May 5, 2024
The yellow patch that the Jews had to wear during the Nazi regime was not invented by the Nazis. Umar bin al-Khattab, the second Muslim caliph, who came to power in 634 after the death of Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s successor, was the first to order the Jews to wear a piece of yellow cloth on their clothing as a sign of identification, intended to humiliate the Jews. The caliphate is a political-religious form of government under the leadership of a Muslim ruler with the title caliph, which means successor to the Prophet Muhammad
Caliph Omar laid down the living conditions of non-Muslims under Muslim rule in a series of laws. These were degrading and humiliating laws designed to make life miserable for non-Muslims and especially for Jews, as Muhammad commanded his believers in the Quran in Sura 9, verse 29
Fight those who do not believe in Allah ... and those who will not adhere to the true religion. To those who have been given the Book until they voluntarily raise the tax, the answer will be that they will be humiliated
The anti-Semitic motive, the hatred of the Jews, their humiliation and persecution are deeply embedded in the roots of Islam, in the Koran, in the Hadith, a collection of laws and stories about the life of Muhammad and his deeds, and in the Muslim legal sayings (Fatwa) published by Muslim clerics over the years
The background to Muhammad's hatred of the Jews
Muhammad was born in 570 AD in the city of Mecca on the Arabian Peninsula to a family from the Quraysh tribe. At that time, the Arabian Peninsula was inhabited by Bedouin and Arab tribes who worshipped idols, as well as a small number of Jewish and Christian tribes who believed in one God
The city of Mecca was located on the trade route that ran between the Kingdom of Sheba, in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, and Egypt, Mesopotamia, Byzantium and Israel. Mecca was not only a stopover for traders, but also a religious center. Temples for the various gods believed in by the idolaters stood around the black Kaaba stone
Muhammad’s father died before he was born, his mother died when he was 6 years old, and he grew up with his uncle, who was a merchant. When he grew up, Muhammad became a merchant himself. In the course of his work, he met the Jewish and Christian tribes, learned about their religion, their belief in one God, their laws and customs. The encounter with Jewish culture influenced Muhammad, and at the age of 40, in the year 610 AD, he began to tell the people around him that the angel Gabriel had appeared to him, and commissioned him to bring the gospel of faith in one God to the idolatrous tribes
Regardless of whether the angel Gabriel really appeared to Muhammad or whether it was his hallucination, the gospel that Muhammad began to spread at the beginning of his career as a prophet, was essentially based on the customs and laws of Jewish life, such as praying three times a day in the direction of Jerusalem, fasting on Yom Kippur and the laws of slaughter and kosher
The first to support Muhammad and his ideas was his first wife Kadija, a widow that was older than Muhammad and herself a wealthy businesswoman. Slowly, Mohammed began to gather a group of believers around him, to whom he recited the verses he had supposedly received from the angel Gabriel, and later they were compiled into the Book of the Koran
However, most members of the Quraysh tribe treated Muhammad like a madman, persecuted him, condemned the gospel he brought and refused to follow his path. In 622, Muhammad emigrated with his family and a group of followers from Mecca to the city of Yathrib, which was later called Medina
The city of Medina flourished and prospered in those days mainly thanks to three Jewish tribes who built up the city and developed its trade and economy. The Jewish tribes took in the refugees from Mecca, Muhammad and his admirers, and helped them to gain a foothold in the city. The Jews hoped that Muhammad, who preached the moral values of peace and charity at the time, would create peace between the Arab tribes and therefore encouraged him to spread his teachings
However, Muhammad was not content with proclaiming his gospel to the Arab and Bedouin tribes, and he also expected the Jewish tribes to follow him and regard him as a prophet and messenger of God. But the Jewish religious scholars despised Muhammad, considered him a false prophet and pointed out the many superficialities and contradictions revealed in the verses that Muhammad spoke to his believers
