Tag Archives: Jewish-Muslim dialouge

Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Rambam as Cosmopolitan-Updated

Posted on January 22, 2010 by | 13 comments

There is a new book Sarah Stroumsa: Maimonides in His World Princeton University Press  2009. I await my copy to arrive and for the reviews to start appearing. In the meantime, in her first chapter she describes the Islamic Mediterranean culture in which Maimonides worked and which she will use as the framework for her book. She paints Maimonides as the end of an era of Arabic-Jewish integration.

In this approach, she is similar to the method of Steven Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam. Between the 8th and 12th centuries, Jewish culture was tied up in Shiia and Ismaeli thought, in the formation of hadith collections, and Islamic legal schools, in the machinations of Caliphs, in Arabic poetics, and Islamic science.  Maimonides thoughts as he wrote them, were not the start of something new, rather the final summery, reflection, and synthesis of a different age. She credits this approach to S. D. Goitoin and others.

In this approach, the Maimonides of his time is different than the Maimonides of thirty years after his death and then the subsequent use in the Beit Midrash. The former Maimonides spoke and read Arabic and Berber, had Muslim colleagues, and needs to be situated in a world of Farabi, Ibn Sina, ibn Bajjah and the fiqh of Al Ghazzali and debates between Hanafi and Maliki schools of law, and the Ismaeli Qadi al- Nu man’s “Pillars of Islam.” In many aspects, Maimonides was quite conservative compared to the religious options his age. In contrast, the Maimonides of the Beit Midrash is a about a European reception of his works in Hebrew. In Provence, Maimonides was read with Hebrew translations of Farabi, and ibn Sina, but the original world has been lost.

First Chapter as pdf

The “Mediterranean culture” that shaped Maimonides had, of course,  produced other Jewish leaders and scholars. It is interesting to compare  Maimonides to another “Mediterranean thinker” of impressive stature, Saadia ben Yosef Fayyumi, alias Saadia Gaon (d. 942).80 Like Maimonides’, Saadia’s thought was shaped by his education, travels, readings, and personal encounters, and included the legacy of different schools
and religious communities. Like Maimonides’, Saadia’s originality lies in  his ability to integrate these diverse sources of influence into a coherent Jewish thought, speaking the universal cultural language of his time while  yet remaining entirely Jewish. The differences between the tenth-century  Saadia and the twelfth- century Maimonides are not only differences of  personality. The distinctive characters of their respective “cultural Mediterraneans” reflect the turning point in the twelfth century. Both Saadia and Maimonides can be seen as high- water marks of the Jewish Mediterranean society. Saadia, in the tenth century, marks the consolidation and coming of age of the Judaeo- Arabic Mediterranean culture. Maimonides, at the close of the twelfth century, marks the turning of the tide, the end of an era: the beginning of the waning of Islamic culture, the rise of Europe an intellectual power, and, as part of this process, the great shift occurring within the Jewish world.

In modern parlance, he could  perhaps be called “cosmopolitan,” that is, a person who belongs to more  than one of the subcultures that together form the world in which he  lives.

Even some of his famous statements in his commentary on the Mishnah reflect the world in which he lived and book that were known to his readers.

Ibn  Qutayba (d. 889), a traditional Muslim scholar, wrote an anthology of edifying material for the state secretaries, in the introduction to which we find him quoting the Prophet Muhammad’s learned cousin, Ibn Abbas, who had said: “Take wisdom from whomever you may hear it, for wisdom can come from the non- wise.”

Update:

I thank my reader Jeff for pointing me to a recent book review by David Burrell at NDPR- here. In general I recommend highly David Burrell’s Knowing The Unknowable God as an easy to read introduction to the trajectory of Farabi-Maimonides-Aquinas.

Burrell chose the same passage, which I chose, from the first chapter to illustrate her approach. According to Burrell’s summary of Stroumsa, in the chapters which I have not read yet—Maimonides was influenced by the Fundamentalist Almohad world of his youth, including his view of the unity of God, his definition of a leader, and his messainism. But unlike the Islamic world where jurist and philosophers were not the same social roles,  Maimonides in his rarely-found dual role could offer a more creative synthesis of fundamentalism and philosophy. Strousma finds a serious Ibn Sina influence on Maimonides’ vision of perfection as contemplative and erotic and ecstatic. She finds this is one of the places where Maimonides own religious belief is found.

