"In 1922, four years after the Zaydi dynasty known for its long legacy of anti-Jewish edicts resumed the throne, the government of Yemen reintroduced the medieval Islamic law requiring Jewish orphans under age 12 to be forcibly converted to Islam (gezeirat ha-yitomim) [known as the Yemenite Orphans Decree]. Haybi captures one such unfortunate child, earlocks shorn, surrounded by his Muslim guards. (Ironically, the traditional Jewish practice of wearing earlocks, or pe’ot, was forced upon Jewish men as an act of humiliation, because they were regarded as effeminate.)
In another, Jewish men are seen engaged in the demeaning task of disposing of animal carcasses outside the city walls. Vultures crowd the foreground of the picture frame, flapping their wings and kicking up the dust, adding to the sense of filth and abasement. In a kind of topographical palimpsest that may have been a tribute to the community’s tragic past, Haybi even photographed the dry Al-Sayileh riverbed where Sana’a’s Jews lived until their expulsion in 1679 [known as the Mawza exile]. Upon their return a year later they were confined to a swampy area of the city where they constructed the Jewish ghetto."
Excerpt from Available Light: Pictures from Yemen
Describing Scenes of Sana’a: Yihye Haybi’s Photographs from Yemen, 1930–44.
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In Islamic countries, sissys are called dhimmis. Dhimmis are Jews and Christians who work for Muslims, usually performing the lowest-paying jobs. Dhimmis are often treated like slaves and kept as such by their owners. They are often not allowed to convert to Islam to preserve their ability to work. However, dhimmis are also under the protection of their Muslim owners. Sometimes, though, the owner of a sissy dhimmi allows her to convert to Islam, but only after she has been castrated. Sissy dhimmis are often forced to wear pink burkas, and there are places they are forbidden to enter. In these areas, their owners have the option of tying them up to prevent them from getting lost.
what is ur opinion on people who say Jews weren’t colonized & oppressed by the Caliphates & Ottoman Empire & what evidence would you use to try & disprove their point? (For context I’m arguing with a dipshit about Jews being indigenous and fear I am not articulating my points well enough. They brought up that „Jewish golden age“ occurred under Muslim rule so they couldn’t be oppressed & treated as subhuman, or something.)
Ph man... 😫 Apologies in advance
I need to make several qualifiers. 1) I'm not an authority or good source on this topic yet - I'm really into middle eastern history on an "interest" level, but this is relatively recent and has been 90% focused on Israeli history. I took one (1) course on MENA studies last year, so not only do I not have a lot of experience on arabic and muslim history, but it is all stained by the dubious influence of panarabism that at least my MENA-department approached all descripitions of dhimmi-hood and Ottoman minority treatment. My knowledge on this is very spotty. 2) Since I'm so unqualified, I can't really offer you good arguments or talking points, because that requires more confident and source-backed underpinnings than I currently. What I can do, like with almost everything, is ramble in a half-comprehensible for way too long way about shit I varely understand.
Hopefully some competent jews or goyim with a good base of historical knowledge of the Ottoman Empire or al-Andalus will see this and give you some actual advice and information, instead of my poorly informed ramblings. That being said, here's one of the least compact or useful rant I've posted👇🤷♂️
It's such an annoyingly common line of argumentation - either made by radical antizionist jews like Naturei Karta (doesn't matter in the end (to me) if the motivation behind it is some noble idea of ingratiating themselves to Muslims for the rest of us) or tankie antozionists with a third-world orientalist fetish, or by goyim some Muslims. Like, most things are "more complicated than they appear", but this really is pretty complicated.
Firstly, it's almost always the case that this argument is based propagandized historiography about the Ottoman Empire or the Caliphates - that could honestly be treated like a separate problem about ideological filter bubbles. If that is the only actual cause of the argument, some better and more nuanced/qualified sources would fix it, which anyone will find with some intellectual curiosity.
But then there's the type of person who thinks jews were "treated nice" by Muslims as opposed to being "treated badly" by Christians, because they're immersed in a culture that has made either nazism and the Shoah into a symbol of a uniquely European problem - or the Crusades and Inquisition. It has the clear stink of orientalism and fetishizing of "non-western cultures" or whatever you want to call it - in my opinion. When violent atrocities against jews by muslims are 1) not well known to a western radlib, and 2) violent persecution is treated like the only type of persecution of jews worth considering (if there arent photos of jewish bodies in the street post-pogrom, it's not valid, or something), it's pretty easy to accept a romantic depiction dhimmi-hood.
The Pact of Umar, the basis for Muslim laws for monotheistic non-Muslims, on its face requires ensuring the protection of dhimmis (the jizya tax doesn't change this fact). And just like constituional or political principles of equality under the law will lead to prosperity when times are good, society is stable and the economy is prospering- they don't have to mean jack shit to the people in power the moment they become inconvenient.
The dhimmi system, looked at through a macro perspective, didn't "safeguard" jews from violent pogroms and massacres. This is just a historical fact essily proven by just naming any pogrom carried out under Muslim rule. Sometimes it did, and sometimes your local Muslim ruler or community will throw the so-called "protections for non-Muslims" away the moment they feel like it. In the exact same way, there were periods where Christian rulers were good to its jewish subjects, and there were periods where Inquisitions happen.
