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Spoerl / The Levantine Review Volume 2 Number 1 (Spring 2013)

MUHAMMAD AND THE JEWS ACCORDING TO IBN ISHAQ

Joseph Spoerl∗

Abstract

This paper examines the phenomenon of anti-­Semitism in the Muslim world, shedding light on one component of the Islamic tradition, namely, the earliest extant biography of the Prophet Muhammad, the Sirat Rasul Allah, or The Life of the Prophet of God by Ibn Ishaq (d. 767 CE.)

INTRODUCTION

A number of scholars have chronicled the intensification and spread of anti-­Semitism in large parts of the Muslim world over the past 80 years or so, some of them—including Andrew Bostom,^[1] Robert Wistrich,^[2] Matthias Kuentzel,^[3] Klaus Gensicke,^[4] Meir Litvak,^[5]

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1. Andrew Bostom, ed. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008).
2. Robert Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (New York: Shocken Books, 1991), 195-­267; Muslim Anti-­Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger (N.P.: The American Jewish Committee, 2002) http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369-­D582-­4380-­8395-D25925B85EAF%7D/WistrichAntisemitism.pdf; A Lethal Obsession: Anti-­Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010). The second of these works has just been published in an updated German translation: Robert Wistrich, Muslimischer Antisemitismus: Eine Aktuelle Gefahr (Berlin: Edition Critic, 2011); see review by Manfred Gerstenfeld at http://spme.net/articles/8687/3/11/Muslim-­Hard-Core-anti-Semitism-Comparable-­to-­that-of-­the-Nazis.html.
3. Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-­Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (New York: Telos Press Publishing, 2007).
4. Klaus Gensicke, The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis: The Berlin Years, trans. Alexander Fraser Gunn (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011). [This book is a translation and updated revision of Klaus Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten: Eine Politische Biographie Amin el-­Husseinis (Darmstadt: Wissenschatliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007).]
5. Meir Litvak, “The Anti-­Semitism of Hamas,” Palestine-­Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture 12 (2005), http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=345; Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).