In today’s world, the claim that Islam helped the survival of Judaism would seem absurd given the antagonism between Islam and Zionism but there can be no denial of this historical fact. At the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad’s (SAW) birth in 570 CE, the Jews and Judaism were on the path to extinction. However, the coming of Islam saved the Jews, providing a new framework in which they not only survived but thrived, laying foundations for successive Jewish cultural prosperity through the medieval period into the modern world.
Professor David J. Wasserstein, a professor of history, classics, and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee delivered a fascinating lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London in May 2012 articulating this argument of Islam saving the Jews.
Before the advent of Islam, Wasserstein describes the decline and tribulations of Judaism under the Roman Empire due to forced conversions to Christianity between the fourth and seventh centuries. Gradually, the Roman Empire deprived the Jewish people of their rights as citizens preventing them from fulfilling their religious obligations and excluding them from society.
Besides the Roman Empire, the Jews suffered under the Persian Empire due to the Persians lengthy military and political conflicts with the Byzantine Empire. The Persian Empire at that time included Babylon now Iraq that was the world’s greatest concentration of Jews and housed the greatest centers of Jewish intellectual life. This struggle between these two empires resulted in a separation of Jews under Byzantine, Christian rule, and Jews under Persian rule.
Professor Wasserstein mentions that the Jews living under Christian rule were losing the knowledge of their languages, Hebrew, and Aramaic, and began adopting the local languages like Greek and Latin which likely meant losing connection to central Jewish literary works such as the Torah. The loss of language and literature as a unifying force was a major factor in the assimilation of the Jewish people and its doom in the Christian world because of the separation of Babylon during the conflicts with Persia.
Wasserstein credits the rise of Islam in preventing the extinction of Judaism, “Had Islam not come along, Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance and Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult.” He further states that the “Islamic conquests of the seventh century changed the world, and did so with dramatic, wide-ranging, and permanent effects for the Jews.”
By 632, the Islamic empire stretched from Spain across North Africa and the Middle East to Iran and beyond. This was a game-changer for the Jews as they were now under one rule, Muslim rule, and became a transformation for the better in all aspects of life. Under Muslim rule, the Jews became second-class citizens which was relatively better than not being a citizen at all under Christian rule.
Besides enjoying certain rights as citizens, the Jewish people had social and economic equality. The Islamic empire didn’t restrict Jews to ghettos in either a literal or economic sense and had full religious freedom, as Islamic societies were open societies. Furthermore, Wasserstein mentions that the Jewish community enjoyed formal representation, through their own leaders, before the authorities of the state.
The adoption of the Arabic language by the Jewish people also led to wider cultural developments. Professor Wasserstein states, “The Jews of the Islamic world developed an entirely new culture, which differed from their culture before Islam in terms of language, cultural forms, influences, and uses. Instead of being concerned primarily with religion, the new Jewish culture of the Islamic world, like that of its neighbors, mixed the religious and the secular to a high degree.”
Also, the revival of Hebrew among the Jews occurred under Muslim rule that resulted in the greatest poetry in Hebrew written since the Bible. In Islamic Spain, the Jews experienced a golden age in terms of cultural prosperity.
Wasserstein alludes to a direct correlation between Jewish cultural prosperity and Muslim Arabic cultural prosperity. When Muslim Arabic culture flourished, so did that of the Jews; when Muslim Arabic culture decayed, so did that of the Jews. However, for the Jews, the cultural capital they built up under Muslim rule served as the nursery of further growth in Christian Spain and the general Christian world.
Professor Wasserstein concludes that the Islamic World was not the sole source of inspiration for the Jewish cultural renewal that came later in Christian Europe, but it certainly played a major role in that development, and no one can overestimate Islam’s influence on Jewish cultural revival.
Given the positive role of Muslim Arab rule in reviving the Jewish faith and culture, I strongly believe that the modern state of Israel and Zionists must treat the Muslims and Arabs under Israeli occupation more humanely and immediately establish a sovereign Palestinian state.