The core problem for the jews, and for any other minority religious groups under the rule of christians or muslims, is that it's ALWAYS conditional. These "protections" aren't some laws of nature. Even if the conditions for second-class citizens happen to be good one minute, the fact that they're second-class citizens means, necessarily, that prosperity and security can be ripped away at any second, and for any reason. In the same way that fundamentalist christians today can cherry-pick quotes from the old testament to justify their hatred of gay people, Muslim treatment of jews is fundamentally influenced by the fact that the Quoran on the whole contains so much dissonant doctrine on how muslims should treat jews - you can find quotes stating that Eretz Yisrael was given to the jews by Allah judt as easily as you can find quotes that say justify slitting the throats of any jews you come across. You can make islam or muslims appear as religiously antisemitic or "nice" to jews as you want, becaude there are ample hadiths and quotes available to justify either position - which is exactly what happend over and over under the caliphates and the Ottoman empire.
(A more extreme (maybe?) example of the same thing is just looking at the writings of Martin Luther on the jews - stripped of any timeline or context, you'll both find the most vitriolic writing about jews imaginable (On the Jewish Question) and very tolerant and favorable writing. And how the catholic church can both say "we should love the refugee or the homosexual because the message of Jesus was to love your neighbor and accept everyone" - OR the opposite. (This dissonance I actually am personally familiar with having grown up very catholic and gay)
As far as I've learned, the "golden age" that Maimonides lived during (or the flourishing of jewish philosophy and scholarship during other periods under foreign rule, like for Philo of Alexandria, maybe?) in primarily describing a philosophical and interreligious golden age - it's not really a term describing some universal period of jewish prosperity under Islam. As far as I know it's mostly used to describe the particular climate around the 1100s in al-Andalus. It doesn't accurately describe how jews still had the status of a minority religion under Islam, which not only comes with the specific laws for non-muslims, but the more subtle implications of being a social minority. Muslim rule was still often preferrable than the massacres and forced conversions that were often frequent under European christian rule, and jews sometimes fled to the Ottoman empire after expulsions from Europe. This was more so the case around the 15th century - during the 19th century, rhe situation was almsot the opposite: jewish life in Europe was thriving, and it was shit in the Ottoman empire.
Idk how to express it appropriately, but if there was some imaginary scenario of Jim Crow segregation that didn't include any lynchings, would it be accurate or fair to claim that black people were treated well, just becasue they weren't lynched for being black? I wouldn't.
Jewish marginal self-governance under Ottoman or Muslim rule was obviously great compared to european ghettoisation - but the readon the good times didn't ladt is that this self-rule was granted by the actual rulers. It could therefore be taken away. This is why jewish sovereignty and self-rule is so necessary and important. The majority can always turn on you, and they probably will: and when that happens, how the fuck are you supposed to protect yourself?
The second headache-inducingly complex part about dhimmi-status under muslim rule, specifically under Ottoman rule, is imo even more complicated to explain, beacuse you also have to consider the specific Ottoman legislation and structure of the millet-system. There are some academic disagreements about it which makes it complicated, and Ottoman governance was incredily varied - so it's even more complicated trying to draw some sort of simple judgements about whether it was good or bad on the whole. My knowledge of the Ottoman millet-system is 1) not deep enough, and 2) mostly from the context of the academic field of MENA-studies - which has a problematic tendency of valorizing arabic, muslim and Ottoman history. Therefore I'm gonna avoid trying to lecture anyone on it - or rather I'm gonna avoid portraying my ramblings as something you should take at face value or some kind of authority - at least until I've read about it to qualify my opinions adequately.
My store-brand TLDR is that life for jews under Ottoman rule was pretty decent, but always volatile and oppressive.
Honestly the major problem in my experience is most likely just ignorance about Muslim religious and political persecution of Jews, combined with an urge to contrast it to the European Christian kind, something westerners know a lot more about (partly because modern (important qualifier - specifically post Shoah) western academic treatment of its own jewish persecution has overall been more self-critical)
If you view persecution of jews by different majority groups as some theoretical study of some intrinsic "tolerance or intolerance", instead of looking at it like a historical phenomenon or fact (as in understanding that it changes over time and space) - it's hard to achieve some type of rational and accurate understanding of antisemitic oppression. Christians have been worse worse during certain periods of history, and Muslims have been worse during others (including the current one, obviously). If you treat antisemitic persecution as a venue for arguing about is Islam or Christianity/ "Europe or the Middle East" - instead of something which necessarily has to be based on the experience of jews, you will end up with an incorrect understanding of it. Just like how it's cynical when american christian conservatives (and Ben Shapiro) extole the virtues of "Judeo-Christian civilization and values" as if Islam is somehow historically or conceptually separable from the other two Abrahamic religions. You can make a perfectly sound and rational argument that Judaism and Islam are theologically much more similar than Judaism and Christianity - something which I happen to also believe is accurate.
I have no clue if any of this is comprehensible or useful, I apologise 💀. Good luck with the idiots, chaver 🧡
I've added a few things I have read/listened to beyond academic sources, and a couple things I'm pretty sure are accurate or useful, just in case you want to look them up to help your problem
Pact of Umar/dhimmis
Yad Vashem (jews under Islam) (pretty short and good imo)
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""The mindset in the Middle East is very simple. It is based on the Qur'anic concept of dhimmi status for all religious minorities who are "people of the book." Such people can at best be tolerated but they should NEVER be in a position in power whether within a country or within the Middle East. As such, Israel's existence violates a definitional and fundamental tenet of the mindset in the region. It is that simple. It has nothing to do with land; nothing to do with two states; nothing to do with other geopolitical realities. Islam is supreme. Islam can protect you as long as you know your place. Israel said NO! We have dignity; we have a right for self-autonomy. Ask yourself the following question: How are non-Muslim minorities faring throughout the Middle East? Yes, there are times when minorities are "tolerated" but the overlords reserve the right to exterminate you as they see fit. There is 1,400 years of that recorded history. Learn your history.""
