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From Zeek: A Journal of Jewish Thought and Culture
http://www.zeek.net/708memory/
Both pro- and anti-Israeli forces claim to be speaking of the same history, yet each side draws a completely different conclusion about what actually took place. According to one argument, Jewish-Muslim history recounts a time of harmony, coexistence, and cultural interchange, while the other contends that this same period was one of humiliation, discrimination, and oppression. Somewhere in between these respective ideological claims lies a history that still needs to be properly understood independent of the desire to political repurpose the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Pro-Arab pundits must take into account that, notwithstanding all the benefits that Islam brought forth to the Jews, by today’s moral and legal standards the Jews of Islam lived as second-class citizens. They were subjected to unique taxes such as the poll tax and the land tax, while civil law imposed prohibitions that marked them as different from and inferior to their Muslim counterparts. Jews were prevented from striking Muslims, bearing arms, building or repairing houses of worship, proselytizing, and were forced to wear distinctive clothing. In addition, they experienced bouts of persecution and violence. Any writer who addresses the topic of Jewish-Muslim history without taking these issues into consideration is being negligent.
Pro-Israeli writers need to acknowledge that, in spite of their unequal status, the Jews living in Muslim societies – both in medieval and early modern times – were members of well-integrated communities. The degree to which Jews were culturally, linguistically, socially, and economically assimilated in Muslim societies is proof in and of itself that Jewish-Muslim history cannot be characterized solely in terms of discrimination and persecution. Legally, while the dhimmi (the non-Muslim citizen of an Islamic state) was subject to many prohibitions, in exchange he received freedom of religious worship, freedom of self-government, freedom of movement and settlement throughout the empire (with the exception of Mecca and Medina), freedom of occupation, and protection by the law. Again, in view of these facts, we cannot characterize Jewish-Muslim history solely in terms of intolerance.
