Jews in Muslim Societies

Hello all!

Below is the handout for tomorrow’s class; it’s a lot of material, so if you could look it over before then, it’d be great. This and the other short reading will be on Blackboard, under the discussion board, as well.  See you tomorrow!

Jews in Muslim Societies, October 8^th

Our authors this week:

Maria Rosa Menocal (Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, 2002) was born in Cuba.  She received her PhD in Romance Philology in 1979 from the University of Pennsylvania, and taught there for a few years before moving to Yale.  For the past 23 years she has taught at Yale, where she is currently the R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and director of the Whitney Humanities Center.  Her research interests include comparative medieval lyric; the intellectual history of the study of the Arabic and Hebrew aspects of medieval Spanish identity; the formation of Castilian culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  Besides Ornament of the World, her books include The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage (1987), Writing in Dante’s Cult of Truth: From Borges to Boccaccio (1991), and Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric (1994).

Amy Mills (“Narratives in City Landscapes: Cultural Identity in Istanbul”, The Geographical Review 95, 2005) received her PhD in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004.  She has been an assistant professor in the department of Geography at the University of South Carolina since 2005.  She describes her research (which focuses on Turkey, specifically Istanbul) as “studies of geographies of identity at various scales. These scales include: the individual body and its gendered and ethnic identities; the neighborhood as a social space of community and belonging and/or exclusion; the city and its urban landscapes; and the nation and nationalism within a global context” (Mills, Personal Website, “Research”).

Jews in Islam

Islam and non-Muslims

–Dhimmi (“people of the dhimma”): this term refers to non-Muslim peoples under Muslim rule whose rights were explicitly protected by the state.  For the most part, this applied to the People of the Book (Ahl al-Kitab, i.e., Jews and Christians), though in some areas it was extended to Zoroastrians and Hindus.  In return for state protection, dhimmi were expected to pay the poll tax or jizya.

-Jizya: poll tax paid by non-Muslim subjects of Muslim rulers

Jews in Medina- large population of Jews in Medina when Muhammad arrived in 622

-Constitution: drafted by Muhammad shortly after his arrival in the city.  Laid down the social bases of Jewish-Muslim interaction: mutual toleration and self reliance.

-“(25) The Jews…are one community with the believers (the Jews have their religion and the Muslims have theirs), their freedmen and their persons except those who behave unjustly and sinfully, for they hurt but themselves and their families.”

-“ (37) The Jews must bear their expenses and the Muslims their expenses. Each must help the other against anyone who attacks the people of this document. They must seek mutual advice and consultation, and loyalty is a protection against treachery. A man is not liable for his ally’s misdeeds. The wronged must be helped. “

The Quran- what is said about Jews? Overall, the Quran shows a marked preference for Christianity over Judaism.  Furthermore, Jews in the Hadith are portrayed negatively, though Bernard Lewis says that this appears “less so in discussing his [Muhammad’s] beliefs and practices, more so in reference to Jewish relations with the Prophet and Muslims” (59).

-5:82- Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans; and nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say, “We are Christians”: because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world, and they are not arrogant.

-5:59- Say: “O people of the Book! Do ye disapprove of us for no other reason than that we believe in God, and the revelation that hath come to us and that which came before (us), and (perhaps) that most of you are rebellious and disobedient?”

-9: 29-32- 29. Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.  30. The Jews call ‘Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!  31. They take their priests and their anchorites to be their lords in derogation of Allah, and (they take as their Lord) Christ the son of Mary; yet they were commanded to worship but One Allah. There is no god but He. Praise and glory to Him: (Far is He) from having the partners they associate (with Him).  32. Fain would they extinguish Allah’s light with their mouths, but Allah will not allow but that His light should be perfected, even though the Unbelievers may detest (it).

HISTORY, 8^th c.-19^th c.