She also attributes the Letter on resurrection to the Almohad heresy hunting against those falasifa who deny resurrection. (I thought for years that Bernard Septimus’ work on the resurrection controversy using only Jewish sources was barking up the wrong tree for similar reasons, any introductory work on medieval Islamic thought mentions the Islamic controversy on resurrection at the end of the 12th century.)

She suggests that Maimonides’ “identifying true monotheism with a noncorporeal perception of God” aligns him with Ibn Tumart’s school of thought (71). It is especially “Maimonides’ overall perception of the role of the ruler that is modeled according to Almohad thought” (77). In particular, his “depiction of the Messiah is characterized by an overwhelming insistence on his military role” (78). Yet it is here that we must recall that

the status of Maimonides within his own community was strikingly different from that of the Muslim philosophers of his generation within  their society[. Indeed], as the spiritual leader of a minority group, [he] could feel, perhaps more than a Muslim philosopher marginalized in the court, that he was able to shape the minds of his flock, [leaving] him, paradoxically, more freedom to adopt Almohad ideology than that left to his Muslim counterparts (79).

Chapter five, “A Critical Mind”, on Maimonides as scientist gives Stroumsa has :”a particular fascination for his obloquy towards pseudo-science, which he labels “ravings”

The chapter crowning the study, “‘From Moses to Moses’: Maimonides’ Vision of Perfection”, begins by comparing the Rambam’s concerns with those of Avicenna,… “the Guide gives us a glimpse of a positive description of Maimonides’ understanding of paradise.”

Commenting on this unusual use of evocative language by the Rambam, Stroumsa proposes (and I would concur) that “his description of the bliss of the perfect souls rings with the exultation and rapture of the believer” (164).

Maimonides’ own Treatise on Resurrection has elicited contentious commentary… Yet in the light of his clear predilection for immortality of soul, one wonders why Maimonides should insist, as he does in his ‘creed’, on obligatory belief in the resurrection of the dead. Stroumsa cuts the Gordian knot by suggesting that

in instituting a list of legally binding dogmas that define the boundaries of Judaism, [he] followed the example of the Almohads, [and especially of] their source of inspiration, Ghazali, who counted the denial of the resurrection as one of the marks of the philosophers’ heresy.

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“He was the best of the Jews” – A Muslim Homily Suggestion

Posted on December 29, 2009 by | 1 comment

M. A. Muqtedar Khan, professor of political science at the University of Delaware offer his fellow Muslims a suggestion of a topic to speak about.

“He was the best of the Jews”

If Muslim Imams told the story of Rabbi Mukhayriq to their congregations in America and elsewhere, I am confident that it will contribute to manifestations of increased tolerance by Muslims towards others.

By Muqtedar Khan, December 28, 2009

There are many stories that contemporary Imams rarely tell their congregations. The story of Mukhayriq, a Rabbi from Medina is one such story. I have heard the stories about the battle of Uhud, one of prophet Muhammad’s major battles with his Meccan enemies, from Imams and Muslim preachers hundreds of times, but not once have I heard the story of Rabbi Mukhayriq who died fighting in that battle against the enemies of Islam.

So, I will tell the story of Rabbi Mukhayriq – the first Jewish martyr of Islam. It is quite apropos as the season of spiritual holidays is here.

Mukhayriq was a wealthy and learned leader of the tribe of Tha’labah. He fought with Prophet Muhammed in the battle of Uhud on March 19, 625 AD and was martyred in it. That day was a Saturday. Rabbi Mukhayriq addressed his people and asked them to go with him to help Muhammed. His tribe’s men declined saying that it was the day of Sabbath. Mukhayriq chastised them for not understanding the deeper meaning of Sabbath and announced to his people that if he died in the battle his entire wealth should go to Muhammed.

Mukhayriq died in battle against the Meccans. And when Muhammed, who was seriously injured in that battle, was informed about the death of Mukhayriq, Muhammed said, “He was the best of Jews.”

Muhammed inherited seven gardens and other forms of wealth from Mukhayriq. Muhammed used this wealth to establish the first waqf – a charitable endowment – of Islam. It was from this endowment that the Prophet of Islam helped many poor people in Medina.

