Jews, Muslims and the 'original grudge' theory

Born in Marrakesh, Daniel Sibony brings his background as a psychoanalyst to the question of Jewish-Muslim relations over 13 centuries. He should be commended for swimming against a tide of denial, Lyn Julius writes in JNS News:

Daniel Sibony

In 2013, Princeton published  the first encyclopaedia  on the history of relations between Jews and Muslims, edited by Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora,  from the birth of Islam to  the present day. It is a glossy coffee table book, featuring more than 150 articles by an international team of leading experts'. Its stated objective was 'greater historical understanding and a more informed dialogue between Jews and Muslims.'

One man was not impressed. Daniel Sibony is a French  psycho-analyst and philosopher, and the author of no less than 26 books, most, sadly, not available in English.  Sibony believed that achieving 'greater understanding' and promoting 'dialogue' meant idealising  the true nature of Jewish-Muslim relations during 13 centuries of 'coexistence'. He set out his response to Meddeb and Stora in a book called  Un certain vivre-ensemble: musulmans et juifs dans le monde arabe.'

The book's message may be summed up as follows: "Tell me whom you despise, and I'll tell you who you are.'"

Sibony argues that the Muslim bears the non-Muslim Other an ' original grudge'.  The grudge has coloured Muslim relations with the Jews living amongst them since the Koran was written in the 7th century. The 'grudge' has helped define Muslim identity, he claims.

Going  back to Muhammed's encounter with the Jewish tribes of Arabia, the grudge consists of resentment against the Jews for 'betraying' Muhammed by refusing to follow his new religion. And there is the lingering resentment that the Jews were first out with their Holy Book.

The Jew is cursed by his primordial failure to convert. In fact the very term 'Jew'  - with its associations of uncleanliness and femiminity - was an insult in Morocco. He is condemned to inferior dhimmi status, a system of humiliating handicaps and strictures. He was banned from reading the Koran in case he might criticise it.To argue that the colonial era in Arab lands marked a divorce between Jews and Arabs assumes that there was a marriage in the first place.

Non-Muslims kept the Islamic world afloat through payment of the jizya tax. The ruler levied this tax in order to protect the Jews. But protect them from whom? A hostile populace which had assimiliated the lessons of the Koran and the 'original grudge'.

Living  in the Marrakesh medina in Morocco until he left for France aged 13, Sibony knew the power of the mob. Riots would erupt around the time of the Jewish festivals, to the extent that one Jewish mother preparing her daughter's wedding sought reassurance from a neighbour that his co-religionists were not planning to disrupt the festivities. The ruler could turn the screw on his Jews when he needed them to pay heavier taxes, while threatening to unleash popular violence on them. Today's jihadists, Sibony considers, are mobsters in modern clothing.

The Stora-Meddeb encyclopaedia vaunts the cross-cultural Golden Age in Spain as evidence that Jews and Muslims could coexist in harmony. But Sibony says that culture could exist and flourish side-by-side with a culture of humiliation: even a slave can enjoy a good night's sleep when he takes off his leg-irons. The Encyclopedia, he argues,  emphasises the positive exception to the rule.

But there are plenty of Jews from Morocco willing to testify to the good relations between Jews and Muslims. One reason was that the mob never penetrated the richer quarters, protected by the police - their Jewish residents were insulated from trouble.

Sibony claims that Jews did not want to dwell on the negative: they were too busy living life to the full - a life filled with music, poetry, ritual and faith. Besides, their childhoods were marked by the hope that they would soon be leaving. There were times when Muslims too forgot their 'grudge' -  but it was always there in the background, like a radio whose volume knob had been turned down. The ultimate proof that all was not well between the two communities is the massive exodus of Jews from Arab lands.

Sibony's thesis may be criticised for putting too much emphasis on a dhimmi status abrogated by the colonial era, and for ignoring the influence of European and Nazi antisemitism in the Arab world. But in Morocco, the colonial period was shorter than most, and Sibony still remembers seeing Jews wearing the discriminatory black djellaba in his native Marrakesh. He should be commended for boldly swimming against a tide of denial and distortion.

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