-Under the Caliphate, Jews were generally accorded fair treatment as dhimmi, though there were periods of repression (particularly associated with the era of Abu Mutawakkil in the mid 9^th century)

–Muslim Spain: Timeline

-711: Umayyad Invasion of al-Andalus (the Iberian peninsula)

-756: After Abassid overthrow of Umayyad dynasty in 750, last Umayyad, Abd ar-Rahman I, flees to Spain where he establishes himself as emir

-929: Abd ar-Rahman III (912-961) proclaims himself Caliph; Umayyad caliphate in Spain reaches greatest point

-1090: after years of civil war and disunity after the fall of the Umayyads (1030), the conservative African dynasty the Almoravids conquer al-Andalus

-1147: Almohads replace Almoravids, Muslim control of al-Andalus decreasing with every dynastic change

-1212: Almohads suffer crushing defeat at hands of the combined Christian kingdoms (Castille, Navarre, Aragon, and Portugal)

-1228: last Muslim state in Spain, Grenada (under the Nasrid dynasty), is established; survives as client of Castille until Catholic conquest in 1492

–Ottomans Jews were most important community in Muslim world

-first, most numerous; Ottomans actively encouraged Jewish immigration from around the Mediterranean, transporting Jews from areas where they were persecuted and settling them in Ottoman territory

-the presence of so many minorities (many varieties of Christianity) made Jews a less obvious target

-Jews, unlike Christians, had no attachment to the Ottomans’ enemies (Christendom)

–Persia was generally the worst place for Jews in Muslim world

-most visible minority and only one across Iran (others were regional, e.g.  Armenians)

-stricter standard of Shi’a Islam: Jews not just infidels, but “ritually unclean- people whose very touch brought pollution” (151)

Balfour Declaration, Mandate, and establishment of the State of Israel

-1917- Balfour Declaration by the British government, stating that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, formed the basis for the 1922 British Mandate over Palestine

-Jewish immigration to Palestine increased in the 1930s as a response to Nazi persecution, though the British tried to put a cap on immigrants to Palestine

-with the establishment of Israel and the ensuing war between Israel and her Arab neighbors in 1948, Jews in Arab countries faced both domestic (persecution or outright expulsion) and international (Israeli efforts to get Jews to move, and often logistic cooperation between Israel, Western nations, and Arab countries in order for the latter to get rid of their Jews) pressure to leave

-Aliya (Hebrew for ‘ascent’): the immigration of Jews to the State of Israel, or Eretz Israel

-over 800,000 Jews from Arab countries came to Israel in the decades after 1948; today almost none remain

Islamic Anti-Semitism: A Historiographical Debate

-One view: “There is little sign [in the Muslim world] of deep-rooted emotional hostility directed against Jews- or for that matter any other group- such as the anti-Semitism of the Christian world” (32); that anti-Semitism in the Muslim world is essentially a product of European anti-Semitism, transferred to the Middle East via imperialism and European media (Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Nazi propaganda, etc.)

-Opposing view: “During the last fifteen years, certain Western scholars have tried to argue that, first, Islamic anti-Semitism- that is, hatred of Jews- is only a recent phenomenon learned from the Nazis during and after the 1940s, and, second, that Jews lived safely under Muslim rule for centuries, especially during the Golden Age of Muslim Spain.  Both assertions are unsupported by the evidence.  Islam 1, that is, the Islam of the texts, as found in the Qur’an and hadith and in the sira, and Islam 2- that is, the Islam developed or elaborated from those texts early on by the Qur’anic commentators and jurisconsulists, and then set in stone more than a millennium ago- and even Islam 3, in the sense of Islamic civilization- that is, what Muslims actually did historically- have all been deeply anti-Semitic.  That is, all have been anti-infidel, so that Christians too are regarded with disdain and contempt and hatred, but the Jews have been served, or been seen to have merited, a special animus.” (22) 

Country	1948	2008
Afghanistan	6000	0
Algeria	140000	0
Azerbaijan	30000?	6,800
Egypt	75000	100
Iran	50000	10800
Iraq	105000	120
Lebanon	25000	0
Libya	40000	0
Morocco	250000	3000
Syria	20000	100
Tunisia	66000	1000
Turkey	80000	17800
Yemen	55000	200
	912000

September 10, First Sawyer Seminar: Ahmed El Shamsy, “Orthodoxy and Deviance in Premodern Muslim Societies”

Here are my relatively disorganized notes from Professor El Shamsy’s talk, which was intended to compliment, not overlap, his article that we read, “The social construction of orthodoxy”:

-how did Muslims reconcile and sustain heterodox and mutually irreconcilably (and contradictory) systems both within Islam and between Muslims and non-Muslims?

