Antisemitism in Islam: Difference between revisions

[[File:Images-nazism-0022.jpg|210px|right|thumb|''Mein Kampf'' has at times sold well when published in some countries in the Muslim world and elsewhere, and is often sold along-side religious literature.<ref name="Alastair Lawson">Alastair Lawson - [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8382132.stm Mein Kampf a hit on Dhaka streets] - BBC News, November 27, 2009</ref><ref name="AFP Mar 18 2005">[{{Reference archive|1=http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Arts/Mar/18/Hitlers-Mein-Kampf-sells-50000-copies-in-Turkey-in-three-months.ashx#axzz1mYj9kPvg|2=2012-02-16}} Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' sells 50,000 copies in Turkey in three months] - Agence France Presse, March 18, 2005</ref> Depicted above are Islamists employing the Nazi salute.]] Jews have historically suffered [[Dhimmitude|dhimmi]] status under [[Khilafah (Caliphate)|caliphates]] of the past, like all religious minorities permitted to keep to their faiths under Islamic rule. At times and places this co-existence was had a quality of tolerance, sometimes persecution. In recent times the Islamic intellectual, social, and political milieu has grafted itself onto more Western notions of antisemitism, especially as expressed and ideologized by Nazi Germany. Modern '''Islamic antisemitism''' is consequently based upon a medley of Islamic scriptural citations and new-fangled Western (and especially Nazi) terminologies and tropes. In illustration of this, modern Islamic anti-Jewish polemics often feature in Arab book-fairs and bookstores alongside Arabic translations of Hitlers ''Mein Kumpf'' (sometimes translated in Arabic as "My Jihad"). Some academic scholars date the modern increase in anti-semitism in the Muslim world to the beginnings of the Arab-Israeli conflict, while others trace it to the 19th century and possible influence from Arab Christians.

According to many modern, critically-oriented and source-skeptical historians of Islam, it is likely that Muhammad himself was not hostile to Medinan Jews. These historians argue that many verses in the [[Qur'an]] (which is generally considered a source contemporary to Muhammad) that directly address the fate of Muhammad's contemporary Jews are rather tolerant and that truly violent intolerance would have been unlikely to emerge from the highly cosmopolitan environment of pre-Islamic Arabia. This, they argue, contrasts sharply with the much later [[hadith]] sources which are frequently intensely vitriolic in their address of Jews and record such events as the expulsions, persecution, enslavement, and [[The Massacre of the Banu Qurayza|execution of Medinan Jews]] en masse. Historians who incline towards this line of reasoning argue that this content found in the hadith was only invented later by Muslim authorities as polemical material to employ against Jews and Judaism. Not all historians are convinced by these arguments, however, as indirect mention of the Jews in the Quran itself is often highly critical and at times straightforwardly insulting. This debate is, however, a strictly academic one, and mainstream Islamic scholars stand firmly by the narrative found in the hadith literature.