Talk:Antisemitism in Islam

Misleading title

The first reaction when I read this title is "Oh Islam is by essence judeophobic". Like its a clearly defined section and part of it. Chapter 5: Be Judeophobic. It is totally wrong. I understand there are not a lot of experts in Islam in Western society but guys this is a science website. When we don't know something we ask experts. Proven experts. (I am not an expert but apparently I know more than the initial author of the article / title about the pure theological part of this religion).

I am also very disappointed by the lack of accuracy and scope in this article that makes it extremely misleading to the point it leads people into thinking something wrong: Islam has judeophobic views.

So yes, first of all, we should say judeophobic instead of antisemitic. Because as you mentionned it semitic means something totally different.

It mixes 2 different problems:
- The relationship between Islam and Judaism (the pure theory of the religion)
- The relationship between muslims and jews (the social nature of people)

Islam as a religion has no hate against Judaism. Its only stance is that the teachings of Moses and following prophets until Jesus have been corrupted by the sons of Israel with edits and inserts of things that were not there initially. That's all. So it just says "This judaic religion is irrelevant because we lost the original content and it is crippled by lies". There is no hate in Islam against people solely because of their religion.

Now indeed there is judeophobic people who identify as muslims and use Islam as a way to justify their hatred as being legit. But the same goes for all communities. Jewish people hating muslims based on their religion... Atheist and christians, so on and so forth. There is no new info there.

So what's the point of this article anyway ? It feels totally irrelevant.

I see 3 options:
- delete it (I saw it was proposed yet rejected, I need to read the argument why I am curious to see what was useful in it)
- modify the title to speak of judeophobia in countries with a majority of muslims (and then we will need to do the same for every single religion ??? Next islamophobia in Israel, in France...)
- modify the the title to mention just the relationship of obsolescence between Islam and Judaism and focus only on that. The study of the thoery and not behaviour of people (sure why not, that could be interesting)

This is the classic mistake. Person X has trait A and thinks B implies that whoever has A thinks B which is totally wrong. There is not necessarly a causality link between A and B. It has to be proven. This is often used in hate speeches as a logical fallacy and I see it in this article.

Anyway I am all ears because honestly this is a mess.

Dubious statement (factually & logically)

"The Quran does not present itself as a fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible but rather a restoration of its original message – thus, no clash of interpretations between Judaism and Islam can arise"

• "restoration of its original message" implies that the Hebrew Bible, as the specific set of texts known by this name, had a different "original message" than the one preached around 600 CE. Twice doubtful:
  • Don't think Islam regards the HB as an authentic reproduction of the divine "holy book", or divine revelation to the people.
  • Don't think Islam ever saw the Hebrew Bible (the book known by this name) as possibly carrying the correct message, which Jews first received through its very text and recognised, and only later denaturated.

• "thus, no clash of interpretations between Judaism and Islam can arise."

Fallacy: would only be correct if either the Hebrew Bible were to be seen by Muslims as at least one form of the authentic divine "holy revelation" (and then, logically, be a valid replacement of the Koran), or if "Judaism" had adopted the Koran/Islam; which it didn't, nor does Islam claim that it had. On the contrary, "Judaism" cum its scripture is seen as straying from the divine message, indeed given by Allah to Musa, but denaturated since - in written (Hebrew Bible), not just but also in interpretation.

Am I wrong in any of it? Arminden (talk) 18:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

The first part "The Quran does not present itself as a fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible but rather a restoration of its original message" sounds right.

I agree the next bit sounds wrong, but I also don't understand your rebuttal.

Would it work to just delete the next bit? Does it have a citation?

Irtapil (talk) 13:58, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The first question I would ask in my ignorance is what the Quran actually says about the HB. Or is this a confusion between "Quran" and "Islam"? Zero^talk 01:39, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

@Zero0000 I'm just a curious atheist, but I've been quite interested in Islam since about 1999. This is my general impression as an outsider, from talking to Muslim colleagues, and listening to various interviews and seminars, etc.

My attempt to actually read The Quran didn't get past the translator's introduction, plus a few haphazard pages here and there. So I am not sure what itself says about the Bible.

But technically that wasn't The Quran, because The Quran refers only to the Arabic version. Translations into other languages are all labelled things like "the meaning of The Quran" if they come from Islamic publishers (some older translations done by Christians are "the Koran, translated by…").