-inherently paradoxical: fusing the universalist truth claims of Islam with multiculturalism

-on practical level, the premodern Islamic state is ‘compartmentalized’ system

-“Constitution of Medina”: post-622; first document attempting to reconcile multiculturalism; stress on mutual solidarity (between Medinese Jews and new Muslim community); could have formed precedent but didn’t, as the system broke down

-Abu Bakr- told fighters to spare non Muslim peoples; said “let them bring tribute”

-poll tax (jizya) was cornerstone of relations between Muslims rulers and non-Muslim ruled

-freedom for communal self rule = the main characteristic of Muslim rule

-extended to Zoroastrians and Hindus (not just dhimmi)

-Arab conquerors = ethnically homogeneous; result of Umar”s order for garrison towns

-second phase, post 750: introspection, the “phase of optimism”

-optimism that all questions/disputes could be settled

-but in 9th/10th centuries, multiplication of problems because of no central authority weakened this sense of optimism

-third phase: “phase of maturity”- pragmatic acceptance of difference

-many cities had representatives of all four schools (Shafi’i, Hanbali, Zahiri, and Jariri) of jurisprudence, thus 4 different legal systems

-heterodox thinkers sought refuge in schools, took cover behind their school

-Sufism = another category with accepted realm of belief and practice

-Why did extreme multiculturalism characterize Islam?

-very diverse area: crossroads of Asia, Europe, Africa

-1890s, Heinrich von Treitschke: “enslavement” was driving force behind multiculturalism; Ottomans willing to let minorities control own affairs because they were infidels

-men are equal due to shared rationality

-but in phase of maturity this universalist approach was abandoned, but replaced now with relativism but divine revelation

-unnatural does not equal impermissable

-Why demise?

-adoption of nation-state model

-based on vision of nation as single organism with common law for all; precludes notion of compartmentalized communities within Muslim state

Discussion:

-von Treitschke: Ottoman Empire was “accumulation of national fragments welded together by force”

-“universalization of ethical expectations”

-before nation-state system, these expectations were different by sect, class, etc.

-parallel sides of life that are radically different

-universalism =/= uniformity

-multiculturalism is not dead in nation-states, but there is single core of ideals which didn’t exist in Islamic premodern societies

-issue of space and sovereignty in premodern vs modern (ie nation-state)

-orthodoxy is claim, not objective fact

September 3: How we got here (Gelvin, The Modern Middle East)

Our reading this week was UCLA professor (and Zeynep’s advisor!) James Gelvin’s survey The Modern Middle East.  As per Prof. Shields’ request, everyone brought one passage or concept that struck them.  Here they are:

-Defensive developmentalism: new term for many of us and a central part of Gelvin’s thesis.  Basically, defensive developmentalism is when “rulers or would-be rulers of states outside Europe copied European methods of governance and imposed them on their domains…because those methods seemed to provide the most effective means to protect themselves and mobilize the energies of their populations” (71).  The end goal was, obviously, military reform.  But for military reform, rulers needed to “expand the sources of revenue under their control, their ability to coordinate the activities of their populations, and their ability to discipline their populations” (74).  To collect the taxes that would support these newly created armies, rulers had to expand “access to education…[and promulgate] new legal codes”.

-Gelvin’s conception of modernity, 2 components: world system economy and a world system of nation states (the first of which begins to emerge in the 17th century, the latter in the 19th)

-Chapter 9 (‘Secularism and Modernity’): does secularism mean modernity in Gelvin’s understanding?  No; Gelvin talks about how some thinkers define modernity by the secularizing tendencies that accompanied modernization in Europe.  However, “the prominent role religion plays in politics and political discourse of Middle Eastern states does not mean these states are not modern; rather, it means these states follow an alternative form of modernity” (132; bold mine).