The Jews’ refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet and messenger of God, their refusal to accept his teachings, and above all the mockery and contempt they showed him, caused Muhammad to develop strong feelings of hatred towards the Jews and Judaism. Muhammad began to attack the Jews, whom he called “the People of the Book”, and the Christians in his words. He claimed that the verses of the Quran were the true Torah that Moses had received on Mount Sinai, while the Jews and Christians had twisted and changed the words of God to suit their needs
Muhammad then changed the laws of Islam to distinguish it from Judaism and to bring his gospel closer to the customs of the Arab tribes. He declared Mecca and the Kaaba stone sacred and moved the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. He introduced fasting during Ramadan and later included the Ashura fasting in Ramadan. He also moved the day of rest from Saturday to Friday
In 624, Muhammad and 300 of his followers fought against the army of the Quraysh tribe from Mecca in a battle near the village of Badr, between Mecca and Medina. Imbued with the fervor of faith and Muhammad’s promise that death in war for Islam would be rewarded with eternal life in paradise, Muhammad and his followers succeeded in defeating the Meccan army, which was larger and stronger than they were
Muhammad drew great encouragement from the victory at the Battle of Badr, and upon his return to Madinah, he launched a war against the Jewish tribes who refused to convert to Islam and accept his gospel. Muhammad proved to be a cunning commander. He succeeded in outwitting the Jewish tribes, separating them, surprising them and defeating them
The first two tribes to be defeated, Kinuka and Bani Nazir, were favored by Muhammad and were allowed to emigrate from Medina, leaving all their possessions behind. The third defeated tribe, the Bani Kurita tribe, was subject to the usual rules of war in the Arabian Peninsula at the time – all the men were slaughtered, and the women, children and property were divided among the victors
At the beginning of the year 628, Muhammad and his army, which had increased in size and strength, attacked the city of Khyber, north of Madinah, where there was a large Jewish settlement that opposed Muhammad. Before the attack, Muhammad invited the leaders of the Jewish community in Khyber to come to Medina and negotiate. On the way there, they were attacked and murdered by Muhammad’s warriors
Muhammad’s army besieged Khyber and cleared the palm groves that surrounded the city and were an important source of food. After a fierce battle, Muhammad’s army succeeded in breaking through the city’s fortifications and the inhabitants surrendered. In the deed of surrender, it was agreed that the inhabitants of Khyber would be allowed to remain in the city, but that the victors would take the property of the inhabitants of Khyber and that the inhabitants of the city would be heavily taxed with half of the annual date harvest
The leader of the Jewish fighters in Khyber, Kannana, was murdered on Muhammad’s orders, and Kannana’s beautiful wife, Tzafia, was taken to Muhammad’s hermitage along with the sister of the Khyber Jews’ fortress officer, and forced to convert to Islam and join the women’s sect that Muhammad gathered in his hermitage
Jewish life under Muslim rule
The caliphs, the successors of Muhammad, continued the tradition of hatred towards the Jews, and other non-Muslims. Omar, the second caliph, drew up a treaty with 12 laws that allowed a non-Muslim to live among devout Muslims
The unbelievers in Islam who were allowed to live among the Muslims were called Dhimmis, and humiliating rules and living conditions were imposed on them. They were forbidden to touch the Koran. They had to wear special clothing to which a piece of cloth was attached for identification – yellow for Jews and blue for Christians. They were not allowed to observe many customs of their religion, and some customs, such as drinking wine or mourning customs, were forbidden in public
The most difficult remission, however, was the Protection Fee that the Dhimmi had to pay. The Protection Fee consisted of a skull tax, which was based on the number of members of the household, and a property tax. This instruction comes from the words of Muhammad in the Quran, in Surah 9, verse 29, as quoted earlier in the article
Protection Fees have been used over the years in all Muslim countries and under all regimes, as a means of oppressing Jewish communities
In Joan Peters’ book From Time Immemorial, whose first English edition appeared in the early 1980s, several chapters are devoted to the history of Jewish communities in Muslim countries
The descriptions and historical facts in this book, confirmed by hundreds of references, lead to the horrific realization that atrocities such as we saw on October 7, 2023, were the daily lot of many Jewish communities, throughout centuries of history under Muslim rule
