Jews and Muslims in history: the record under Islam

Jews under Muslim rule lived for centuries in greater security than in Christian Europe. Do Muslims hate Jews? The question is asked often, usually because of the conflicts of the last century. The longer history of Jews and Muslims tells a different story: for most of the past fourteen centuries, Jews found in the lands of Islam a security they rarely knew in Christian Europe.

What the Qur’an commands

The Qur’an promises reward to the Jews and Christians who believe in God and the Last Day and do good.¹ It permits Muslims to eat the food of the People of the Book and to marry their women.² And it commands justice and kindness toward all who do not fight Muslims because of their religion:

لَّا يَنْهَىٰكُمُ ٱللَّهُ عَنِ ٱلَّذِينَ لَمْ يُقَـٰتِلُوكُمْ فِى ٱلدِّينِ وَلَمْ يُخْرِجُوكُم مِّن دِيَـٰرِكُمْ أَن تَبَرُّوهُمْ وَتُقْسِطُوٓا۟ إِلَيْهِمْ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلْمُقْسِطِينَ ٨

Allāh does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes – from being righteous toward them and acting justly toward them. Indeed, Allāh loves those who act justly.

Qur’an 60:8³

The historical record

The historian Mark Cohen of Princeton, in the first systematic comparison of Jewish life under medieval Islam and medieval Christendom, rejected both the myth of an interfaith utopia and the claim that Jews were persecuted under Islam as they were in Europe.

He concluded that relations between Muslims and Jews, though not utopian, were less confrontational and violent than those between Christians and Jews in the West, and that Jews were treated oppressively in northern Europe and expelled while they fared much better in the lands of Islam.⁴⁵ Jews under Muslim rule had a regular legal status, took part in the mainstream of cultural life, and mixed socially with their neighbours.⁶ The documents of the Cairo Genizah show that world from inside; see The Cairo Genizah.

Justice toward all

The verse explains the record. Islamic law gave Jews and Christians a protected place, with the right to keep their faith, their courts and their places of worship, because the Qur’an forbids Muslims only from those who make war on them, and commands justice toward everyone else. Hatred of Jews as Jews has no ground in the Qur’an, which elsewhere commands that hostility toward any people must never lead Muslims away from justice.⁷ Where it appears in the modern world, it betrays Islam’s own teaching and its own history.

Further reading: The Cairo Genizah, War and peace in the Abrahamic traditions, Interfaith marriage.

Notes on Jews under Muslim rule

1. Qur’an 2:62, trans. Saheeh International; Arabic text from Quran.com. ↩
2. Qur’an 5:5, trans. Saheeh International; Arabic text from Quran.com. ↩
3. Qur’an 60:8, trans. Saheeh International; Arabic text from Quran.com. ↩
4. Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; new edition 2008), as described by the publisher. ↩
5. “Cohen illuminates controversial relationship between Jews and Muslims,” Princeton University, 7 February 2011. ↩
6. Daniel Pipes, review of Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 1995. ↩
7. Qur’an 5:8, trans. Saheeh International; Arabic text from Quran.com. ↩