[A.D. to Modern] Jewish/Muslim Discrimination?

Overheal

I hope this topic is appropriate for this forum,

Triggered by the realization that western society broadly deems 'Islamaphobia' an acceptable norm, I have questions about the persecution of Jews in the United States on an historical basis.

For one, I don't even know generally when Jews first immigrated to the Americas. Also today in comedy especially, we mock many stereotypes about Jewish people, and when did this practice begin?

The similarities I see between then and now are religious sectarianism as well as obvious anthropological divides between different castes. The Jewish are not viewed [in the US] to be a violent people, especially when regarded against how Muslims are portrayed. Post Auschwitz, many westerners sympathized with the Jewish creed; today, Muslims seeking refuge are regarded with elevated xenophobia and sectarian outrage. Really what are the similarities in Jewish history and Muslim history?

Manach

Well the OP does seem to have both a loaded and one-sided view. Perhaps tenanted on a simplistic meme of the dominant Western religion being somehow bad and the embracing of the notion of victimology as a narritive. Given the overly social justice meme that is occurring in numerous US academic institutions perhaps not overly surprising that instead of a Whig or Trends theory of history it is now one of grievances.

There has been a variety of negative and positive interactions based on religious ideologies both in the European core and borderlands areas as well as during the formative years the emergence of political and territorial borders. From authors like Brendan Lewis or Geoffrey Wheatcroft it would have been the European powers on the weaker and defensive side facing both a technological equal, centralised and committed Islamic power. To use the terms sectarian without such an historical appreciation seems to more a precursor to boost dubious current day policies based on discovery of historical actions that are divorced by time and culture.

tac foley

Overheal wrote: »

Really what are the similarities in Jewish history and Muslim history?

Apart from a monotheistic belief, and a few figures from the Pentateuch including Abraham and Isaac, Islam seems to have little in common with Judaism. Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet, whereas Judaism of the traditional kind ignores him completely, but then, the so-called Old Testament was written and compiled a long time before Mohammed or Christianity appeared.

Can't answer much more on the comparison, except to say that Judaism is a non-prosyletising religion - basically, if you weren't one, it's very difficult to become one. In particular, it does not urge its followers to slaughter those who do not accept its tenets, unlike Islam, which does. Judaism is not full of bloody conquest by the sword, at least, in the last three thousand years or so, whereas a lively proportion of Islam is making a career of it.

Jews don't blow up, commit suicide by explosives, or otherwise use violence to settle inter-religious differences as do the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam - wholesale and on a daily basis.

Jews tend to turn deserts into gardens of paradise, whereas a very large proportion of Islam, including whole nations, seems determined to turn Israel back into a desert, or at least empty of Jews.

Give Jews ten billion dollars and they build a city, full of homes, schools, medical facilities, stores, libraries, roads and domestic infrastructure.

Give Moslems ten billion dollars and they build tunnels and import rockets and tons of explosives to carry along them to destroy the Jews.

Ask a six-year-old Jew to recite the Ten Commandments and you'll hear the usual list of don't do this or that that we are all familiar with. Things that if you obey them, will make life easier and more pleasant for you and those around you.

Ask a six-year-old Moslem child the same question and you'll get a litany of hate, prime amongst which will be advice to kill Jews.

Many Jewish kids want to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer or a pillar of society.

Many Moslem kids want to grow up to be big enough to strap on a few kilos of explosives and become, well, messily dead, hopefully having killed some Jews in the process. Or none-Jews like most everybody else here. Failing the use of explosives, running around a shopping mall or beach, slaughtering shoppers or tourists will do, or piloting airplanes into skyscrapers, or simply wiping out whole villages.

The history of Islam, apart from some fancy poetry about a bottle of wine and thou, and a thousand and one fairy tales, seems to be filled with wholesale blood and slaughter, in spite of the claim by its followers to be a religion that promotes peace.

But hey, don't take my word for it, after all, I'm Jewish, and I could be trying to lie to you to make Judaism look good - after all, in the last 100 years or so many of us have been awarded Nobel prizes for one thing or another - almost 200 in total.

By comparison, Moslem winners of ANY Nobel Prize can be counted on one hand and another finger.

Don't get me wrong - there HAVE been naughty Jews - Bugsy Siegel was one.

