Eternal Enemies
By Juan Cole points out that, despite the best efforts of the Right to argue otherwise, there is no “eternal” enmity between Jews and Muslims.
For entire centuries in the late medieval period, Jews were completely excluded from Britain, France, Spain, etc. In contrast, Jews had thriving mercantile communities in places like Cairo in the same period. To paraphrase our SecDef: Was it paradise? No. Was it better than being kicked out altogether or forcibly converted to Catholicism? You bet.
It’s a generalization, but I don’t think an unfair one, to say that Jews were much safer in Muslim communities between, oh, 632 and 1948 than they were in Christian communities. Muslims don’t tend to believe that the Jews committed deicide, and have for the most part had a much healthier attitude towards commerce than Christians. The Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are all the products of Christianity, not Islam.
None of this should be thought of as a justification of Muslim behavior after 1948, but it’s important to note that no historical enmity exists, or to the extent that it does the enmity is far less than that between Jews and Christians. Cole also points out that the Christian attitude toward Jews is only partially explained by the concept of blood libel; it was much more difficult to make your way as a Muslim in Christendom in the Middle Ages than as a Christian under Islamic rule. Indeed, the history of intolerance extends to different sects of Christianity. A considerable number of Orthodox Christians in the Balkans preferred life as subjects of the Ottoman Empire to life under far more repressive Catholic rulers.
Hat tip to Matt.