re: #133 Destro

Yea, you tell me why you have a problem with that statement. Jews and Muslims have been co-habitants in a way not possible in Christian Europe for centuries.

Not true, actually. Europe’s history with the Jews is very dark, but there are extensive periods of coexistence and tolerance. If Muslim Cordoba is to be praised, so are Aragon and Valencia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, under Christian rulers, the early centuries of the Polish communities, what’s called ‘the heroic age’ of the Ashkenazim…the list goes on. There were many times and places in Christian Europe where Jews were fairly secure and legally protected, and many places under Islam where they were not, as well as vice-versa.

Trying to pit the two against each other in some tolerance showdown is foolish. It’s two huge areas, and two very long histories.

I tend to feel that Islam would win for ‘better for medieval Jewry’, which is my area of real interest, but by the nineteenth century…maybe not so much.