No doubt I'll have others pointed out to me in the course of this thread, but like any good Jew, I'm here to learn.

tac

Peregrinus

Theologically, Judaism and Islam are much closer to one another than either is to Christianity and, for most of history, Judaism and Jewish communities tended to fair better under Islamic regimes than under Christian ones. The Islamic world wasn't exactly a multicultural paradise, but it was a great deal more tolerant of religious minorities than the Christian world, and there are plenty of examples of Jews fleeing persecution in the West to find tolerance in the Islamic world. Jewish/Muslim antagonism of the kind that is so familiar today is a largely modern phenomenon and, ironically, probably owes more to western, enlightenment ideas (such as nationalism) than it does to either Judaism or Islam.

But that's not what the OP is asking; he's asking whether there's any parallel between the treatment of, and attitudes towards, Jews and Muslims in European/western societies. He mentions the US in particular.

In the US, unlike in Europe, there has never been much explicit legal discrimination against Jews (though there was some). This is partly a matter of timing; the US only came into being as a political entity at the end of the eighteenth century, by which time formal discrimination against Jews was being dismantled in Europe. The same ideological/intellectual factors were at work in both places.

Social and cultural antisemitism certainly survived in the US, as in Europe. But for a long time it was relatively low-key, simply because the number of Jews in the US was vanishingly small. It wasn't until mass immigration in the later part of the nineteenth century that the US acquired a large Jewish population, whereupon the antisemitic stereotypes current in Europe appeared and flourished in the US - the Jews are mean and grasping, they are dishonest, they are materialist, they are disloyal, they are dirty, they are poor, they are rich, they control the banking system, they enslave others through credit, they deny others credit, they are a threat to national security, they are "foreign", etc, etc - all the usual stuff. And until well into the middle of the twentieth century it wasn't unusual to find businesses - e.g. hotels - that wouldn't (knowingly) serve Jews, and cultural institutions (sports and social clubs) that either excluded them or limited their access in one way or another. And there's no shortage of published cartoons that caricature Jews' supposed facial appearance and greedy, grasping nature. The only think you find in European antisemitism during this period that you don't find in American antisemitism is explicitly sexualised cartoons portaying Jews as rapists, homosexuals, corrupters of innocent young girls, etc. And that's probably an outcome of American puritanims in public discourse rather than any more tolerant attitudes towards Jews.

Probably there wasn't a huge amount of difference between antisemitism as expressed in Western Europe and in the US in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. But as we know there was a great resurgence of the most virulent antisemitism in Western and Central Europe in between the wars. This found little parallel in the US, though the Ku Klux Klan, when revived in the 1920s, added Jews to Blacks among its hate objects, and from the 1930s, when Gallup began to survey public opinion, we have confirmation that a majority of the US population perceived Jews to be "greedy" and "dishonest". And there is at least one documented lynching of a Jew for the rape and murder of a "white" girl. (And, yes, in that context people did distinguish the "Jewish" alleged perpetrator from the "white" victim.) Even throughout the Second World War, surveys showed "Jews" as the group most likely to be perceived as disloyal to the US and a threat to its security - more so even than "Japanese". We probably would regard all this as dreadful were it not for the fact that, set against what was going on in Germany at the time, it looks practically benign.

"Violent" was never a large part of antisemitic stereotypes either in the US or in Western Europe. But, I have to say, "terrorist" certainly was, especially in the US. Terrorism isn't a new phenomenon in the US. (Interesting factoid of the day: the world's oldest police "bomb squad" is the New York Police Department's, which has been around since the 1890s.) In the late nineteenth/early twentieth century in the US there was significant labour unrest, often spilling into violence which was blamed, according to taste, on revolutionists/socialists/anarchists or on police lackeys/employer's goons. And your stereotypical anarchist labour agitator was always portrayed as an immigrant, and frequently as a Jewish immigrant.

Anti-Muslim sentiment is a much more recent phenomenon in Europe because, again, it's only recently that there has been any signficant number of Muslim immigrants into Europe. Back in the day, British colonial policy in India tended to favour Muslims, who were regarded as better educated, more easily westernised and altogether sounder chaps and more advanced than those superstitious, fatalistic Hindus. In the 50s and 60s and into the 70s, opposition to the State of Israel wasn't seen as a Muslim thing, more an Arab nationalist thing, and in any event that particular conflict slotted neatly into a Cold War mindset in which it was simply the local manifestation, through proxies, of the struggle between capitalism and communism, and therefore nothing to do with Islam (or Judaism, for that matter). But once you do have significant Muslim immigration into Europe, you have all the usual anti-immigrant and anti-minority attitudes emerging. And, yes, there are striking similarities between some of the things written (or drawn) about Muslims today, and some of the things written (or drawn) about Jews in the past. Some of the stereotypes are different (Muslims aren't a greedy cabal of rootless cosmopolitan bankers, Jews were never seeking to establish a worldwide caliphate - but who cares exactly how they try to wield their nefarious power?) and some of the preoccupations of the majority community have changed (kosher slaughter never commanded the attention that halal slaughter gets in some quarters today). But, basically, the same attitudes are at work, and they are manifested in many of the same ways.

