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Faculty Scholarship

4-1-2012

Why Jewish Studies Scholars Should Care about Christian–Muslim Relations

David M. Freidenreich Colby College, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Freidenreich, David M., "Why Jewish Studies Scholars Should Care about Christian–Muslim Relations" (2012). Faculty Scholarship. 34. https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/faculty_scholarship/34

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colby. Why Jewish Studies Scholars Should Care about Christian-Muslim Relations David M. Freidenreich

uguccio had a problem. As a leading legal status of Christians and, in particular, prepared by Christian butchers is permissible. late-twelfth-century expert on Church Christian acts of animal slaughter. Sunnis Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), for example, Hlaw, he knew well the traditional asserted that Christianity, like Judaism, is declared that Christian butchers who invoke distinction Christians made between Jews similar to Islam. After all, the Quran elevates Christ are in fact heretical Christians whose and pagans, as well as its various legal the status of People of the Book over that of meat is therefore forbidden to Muslims; implications. Jews, after all, held an inferior other non-Muslims by, for example, permitting orthodox Christians, however, invoke God status to pagans within medieval canon law. Muslims to consume meat prepared by alone, in accordance with the Quran. As several of Huguccio’s colleagues explained, Jews and Christians. ‘Shi‘is countered that Why should scholars of Jewish Studies “through the abuse of scripture [Jews] subvert care about the attitudes of Christians and Mus- faith in Christ . . . lims toward one another? Gentiles, however, are Let me offer three rea- not like this.” For this sons, which, I believe, reason, Christians may apply not only to the eat with pagans but not debates summarized with Jews. Similarly, it above but more broadly is legal under certain as well. circumstances for a Ideas about Jews Christian to be the and Judaism play an slave of a pagan, but a important role in the Christian may never ways Christian and be enslaved to a Jew Muslim authorities according to the laws in viewed one another force during the high during the Middle Ages Middle Ages. and, arguably, during Huguccio’s modern times as well. problem was how to Christian attitudes account for the status regarding Islam are inter- of Muslims, known twined with Christian as Saracens in Latin. Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Pope John Paul II, and Sheikh Tatzir Tamimi during an interreligious conceptions of Judaism: Muslims, of course, are meeting at the Pontifical Institute, Notre Dame, Jerusalem, March 23, 2000. Photo by Amos Ben the question Huguccio neither Christians nor Gershom. Courtesy of the Israel Government Press Office. poses is, in effect, “How Jews. By the logic of Jewish are Muslims?” medieval canon law, this means that Muslims Christians and Jews know nothing of God’s Islamic authorities ask a different ques- must be gentiles, which is to say pagans. Yet will and thus are not like Muslims at all. As tion—“How Muslim are Christians?”—but Huguccio also knew that “nearly all Saracens a case in point, Shi‘is claimed that Christian they, too, have Jews in mind. Ibn Qayyim at the present Judaize: they are circumcised, butchers invoke Christ, not God, when al-Jawziyya, for example, discusses Chris- they distinguish among foods, and they slaughtering their animals. Surely the Quran tian butchers who invoke Christ alongside imitate other Jewish rituals. There ought would not permit treating Christ as God! Jewish butchers who slaughter non-kosher not be any legal difference between them.” Sunni jurists bent over backwards to animals. More broadly, Islamic authori- Huguccio resolved his dilemma by preserve the permissibility of Christian acts ties place Jews and Christians within the collapsing the centuries-old legal distinction of animal slaughter and, by extension, the same legal category, “People of the Book.” between Jews and pagans. While not without definition of Christianity as similar to Islam Christians and Muslims pose different its detractors—various jurists and theologians in important respects. “God, praised be He, questions about one another. Unlike continued to regard Jews as posing a uniquely permitted their food even though He knew his Muslim counterparts, who compare grave threat to Christian souls—Huguccio’s that they invoke a name other than God’s Christianity to their own religion, Huguccio definition of Muslims as legally equivalent over their slaughter,” argued the early twelfth- compares Islamic practices with those to Jews became normative. Muslims living century jurist Ibn al-‘Arabi. “Greater respect of the Jews. These comparisons reflect in Latin Christendom became subject to is accorded to them than to idolaters because fundamentally different approaches to the same laws as Jews over the course of they adhere to God’s Book and cling to the conceptualizing the relationship between the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. coattails of prophets.” Other Sunni authorities Us and Them. Islamic law employs a sliding Meanwhile, in the Muslim world, did not believe that God was quite so gener- spectrum in which non-Muslims are like scholars of Islamic law were debating the ous, but all assert that at least some meat Muslims to varying degrees. In the context

14 AJS Perspectives of discussing laws governing the blood- notions about gentiles more effectively. The study of Christian-Muslim relations money due to the relatives of a murder Pre-Rabbinic and Rabbinic literature alike constitutes an important cognate field victim, Muslim jurists even assign numerical attest to a binary distinction between Jews to Jewish Studies. Our discipline fosters values to these degrees: Jews and Christians, and gentiles analogous to the Hellenistic scholarship about majority-minority relations according to many Sunni authorities, are distinction between Greeks and barbarians. and the distinctive attributes of minority worth either one-third or one-half the value Jewish sources thus represent gentiles simply life. Awareness of the dynamics that animate of Muslims, while Zoroastrians and other and literally as non-Jews: in numerical terms, other instances of majority-minority relations non-Muslims are worth only one-fifteenth. 0. This paradigm differs both from the sliding furthers our ability to interpret our own Shi‘i sources, tellingly, declare that Jews, spectrum used by Muslims to represent People data and to communicate our findings to Christians, and Zoroastrians alike are worth of the Book as like Muslims and also from colleagues who study other civilizations. only one-fifteenth the value of a Muslim. the antithetical framework employed by Only if we understand Christian-Muslim Canon law, in contrast, envisions a world Christians to present Jews as anti-Christians. relations can we answer, in a scholarly idiom polarized between Christians and Jews How and why do Jewish thinkers employ this quite different from that of Ibn al-‘Arabi or and imagines Judaism as antithetical to distinctive worldview? In what contexts, for Huguccio, such questions as “How Christian Christianity. Jews are not fractional Christians what reasons, and to what ends do Jewish are Jews?” and “How Jewish are Muslims?” but rather anti-Christians (-1, to stick with thinkers supplement their binary paradigm our numerical values). Other non-Christians, with elements of likeness or antithesis? David M. Freidenreich is the Pulver Family the “gentiles,” are neutral (0), so long as To what extent, if any, might intellectual Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Colby they aren’t reclassified as being quasi-Jewish exchange within Christian or Muslim cultures College. He is the author of Foreigners and Their and thus thrust toward the negative pole. account for these adaptations to the classic Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Recognition of this dynamic does more Jewish approach to conceptualizing non-Jews? Christian, and Islamic Law (University of than improve our understanding of Christian Familiarity with ideas regarding Christian– California Press, 2011). and Islamic ideas about Jews. It also enables Muslim relations enables us to ask better scholars of Jewish Studies to query Jewish questions about the ideas espoused by Jews.

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