Rocky,

Aug 7, 2012 -- 2:43PM, rocketjsquirell wrote:

lilwabbit

you wrote:

"You are free to demonstrate with your better scholarship that, generally speaking, Muslims didn't treat Jews far better than the Christians. I promise to be as objective a judge as I can on your scholarship."

that is not what I said. go back and re-read. Of course you are very good at not reading what I write and pretending I said something else.

Rest assured I've understood your every word.

You explicitly stated Jews were treated "horribly badly" by Muslims throughout history. You claimed Lewis was inaccurate. By once more running away from a challenge to demonstrate his inaccuracy and the veracity of your own words, without recourse to isolated incidents, you have again made the truth amply clear. Thank you for that.

Now, after Brow's attempt to come to your rescue, you've conveniently diluted "horribly badly" into "poor". Yet, a "poor" treatment by Muslims throughout history is still a gross generalization. Hence you need to back it up rather than run away from perfectly well-founded questioning. You must first offer some well-founded and universally applicable standards for "poor treatment". You and Brow keep judging (Islamic) history by modern secular standards. "Poor treatment" is always relative to the prevailing customs of the times in lands where the Jews mostly resided. As Lewis points out, Christians were the ones who fared poorly compared to the Muslims. You'd be right to say that the whole world (including the Jews) wasn't big on toleration of anything "not us" until the late 20th century, and even now it's proving to be a chimera. If modern secular nations were the standard, then the whole world has treated people of different persuasions "poorly" throughout history. Islam, all the way up to early 20th century, wouldn't stand out in any special way as "poorer" than the rest. The opposite seems to be the case. As Karen Armstrong cautions, "it would be a mistake" to judge the past by the standards of modern Switzerland or Sweden.

Now, we can continue playing cat and mouse until there's no tomorrow. But as far as this topic is concerned, you'd still be the mouse on the run.

Wabbit

Aug 8, 2012 -- 1:52AM, Lilwabbit wrote:

Rocky,

Aug 7, 2012 -- 2:43PM, rocketjsquirell wrote:

lilwabbit

you wrote:

"You are free to demonstrate with your better scholarship that, generally speaking, Muslims didn't treat Jews far better than the Christians. I promise to be as objective a judge as I can on your scholarship."

that is not what I said. go back and re-read. Of course you are very good at not reading what I write and pretending I said something else.

Rest assured I've understood your every word.

You explicitly stated Jews were treated "horribly badly" by Muslims throughout history. You claimed Lewis was inaccurate. By once more running away from a challenge to demonstrate his inaccuracy and the veracity of your own words, without recourse to isolated incidents, you have again made the truth amply clear. Thank you for that.

Now, after Brow's attempt to come to your rescue, you've conveniently diluted "horribly badly" into "poor". Yet, a "poor" treatment by Muslims throughout history is still a gross generalization. Hence you need to back it up rather than run away from perfectly well-founded questioning. You must first offer some well-founded and universally applicable standards for "poor treatment". You and Brow keep judging (Islamic) history by modern secular standards. "Poor treatment" is always relative to the prevailing customs of the times in lands where the Jews mostly resided. As Lewis points out, Christians were the ones who fared poorly compared to the Muslims. You'd be right to say that the whole world (including the Jews) wasn't big on toleration of anything "not us" until the late 20th century, and even now it's proving to be a chimera. If modern secular nations were the standard, then the whole world has treated people of different persuasions "poorly" throughout history. Islam, all the way up to early 20th century, wouldn't stand out in any special way as "poorer" than the rest. The opposite seems to be the case. As Karen Armstrong cautions, "it would be a mistake" to judge the past by the standards of modern Switzerland or Sweden.

Now, we can continue playing cat and mouse until there's no tomorrow. But as far as this topic is concerned, you'd still be the mouse on the run.

Wabbit

"Treatment  is relative to the prevailing times."  "The whole world... wasn't big on toleration of anything "not us" until the late 20th Century".  Rather amazing way of dismissing a history that focused on a particular people.  Hey everybody did it back then.  Well guess what?  History records those events that actually happened and why they happened.  You can simply choose to gloss over them as if they were "typical" of the times, but the truth is that Muslims rarely tolerated Jews.

By the way, "the whole world" isn't big on toleration of anything "not us", especially Jews and that is as of today.

The reason why the cat and mouse game continues is because of your intentional blindness to the truth.

