Under Crescent and Cross by Mark R. Cohen

Author:Mark R. Cohen [Cohen, Mark R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691139319
Publisher: PrincetonUP
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE JEWISH POLEMICAL RESPONSE TO ISLAM

Commensurate with Islam’s relatively mild assault on Judaism, compared with its heated polemic against Christianity, the Jewish response to Islam was similarly bland, especially when compared with the vigor of the Jewish anti-Christian polemic in Europe.

Negative Jewish Attitudes

Though far from absent in Jewish writings, hostility toward Islam had little of the acerbic tone that its counterpart in the Christian world had. Moreover, while Jesus and the symbols of Christianity evoked unbridled contempt among the Jews of Christendom,71 a similar pattern of stimulus and response appears not to have existed among the Jews of Islam. By the time of the Islamic conquest, anti-Christian themes, whether overt or veiled, had become so engrained in the Jewish mentality that they continued to appear even in Jewish writings in the Arab world.72 the Jews of Islam, further, continued to confront Latin Christianity in debate in the tridenominational marketplaces of the Mediterranean littoral, in such ports as Ceuta (Morocco) and Alexandria.73

Only two derogatory epithets describing the Prophet Muhammad are known to have been in use among Jews of the Islamic world. The first was “madman” (meshugga'). Evidently inspired by the adjective “crazed” (majnūn) hurled at Muhammad by some of his unbelieving Arab contemporaries, Jews connected the word with a verse in Hosea (9:7): evil ha-navi’ meshugga' ish ha-ruah, “The prophet was distraught, the inspired man driven mad by constant harassment.”74 The other epithet was “defective” (pasul), a Hebrew pun on rasūl (messenger). According to Islamic law, such blasphemies were punishable by death. There is little indication, however, that the Jewish characterization of Muhammad as “madman” or “the defective one” became known to Muslims, or that Jews secreted a more elaborate, irreverent jargon about Muhammad that expanded on the hostile utterances of the Jews of Medina during the Prophet’s lifetime.75

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