Scholar David Collier explodes the myth that Jews and Muslims lived peacefully together in Muslim countries

Here is a superb insight, thanks to scholar and journalist David Collier, into the grim reality of dhimmitude in Islamic lands.

The subordinate status of Jews and other “people of the book” in Sharia states is based on the Qur’an: “Fight against those do not believe in Allah or the last day, and do not forbid what Allah and his messenger have forbidden, and do not follow the religion of truth, even if they are among the people of the book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” (9:29)

This is what that state of “willing submission” looked like.

“No! The Jews were not ‘living happily’ in Arab lands,” David Collier, January 29, 2023 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

According to the anti-Israel narrative, Jews and Arabs lived peacefully together – until of course the ‘Zionists’ arrived to spoil the ‘beautiful’ relationship.

 

This is one of the most offensive rewrites of history. It may be true that the Jews had a worse time in Europe – a deflective phrase I have even heard academics use – but let’s face it, is the industrial slaughter of 6 million Jews really the bar we want to measure things by?

The reality is that Jews in Islamic lands knew their place. Jews in Islamic lands were often third class citizens, with special taxes to pay, and a myriad of degrading rules to live by. Even looking a Muslim in the eye could result in death. This from Algiers (current Jewish population = zero) in the 19th century:

Sometimes, specific periods of acceptance or calm in nations such as Morocco are held up as examples – but this too is deceptive. Whilst a few Jewish families may have been given privileges now and again – the majority still lived in perpetual fear, and at the mercy of the Muslim majority population that surrounded them. Jews could be brutally attacked – but dared not complain.

Whilst doing research I have stumbled on numerous newspaper reports laying out the horror of the treatment of Jews in Islamic lands. All of them long before Israel’s war of Independence in 1948. I intend to create country-specific pages on the website to let others use them as a reference – part of a wider plan to greatly bolster the historical evidence available on this site. A depository of truth to help do battle with the revisionists. For now, I will just give an example or two from each country.

This is what it was really like for Jews living under Muslim rule:

Morocco

Jewish population was once 265,000. Today it is about 3000. This report is a description of the forced expulsion in 1807 of a Jewish community in Mogadore Morocco – and the theft of all their property.

Random acts of violence against Jews persisted wherever Jews resided. These reports are of a massacre in Tetuan (1858) and the pillage of a Jewish settlement at Tameslouht in 1889.

The next two give a taste of the status of Jews in Morocco, a report from Tangier in 1825 and Mogador in 1864:

There is evidence of persistent persecution throughout the 19th century. This continued into the 20th century, with this report of an attack at Fez, occurring in 1912, just five years before the Balfour declaration:

I have provided several examples of attacks and the level of persecution in Morocco because it is generally considered the ‘most favourable’ of the nations, with some almost describing a romantic, utopian existence. Reading the above the bitter truth is clear for all to see.. For the other Jewish communities throughout the Middle East and North Africa, I will restrict the evidence here to just one or two examples (the country pages when uploaded will contain multiple examples from each)….

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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