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as it was expounded in al-Muqtaṭaf, this theory was meant to offer
further proof that Jewish philosophy is best developed within arab-
Islamic culture and civilization. not only were the Jews who first fled
to arab lands from the “chauvinistic oppression” of roman rule the
ones who attained the pinnacles of Jewish philosophic inquiry, but the
demise of Jewish philosophy can be traced to the moment at which
european Christendom destroyed the great Jewish community that
had flourished under Islam. “At the end of the fifteenth century,”^65
the author explains, “the Jews were expelled from Spain and, in their
expulsion, Jewish philosophy disappeared.” For this author, Jews have
a special bond with arab and Islamic civilization, tied, at least in part,
to their shared racial origins. Moreover, the two societies are conceived
in opposition to the imagined Other of europe. Jews are second only
to arabs in “the history of philosophy” and share the glory with arabs
for together having “preserved science and philosophy during a pe-
riod in which europe was lost in the darkness of ignorance.” explicitly
linking Jewish philosophy (and, more generally, the achievements of
Jewish culture) to arab or Islamic rule, the article expresses pride in
the shared arab- Jewish philosophical past in contrast to the ignorant
past of europe.^66
Crescent, Cross, and the Causes of Antisemitismthe notion that historically Jews thrived and prospered under arab and
Islamic rule— especially as compared to the oppression and persecution
they suffered in Christian Europe— was a leitmotif of nearly all com-
ments on the course of Jewish history articulated in these journals.^67
(^65) the author writes that the expulsion took place in 1494. It is not clear why the
author identifies this date, rather than 1492, as the date of expulsion.
(^66) al-Muqtaṭaf 33:2 (February 1908), 127.
(^67) Mark r. Cohen dubs this “the ‘myth of an interfaith utopia’ in Islam,” which was
propagated by both Jews and arabs (especially, though not exclusively, Muslims) for
various purposes at different times. “Frustrated by the tortuous progress of their own
integration into gentile society in what was supposed to be a ‘liberal’ age of emancipa-
tion,” writes Cohen of nineteenth- century european Jews, “Jewish intellectuals seeking
a historical precedent for a more tolerant attitude toward Jews hit upon a time and
place that met this criterion— medieval Muslim Spain,” and, more broadly, the Jewish
experience under Islam. Cohen contends that this myth has been employed more recently
“by arabs as a weapon in their propaganda war against Zionism.” he explains that “ac-
cording to this view, for centuries, Jews and arabs lived together in peace and harmony
under Islamic rule” and thus “modern antipathy toward Israel began only when the Jews
destroyed the old harmony by pressing the Zionist claim against Muslim- arab rights to
Palestine.” he claims that Christian Arabs “have felt a need to affirm historical Islamic