Last edited Sat Aug 1, 2015, 10:10 AM - Edit history (1)
I am sure you know he made war throughout his life and is lauded for conquering and converting all of Arabia - enslaving or exiling those he could not convert. The Jewish tribes of Arabia fell afoul of his conqueror dreams, but a little ethnic cleansing Solved that problem. Muslim historical sources are conflicted on whether his army merely kicked out all Jews (no word on how many died trekking across the desert) or beheaded a large number first. One of his wives, I think, was a Jewish woman who had been taken as war booty.
As the Muslim empire expanded by war, Jewish communities lived under Muslim rule as islands within majority-Muslim populations. They were pretty much killed whenever the locals were in the mood to do so.
A notable massacre of Islam's Golden Age was Granada 1066. A Jewish guy gained power and favor with the Muslim leader, so locals killed him and slaughtered the few thousand Jews who lived in the city. That gives a fine perspective on how well integrated Jews were in Muslim lands: basically, they were left alone...until they weren't.
More recent attacks: well i am no expert so I will just name a few:
In Mashhad 1840 or so was "God's Justice" (that's the Muslim name for the event) when the the Muslim leader had his people suddenly attack the defenseless Jews of the area and start killing. After a few dozen were slaughtered he ordered the rest to convert to Islam or die as well. Interestingly the Jews were able to secretly stay Jews for generations - pretending to be Muslim in public but teaching their children Jewish tradition in the homes, as best they could despite fear for their lives. Their descendants thrive today.
The 1834 Safed pogrom occurred in Palestine and lasted a month. The local Muslims were already rebelling against their Muslim overlords, so in the general air of lawlessness they had fun attacking the defenseless (and, of course, hated) Jews. For a solid month they burned synagogues, raped Jewish women and killed Jewish men. This didnt stop until order was restored to the area. Again that shoukd give you an idea of how the average Muslim in Palestine regarded the Jewish neighbors who had never harmed them.
More famous today are the Palestinian riots of 1929, when Palestinian Muslims went house to house to slaughter Jews, who as always were defenseless - including butchering a whole school full of children, mutilating, raping, and burning people, et cetera. Other Muslims hid Jews to keep them safe from the slavering mobs. (These mobs BTW sprang up independently in many towns. It wasn't one mob - it was a widespread multipronged joyous massacre. Again.) The Brits investigated - you can read their report if so inclined. They found nothing the Jews had "done" to cause it. They were simply Jews. And the Muslim majority enjoyed killing Jews.
By the way, these riots are said to be the turning point when Jews in Palestine finally decided to create some kind of defense after centuries of always being the target and turning the other cheek. So the proto-IDF was born.
And then, of course, after the creation of Israel, the number of Jews driven from Arab lands by murder threat and persecution is roughly equal to the number of Palestinians driven out by the Israeli-Arab war of 1947-49. Note that the Palestinian migration occurred in a setting of war and was fueled by wartime fears (that Jews might rape or massacre Arabs as Arabs had previously done to them). Whereas the Jewish migration from Arab lands was the result of peacetime persecution and confiscation of Jewish homes - collective punishment of Jewish neighbors by Arab neighbors, as "vengeance" because Jews in Israel were surprisingly winning a war against the five Arab countries that had joined forces and attacked them.
Since that time, many fewer Jews have lived in Muslim lands as the majority chose relative safety in the US (discrimination and bullying rather than murder) or Israel (constant threat of attack but safety due to a military and a nation of their own, just like the Christians and Muslims had always had. Though not really the same - since of course Christians and Muslims had always wanted conquest and expanding power, and the Israeli Jews just wanted security.)
If your point is that most of the millions I referred to we're killed by Christians you are right. But if you bought into the oft-repeated claim that the Jewish minority lived in safety in Muslim lands, you are not correct. They were generally better off under Muslim rule than Christian rule, but they were still frequently scapegoated and hated, always defenseless, and murdered at the whims of their hosts and Muslim neighbors
Feel free to do your own research.
= new reply since forum marked as read
