The alpha and omega of Israel-Palestine hostility isn’t about territory but religion and the intertwining tribal sectarianism. It’s an enmity between two Abrahamic lineages and their respective religions — a remix of Kaurava-Pandava inter-cousin internecine warfare.
Islamic antisemitism
In an age when Islamophobia is a familiar terminology, Islamic antisemitism has remained an un-diagnosed malaise, even though it is as old as Islam itself. Contrary to the commonly peddled opinion, Islamic antisemitism didn’t come as a response to Zionism or the state of Israel. Even if Israel were to disappear, Muslims would continue to be hostile to Jews.
Islam’s basic texts, the Quran and the Hadith, are full of chastisement for Jews. The Jews are regarded as Islam’s numero uno enemy. It’s difficult for a Muslim, conditioned as they are by the popular lores, to have an objective view of Jews. In a left-handed compliment to the Jews’ intellectual excellence, Muslims demonise them for their conspiratorial skills. ‘Jewish conspiracy’ is one of the main tropes of Muslim popular culture, and most of the calamities in the history of Islam are blamed on it. So much so that the majority Sunni sect regards Shi’ism as the conspiracy of a Jew, Abdullah bin Saba. Furthermore, Jews are equated with moral depravity. Poet Iqbal would reproach Muslims for their waywardness in such words as ये मुसलमाँ हैं जिन्हें देख कर शर्मायें यहूद, i.e., the Muslims are so bad as to put the Jews to shame.
This attitude is so normal, even religious, that it is not even recognised as antisemitism. And it won’t end until Islamic religious thought is reformed and Muslims are secularised.
Christians too have had a long history of antisemitism. But Europe has secularised and largely rid itself of antisemitism. It’s true that Muslims didn’t perpetrate pogroms and holocaust on Jews, but they still treated them badly, and will continue to do so until they cure themselves of the religious prejudice against them. And for that, a mere reinterpretation of what Quran and Hadith say about Jews is not enough.
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Genesis of the ideological & genealogical feud
To understand the lasting feud between Muslims and Jews, which is as genealogical as it is ideological, let’s have an overview of the Abrahamic legacy.
Jews are the lineal descendants of Abraham from his aristocratic wife Sarah through their son Isaac or Is’haq, and the Arabs are his supposed descendants from his Egyptian slave-girl Hagar through their son Ishmael or Ismail. The Abrahamic tradition of prophethood continued in his son Isaac’s line whose son Jacob (Yaqub) was known as Israel. The descendants of Jacob’s 12 sons — the twelve tribes of Israel — came to be known as Beni Israel.
Beni Ismail
The descendants of Ismail, settled in Arabia, couldn’t attain the same spiritual and intellectual advancement as their more illustrious collateral branch. Compared to Beni Israel, the Beni Ismail remained the proverbial country cousins. They looked upon the Jews with awe and admiration, and called them Ahl Kitab (People of the Book, i.e., divinely guided) since they had Torah. The Arabs called themselves Ummi. In Arabic, Umm means mother. This implied that Ummis were in their natural state, like newborns, without cultural advancement since they didn’t possess a revealed book of divine guidance like the Beni Israel did.
And then, one of them, Muhammad, proclaimed prophethood, claiming to revive their ancestral Abrahamic monotheism. They were a people who believed in One God, but also worshipped idols of many demigods who, according to them, ran the day-to-day affairs of the world. Muhammad and his followers faced stiff opposition from their own tribe, the Quraish of Mecca. To escape persecution, they migrated to Yathrib (Medina).
Prophet and the Jews
Shortly before leaving Mecca, Muhammad had his supreme spiritual experience known as Isra (the Night Journey) and Meraj (the Ascension). He was taken from Masjid al-Harām (the Sanctuary at Mecca with Kaba at its centre) to Masjid al-Aqsa (the Faraway Masjid, that is, the site of the Solomon’s Temple, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem). This journey was symbolic of Islam’s umbilical connection with the Judaic religion and its line of prophethood. The al-Aqsa mosque mentioned in the Quran is the Jewish Temple, which stood on the Temple Mount, and not the existing golden Dome of the Rock or a mosque by this name in that precinct. At the time of the Night Journey, the Islamic masjid was still in future.
In Yathrib, besides the Arab tribes who hosted Muhammad and his followers, there were some Jewish ones as well. Muhammad entered a covenant of modus vivendi with them. Interestingly, he chose Jerusalem’s Temple Mount (al-Aqsa) as the Qibla, or the direction of prayer, to highlight the source of his religion.
He had hoped that since he was reviving the Abrahamic monotheism, the Jews—monotheist themselves, and with an abhorrence for idol worship—would side with him against his Arab opponents. The Jews, however, maintained that since they already believed in what Muhammad was preaching, there was no reason why they should follow him.
The Prophet was disappointed. He set out to unite his followers into a community and establish a distinct identity for them, one separate from both the Jews and the Arab pagans. He marked this break by changing the Qibla from Al Aqsa (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem to Kaba in Mecca. Had the Prophet not changed the Qibla, Islam would end up being a sect of Judaism. Till this day, Muslims revere Jerusalem as their First Qibla, although it would be more appropriate to call it the Former Qibla.
The presence of the Prophet and his followers in Yathrib had not only begun to erode the cultural hegemony of the Jews, but also triggered a change in the inter-tribal power dynamics, whose far-reaching consequences were not lost on them. For one, Yathrib came to be known as Medinat-ur Rasul (Medina in short), that is, the City of the Messenger.
They responded to this challenge from, what they considered, an upstart community by colluding with their Meccan enemies, and paid a heavy price for it. Two of the three major tribes were banished from Medina, and the third, Banu Quraiza, was slaughtered. Their habitations in Khaybar were attacked and subjugated, and they were reduced to tenants on their own lands. Not long after the Prophet’s death, as Arabia was cleansed of all non-Muslims, the Jews too were expelled for good.
One might wonder why the Jews were treated so harshly for conniving with the Quraishi enemies of the Prophet, but when Mecca was conquered and the Quraish were subdued, they were not only given a general amnesty, but were included in the emerging aristocracy of Islam in preference over the people of Medina who had sheltered the Prophet and his followers.
That was because the Arabs, especially the Quraish, were indispensable to the religion of the Prophet, who appeared in their line, the Beni Ismail branch of Abraham. Whereas Jews, the Beni Israel, being the privileged branch of the prophetic tradition, posed a challenge of legitimacy to the new religion.
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Beginning of the feud
Though the Quran describes itself as the confirmation of the earlier scriptures of the Abrahamic tradition, the Torah and the Gospel, no corresponding validation for Islam came from the Jews and Christians. However, the Muslims were soon to become an imperial power, and their theology responded to this challenge to legitimacy by declaring earlier religions, Judaism and Christianity, to have expired their validity. The Jews came in for a more severe castigation as, despite being in treaty with the Prophet, they cast doubt on the truth of Islam, and collaborated with his enemies. The Quran and Hadith are replete with their harsh criticism.
Way out
It’s a truism that scriptures should be read in their historical context. It means that our present shouldn’t be a prisoner of the past as reflected in scriptures. History can’t change, but theology, ideology, attitudes, and behaviour can. And they must for a better future.
Ibn Khaldun Bharati is a student of Islam, and looks at Islamic history from an Indian perspective. He tweets at @IbnKhaldunIndic. Views are personal.
Editor’s Note: We know the writer well and only allow pseudonyms when we do so.
(Edited by Prashant)