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Table of Contents

Introduction

The Foundational Period

The Early Centuries of Muslim History

The Medieval Period

The Modern Period

The Future

Introduction

Relations among Muslims, Jews, and Christians have been shaped not only by the theologiesĀ  and beliefs of the three religions, but also, and often more strongly, by the historicalĀ  circumstances in which they are found. As a result, history has become a foundation f“Ē°łĢż religious understanding. In each historical phase, the definition of who was regarded asĀ  Muslim, Jewish, or Christian shifted, sometimes indicating only a religious identification, butĀ  more often indicating a particular social, economic, or political group.

While the tendency to place linguistic behaviour, religious identity, and cultural heritageĀ  under one, pure definition has existed for a very long time, our modern age with its ideologyĀ  of nationalism is particularly prone to such a conflation. Ethnic identities have sometimesĀ  been conflated with religious identities by both outsiders and insiders, complicating the taskĀ  of analyzing intergroup and intercommunal relations. For example, Muslims have often beenĀ  equated with Arabs, effacing the existence of Christian and Jewish Arabs (i.e., members ofĀ  those religions whose language is Arabic and who participate primarily in Arab culture),Ā  ignoring non-Arab Muslims who constitute the majority of Muslims in the world. In someĀ  instances, relations between Arabs and Israelis have been understood as Muslim-JewishĀ  relations, ascribing aspects of Arab culture to the religion of Islam and Israeli culture toĀ  Judaism. This is similar to what happened during the Crusades, during which Christian ArabsĀ  were often charged with being identical to Muslims by the invading Europeans. While theĀ  cultures in which Islam predominates do not necessarily make sharp distinctions between theĀ  religious and secular aspects of the culture, such distinctions make the task of understanding the nature of relations among Muslims, Jews, and Christians easier, and therefore will be usedĀ  as an analytic tool in this chapter.

Another important tool for analyzing Muslim-Jewish-Christian relations is the placement ofĀ  ideas and behaviours in specific temporal and geographic contexts. Visions of the past haveĀ  had a strong influence on each of the religions, and none more strongly than Islam. ManyĀ  Muslims have as keen an awareness of the events around the time of the Prophet as they doĀ  their own time. It is important for a practicing Muslim to know what the Prophet did in hisĀ  relations with Jews and Christians as a means of shaping their own behaviour toward them.Ā  TheĀ ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²ŌĀ and theĀ ²õ³Ü²Ō²Ō²¹Ģżof the Prophet are key guides for a Muslim in dealing with JewsĀ  and Christians, as they are in all areas of conduct. This same historical consciousness is alsoĀ  present among Jews and Christians, as each group makes claims for positions and status inĀ  Islamic societies. What is important to remember is that the historical interactions ofĀ  Muslims, Jews, and Christians have resulted in each constituency being shaped, affected, andĀ  transformed by the others, such that it is difficult to imagine how each religion would be as itĀ  is without the presence and influence of the others.

The Foundational Period

When Prophet Muhammad was born in 570 CE , Arabia was deeply involved in the political,Ā  religious, and economic rivalries between theĀ ByzantineĀ and Sassanian Persian empires.Ā  Arabia was an important trade route for goods coming from the Far East and Africa and wasĀ  strategically important for each empireā€™s defence. Arabs were recruited into the armies ofĀ  both sides, providing horse and camel cavalries, and each empire had maintained Arab clientĀ  states as buffers and bases of operation. Around fifty years earlier, the last Jewish kingdom inĀ  southern Arabia allied with the Persians and was defeated and replaced by a ChristianĀ  Monophysite army from Abyssinia allied with Byzantium. According to early MuslimĀ  historians, this army, led by a general named Abraha, tried to invade Mecca in the year ofĀ  Muhammadā€™s birth because the pagan Arabs had defiled one of the Christian churches inĀ  southern Arabia. Abraha and his forces were, however, defeated. Because the AbyssiniansĀ  used war elephants for their attempted invasion, many think that this is the elephant referredĀ  to in theĀ ²õ³Ü°ł²¹Ģż³Ł¾±³Ł±ō±š»åĢż²¹±ō-¹ó¾±±ōĢżin the ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²ŌMuslims believe that the Holy ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²Ō contains divine revelations to the Prophet Muhammed received in Mecca and Medina over a period of 23 years in the early 7th century CE. More: 105.

