IMAGInInG ThE “ISrAElITES” • 161only is Judaism not a murderous religion; it is, in fact, “the source
of law and the foundation of the true religions.” this, to be sure, is a
sweeping statement of approval for Judaism, extending far beyond the
narrow scope of denying ritual murder charges.
Challenging Judaism in al-ManārWholesale favorable evaluations of the Jewish religion of the sort found
in al-Hilāl are generally absent from al-Manār, a periodical that was
an amalgamation of a religious Qurʾanic commentary and an intellec-
tual journal.^92 The first pages of each edition ofal-Manār were always
composed of a Qurʾanic exegesis, which rida attributed to al-ustādh
al-imām, rida’s teacher and mentor Muhammad ʿAbduh. In one such
commentary, published in april 1907, rida accuses the Jews of having
“preserved only part of the book that God revealed to them.” the rest
of the original torah was lost. Worse yet, rida asserts, the Jews do not
properly fulfill even the portion of the Torah they have preserved. Deep-
ening his critique of the Jews and their torah, rida adds that “there is
no evidence that the five books attributed to Moses, peace be upon him,
which they call the torah, were actually written by Moses or memorized
by him.” explicitly invoking the research of european biblical scholars,
rida contends rather that the evidence suggests that these books “were
written hundreds of years after him [Moses].” In fact, “there is no evi-
dence that Moses, peace be upon him, knew the hebrew language; his
language, rather, was egyptian.” Where, rida asks rhetorically, “is the
torah Moses wrote in that language and who translated it?”^93
this insistence that Moses was not the author of the torah, or, more
precisely, that he was not the author of the book the Jews now refer to
as the torah, is familiar to us from al- Khalidi’s manuscript.^94 Moreover,
(^92) In this regard I differ with Sylvia haim, who discounts the anti- Jewish references in
al-Manār. though rida “writes of the wealth of the Jews, their meanness, their treacher-
ous relations with the prophet, their danger to the Ottoman empire, etc.,” haim contends
that “this usually occurs in his commentary on the Koran when he is trying to expound
some sura or hadith which refers to the Jews and to illustrate the superiority of Islam over
Judaism.” haim, “arabic antisemitic Literature,” 309. In my view, there is no reason to
discount rida’s comments about Jews, whether ancient or contemporary, regardless of
the genre of texts in which these comments appear. In a later essay, haim acknowledges
rida’s “ambivalent attitude towards the Jews.” haim, “Islamic anti- Zionism,” 49.
(^93) al-Manār 10:2 (april 1907), 83.
(^94) this, of course, was not an original theory of either rida or al- Khalidi; the notion
that the torah was not written by Moses has ancient precedents. My point here is simply
to highlight that both rida and al- Khalidi chose this same theme in their early twentieth-
century writings about the Jews and Judaism.