Talk:Muhammad's views on Jews

Untitled

Damn, five days late, i was just about to create this article... --Striver 17:23, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

FrummerThanThou, your inclusion of The motivation for Muhammad's actions was political rather than racial or theological.[1] John Esposito writes that the massacre of traitors was common practice, "neither alien to Arab customs nor to that of the Hebrew prophets." is another sign that i might have misjudged you. --Striver 17:28, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Edits

This article was in very poor shape. The POV that the Jews had it coming was repeated over, and over, and over again, almost the exact same words, multiple times, from various tertiary sources. I took these out. I also removed admitted speculation regarding: what "would have" happened if people had done things differently and; what was going on in Muhammad's mind. Arrow740 05:14, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

you have been removing sourced material on the grounds that you believe it to be "speculation." the solution is attribution in the text to the person opining, not removal. else, it looks like you're whitewashing, and it may be perceived as vandalism. in the light of that, i have intend to restored those passages, with minor changes as necessary. contrary to the impression you are giving, we can express scholarly opinions and analyses in the article. you referred to a section on the talk page of Muhammad as a diplomat to justify a removal, yet i proved rather conclusively that many of the attributions to people disagreeing were simply false. the majority of scholarship agrees that Muhammad signed with the Jews. academics also pretty much accept that Qurayza had been plotting against Muhammad. lastly, EoI may be a tertiary resource, but it is an exception to the guidelines on WP:RS as it is a specialized, signed encyclopedia written by the most qualified of academics. ITAQALLAH 06:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

You proved no such thing. Look at it again. It is clear that the constitution was imposed after the destruction of the Jewish tribes. Do you deny that? We do not need to include speculation of anyone, historian or otherwise. Watt has a reputation, as do those other people cited, but that does not mean that their guesses should be included in an encyclopedia. I don't expect anything better from EoI as it has a decided Islamophile bias. Arrow740 09:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

"Do you deny that?" the majority of scholarship denies that, as i have shown. there is no justification for removing sourced passages and opinions simply because you find the views discomforting - we can and should include relevant academic discussion. what you speculate about EoI is irrelevant. ITAQALLAH 09:59, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Answer the question. We are editors, not parrots. Arrow740 10:08, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

true, yet we reflect the relevant academic analyses of scholars in our articles. you don't remove content simply because you think it's false, as you have been doing. and neither can you remove content by dismissing the credibility of a scholar's (clearly) inforamed opinion. i don't need to answer your question, it doesn't matter what i think. academic opinion cannot be ignored as easily, however. ITAQALLAH 10:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The whole point is that there is no analysis of material. There is speculation, conjecture. We cannot balance out their POV because responsible historians, like Lewis, do not engage in pure speculation. The only way to proceed is to not include the speculation. Arrow740 22:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

(reset) wrong. as they are respected, scholarly, qualified academics, their views in and of themselves contain weight, regardless of whether you think they are "guessing" or "speculating", which is a subjective and unfounded conclusion. they don't have to be analysing or commentating on a text (or even cite their assertions) for their views to become noteworthy. thus, any removal based upon such fragile reasoning is unacceptable. ITAQALLAH 00:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

"The Jews would have attacked the Muslims in the rear?" Are you kidding me? That's not history. Arrow740 00:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

according to you. according to many qualified historians, however, the Qurayza Jews were indeed intent on helping Huyayy's forces. sorry you don't find that palpable. ITAQALLAH 00:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This article is far too long. It should just be pointers to the articles about the individual tribes, one of which appears to be well-written. I will have to get Stillman, Serjeant, and Peters myself. Arrow740 01:01, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

i'll take that as a concession then. or should i wait for you to finish your cross-posting? ITAQALLAH 01:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Please provide full context, i.e. full paragraphs, for all the speculation you wish to include so that it can be evaluated more fully. Arrow740 01:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

most of the resources are available online. have fun. ITAQALLAH 01:39, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The burden is upon you to provide the context for your additions. If the books are available online (which I doubt) provide links. Arrow740 02:25, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Things Itaqallah has insisted be in the article

Aside from the speculation of biased historians for which you have yet to provide context:

• Muslims were also arguing that there was nothing surprising in Muhammad's rejection by Jews, as that had had occurred to other prophets mentioned in Jewish scripture."

This is unsourced apologetics, as I noted when I removed it before.

• In the Constitution of Medina, Muhammad demanded the Jews' political loyalty in return for religious and cultural autonomy.[1]

This is false as you know well. Read Banu Qurayza.

• Watt states that there is no need to suppose that Muhammad brought pressure on Sa'd ibn Mua'dh:

This is a rebuttal to an argument that is not being made. It also requires context.

You also need to provide the full context for these guesses:

• Their opposition "may well have been for political as well as religious reasons".

• they had almost certainly[11][probably [10]] been involved in negotiations with the enemy [10]

• and would have attacked Muhammad in the rear had there been an opportunity

• The motivation for Muhammad's actions was political rather than racial or theological.

• Watt speculates that had Jews come to terms with Muhammad instead of opposing him, they had become partners in the Arab Empire and Islam a sect of Jewry. They could have secured very favourable terms with him, including religious autonomy. A great opportunity that was lost.

The last one is a blatantly biased and needs to be expunged. It also shows Watt's lack of intellect. This article is largely Watt's POV. This needs to be balanced by removing some of his POV, and by putting in others' as well.

Also the same POV that the Jews had it coming is repeated four times. That needs to be edited. Arrow740 01:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Arrow470, you know there's no point in calling something false, as wikipedia insists on verifiability and not truth. If it is sourced to a relaibale source, doesn't matter what Banu Qurayza says, the quote stays.

