Monday, October 18, 2010

I am a Jew, I am a Muslim, I am a Christian

Joann Sfar makes, or seems to make, an extremely public statement pertaining to the fact that Arab Muslims and Jews can live together peacefully and even become friends. It’s common knowledge that Muslims and Jews have a long and bad history with how they treated one another. However, to see in Rabbi’s Cat that the rabbi and the Muslim were friends was a surprise, to say the least. It is also known that fundamental Muslims (along with some fundamental Jews and Christians) despise other faiths, and will do everything necessary to show it, (i.e. September 11th). I found it very profound that Sfar included this encounter with the rabbi and the Muslim in his book, to see the friendship they both shared (since they both had the same teacher or “ancestor” as the book describes, pg. 84). I think Sfar was trying to show that people of different faith, especially Arab Muslims and Jews, could get along peacefully and be friends. This goes against some common stereotypes that Jews and Muslims can’t or won’t get along. I’m not exactly sure what Sfar’s point was in putting this in his story. Maybe he wanted to make a political statement that although Jews and Muslims have had a bad history, they can still put that behind them and get along. Going with that, the French in this story were racist to both the Arabs and the Jews and maybe Sfar was trying to show that if people stick together (especially those who are persuctued) they can make a difference in society. Or maybe Sfar just wanted to put it in his story, maybe he had no reason at all for putting it in there but to show that the rabbi had a friend who just happened to be a Muslim. Either way, I think Sfar was making a statement that people of different faiths can get along and can even work together/be friends. It’s too bad that in today’s society there is so much racism toward people of different religions.

4 comments:

  1. I think that you are right. In contemporary times, we have seen how the two groups DON'T get along; yet in until about 1948 these groups have gotten along well. There was a picture book from the 1970's called "The Walls of Jerusalem" and shows this relationship between
    these people getting along well.

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  2. "It’s common knowledge that Muslims and Jews have a long and bad history with how they treated one another."

    I think that's a huge (albeit popular) misconception. Before the 20th century (with exceptions of course) Jews and Muslims have generally gotten along with each other. Jews and Christians ("people of book" in Islam) existed in Muslim-majority societies under the dhimmi provision. In some cases these special taxes were also less than the taxes Jewish communities paid under other forms of rule.

    I'm not saying it was rosy all the time; I'm not that foolish. I just think that it needs to be made very clear than pre-20th century Jewish/Muslim relations look nothing like what we see today and I think it would be a mistake to enforce out contemporary lens and set of assumptions on the past.

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  3. however, it was the Jews that Muslims went to war with during the birth of Islam. Thus, Muslims and Jews started out not on friendly terms.

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