An Analysis
| “Jews of Arab Countries: the Congress is convinced that Jews living in Arab countries do not appreciate the kindness and protection that Muslims have granted them over the centuries. The Congress proclaims that the Jews who live in the Arab states and who have contact with Zionist circles or the state of Israel do not deserve the protection and kindness that Islam grants to non-Muslim citizens living freely in Islamic countries. Islamic governments must treat them as enemy combatants. In the same way, Islamic peoples must individually and collectively boycott them and treat them as mortal enemies.”
– The World Islamic Congress meeting in Amman, Jordan, 22 September 1967 |
The philosophy underpinning this statement is the classic Islamic attitude to ‘dhimmis’ – non-Muslims (Jews, Christians, Sabeans, Zoroastrians).
Covenant of Umar
In the 7th century, because the Muslims were a minority controlling a huge empire of non-Muslims, the invading Arab armies instituted The Covenant of Umar. This body of rules decreed that non-Muslims did not have to convert to Islam as long as they deferred to the superiority of Muslims by submitting to a series of humiliating handicaps and restrictions.
Moreover, the Jews submitted to ‘protection’ by Muslim rulers through payment of a heavy poll-tax or ‘jizya.’ The idea that the Jews should surrender their ability to defend themselves to Muslims is one reason why the idea of Israel, as an armed, sovereign state in the Middle East, is to this day anathema to fundamentalists striving to implement Islamic law – e.g. Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
‘Dhimmi’ status was abolished under the influence of the colonial powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries and Jews and Christians could aspire to equal rights with Muslims. On independence, Arab states were ‘secular,’ but all incorporated elements of Islamic law in their constitutions which in practice discriminated against non-Muslims. After 1948 laws were introduced branding ‘Zionism’ a crime in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco and Syria. From then on it was but a short step for Arab regimes to scapegoat all Jews living in Arab countries as Zionist spies, sometimes on the most spurious of grounds.
It is ironic that the World Islamic Congress made its 1967 statement in Jordan of all places: since 1922, when Transjordan was declared an exclusively Arab state in Palestine, Jews have been formally banned from settling in that country. – L.J.
