By Benny Morris
September 10, 2008
The case was certainly unusual--but it typified, in Bostom's view, the sorry lot of the Jews in the Muslim Arab world since the rise of Islam and its expansion around the Mediterranean basin in the seventh and eighth centuries. At the start of his book, Bostom provides a monographlength background survey of the "theological-juridical origins" of Islamic anti-Semitism, illustrating his points with a brief review of its "historical manifestations." At the level of principle, Muslim attitudes toward the Jews (and, less so, toward Christians) were--and are--informed by a basic ambivalence. Jews and Christians deserved, and received, a formal measure of respect as "People of the Book" and as the first to adopt monotheism; Islam had followed in their footsteps. But at the same time Jews and Christians were the "enemy," the rival religion and, in certain times and places, the political and military foe.
http://newageislam.com/the-darker-side-of-islamic-anti-semitism/islam-and-pluralism/d/710
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