Jews, Christians, and the Abode of Islam: Modern Scholarship, Medieval Realities by Lassner Jacob

Author:Lassner, Jacob
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Press
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Perceiving the “Other”

Jews and Muslims in the Abode Of Islam

As did other peoples with revealed texts, the Jews of an expanding Islamic realm were most often free to observe their faith and conduct their communal affairs. Be that as it may, Islam attracted converts of all sorts in wake of the Arab conquest, many of them anxious to enjoy the economic and social benefits of being Muslim. Over the ensuing centuries, peoples subjected to Islamic rule slowly but surely accepted the new religion and became constituents of the ummah, the all-embracing Islamic polity. And yet, the impressive triumph of the Muslims was not complete, not even after they had become an absolute majority in the lands they ruled. Generations after the conquest, there were still significant minorities in the medieval Islamic world that clung tenaciously to their religious beliefs and practices. These included various denominations of Christians, often at odds among themselves over doctrinal and other issues, and docile Jews, relatively small in number but distributed widely throughout the Abode of Islam.

The Jews, with their patented, one might even say obsessive, sense of selfcriticism, have long described themselves as “stiff-necked,” that is, as a stubborn people. The expression refers to a reluctance to bend to God’s will. But with a sense of irony, it also came to be understood as unwillingness to bend to foreign or illegitimate authority. Muslims in turn describe the Jews as having “uncircumcised hearts” (Qur’an 2:88; 5:155), a concept borrowed from the Hebrew Bible where the obdurate Israelites are enjoined to “excise the foreskin (‘orlah) which envelops [their] hearts; and stiffen [their] necks no more” (Deut. 10:16). That is to say, the thickened tissue surrounding the heart renders the seat of human consciousness impenetrable to God’s commands, thus giving rise to stubbornness and wicked acts that occasion the Almighty’s fiery wrath (Jer. 4:4).

From the perspective of the Qur’an, Medina’s hard-hearted Jews stubbornly refused to accept the legitimacy of the Prophet’s claim, this despite his trumpeting of monotheism, his reverence for the Israelite prophets, and his initial acceptance of various forms of Jewish ritual behavior. Nor did the Jews of Arabia, who privileged the values of Arab tribalism, submit quietly to Muslim pressure. Having been provoked by the Muslims, the Jews of Medina, with the honor of their tribes at stake, took up arms and retreated to their strongholds. In the end they were greeted by exile, and in the mysterious case of the Qurayzah, all the Jewish males of age were executed. That two-pronged resistance by the Jews, the first an insolent denial of the Prophet’s message, which bore so much in common with their own faith and belief, the second, their decision to take up arms against the Muslims, left an indelible mark on the historic consciousness of the Prophet’s followers. This picture of Jewish enmity toward the Prophet and his ummah held true not only in Muhammad’s generation but also in generations to follow, the passivity of the Jews in the conquered territories notwithstanding.

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