-The tension between westernizing forces and Islam; Islamic modernists and traditionalists

-p. 141/2: industrialization and the economic crisis that it brought to much of the world in the late 19th century (the Depression of 1873).

-import substitution?  Someone also threw out the acronym ISA; we also compared the experience of Ataturk in Turkey and Reza Shah in Iran during this discussion

-Gunpowder Empires: new way of conceptualizing world systems/world history in the early modern period for some of us

-World War I as a crucial turning point in the development of both the nation-state system and world economy (two components of modernity)

-modernity: usually associated with ideals or concepts (e.g. secularism), but Gelvin defines is based on structures and systems

-along with this, Zionism as colonial project (in particular, Nathan found Gelvin’s description of the Israel/Palestine conflict as a ‘real estate dispute’…interesting)

-The idea of osmanlilik, and how the effort to create an Ottoman identity relates to issues of modernity and Islam

-Two opposing conceptions of osmanlilik: the first, beginning with Mahmud II and Tanzimat, is a secular notion of citizenship on the French model; the second is based on Islam and was prominent during the long rule of Abdul Hamid II (though not always the official narrative)

-Gelvin’s putting the Middle East in a global context, through his use of world systems theory

-people often assume that the Middle East is apart from the rest of the world, divorced from the reality other regions face and has a unique set of issues and problems; Gelvin, by highlighting global phenomena like the crisis of the seventeenth century, disabuses us of this notion

-agency vs. victimhood; Professor Shields found Gelvin’s effort to bestow agency on Middle Eastern peoples in telling their history admirable, but not always historically accurate.  Sometimes there are victims, as in the case of Iraq, 2001-2003 (ex. was Iraq really a free agent making choices that affected its future during these years?)

-finally, the text itself as a ‘top down’ history; some people challenged the assumption that you must know the top down history before reading bottom up accounts (e.g. Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s diary), but we didn’t really pursue this topic

Here are some of my notes (condensed!) from the rest of our discussion:

-The nation-state system was not an inevitable development; this was the part of discussion most focused on Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (I think I have the author and title right on that, though I haven’t read it), so I wasn’t able to follow most of the arguments.  Also in the context of our nationalism discussion, the claim most debated was whether nationalism is truly ‘never authentic, never organic’ (as one person in the class put it) and always a false construction.  We talked a great deal about osmanlilik during this part, and about how osmanlilik was never a fixed project: the emphasis varied between Islam and inclusion/univeralism at different historical moments

-exceptionalism, and how it is often used to oppress.  I honestly don’t remember in what context this came up, but I wrote it down!

-Finally, Sarah posed an interesting question: would the inclusion of different geographic/thematic considerations change Gelvin’s narrative?  This came out of Char’s point that our class is about the Muslim world, but Gelvin’s book focuses on the Middle East, lacking any discussion of Central or Southeast Asia or other Muslim communities across the globe.

See you all at the Seminar Thursday!

First Class, 8/27: Introduction and Heavy Metal Islam

Sorry this is so late everyone! Kind of forgot classes started I guess…

So last week we started with introductions, and then discussed ground rules for class discussions.  Here are the main points:

-no hand raising

-‘ouch/oops’: if you’re offended by something someone says, you should respond with ‘ouch’, to which the offending person should say ‘oops’ as a way of clearing the air

-‘step up/step back’: if you find you’re speaking too much, step back; if you haven’t said anything yet, step up

-be direct! no metaphors in order to avoid directly stating your positions (especially about bunnies)

Basically, think about what you say it before you say it to avoid directly or indirectly offending other people in the class.

About Heavy Metal Islam:

-the economic aspect of oppression as described in Levine’s book: the impact that neoliberal policies have on underground artists

-globalization: both as a positive (spreading these new and potentially liberating artistic forms and genres) and negative (creating the neoliberal economic conditions that stifle creativity in many cases) force

-criticism: is metal, as a violent and angry musical form, really a means toward peace and reconciliation in the Middle East?

-response: metal is more a coping mechanism, a way for young people to escape the political and social repression of their societies

-resistance to metal as an alien, outside (Western) force

-yet different forms of music are forms of protest in and of themselves