The Roman Republic was founded in 509 BC. It would take 250 years before the Romans would conquer all of Italy. It would take another 400 years for Rome to reach the full extent of its empire – stretching from the Caspian Sea on the East to the Atlantic Ocean on the West.
Mohammed founded Islam in 610. When he died in 632, a portion of Arabia had accepted his religion and given Mohammed its fealty. Over the next 12 decades, the Muslims conquered lands from the Atlantic Ocean on the West to the Indus River in India, some 1,200 miles further to the east than the Romans had gone. Mohammed started with no money, no title, no military experience. What he had was a voice in his head and the visions that came from it. How was it possible for the Muslims to not only conquer so much territory in such a short time, but to control it for centuries?
I have heard said several times something to the effect that Jews and Muslims have hated each other and been at war ever since the days of Abraham’s two sons: Ismael (the “father of the Arabs”) and Issac (the “grandfather of the Israelites/Jews”) and there is nothing that can be done to change that. And so, we Americans should not waste our efforts trying to resolve an inherently intractable (God ordained) problem.
Based on my studies, for most of their history, the Islamic nations have been more accepting and tolerant of Jews and Judaism than other countries – especially those that were Christian. This changed at the outset of the 20th century, when Jewish leaders living in western countries, set about to make Palestine, where 85% of the population was Muslim, the homeland of the Jews. Jews had not represented more than 10% of the population of Palestine for the previous 1,800 years,
As I have come to learn, one of the main reasons for the rapid expansion and success of Islam has been its very willingness to tolerate other monotheistic religions and particularly Jews and Christians. This perspective came from Mohammed ‘s core belief that there is one God, who he referred to as “Allah”. Allah was the Creator of the Universe; he co-exists with humans, and he holds each individual person accountable for his/her actions. In the afterlife, those who please Allah by their right actions will be richly rewarded and those who do not will be severely punished. This concept often gave much greater meaning and purpose to an individual’s life. Muhammed believed that Allah was the same God referred to and worshipped in the Jewish and Christian bibles and therefore, they were fellow “People of the Book”.
The freedom of religion granted to the “People of the Book” did come with a cost – able bodied adult men were required to pay a special tax referred to as a dhimmi or jizya. Those who paid this tax were exempted from military service and understandably, in a warrior culture, were considered as second-class citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya. Not surprisingly, many Jews and Christians chose to avoid the tax and the citizenship stigma by converting to Islam. (Pagans, typically polytheists, did not have that option; they either converted to Islam or they were killed or enslaved.)
Let’s consider one area of conquest: Iberia (Spain & Portugal). Iberia had been a Roman possession since the end of the 2nd Punic War in 201 BC. In 380 AD, Christianity became the official religion throughout the Roman Empire. As the Western Roman Empire began to crumble in the 5th Century, Iberia was taken over by the Visigoths, the Germanic tribe that had sacked Rome in 410 AD. The Visigoth nobility were Christians and so they continued to administer Iberia similarly to the Romans.
The Muslims wrested Egypt from the Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire) in 641 AD. With the subsequent capture of Carthage in 698, the Muslims ruled all North Africa. The best fighters in N Africa were the Berbers who were polytheists that worshipped Greek gods. They generally disliked the Byzantines and had few qualms about converting to Islam and joining in the Muslim conquests. In 711, Tariq, a Berber chieftain, took it upon himself to lead a band of 1,700 Berber tribesman (and recent Muslim converts) to cross the Straights of Gibraltar (the name comes from Tarik’s “Jabal” meaning mountain), to go plunder southern Iberia. They were overwhelmingly successful. So much so, that the Muslim Arab governor of N. Africa, Musa Ibn Nusayr, joined him with an Arab force of 18,000 fighters. They conquered most of Iberia within a few years. Muslims ruled all of Iberia for the next 250 years.
The Muslims from beyond Iberia never represented more than 2% of the Iberian population. How were they able to effectively rule it after defeating the Visigoth armies?
Initially, the Muslims appointed Jews residing in Iberia to assist them in administering their new territory. After a while, many of the local nobles, all Christians, who aspired to a share in power, began to embrace Islam and the Arabic language. However, most of the population remained Christians. “The historian Jessica Coope of the University of Nebraska argues that the pre-modern Islamic conquest was unlike Christianization because the latter was ‘imposed on everyone as part of a negotiated surrender, and thus lacked the element of personal conviction that modern ideas about religious faith would require’, but the conquest of Dar al-Harb was motivated not by a goal of converting the population to Islam but by the belief that everyone was better off under Islamic rule.” (refer to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_Spain#:~:text=The%20Muslim%20conquest%20of%20Spain,Umayyad%20Wilayah%20of%20Al%2DAndalus.
Returning to the question of relative treatment of the Jews, let’s continue with Iberia. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, issued the Alhambra Decree, ordering the expulsion of all Jews from their kingdoms. In a matter of months, Spanish Jews were forced to renounce their faith or leave their thousand-year homeland behind. And where did they go? The wise ones went to Muslim countries. “The most fortunate of the expelled Jews succeeded in escaping to Turkey. Sultan Bajazet welcomed them warmly. ‘How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king,’ he was fond of asking, ‘the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and enriched ours?’ Among the most unfortunate refugees were those who fled to neighboring Portugal.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-spanish-expulsion-1492
Many of us in America have formed very negative perceptions of Muslims and the Islamic religion. It is often portrayed as being harsh, autocratic, and even evil. However, the great success enjoyed by the rapid spreading of Islam and its many adherents today belies such perceptions. Islam obviously offers something that hundreds of millions of people have found positive and worthy of commitment.
All of us in America who are unfamiliar with Islam need to take the time and effort to understand what the precepts and requirements of Islam are so that we are better able to interpret and hopefully play a positive role in addressing the current tensions in the Middle East and especially in that section of the region often referred to as Palestine. Here is a link to the Five Pillars of Islam. https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-one/the-five-pillars-of-islam