Muslims see it as very important to preserve the original version exactly, and not use a translation-of-a-translation, like the King James Bible. They see the older prophecies (Christianity and Judaism etc.) as corrupted and garbled by being translated through multiple languages, and various other degradation over time.

From their point of view, The Quran is the divinitive version of the story, the correct error-free version. But it's the same story, the same one God, etc. as Christians and Jews share.

I'm not sure quite where that idea is written down. It might be in the Quran itself. Or it could be in the Hadith, a separate collection of texts that were the words of the pophet محمد as distinct from the Quran, which is the word of God himself. Or if this concept is just a sort of "self evident truth" that's not actually in print anywhere specific.

The Quran has mony of the same people are stories as the Bible. They are recognisable even to somebody not very familiar with either book (i.e. me).

Irtapil (talk) 15:51, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

@Arminden: (My own religious background is that I'm an "atheist who sometimes does Christmas lunch". Despite the Christmas lunch thing, out of the religions being discussed here I am most familiar with Islam, and I know amost nothing about Judaism.) This isn't my own view of it, but the personal option of a random atheist is irrelevant here, so this is just what most Muslims believe, to the best of my understanding.

As I was also saying below, Muslims regard the Quran as a more accurate, less degraded, error-free version of the same message from the same God. Subsequently preserved exactly only in Arabic.

As far as I can tell, Muslims think early phropets were real, and those holy texts were correct when revealed, but that in the subsequent hundreds or thousands of years, humans have damaged the original message. The only really big difference is Muslims think Jesus was a prophet, but not a messiah or son of god.

I really don't understand what you are saying though, @Arminden? I understand why Muslims think the newer book is better, but you seem to be saying the older version is better? And I can't work out why?

I had never heard the term "Hebrew Bible" until about a month ago. As far as I understood it, the Bible has an older half (the old testament) shared with Judaism (the Torah), and a post-Jesus bit (the new testament) that is unique to Christianity. The Torah is in Hebrew, and the bible is in hundreds of modern languages (plus a few old ones like Latin, Slavonic, etc.). I thought the original texts that both books of the bible came from were in a huge array of languages that didn't fully match any version. Bits were in Hebrew or Greek, but also other languages. So bits of the Greek and Hebrew bible are original, but none of them have the full set? None of the prior books have the magic of the - all Arabic and only ever Arabic - Quran?

If the story of the Hebrew bible is that it's all in the original language? then by the Islamic logic that makes it vastly supirior to a King James Bible but I think they'd still prefer their shiny new Quran, I don't see how old Hebrew would trump new Arabic?

Irtapil (talk) 16:56, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

@Irtapil (1): Yes, I mainly mean the part:
"no clash of interpretations between Judaism and Islam can arise".
If it said "no clash of interpretations between what Islam presumes the original Mosaic/Sinaitic Judaism must have been", then the logical fallacy is gone and you'd only have to educate me about what Islam thinks Moses received from God at Sinai. But saying that Judaism and Islam should be in sync, ignores the very real differences of text and dogma between the two, which makes a full harmonisation impossible; only conversion would do. Fred Donner (see for instance here) is convinced that up until c. 700 CE, Islam was not codified, not really a religion, and a much more inclusive concept of monotheistic brotherhood allowing for all "righteous" Jews and Christians to be regarded as perfectly acceptable mu'minin, "Believers", as much as any of the fresh followers of Muhammad. Ever since though, a clear distinction was introduced, and the actual Judaism (and the more so: the actual Christianity, with its concept of Trinity), were discarded as aberrations. That means: YES, an inreconcilable clash of essence, let alone of interpretation, between practiced Judaism and Islam.

I don't know when and where the concept of denaturation of the original true revelations in Judaism and Christianity took shape, who was blamed if anyone beyond "the Jews" and "the Christians", if the actual texts of the Hebr. Bible (HB) and the Chr. Bible (CB) themselves are seen as contaminated (I believe that's the case) or just their exegeses, and if all main branches of Islam take an identical stand on these topics. Also, in the most accommodating of cases (both HB & CB are/were in their original content divine revelations), are they seen as time- or culture-appropriate, and less complete versions of the divine revelation, which only came down in full to and through Muhammad? Or as equally complete? To push it even further: is there a unique way in which God reveals his truth, an unchangeable "copyrighted" Holy Book in God's mind? Because then the HB and CB are really waaay off, as their actual text hardly at all resembles that of the Koran. Big questions.

