222 • chapter 5
after Moyal published at- Talmūd, Malul published his own short arabic
book aimed at answering contemporary arab concerns about Jews and
Judaism. Compared to Moyal’s book, Malul’s 1911 Kitāb asrār al- yahūd
(the Book of the Secrets of the Jews) is more explicitly a work of apol-
ogetics. through his sixty- four- page text, Malul tried to show that Juda-
ism is not the foreign, insidious phenomenon that many arabs believed
it to be. Malul’s book uses both philosophical discussion and historical
analysis to set forth a sustained, if somewhat meandering, argument
about the essential sameness of all religions, especially the monotheis-
tic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Given the shared values
and goals of these religions, Malul sets out to explain the hatred and
violence that nonetheless developed between the various religious com-
munities. the cause, Malul contends, has little to do with the religions’
beliefs and principles; rather, it is economic jealousy that produces hos-
tility between religious groups. While Malul’s focus on financial com-
petition may strike the reader as simplistic, it is, I argue, essential to
understanding Malul’s interpretation of arab opposition to Zionism.
Before analyzing the text itself, it is instructive to consider the title
Malul chose for it: Secrets of the Jews.^141 in 1893 in Beirut, Najib al- hajj
published Fī az- zawāyā khabāyā aw kashf asrār al- yahūd (clandestine
things in the corners, or unveiling the Secrets of the Jews). this an-
tisemitic book is an arabic adaptation of Georges Corneilhan’s 1889
Juifs et opportunistes: Le judaisme en Egypte et Syrie.^142 Because Malul
knew of al- hajj’s book— he mentions it, though not by its title, in Asrār
al- yahūd^143 — one suspects that he wished to have his own book under-
stood as, at least in part, a rebuttal of al- hajj’s. al- hajj, he implies,
failed to reveal truly the Jews’ secrets; to understand the Jews prop-
erly, rather, one must read Malul’s book.
after the book’s dedication to his father, Malul immediately begins
his broadside against critics of the Jews and Judaism. he contends that
there are three types of knowledge- seekers: those who seek it with-
out regard to its consequences; those who seek it in order to improve
human society;^144 and those who seek it to satisfy their own ambition.
It is people of the third category— a type Malul detests and regards
(^141) While the phrase asrār al- yahūd is reminiscent of the Islamic notion of asrār al-
qurʾān, the “secret meaning of the qurʾan,” Malul, i presume, had more recent anti-
Jewish polemics in mind. on the concept of the qurʾan’s secret meanings, see Shigeru
Kamada, “Secrets,” eQ.
(^142) See Norman a. Stillman, “arab antisemitic Literature,” in Levy, Antisemitism. See
also haim, “arabic antisemitic Literature,” 307– 8.
(^143) Malūl, Kitāb asrār al- yahūd, 1:19.
(^144) Malul affiliates himself with this second category. ibid., 8.