously tolerant of diverse religions within their borders. Many Mongol rulers even converted to Islam. Of course, history is vast and multifaceted, so you might be talking about a different time/place than I am.
      - wizzwizz4 3y ago
        I don't know they ever did try to eliminate Islam, but the particular issue of washing was a conflict between their religious practices. I learned this from https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/hfsnrYC2aGbr1HEehhwrqZ?start=6m30s&stop=7m36s https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/hfsnrYC2aGbr1HEehhwrqZ?start=6m3... by Premodernist, which quotes and discusses 長春真人西遊記: > Now the subtext here, which Li doesn't come right out and say, but is kinda understood for a contemporary: when the Mongols forbade people from washing in the rivers, that means that if they caught you going into the river to wash, they would kill you on the spot; because that was a taboo in the Mongol religious system. Now that was a problem if you were a Muslim who had come under Mongol rule, because Muslims of course do ritual washings before prayers, and in central Asia they would very often just go down to the local stream or river to do the washings. But if a Mongol saw them doing that, they would go over there and strike them down and kill them. And there are accounts – not in this account, but there are accounts in other historical works from the period, particularly from Muslim writers – that talk about, it was not uncommon for Muslims to be killed by Mongols in this way.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  Many of those places were Christian or Zoroastrian or whatnot way before early Muslim conquests, look it up. And Jews lived there since before year 0
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- myth_drannon 3y ago
  right, there was no country called Iraq until recently. What I meant was not a political entity but a region where the modern state of Iraq resides, so you can call it Assyria/Babylon/Roman Empire/Greek Empire/British Mandate. Same for Iran, with countless empires but the region is the same.
lots2learn 3y ago
I don't think you understand the word colonizer. The Muslims conquered and lived among the people. They created a civilization which non-Muslim minorities were a part of. This is very different from European colonialism that extracted resources from the lands and people they conquered for the exclusive benefit of the Empire.
- mutatio 3y ago
  They were colonizers and practiced genocide. It's a great source of pride that Jews were banished from the Arab peninsula (or forcefully converted). Other branches of Islamic history such as the Ottomams were also colonisers. Don't forget Muhammad himself was a warlord.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    If they were banished from the Arabian peninsula, what were they doing in Yemen in 1948?
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - g8oz 3y ago
    >>way, way, way before europeans started trading slaves. You might want to look into the Roman slave trade.
  - SomeDaysBe 3y ago
    > Muslims in europe had white people (and black people too) as slaves, way, way, way before europeans started trading slaves Rome? Greece? What are you even talking about? > FWIW slavery is still ongoing, today, in some muslim countries Also in the USA [1] and EU [2]. Spare us the "europeans are peaceful / muslims evil" angle please. [1] https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/united-states/ https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie... [2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-001305_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00130...

teejays 3y ago

[flagged]

wslh 3y ago
I think another way to see it is that Zionism is the perfect excuse for struggle. There are 16m of Jews in a world of 8b people. And, the world was silent while half of the Jewish population was been literally exterminated. Even US was closed to Jews refugees.
nolongerthere 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
user982 3y ago
This was Jerusalem in 1896: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vaIK8wlAl0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vaIK8wlAl0
ars 3y ago
When Zionism started "peaceful coexistence" was long since gone. You are combining time periods over hundreds of years. Peaceful coexistence ended around 860 (and stated getting worse in 636 with the Siege of Jerusalem), while modern Zionism didn't start till 1840's - around 1,000 years later. Possibly prompted by the Arab massacres in 1834: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed People sometimes talk about how Israel was mostly inhabited by Arabs before Israel was founded, but they neglect to inform that this was because of the numerous massacres against Jews who had been living there for thousands of years.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  What happened in 636, who was expelled?
  - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hdlothia 3y ago

During the rule of al-Mutawakkil, the tenth Abbasid Caliph, numerous restrictions reinforced the second-class citizen status of dhimmīs and forced their communities into ghettos.[15] For instance, they were required to distinguish themselves from their Muslim neighbors by their dress.[16] They were not permitted to build new churches or synagogues or repair old churches according to the Pact of Umar. Is this an accurate portrayal of the good relations you describe or an exception? It's hard to find unbiased accounts of what Jewish-Islamic relations were like pre-israel, especially since both sides have an agenda to push.

g8oz 3y ago
And yet this hardly compares to what happened in Europe during the medieval period.
- hdlothia 3y ago
  It seems like neither the Christian world or the Islamic world have been safe havens for Jewish people.
someotherperson 3y ago
There are examples of widespread persecution, but this is incredibly low effort. Al-Mutawakkil (who was Uzbek and Greek, for what it's worth) was a psychopath that didn't represent the general Islamic view. The pressures he placed on Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and even other internal Islamic sects was not a popular view. Christians were regularly teaming up with Muslims to riot against the bad leadership[0]. The idea that it was enforced is even more dubious. The decrees were racist, sure, but unlike his more insane personalized antics (like when he ordered a holy Zoroastrian tree be cut down and shipped to him so he can build his house out of it[1]) the vast majority of the Islamic world didn't agree or support any of it and it was unlikely that any of it was actually enforced. He had little support outside of the Turkic world and a North African militia group, and even that was far and few inbetween. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homs_revolts_(854%E2%80%93855) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homs_revolts_(854%E2%80%93855) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_of_Kashmar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_of_Kashmar

msteffen 3y ago

I do think that your comment almost understates the relationship: in 1917, an incredible 40% of Baghdad's population was Jewish. The nature of historical Jewish-Islamic relations is obviously a matter of great political contention (especially now). It varied depending on the politics of the time and place—sometimes rich and peaceful (and indeed better than Europe) and sometimes tragic and violent—but for anyone casually curious, there is a dedicated Wikipedia article that I think is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Muslim_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...

resolutebat 3y ago

Describing Arabs in Israel as first-class citizens is a bit starry-eyed, although they're certainly better off than their second-class non-citizen cousins across the Green Line though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Racism_against_Arab_citizens_by_Israeli_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Racism_agains...

farseer 3y ago

The fact that Israel carried out an intimidation campaign against Iraqi Jews to force them to immigrate is pretty much a mainstream historical discourse.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bomb...

bawolff 3y ago
The source you link to seems to indicate that this is not an accepted historical fact but very much disputed who precisely did what.
deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

mcmoor 3y ago

And I thought that enforcement is a direct retribution because of a certain nation being created in 1948. The relation certainly plunges downhill after that.

DoItToMe81 3y ago

I've known Israelis and Arab Israelis. I would NOT call them 'first class citizens', there is discrimination codified into law and most state entities.

bushbaba 3y ago

Jewish Arab relations historically were ok, not something I’d call “very good”. Some paces better than others, some times better than others. Generally though Jews were still second class citizens in Arab nations. Here’s a wiki article that captures some the past issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world