Lyn Julius
How Did the Qu’ran Impact Jews Living in Muslim Lands?
Summary
Many political, social, and economic factors influenced the positions of Jews living in Muslim lands. But what about the religious dimension? Rick Sopher and Lyn Julius discuss what the Qur'an say about Jews, the Torah, and how Islam and Arab Muslim countries implement those messages.
Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius was born in the UK and educated at the French Lycée in London and the University of Sussex. The daughter of Jewish refugees from Iraq, she is a journalist and founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (www.harif.org). Lyn blogs daily at Point of No Return (www.jewishrefugees.org.uk). Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Huffington Post, Jewish News, and Jerusalem Post. She has a regular column in the Times of Israel and JNS News. Her book Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight has been translated in to Norwegian, Portuguese and Arabic, and a Hebrew version is in progress.
Rick Sopher
Rick Sopher is the CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Capital Holdings. He has received various industry awards, including the Outstanding Contribution Award from Hedge Fund Review and the Decade of Excellence Award by Financial News. Rick graduated from Cambridge University and has more recently worked in the area of interfaith relations with the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, as a member of their council. During the lockdown period, Rick convened an online dialogue between professors of religion at the world’s leading universities to discuss the relationship between the Qur’an and the Bible, and has himself dialogued with Muslim leaders on the subject. Rick was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 2007 from President Chirac for his contribution to religious education in France. He is also chairman or director of several educational charities in the UK.
I think he was born into no religion. He grew up in Mecca. There were not, the religion was, it was strange to call it religion, but there were many polytheists. Mecca was a trading venue where they came and worshipped and paid homage to all these stones. It was about as polytheist as you can get, not many Jews or Christians there actually. And when you went to Medina, which, because what he was preaching about the one God was rejected by the people of Mecca, he rise in Medina and there he meets communities of Jewish people who’ve been living there for a long time, and some Christians.
Yes, I said what the Qur'an says about the Holy Land. There’s no counterclaim in the Qur'an to the Holy Land and I think that is pretty much ignored. The attitude of most Muslims is to ignore those verses and not talk too much about them. You never hear that pointed out.
Yes, it is very possible indeed, because as we all know, it’s the victor or the survivor that writes the history and there were no Jews left in Arabia after that time to really write the history properly. So I think the answer is yes.