When Muhammed migrated form Mecca to Medina in 622 he signed a treaty with the various tribes that lived in and around Medina. Many of these tribes had embraced Islam, some were pagan and others were Jewish. All of them signed the treaty with Muhammed that is referred to by historians as the Constitution of Medina. The first Islamic state, a multi-tribal and multi-religious state, established by Muhammed in Medina was based on this social contract.

According to Article 2 of the Constitution, all tribes who were signatory to the treaty constituted one nation (ummah). Mukhayriq’s people too were signatories to this treaty and were obliged to fight with Muhammed in accordance to Article 37 of the Constitution, which says:
The Jews must bear their expenses and the Muslims their expenses. Each must help the other against anyone who attacks the people of this document. They must seek mutual advice and consultation, and loyalty is a protection against treachery. A man is not liable for his ally’s misdeeds. The wronged must be helped.
In a way Rabbi Mukhayriq, who was also a well-respected scholar of Jews in Medina, was merely being a good citizen and was fulfilling a social contract. But his story is fantastic, especially for our times when we are struggling to build bridges between various religious communities. Mukhayriq’s loyalty, his bravery, his sacrifice and his generosity are inspirational.

Perhaps it is about people like Mukhayriq that the Quran says:
And there are, certainly, among Jews and Christians, those who believe in God, in the revelation to you, and in the revelation to them, bowing in humility to God. They will not sell the Signs of God for a miserable gain! For them is a reward with their Lord (3:199).
Mukhayriq’s story is a story of an individual’s ability to transcend communal divides and to fight for a more inclusive idea of community. He was a true citizen of the state of Medina and he gave his life in its defense. He was a Jew and he was an Islamic hero and his story must never be forgotten and must be told and retold. When Muslims forget to remember his, and other stories that epitomize interfaith relations they diminish the legacy of Islam and betray the cause of peace.

If Muslim Imams told his story in their congregations in America and elsewhere, I am confident that it will contribute to manifestations of increased tolerance by Muslims towards others. There are many such wonderful examples of brotherhood, tolerance, sacrifice and good citizenship in Islamic traditions that undergird the backbone of Islamic ethics. I wish we told them more often.

Muqtedar Khan is Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware and a fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.

In another one of his writings The Islamic State and Religious Minorities, he offer these comments on the role of Jews within Islam. He is looking to cultivate Muslim theories of religious tolerance against those who have been advocating an Islamic state. He wants an Islam based on social contract not coercion. He presents early Islam as a Jewish-Muslim federation.

The irony of this reality is that in seeking to impose Islamic law and create an Islamic state, Islamists are actually in direct opposition to the spirit and letter of the Quran. The Quran is very explicit when it says “there is no compulsion in religion,” (Quran 2: 256). Elsewhere the Quran exhorts Jews to live by the laws revealed to them in the Torah. In fact The Quran expresses surprise that some Jews sought the arbitration of the Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him) rather than their own legal tradition (5:43). The Quran also orders Christians to live by their faith; “So let the people of the Gospel judge by that which Allah has revealed therein, for he who judges not by that which Allah has revealed is a sinner,” (Quran 5:47). From these verses it is abundantly clear that an Islamic state must advocate religious pluralism even to the extent of permitting multiple legal systems.

Unlike the present day Islamists, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), when he established the first Islamic state in Medina – actually a Jewish-Muslim federation extended to religious minorities the rights that are guaranteed to them in the Quran. Prophet Muhammad’s Medina was based on the covenant of Medina, a real and actual social contract agreed upon by Muslims, Jews and others that treated them as equal citizens of Medina. They enjoyed the freedom to choose the legal system they wished to live under. Jews could live under Islamic law, or Jewish law or pre-Islamic Arab tribal traditions. There was no compulsion in religion even though Medina was an Islamic state. The difference between Medina and today’s Islamic states is profound. The state of Medina was based on a real social contract that applied divine law but only in consultation and with consent of all citizens regardless of their faith. But contemporary Islamic states apply Islamic law without consent or consultation and often through coercion.

