Fight in the Way of God 97example, that by the sixth century C.E., there was, as noted by H. G.
Reissener, complete agreement among Diaspora Jewish communities
that a non-Israelite could be considered a Jew only if he was “a fol-
lower of the Mosaic Law... in accordance with the principles laid
down in the Talmud.” Such a restriction would immediately have
ruled out Medina’s Jewish clans, who were not Israelites, and who nei-
ther strictly observed Mosaic law nor seemed to have any real knowl-
edge of the Talmud. Moreover, there is a conspicuous absence in
Medina of what should be easily identifiable archeological evidence of
a significant Jewish presence. According to Jonathan Reed, certain
archeological indicators—such as the remnants of stone vessels, the
ruins of immersion pools (miqva’ot), and the interment of ossuaries—
must be present at a site in order to confirm the existence there of an
established Jewish religious identity. As far as we know, none of these
indicators have been unearthed in Medina.
Naturally, there are those who continue to assert the religious
identity of Medina’s Jewish clans. Gordon Newby, for example, thinks
Medina’s Jews may have comprised distinct communities with their
own schools and books, though no archeological evidence exists to
confirm this hypothesis. In any case, even Newby admits that with
regard to their culture, ethics, and even their religion, Medina’s Jews
were not only quite different from other Jewish communities in the
Arabian Peninsula, they were practically identical to Medina’s pagan
community, with whom they freely interacted and (against Mosaic
law) frequently intermarried.
Simply put, the Jewish clans of Medina were in no way a reli-
giously observant group; they may not even have been Jews, if Margo-
liouth and others are correct. So it is highly doubtful that they would
have engaged in complex polemical debates with Muhammad over the
Quran’s correlation to Hebrew Scriptures that they neither could
read, nor likely even owned.
The fact is that nothing Muhammad either said or did would
necessarily have been objectionable to Medina’s Jews. As Newby
writes in A History of the Jews of Arabia, Islam and Judaism in seventh-
century Arabia operated within “the same sphere of religious dis-
course,” in that both shared the same religious characters, stories, and
anecdotes, both discussed the same fundamental questions from