@Zero: as far as I know, the Koran doesn't say anything about the HB or CB. It deals with many of the same events, but never with the texts. Over time, Islam develops layer after layer of padding, putting more and more distance between it and previous monotheistic revelations, but that's later on. I don't know anything beyond that. Ceck out Donner and other specialists.

@Irtapil (2): to Muslims, every word of the Koran is 1:1 God's revelation (Allah -> Jibril -> Muhammad). Moses (Mousa) and Jesus (Issa) received their own revelations, but they got garbled in time. Jews & Christians stand accused of misrepresenting & misinterpreting God's original words to Moses and Jesus. How, when, by whom precisely - no idea, nor if there's any Muslim consensus on that. Probably not, but the outcome is rejected.

Hebrew Bible, OT, NT: first, there's no 100% universal canonical form of either (see Biblical canon). Even the Koran didn't always look exactly the same, as proven by the few C7 fragments found. The HB has the Masoretic form, which is very detailed, but late (C10), and not binding in every minute detail to all followers of Rabbinic Judaism, let alone to Karaites or even Samaritans. The Christian OT is based on the Septuagint (LXX), an ancient (C3 BCE) Greek translation of what Alexandrian Jewish sages considered to be relevant (canonical?) from their perspective; and "based on" isn't an evasive term, as there is no one complete ancient manuscript of the LXX accepted by all. But that is the base of the OT, and it's in Greek only. As the HB is almost only in Hebrew, with a little bit of Arameic in the later books, the NT is 100% in Greek, with some discussion about some parts maybe originating in Hebrew texts, based on Semitic turns of phrase which aren't Greek in character, even if they came down to us in Greek. So no, the Bible is not in many languages: you only need Hebrew, a little Arameic, and Greek to read both the HB & CB "in original". As to the NT, there are quite substantial differences in content (long & short versions, varying wording, non-uniform sequence of the books), based on a missing standard text. There are several old manuscripts, which contain these variations, and different denominations and/or translators rely on different MSS.

I would argue that there is no special "magic" to the Koran beyond the incantational "magic" of any liturgical recitation, be it of the Hebrew Bible, pre-Vatican II traditional Catholic Latin scripture, or indeed of any other Christian, various Persian or non-monotheistic religious ritual. The Koran is a much more poetic scripture than the historical parts of the HB and the biographical passages of the NT, which are more focussed on a narrative. And that's probably the main reason for you (and me) not getting ahead to well with reading the Koran, even more so in translation: as I'm telling myself, "it's poetry, stupid!". To use your terms, "old Hebrew" (Biblical Hebrew) does or does not "trump new Arabic" (new? For a C6-7 idiom of the Arabic Peninsula?!) as much or as little as any language trumps another, especially in their most polished literary products. Hebrew has a huge quality of conciseness, among others, and Judaism's concern with ethics is so old that part of its scripture is a condensed form of very profound thought, while Arabic culture of the pre-Muslim period excelled in one branch of arts only, and that's poetry, with all its intricacies of topic, language, and poetic art. So no, I wouldn't support your claim. But thanks for your food for thought! Cheers, Arminden (talk) 19:36, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

missing context on the relationship between Abrahamic faiths

The article leaps straight into the hostility as if Islam and Judaism arose independently on different planets, but from some perspectives they are different branches of the same religion. I'm knowledgeable enough on this topic to see there's huge gaps of some important things missing, but I feel under-qualified to fill those gaps by myself. I'll try to find some things to add to add as "see also" but the introduction really needs a couple of sentences of background about…

• How Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are related to each other (historically and theologically)
• The somewhat privileged position of both Jews, Christians, and some other religions have as "people of the book" within moderate and conservative Islam (as opposed to radical fundamentalist Islam, which moderates often regard as not really Islam, e.g. "so-called Islamic State").

The balance in the body of the article could also be improved by some coverage of Islamic objections to antisemitism.
Irtapil (talk) 13:46, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Timeline of antisemitism has an RfC

Timeline of antisemitism has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. patsw (talk) 23:30, 16 January 2024 (UTC)