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David Nirenberg on the Jewish-Muslim relations in Christian Spain

Posted on October 19, 2009 by | 4 comments

David Nirenberg, of the University of Chicago, does micro studies of Jewish life in Spain based on legal documents. He offers a nuanced approach to the topic of interfaith relations in Spain. He points out that there is no simple calculus to say if a society was tolerant. His big insight is that Jewish –Muslim relations were mediated by Christians and both minorities modeled themselves on patterns of the host. He shows that many of the incidents were local events of urban fear of the other.  Think of the movie “Do the Right Thing” or the Crown Heights incident between Jews and the Black community.  A bit of Zygmunt Bauman on Judeophobia and urban tensions could probably really sharpen an already fine article.

Here is the fine article of his online that gives many of his conclusions from his book.

David Nirenberg, What Can Medieval Spain Teach Us about Muslim-Jewish Relations? CCJR Journal Spring / Summer 2002. 17 -36

I give some of his general principles and there cases: Tax Collection, Butchers, and Holy Week

First, no history as long and complex as that of Muslim and Jewish interaction can be explained by exegesis of a single text, even when that text is as foundational as the Bible or the Qur’an. Such prooftexts can sustain any number of interpretations over time, some of them quite contradictory, as anyone familiar with the Talmud (for example) knows.

Second, societies cannot be classified as tolerant or intolerant merely through the accumulation of “negative” or “positive” examples. Our understanding of the history of Muslim (or Christian) relations with Jews has to be rich enough to explain both the periods of relatively stable coexistence and the periodic persecution that marked Jewish life in both civilizations. Any account of Muslim-Jewish relations that does not simultaneously make sense of, for example, the brilliant career of Samuel Ibn Naghrela and the terrible massacre that ended his son’s life is obviously inadequate, for both are very real products of the same society. And finally, historians are not accountants, toting up the assets and liabilities of this and that society in order to declare a particular tradition more solvent (or in this case, more tolerant) than another.

The positions Jews and Muslims took vis-à-vis each other in Christian Spain cannot be understood in any simple sense as the products of “Jewish” or“Islamic” cultural attitudes toward one another. They were that, of course, but they were also very much influenced by what Jews and Muslims understood to be Christian interests and ideologies.Sometimes the arguments were purely economic or pragmatic.

Jews also were the tax collectors, officials, scribes of the chancery, and those employed in land and sea services. A Jew acted as magistrate, and as such sentenced [Muslims] to punishment of whipping or lashes.

The competition sometimes made for strange bedfellows. When the Jewish butchers of Daroca succeeded in acquiring a royal monopoly on selling halal meat to Muslims, the Muslims joined with the Christians in lobbying to have the Jewish meat market shut down. Moreover, the winner was not predetermined. The episode is revealing in that it confirms an important point: Christians were the ultimate arbiters in this competition between Judaism and Islam. Hence any arguments in the contest needed to be made with an eye on the Christian audience.

Each year during Holy Week, in Spain and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, crowds of Christian clerics and children participated in ritualized stone throwing attacks on Jewish quarters called “killing the Jews.” In 1319, a group of Muslims tried to make the practice their own.

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Towards Jewish-Muslim Dialogue by Trude Weiss-Rosmarin

Posted on October 15, 2009 by | 2 comments

Trude Weiss-Rosmarin (1908 – 1989) was a Orthodox Jewish-German-American writer, scholar, and feminist activist. She co-founded, with her husband, the School of the Jewish Woman in New York in 1933, and in 1939 founded the Jewish Spectator, a quarterly magazine, which she edited for 50 years. She was an influential critic of the Christian- Jewish dialogue. She was also a critic of Rabbi Steven Riskin’s first years at LSS, which she perceived as modernizing away from traditional synagogue practice.

One of her little discussed books is Towards Jewish-Muslim Dialogue (Sept 1967), written right after the Six Day War. The journal Tradition accepted that the victory was God’s hand in history, but we should avoid open messianism. In contrast, Weiss- Rosmarin was cautioning that victory does not occur on the battlefield but in the winning of the peace afterwards.

She affirmed that Israel is a successor to the ancient Jewish states in the Middle East, but bemoans how it is presenting itself as an outpost of the West. She considers as proof of this Western exclusivism the attitude of the European born elite toward the immigrants from Arab countries, treating them as the “second Israel” and judging them by Western mores. Israelis have to become integrated into the Arabic middle Eastern society around them.