Kev W

tac foley wrote: »

Somehow, this thread has slipped sideways.

The OP's original question was 'what are the similarities in Jewish history and muslim history?'

Somehow, it has changed into something else.

I'm done here.

tac

It "changed into something else " in the space of a single post with a a POV dissimilar to yours?

One which directly answers the OP's question?

Kev W

tac foley wrote: »

My quote was the original question of 'Overheal'. Let me just write it again in case it wasn't clear - 'what are the similarities in Jewish history and muslim history?'

You figure it out.

tac

Yes, that's the question that Peregrinus answered. Are you offended that their answer is different to yours?

Kev W

tac foley wrote: »

Are you kidding me? MY response was to the revised question. I have no problem with his response to that, only puzzlement that somehow the original question has changed from one about history to one of 'persecution of Jews in America'.

I'll write it yet again - 'Really, what are the similarities in Jewish history and muslim history?'

Don't try and invent any kind of an argument between me and Peregrinus. His response is just fine to the new question from Overheal. If I ever have a beef with Peregrinus I can invent it myself, 'kay?

tac

I wasn't aware of any edits to the question.

Peregrinus

tac foley wrote: »

Somehow, this thread has slipped sideways.

The OP's original question was 'what are the similarities in Jewish history and muslim history?'

Somehow, it has changed into something else.

I'm done here.

tac

Well, he does say he has "questions about the persecution of the Jews in the United States on a historical basis". So I don't think he's looking in general terms for similarities in Jewish and Muslim history; more like a comparison between their respective histories of persecution.

Overheal

To end the sniping, Peregrinus nails understanding what the customer [OP] wanted, rather than explicitly what was said Common enough thing in retail as an aside: Do you have any idea how many different things a "modem" can be to a customer? I encountered at least 5 different things: a modem, a PC, a laptop, a router, and a telephone. /digress

As for the other post, Tac,

Jews don't blow up, commit suicide by explosives, or otherwise use violence to settle inter-religious differences as do the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam - wholesale and on a daily basis.

Jews tend to turn deserts into gardens of paradise, whereas a very large proportion of Islam, including whole nations, seems determined to turn Israel back into a desert, or at least empty of Jews.

Give Jews ten billion dollars and they build a city, full of homes, schools, medical facilities, stores, libraries, roads and domestic infrastructure.

Give Moslems ten billion dollars and they build tunnels and import rockets and tons of explosives to carry along them to destroy the Jews.

Ask a six-year-old Jew to recite the Ten Commandments and you'll hear the usual list of don't do this or that that we are all familiar with. Things that if you obey them, will make life easier and more pleasant for you and those around you.

Ask a six-year-old Moslem child the same question and you'll get a litany of hate, prime amongst which will be advice to kill Jews.

Many Jewish kids want to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer or a pillar of society.

etc

what's 'historical' about this? you havent compared histories of either group there.

But once you do have significant Muslim immigration into Europe, you have all the usual anti-immigrant and anti-minority attitudes emerging. And, yes, there are striking similarities between some of the things written (or drawn) about Muslims today, and some of the things written (or drawn) about Jews in the past. Some of the stereotypes are different (Muslims aren't a greedy cabal of rootless cosmopolitan bankers, Jews were never seeking to establish a worldwide caliphate - but who cares exactly how they try to wield their nefarious power?) and some of the preoccupations of the majority community have changed (kosher slaughter never commanded the attention that halal slaughter gets in some quarters today). But, basically, the same attitudes are at work, and they are manifested in many of the same ways.

That was the hypothesis I had, given the culmination of all my trivial knowledge. Right now in my social media (including some elements on boards) it's being seen as culturally acceptable to view Muslims with incredible disdain. Even people who normally wouldn't be political, or are essentially moderates, have been 're-sharing' the most hate-inspired crap, like this example which is among the tamest: https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/11990380_881927298561377_625781396112942142_n.jpg?oh=e18ca1d1f2ed66f6f0359c1b46e6bf4b&oe=566001D7

It just struck me how ubiquitous the xenophobia towards muslims has gotten and I wanted to compare it to the most likely and ironic of examples, Judaism.

