The state of Jewish-Muslim relations has been a contentious to­pic for a long time now.

Nineteenth-century historians, particularly Jewish ones, claimed that the relationship between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East was more harmonious than the relationship between Jews and Christians in Europe.

Arabs hostile to Zionism and Israel adopted this view in the 20th century.

Writing in the 1930s, George Antonius, a Christian Arab, com­mented that Arab history remained “remarkably free from instances of deliberate persecution,” and that in spite of the Palestine problem, the treatment of Jews in Arab countries “continues to be not less friend­ly and humane than in Eng­land or the United States.”

Reacting to such rose-coloured assessments, some Jewish writers in recent times have argued that Jews did not fare well un­der Islam and that Muslims treated Jews almost as badly as medieval Christianity.

Mark Cohen, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, has weighed these diametrically opposing interpretations and, in the second edition of Under Crescent & Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, (Princeton University Press), he reaches a middle-of-the-road conclusion

As he puts it, “When all is said and done, the historical evidence indicates that the Jews of Islam, especially during the formative and classical centuries (up to the 13th century), experienced much less persecution than did the Jews of Christendom.”

Cohen validates his theory by quoting Bernard Lewis, whose book, Jews of Islam, he rates as “the most balanced assessment of the position of the Jews under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages.”

According to Lewis, Jews were generally treated better under Islam than un­der Christianity, with hostility to Jews in Islamic society being non-ideological.

Taking this as as his starting point, Co­hen writes: “Whereas the Christian vocabulary for the Jews and Ju­daism reflects animosity, Islamic parlance betrays recognition of mutually held religious con­cepts and values.”

Essentially, Jews and non-Muslims in Islamic Arab societies, popularly known as dhimmis, agreed to a host of discriminatory limitations in return for protection.

Cohen maintains that Jews and Mus­lims enjoyed “easygoing” social interaction, despite friction owing to divergent customs and mores, but that xenophobia accompanied Jewish-Christian relations.

Judaism and Christianity both for­bade intermarriage, the ultimate form of sociability, but Islam handled the mat­ter “more indulgently,” he adds.

A Muslim man was permitted to mar­ry a dhimmi woman on the presump­tion that he, as master in the relationship, would not be susceptible to the lure of his wife’s religion. Further, Islamic law required the hus­band to permit his non-Muslim wife to observe her religious rituals and to pray inside their house.

Cohen points out that Jews in Islamic realms did not experience “physical violence on a scale remotely approaching Jewish suffering in western Christendom.” As an example, he cites Muslim and Christian reactions to the Black Death.  

In Europe, where the Crusades had al­ready ravaged Jewish communities, the Black Death triggered massive po­groms, but in the Is­lamic world, Jews were not blamed for the plague and po­groms did not occur.

Jews, however, were the target of Muslim  outbursts of violence.

In 1032, the Jewish quarter of Fez, Morocco, was sacked by Berbers and 6,000 Jews are said to have been slain. Just 32 years later, the Jews of the Spa­nish-Ber­ber kingdom of Grenada were massacred. Cohen says that the Berber Almohads perpetrated the most serious crimes against Jews during this period.

Under Christianity, Jews performed vital commercial functions, notably as moneylender and tax collectors. But as the need for their services waned with the rise of a Christian commercial class, Jews were subjected to the whims of lo­cal rulers, often with tragic results.

As Cohen observes, “When the time came that rulers saw no further use for the Jews, they confiscated whatever remained of their wealth and expelled them.”

Rabbinical attitudes to money lending varied. In ancient Babylonia, Jews were discouraged from charging interest to gentiles. Yet in Europe, from the 12th century onward, rabbis justified usury for a variety of reasons: hard times, the exclusion of Jews from landed occupations, the heavy tax burden, and the need to amass funds to bribe Christians when Jews came under the threat of persecution.

Although Jews were usually worse off under Christianity, they encountered a much more hospitable environment in the southern Mediterranean region of France than in the northern part of Europe.

“Jewish communities in the south experienced much less persecution and over all lived in more placid, integrated fashion with their surroundings than their northern European brethren,” Co­hen notes. “They were less segregated from Christians, and their economic activities varied.”

The Jewish response to persecution differed markedly in Christian and Mus­lim lands.

Ashkenazi Jews preferred martyrdom to conversion, since they considered Christians theologically idolatrous and were bound by the mishnaic ruling that Jews must die rather than succumb to idolatry. Sephardi Jews, when threatened with death unless they converted, typically accepted Islam rather than martyrdom, Cohen points out.

In summing up, he says that Jews in Islamic areas regularly crossed boundaries to participate, if only temporarily and tenuously, as virtual equals with Muslims. He adds, “Though always at risk of incurring Muslim wrath and even persecution, Jews, nonetheless, enjoyed substantial security during the formative and classical periods of Islam.”

Practically speaking, Jews and Mus­lims in Islamic societies were equal in economic matters. Islamic law demand­ed that dhimmis remain subordinate in partnerships form­ed with Muslims, but this edict was often ignored.

As well, Jews did not suffer restrictions on their free­dom of movement under Islam.

The situation was different in Europe.  

Jewish merchants and traders intensified Christianity’s animus toward Jews, while deeply ingrained theological hatred of Jews had a profoundly negative impact on law and policy that only escalated over time.

Under Crescent & Cross, in short, is a useful volume about an extremely sensitive issue.