The denigration of the Jews, as expressed in the treaty, has persisted through the generations and has manifested itself in practice in varying degrees of severity and cruelty, depending on the character of this or that Muslim governor, Peters writes and continues
When there was tyrannical rule, life was a brutal slavery, as in Yemen, where the Jews had to clean the city’s toilets or clear the streets of animal carcasses, without pay, and often even on Shabbat
Under Muslim rule, the Jews were forced to live separately from the Muslims in Arab-style ghettos called “Hara” or “Malach”. A traveler who recorded his journeys in the 19th century described the life of the Jews in Cairo
There are about five thousand Jews in this country, most of whom live in the capital, in a miserable, overcrowded and polluted neighborhood, whose alleys are often so narrow that two people can barely walk past each other
Joan Peters describes persecutions, pogroms, massacres, murders, rapes and looting in detail in her book and writes: In all generations, the Jews were the first to be persecuted in times of economic crisis or political upheaval, and the cumulative record of massacres that took place from time to time was considerable among the Jews even in times of relative calm. In Syria, the heinous blood plot of 1840 resulted in the death, torture and robbery of countless Jews who were treated for the murder of a Christian priest and his servant in order to use their blood to bake matzah for Passover
When the Nazi regime emerged in Germany, Muslim leaders found in it an ally for their hatred of the Jewish people, which intensified with the rise of the Zionist movement, and the beginning of immigration to the Land of Israel. Meetings between Arab leaders and the heads of the Nazi government encouraged Arab leaders to intensify the oppression of Jewish communities, and to organize riots in them, as happened in Iraq in 1941 in the massacre known as the Great Parhud
On November 28, 1941, the Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the father of the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” blood conspiracy, met in Europe. In their book Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, published by Yale University in the USA, researchers Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz claim that it was at this meeting that Hajj Amin al-Husseini convinced Hitler to carry out the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” program – the comprehensive and systematic operation to exterminate the Jewish people
Not all researchers agree with this assertion, which is based among other things on the affidavits of Dieter Wislitzny, a Nazi official from the Department for Jewish Affairs in the Reich Security Main Office, headed by Adolf Eichmann, as part of the SS. However, it is undisputed that the Mufti of Jerusalem knew about the plan for the Final Solution, promoted cooperation with Nazi Germany, and carried out pro-German and anti-Jewish propaganda in the Arab world
Summary
“It’s unbelievable” was a sentence that I heard again and again from various people after the massacre of October 7, 2023. This statement is an expression of ignorance and educational failure with regard to learning about the culture of the Arab peoples, the history of Islam, and Jewish-Muslim relations
The educational system of the State of Israel and Jewish communities around the world rightly place great emphasis on the study of the Holocaust, the greatest anti-Semitic event that ever occurred. However, Holocaust studies must not marginalize the outrages, persecutions and anti-Semitism that Jewish communities around the world have experienced over the generations
The events of October 7, 2023 should trigger a turnaround and change in the education system that will bring three issues to the forefront that are important for our continued existence as a free nation in a Jewish state
Jews – Judaism, Jewish culture, Jewish history, language and tradition
Arabs – Islam, Arab culture, Arab history, Arabic language and tradition
Jewish and Arab relations in the course of history and in the present
Only if our children learn thoroughly the culture and history of their people, the culture of our neighbors, their language and the history of relations between Jews and Arabs, will future generations know how to live with strength and security in this land surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies who are just waiting for an opportunity to destroy us
However, if we continue in the way of the storytellers, who forget history and shape a virtual reality according to their whims and their imagination, future generations will face massacres and annihilation, many times greater than what we experienced in October 2023