So if the British thought the Muslims were a good fit for assimilation: why? What was their view on Sharia law, and how did that coincide with public beheadings and stockades, prima nocta (if applicable), etc.

By comparison, Moslem winners of ANY Nobel Prize can be counted on one hand and another finger.

Inventing algebra has to count for something. No pun intended.

Peregrinus

Overheal wrote: »

So if the British thought the Muslims were a good fit for assimilation: why? What was their view on Sharia law, and how did that coincide with public beheadings and stockades, prima nocta (if applicable), etc.

Well, we’re talking about the British in India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Basically, as far as I can see, the British favoured the Muslims because the Muslims were More Like Us than the Hindus. The Muslims were not just monotheists; they worship the same God as the British do. And, even leaving religion aside, culturally they had a good deal in common with Europeans; they shared a familiarity with, and appreciation of, the Greek philosophers; they were interested in science, etc, etc. Plus, politically and militarily, they were closer to the Europeans. The British Raj, remember, displaced the Moghul Empire, in which a Muslim minority politically dominated a largely Hindu continent. It even looked a bit colonial; a lot of the administrative/officer class of the Moghul Empire were immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants, from Persia. Ambitious young men from Persia came to India to make their fortunes or, failing that, at least to make their careers in government service, just as ambitious young men from Britain were starting to do. So the Muslim community in India conformed to a British expectation of What Civilized People Do.

I don’t think the Mughal Empire ever implemented Sharia law, at least in the criminal sphere. No doubt their criminal justice could sometimes be fairly savage by our standards, but the same was true of the criminal justice which the British themselves administered at the time; they would hang someone for stealing ten shillings . And that was in Britain; you can imagine the standards of justice they administered to “natives” in the colonies. So I don’t think Mughal rule would have looked at that brutal to them.

Zebra3

tac foley wrote: »

Apart from a monotheistic belief, and a few figures from the Pentateuch including Abraham and Isaac, Islam seems to have little in common with Judaism. Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet, whereas Judaism of the traditional kind ignores him completely, but then, the so-called Old Testament was written and compiled a long time before Mohammed or Christianity appeared.

Can't answer much more on the comparison, except to say that Judaism is a non-prosyletising religion - basically, if you weren't one, it's very difficult to become one. In particular, it does not urge its followers to slaughter those who do not accept its tenets, unlike Islam, which does. Judaism is not full of bloody conquest by the sword, at least, in the last three thousand years or so, whereas a lively proportion of Islam is making a career of it.

Jews don't blow up, commit suicide by explosives, or otherwise use violence to settle inter-religious differences as do the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam - wholesale and on a daily basis.

Jews tend to turn deserts into gardens of paradise, whereas a very large proportion of Islam, including whole nations, seems determined to turn Israel back into a desert, or at least empty of Jews.

Give Jews ten billion dollars and they build a city, full of homes, schools, medical facilities, stores, libraries, roads and domestic infrastructure.

Give Moslems ten billion dollars and they build tunnels and import rockets and tons of explosives to carry along them to destroy the Jews.

Ask a six-year-old Jew to recite the Ten Commandments and you'll hear the usual list of don't do this or that that we are all familiar with. Things that if you obey them, will make life easier and more pleasant for you and those around you.

Ask a six-year-old Moslem child the same question and you'll get a litany of hate, prime amongst which will be advice to kill Jews.

Many Jewish kids want to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer or a pillar of society.

Many Moslem kids want to grow up to be big enough to strap on a few kilos of explosives and become, well, messily dead, hopefully having killed some Jews in the process. Or none-Jews like most everybody else here. Failing the use of explosives, running around a shopping mall or beach, slaughtering shoppers or tourists will do, or piloting airplanes into skyscrapers, or simply wiping out whole villages.

The history of Islam, apart from some fancy poetry about a bottle of wine and thou, and a thousand and one fairy tales, seems to be filled with wholesale blood and slaughter, in spite of the claim by its followers to be a religion that promotes peace.

But hey, don't take my word for it, after all, I'm Jewish, and I could be trying to lie to you to make Judaism look good - after all, in the last 100 years or so many of us have been awarded Nobel prizes for one thing or another - almost 200 in total.

By comparison, Moslem winners of ANY Nobel Prize can be counted on one hand and another finger.

Don't get me wrong - there HAVE been naughty Jews - Bugsy Siegel was one.

No doubt I'll have others pointed out to me in the course of this thread, but like any good Jew, I'm here to learn.

tac

Is this a wind up?