A product of Europe and its civilization, Zionism was caught up in the notion of the superiority of Western, i.e., European civilization. This notion caused the Zionists – ad Jews as a whole – to look down upon the Arabs and their ancient culture in the manner the British looked down upon “colonials.” The Jews came to Palestine with the determination to make the country an outpost of Western civilization and to “civilize the Arab nations.” The unequivocal cultural identification of the Yishuv with the West and the failure to support Arab nationalism in its post-war struggles with the Allies disabused the Arabs of the hope, expressed by Feisal, that the “Jewish cousins” were cousins by Arab definition. (6-7)

If Zionist movement and Jews generally had been more humble in their encounter with Muslim civilization (and the “Second Israel”) and if they had not come to Palestine waving the flag of “Western civilization,” Israel might well have benefited from Arab tolerance and humaneness.(9)

If henceforth Jews will assign to Jewish-Muslim dialogue the importance that is its due, the Arabs, in whose nationalism religion is as important as it is in Jewish nationalism, will eventually-and perhaps sooner than cold-headed realists will dare expect-rediscover that the Jews are their cousins, descendants of Abraham’s eldest son, Ishmael, who was Isaac’s brother. (44)

If the young State of Israel is to survive and prosper it must become integrated into the Arab world and be accepted by its neighbors. The crucial challenge confronting Israel is how to conclude an alliance of peace with the Arab nations. We believe that with a complete reorientation, especially a muting of the insistent harping on the theme of “Israel is an outpost of Western civilization” the Arab nations would accept Israel on the basis of the kinship which unites Jews and Arabs. (40-41)

Weiss-Rosmarin advocates the return and revival of Hebrew and Israel to its Near-Eastern roots. A complete reorientation to see Judiasm as part of the Arab world.

If there is to be “dialogue” between Israel ad the Arab countries, Israel will have to project a new image of herself-the image of a Semitic brother-state in the midst of Semitic brother-states. Instead of proclaiming itself “the outpost of Western civilization,” Israel should emphasize that Hebrew is a Semitic language and a sister-language of Arabic. The setting of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud is not Europe but the Near East-its deserts and its fruitful regions. The biblical ideal of feminine beauty is not the Western dream. It is “the dark and comely beloved” of “Song of Songs,” who is swarthy as “the tents of Kedar” and –as Arab tents are to this day.(10)

Our prayers for the end of Exile and for the Return plead: “Renew our days as of old.” The renewal in the State of Israel should be a renewal of Jewishness in the traditional pattern of Hebrew civilization which was born, matured and produced its choicest fruit in the Middle East among kindred Semitic neighbors with kindred mores and, after the birth of Islam (622) in cross-fertilization and symbiosis with a kindred religious civilization. (11)

She cites the works of the Jewish Islamisists on the Judeo-Islamic similarities and synthesis. We lived together for more than a millennium. Islam is monotheism and law. We both have oral traditions and diverse schools of legal reasoning. But she adds her own observations on the similarities of the modern trajectories. We have the same problems of Madrasas and Yeshivot wanting to keep modernity and secular education out. Judaism and Islam both had secular nationalisms rise up to create modern states. She even paints a picture of common suffering.

The identity of Jewish and Muslim fate and suffering at the hands of Christians, during the Crusades and in Spain, has not received sufficient attention. It was a period of shared agony and confrontation with a common enemy. This deserves to be better known by Jews and Muslims. The shared fate of oppression and persecution under “Christianity triumphant” is a strong bond of Jewish-Muslim brotherhood. (30-31)

As practical steps, she calls for (1) American Jewish organizations to foster Jewish Muslim dialogue.(2) Jewish institutes of higher learning, especially the seminaries, should introduce courses on Islam and Arabic culture.  (The way Ignatz Goldziher and Jacob Barth, both observant Jews, taught respectively at the Budapest and Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminaries.) (3) Jewish Institutions should assign priority to hosting Muslim lecturers, the way they host Christian lecturers. (4) There should be adult education courses fostering Jewish Muslim dialogue. [42-43]

This was in 1967.

Update- Here is the full text from The Jewish Spectator

–Trude Weiss-Rosmarin – Toward Jewish-Muslim Dialogue

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