Similarly, in 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in "an offensive manner." The killings touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout Morocco.⁽⁶⁾

Other mass murders of Jews in Arab lands occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities; Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews; Algiers, where Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815 and 1830 and Marrakesh, Morocco, where more than 300 hundred Jews were murdered between 1864 and 1880.⁽⁷⁾

Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt and Syria (1014, 1293-4, 1301-2), Iraq (854-859, 1344) and Yemen (1676). Despite the Koran's prohibition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen (1165 and 1678), Morocco (1275, 1465 and 1790-92) and Baghdad (1333 and 1344).⁽⁸⁾

As distinguished Orientalist G.E. von Grunebaum has written:

It would not be difficult to put together the names of a very sizeable number of Jewish subjects or citizens of the Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great financial influence, to significant and recognized intellectual attainment; and the same could be done for Christians. But it would again not be difficult to compile a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms.⁽⁹⁾

The situation of Jews in Arab lands reached a low point in the 19th century. Jews in most of North Africa (including Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco) were forced to live in ghettos. In Morocco, which contained the largest Jewish community in the Islamic Diaspora, Jews were made to walk barefoot or wear shoes of straw when outside the ghetto. Even Muslim children participated in the degradation of Jews, by throwing stones at them or harassing them in other ways. The frequency of anti-Jewish violence increased, and many Jews were executed on charges of apostasy. Ritual murder accusations against the Jews became commonplace in the Ottoman Empire.⁽¹⁰⁾

By the twentieth century, the status of the dhimmi in Muslim lands had not significantly improved. H.E.W. Young, British Vice Consul in Mosul, wrote in 1909:

The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed.⁽¹¹⁾

The danger for Jews became even greater as a showdown approached in the UN over partition in 1947. The Syrian delegate, Faris el-Khouri, warned: "Unless the Palestine problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting and safeguarding the Jews in the Arab world."⁽¹²⁾

More than a thousand Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting during the 1940's in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen.⁽¹³⁾ This helped trigger the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries.

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ant...

Aug 8, 2012 -- 10:38AM, Miraj wrote:

Mitchell Bard, the author of BB's article, is a subjective pro-Israel propogandanist. www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/20... The crippling problem that those trying to make a case for the OP is that they are unfamiliar with objective sources and all too invested in anti-Islam hate mongers and Israel apologists. BTW, most Muslims are not a fan of Bernard Lewis, as he is from the Orientalist mode and not uninfluenced by his own self-interests as a Jew. In fact, cherry picking of his scholarship has recently caused him to become a favorite of anti-Muslim right wing nutjobs (RWN for short). I've read his works and they are decidedly Orientalist, but, his non- political writings are pretty much on point.

Just a simple question.  Did these historical events take place or did they not?

Aug 8, 2012 -- 11:18AM, Lilwabbit wrote:

Aug 8, 2012 -- 9:46AM, browbeaten wrote:

"Treatment  is relative to the prevailing times."  "The whole world... wasn't big on toleration of anything "not us" until the late 20th Century".  Rather amazing way of dismissing a history that focused on a particular people.  Hey everybody did it back then.  Well guess what?  History records those events that actually happened and why they happened.  You can simply choose to gloss over them as if they were "typical" of the times, but the truth is that Muslims rarely tolerated Jews.

By the way, "the whole world" isn't big on toleration of anything "not us", especially Jews and that is as of today.

The reason why the cat and mouse game continues is because of your intentional blindness to the truth.

Brow,

Your reference contained hardly any reliable scholarly citation. Hence your jewishvirtuallibrary.org citation is littered with exaggerations and inaccuracies. Maurice Roumani is non-historian and a politically active Jew. Bat Ye'or is an infamous anti-Islam blogger. The actual reference from Middle Eastern Studies (1971) is not even mentioned. I mean, can any list of references get any dodgier? Bernard Lewis, and to a lesser extent Norman Stillman and Grunebaum, happen to be the only experts and historians on the list. Stillman is referenced but not cited with regard to an incident in 15th century Morocco, Grunebaum provides a rather balanced description of both high and low points in Muslim-Jewish and Christian-Jewish relations, whilst I've already cited Lewis verbatim as to his overall conclusions on the general treatment of the "People of the Book" throughout Islamic history.

You're once more proving my point by your inability to cite more impartial and scholarly sources than jewishvirtuallibrary.org and EretzYisroel.org.

Here's some more Bernard Lewis from the same work (1984, The Jews of Islam):

Generally, the Jewish people were allowed to practice their religion and live according to the laws of their community. Furthermore, the restrictions to which they were subject were social and symbolic rather than tangible and practical in character. That is to say, these regulations served to define the relationship between the two communities, and not to oppress the Jewish people.

Mark R. Cohen, "a leading scholar of the history of Jews in the Middle Ages under Islam", writes:

"Jews in Islam were well integrated into the economic life of the larger society",^[45] and they were allowed to practice their religion more freely than they could do in Christian Europe.^[45]

In conclusion, overall Muslims didn't treat the Jews "poorly", much less "horribly badly". But neither were they beacons of New Age tolerance. Isolated incidents by ruthless individual leaders and mobs have occurred throughout history.

Given 1400 years of mutual history, any idiot can compile an impressive list of incidents on a website and yet fail to be scientifically credible in establishing a general trend for a period spanning over a millennium, based on those incidents.

Kind regards,

LilWabbit

Then I will ask you the same question.  Did these documented historical events take place or did they not?  Are you disputing that these events occured?  I don't care who documented them.

Ibn and Lilwabbit

Now I understand, any source which is not fawningly pro-Muslim is unreliable. Gotcha!

I get it. "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"

And now we know why we can't have peace with people who outwardly denigrate your religion and your beliefs. they will not even own up to their own history, their own words, their own attitudes, their own actions. 

Good going