Overheal

he did say he was Jewish

Smiles35

In my mind I wonder if Jewish people are the closest thing to steadfast and sure in America, certainly in comparison to the great multitudes banter.

DarkyHughes

Well when Christianity returned to Spain & Portugal after the Reconquista when the Muslims fled the Jews went with them because they were afraid (and rightly so) of the antisemitism that would be unleashed on them & under the Muslims they were a protected class. The Spanish King & Queen introduced "blood purity" laws a little similar to Nazi Jewish laws in 1935.

Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal, known as Sephardi Jews from the Hebrew word for Spain, fled to North Africa, Turkey and Palestine within the Ottoman Empire. Because within the Ottoman Empire, Jews could openly practice their religion.

Christians have persecuted both Jews & Muslims a lot more than either has persecuted each other.

Funny how things change.

Peregrinus

Christians have persecuted both Jews & Muslims a lot more than either has persecuted each other.

Or than either has persecuted Christianity, for that matter.

DarkyHughes

Peregrinus wrote: »

Or than either has persecuted Christianity, for that matter.
[/LEFT]

And all three have had very militaristic moments. The Great Jewish Rebellion, The Mohamed conquests I wouldn't really consider ISIS as an Islamic movement it just happens to have Muslims in it sort of like how the UVF & UDA used Protestantism as an excuse to kill Catholics (For God & Ulster), but the Christians have the monopoly on both when it comes to militarism being part of the religion .

DarkyHughes

tac foley wrote: »

Don't get me wrong - there HAVE been naughty Jews - Bugsy Siegel was one.



tac

You do know Bugsy wanted to "whack" 2 top Nazi's who were staying in the same hotel as him when he took a trip to Italy with his girlfriend in the mid 30's? One of the Nazi's was Goering I forget who the other was, it might have been Goebbels .

Peregrinus

DarkyHughes wrote: »

And all three have had very militaristic moments. The Great Jewish Rebellion, The Mohamed conquests I wouldn't really consider ISIS as an Islamic movement it just happens to have Muslims in it sort of like how the UVF & UDA used Protestantism as an excuse to kill Catholics (For God & Ulster), but the Christians have the monopoly on both when it comes to militarism being part of the religion .

I dunno. I think Christian-branded violence - the crusades, for example - has been just as much a grab motivated by the lust for for territory, wealth and power as any other violence.

Peregrinus

DarkyHughes wrote: »

You do know Bugsy wanted to "whack" 2 top Nazi's who were staying in the same hotel as him when he took a trip to Italy with his girlfriend in the mid 30's? One of the Nazi's was Goering I forget who the other was, it might have been Goebbels .

I never heard that! What stopped him?

DarkyHughes

Peregrinus wrote: »

I never heard that! What stopped him?

His girlfriend convinced him not to. At least that's how the story goes, might have been Italian officials who convinced him as they didn't want to sour relations with Nazi Germany.

I thought that was a well known Bugsy story.

DarkyHughes

Peregrinus wrote: »

I dunno. I think Christian-branded violence - the crusades, for example - has been just as much a grab motivated by the lust for for territory, wealth and power as any other violence.

Yeah, maybe. But the Jews were without doubt fighting for their God & religion & imo nothing else in the wars against the Romans. When Titus & his army destroyed the temple that was like the worst thing they could imagine happening to them. I suppose there's cases of Muslims, Jews & Christians legitimately fighting for their God & religion & cases were they just use their respective religions as an excuse for a land grab.

Peregrinus

It's wrong to say that the Jews were fighting for God and religion and nothing else; they were fairly clearly fighting for national autonomy and control of the territory that they regarded as theirs.

Look, any of the tribes that clashed with or resisted the Romans would have had their ancestral gods just like the Jews did; we're just conscious of the Jews because (a) they're still around [hah! In your face, Romans!] and (b) their ancestral god is the god of our own culture. But if we see the Jewish rebellion as motivated by religion, then probably every tribal rebellion against, or resistance to, the Romans could also be seen as motivated by religion.

But in fact I think that's wrong. A particular community may identify and define themselves by religion (and other cultural factors) and may be so identified by their neighbours, but that doesn't mean resistance to annexation/rebellion against occupation by that community becomes a religiously-motivated conflict (as we know all too well from recent Irish history). It's still a struggle for power between imperial domination and national autonomy. There is nothing inherently religious about competition for power. We have no reason to think that, if the communities concerned didn't define or identify themselves by reference to religion, the struggle would not take place.

Zebra3

Overheal wrote: »

he did say he was Jewish

Hardly an excuse to post such crap.