"You also need to provide the full context..." If you think a context needs to be provided, then why don't you add one :-). Adding info. to wikipedia is much better than removing sourced statements.Bless sins 15:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Arrow. To rely solely on Watt and include his ridiculous speculation is out of order. Esposito is pure apologetics based on no scholarship but the reasoning dogma "anything M did was common practice so he cannot possibly be criticized for it", even when massacre was plainly not common in pre-Muhammad Arabia. This is bad faith as those including it here know full well the problematic nature of this as we have discussed this in and out on other articles. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 09:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

npov tag

Hi -- the content seems to be in dispute, so I've added a tag (forgot to log in when I added it). Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 12:43, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Moved

The article said:

Efraim Karsh writes that, though Muhammad might have had no ideological quarrel with the Jewish people, he disliked the Jews of Medina. The reason for this, Karsh says, was that the Jews had not only spurned Islam but were his fiercest critics. Thus, according to Karsh, the Qur'an and biographical traditions, depict Jews as deceitful, evil, and treacherous who would readily betray an ally and swindle a non-Jew. Nonetheless, the Qur'an states that the Jews were specially chosen by God, who raised many prophets among them, blessed them and granted them favours, and held them over all other nations.

The source ([1]) doesn't seem to attribute anything to Karsh, leading to the question who the author is. Please don't restore until the sourcing can be cleared up.Bless sins (talk) 04:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I can't find any sources where the Prophet thought of Christians and Jews as natural allies, like the article says. I can only find this:O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

Hardly seems as PC as the article states. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.130.139.228 (talk) 11:06, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Bernard Lewis goes into why they were natural allies. And another verse states taking non-Muslims as friends as long as they are not persecuting or fighting against Muslims is fine. --♥pashtun ismailiyya 00:53, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

References

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "Esp" :
  • Esposito, John. 1998. Islam: the Straight Path, extended edition. Oxford university press, p.17
  • <ref> Jacob Neusner, ''God's Rule: The Politics of World Religions'', p. 153, Georgetown University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-87840-910-6

DumZiBoT (talk) 13:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Banu Qurayza

This article preaches as fact that which is claim by the descendants of Banu Qurayza. I'm not sure that is entirely fair to Muhammad. If no one minds, I will rephrase it slightly. UltimateDarkloid (talk) 20:02, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

What "descendants of Banu Qurayza" and what claim? Jayjg ^(talk) 00:21, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad's first biographer, wrote a lot of things about Muhammad, among them the fact that he killed those 400-900 Jews. He got his information by asking around, and among those he asked were the descendants of Qurayza. His books was written around 150 years after Muhammad's death. It's quite unreliable, as no other evidence points to such a huge massacre in a oasis city like Medina, considering that 600 were killed in the market in a large trench. UltimateDarkloid (talk) 01:08, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

But the article doesn't cite Ibn Ishaq on the Banu Qurayza. It cites modern, reliable, secondary and tertiary sources. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:16, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

False Accusations Of Anti Aemitism

I have seen someone on this article write that the Prophet(S.A.W) claimed that there will be final slaughter of Jews before Judgement day at hands of Muslims,this is false,the Prophet said that the Jews and Christians will also achieve paradise as they were followers of the one god,why is such false accusation of anti semitism being put here on this esteemed site against our beloved prophet by people with vested interests to create conflicts between Muslims and Jews,they have given a so called citation that falsely quotes from a book which no one has read,so I removed the citation,please stop spreading false accusations and creating conflicts,just accept our differences and let us live in peace.Muzammil901 (talk) 07:07, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

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Jewish Encyclopedia reference

There is a reference in this article from the “jewish encyclopedia” which was originally published in 1906 and expresses the common rhetoric espoused by orientalists in England around the time. The issue with the specific reference is that it’s irrelevant to the article in that it goes into describing what it perceives as Muhammad’s attitude to the situation , even though this impossible to do for a man who lived 1400-1500 years ago with no primary sources but some secondary sources that inherently don’t express Muhammad’s views ( all information about the incidents is ultimately derived from Hadith and Israiliyat that we’re compiled hundreds of years after Muhammad and thus none are primary sources).

The second point of contention is that chosen information from the encyclopedia are simply factually incorrect which is understandable given the time this information was published . For example it claims that Muslims believe that Abraham is an Arab, which is simply false. Such a view has never been espoused in any of Islamic Hadith or Quranic sources. Thus either this reference should be removed and replaced with a reliable source. Or the information that this encyclopedia cites should be directly used to take information from and post it here as clearly simply leaving this source as is would bias this article to contain overtly negative sources that feature an excess of views from Historians who support a revisionist view of Islam, which in itself is a contentious view point as most western historians of Islam aren’t in the so-called “revisionist Islam” camp.

I would suggest also including references from modern Islamic historians that are also non western as it would make the information here more well balanced. If there is a modern day analog to the Jewish encyclopedia then it would be interesting to post information from it as long as it acts like an encyclopedia and compiles information for the readers rather than simply interpreting the information and presenting false information. Thinktank9238327 (talk) 16:37, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

The JE doesn’t provide inline citations unfortunately, so we don’t know where it came from. One thing is for sure, it had been misrepresented. I have fixed it [2]. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:34, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

violence

Where are the violent verses in Quran and Hadith against Jews? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:7F4:5083:42CA:D9F2:4849:DB1D:5845 (talk) 14:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)