Jews and Muslims: Their Contacts through the Ages

What are the contours and major themes of interactions between Jews and Muslims from the 7th century to the present? What can we learn from this history about ways in which minority and majority communities develop—socially, intellectually, and so on—in relationship to one another, in varying political and demographic circumstances? This course explores the topic of Jewish–Muslim relations from such angles as religion, literature, philosophy, politics, economics, and social life. Some of the contexts and themes we will examine are the following: attitudes toward Jews and Judaism in earliest Islam; the Judeo-Arabic “symbiosis” of the Middle Ages; social developments in the Jewish–Muslim relationship in the Near East and Europe in the early modern period; Jews and Muslims as ethnic and religious minorities in Western countries today; and Islamic life in the State of Israel.