The Diaspora Jews and the Stances of Muslims and Europeans Toward Them

Amin Maalouf, the Lebanese-origin writer and thinker and member of the French Académie Française, writes in his research book *The Crusades as Experienced by Arabs*: “If my ancestors had been Muslims in a country conquered by Christian armies, rather than Christians in a country conquered by Muslim armies, I do not believe they would have managed to continue living for 14 centuries in their cities and villages, retaining their faith.”

This precise sentence summarizes several aspects of history and contradicts the preconceived notions and beliefs of many, as well as the prevailing view regarding the nature of the relationship between Arab Muslims and followers of other religions, particularly Christians and Jews, from the days of the Umayyad state to the present day, without pausing to examine what is recorded in religious texts and references over the past 1,300 years.

There is a common, yet mistaken, belief about the status of Jews under Islamic rule, passing through the period of Arab rule in Al-Andalus, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimid Caliphate, and the states and kingdoms in between, leading up to the Ottoman Empire, its collapse, the fragmentation of its territories, the end of the Anglo-French colonial era in the region, independence, the establishment of Israel in 1948, and the years that followed. During this time, Jews generally lived their best years alongside Arabs and Muslims, following the era of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs. Conversely, they generally endured their worst years in Europe. Had it not been for the intense European hatred toward them, no individual or entity would have considered establishing an independent Jewish state. Jews lived as a minority in dozens of countries throughout their history, and this suited them given the sharp religious, social, and political differences among them.

Al-Andalus was one of the most prominent examples of what is known as the “Golden Age” of Jews under Islamic rule, particularly in the 10th and 11th centuries AD, under the Umayyad Caliphate in Cordoba. Jews held the highest positions, serving as ministers, physicians, poets, and philosophers. The most famous among them were Shaprut, a physician and minister in the court of Abd al-Rahman III, and the philosopher Moses Maimonides, the greatest Jewish theologian in history. This was followed by persecution of Jews and Christians in the 12th century, and then the Catholic victory over Arab-Islamic rule with the fall of Granada in 1492. Jews and Muslims fled or were expelled from Spain, particularly those who refused to change their religion, to North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and Europe. These Jews became known as “Sephardim.”

Generally, Jews lived under Islamic rule as “People of the Book” (dhimmis), meaning a protected religious minority in exchange for paying the jizya tax and adhering to certain social restrictions, including the requirement to wear specific clothing that distinguished them from others, and restrictions on building places of worship, among other things. This system provided relative protection and stability for Jews compared to their situation in Europe during certain periods, although it never reached full equality. The severity of restrictions varied according to the state, era, and ruler, but Jews enjoyed favor during some periods of the Ottoman Empire. In Morocco, ancient and relatively prosperous Jewish communities also formed, despite periods of intermittent discrimination and persecution. In Yemen, Iraq, and Egypt, Jewish communities had existed since ancient times, for thousands of years before Islam itself.

The status of Jews in Christian Europe was generally harsher and more volatile. They were expelled from England in 1290, from France several times, from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1497. From the 16th century onward, they lived in closed ghettos, forbidden from leaving after a certain hour. They suffered greatly during the Inquisition and were subjected to repeated massacres resulting from accusations that they kidnapped Christian children and drank their blood.

Following the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the movement of Emancipation began in the 18th and 19th centuries, granting Jews full citizenship rights in most of Western Europe. The status of Jews in the Russian Empire was the most difficult in Europe; they were prohibited from living in specific geographic areas and were subjected to repeated waves of collective violence, particularly during the period 1881–1884 and after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, followed by an even more intense wave between 1903 and 1906. This resulted in the migration of millions of them to Western Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then came the period of the Holocaust, perpetrated by the German Nazis, which remains the most destructive event in modern Jewish history.

With the end of the Second World War and the establishment of Israel in 1948, Jewish migration from Arab countries to Israel began, originating from Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, Syria, and Libya. This migration occurred either due to increasing pressures and restrictions on them in their home countries, or through voluntary migration to Israel, depending on the situation and country. This is the subject of a forthcoming article.

Ahmed Al-Sarraff