There were numerous Christian settlements throughout the southern and eastern parts ofĀ  Arabia, but few in theĀ Hijaz(Arabic; lit. ā€˜the barrierā€™). A region in the west of present-day Saudi Arabia along the Red Sea which includes some of the holiest sites and cities for all Muslims ā€”…, the area of Muhammadā€™s birth. TheĀ HijazĀ had numerous JewishĀ  settlements, most of long standing, dating to at least the time of the destruction of the SecondĀ  Temple in 70 CE. According to some scholars, the earliest Jewish presence in theĀ HijazĀ was atĀ  the time of Nabonidus, about 550 CE. The Jews in these settlements were merchants, farmers,Ā  vintners, smiths, and, in the desert, members ofĀ BedouinĀ tribes. The most important Jewish dominated city was Yathrib, known later as Medina, which featured prominently inĀ  Muhammadā€™s career. The Jews of theĀ HijazĀ seem to have been mostly independent, but weĀ  find evidence of their being allied with both Byzantium and the Persians. Some made theĀ  claim to be ā€œkingsā€ of theĀ Hijaz, most probably meaning tax collectors for the Persians, and,Ā  for a variety of reasons, more Jews were loyal to Persian interests against those of theĀ Ā ByzantineĀ Empire. Jews, as well as Christians, seem to have been engaged in attempting toĀ  convert the Arabian population to their religious and political views, often with some success.Ā  The loyalties of the Jews and Christians to one or the other of the two empires meant that Arab sources report that, at the time of Muhammadā€™s birth, some Meccans had abandonedĀ  Arabian polytheism and had chosen monotheism. In Arabic these individuals were referred toĀ  asĀ ³ó²¹²Ō¾±“ŚĢżin a Jewish, Christian, or non-sectarian form. From ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²Ōic and other evidence, it isĀ  clear that Meccans were conversant with the general principles of Judaism and ChristianityĀ  and knew many details of worship, practice, and belief. During Muhammadā€™s formative andĀ  early adult years, the character of his birth city, Mecca, was very cosmopolitan.

When Muhammad had his first revelation in 610 CE, his wife Khadija sought the advice ofĀ  her cousin, Waraqa ibn Nawfal, aĀ hanif, learned in Jewish and Christian scriptures.Ā  Muhammad eventually declared that he was a continuation of the prophetic traditions ofĀ  Judaism and Christianity, claiming that he had been foretold in Jewish and Christian scripture.Ā  A central doctrine of Islam places Muhammad at the end of a chain of prophets from God,Ā  starting with Adam and embracing the major prophetic figures of Judaism and Christianity,Ā  including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Denial of this central idea by Jews and Christians isĀ  said to be a result of the corruption of the sacred texts, either inadvertently or on purpose.Ā  This disparity of perspective underlies much of what Muslims believe about their Jewish andĀ  Christian forebears, and conditions Islamic triumphalist views about the validity of IslamĀ  against the partial falsity of the other two traditions.

TheĀ ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²ŌĀ and theĀ ³§¾±°ł²¹Ģż(the traditional biography of Prophet Muhammad) presentĀ  ambivalent attitudes toward Jews and Christians, reflecting the varied experience ofĀ  Muhammad and the early Muslim community with Jews and Christians in Arabia. ChristiansĀ  are said to be nearest to Muslims in ā€œloveā€ (²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²Ō 5:82), and yet Muslims are not to takeĀ  Jews or Christians as ā€œclose allies or leadersā€ (²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²Ō 5:51). TheĀ ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²ŌĀ often makes aĀ  distinction between the ā€œChildren of Israelā€ (i.e., Jews mentioned in the Bible) and membersĀ  of the Jewish tribes in Arabia during Muhammadā€™s time. This distinction is also present in theĀ Ā ³§¾±°ł²¹Ģżand other histories. Some Jews are represented as hostile to Muhammad and his mission,Ā  while others become allies with him. The ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²Ōic revelations that Muhammad received inĀ  regard to Christians and Jews seemed to correspond to the degree of acceptance that he wasĀ  awarded by these two communities. Initially, Muhammad sought their acceptance, but whenĀ  the leaders of the Christian and Jewish communities rejected him as a false prophet, heĀ  received revelations that commanded him to distance himself from them. In the ā€œConstitutionĀ  of Medina,ā€ which Muhammad negotiated with theĀ Ansar, the Muhajjirun, and the Jews ofĀ  Medina, Jews were included in theĀ Umma, the community, and were allowed freedom ofĀ  association and religion in return for the payment of an annual tax. This agreement and theĀ  subsequent treaties negotiated by Muhammad with the Jews of Tayma, and other cities in theĀ Ā Hijaz, establish the precedent of symbolically including ā€œPeople of Scriptureā€Ā (Ahl al-Kitab)Ā Ā in theĀ ±«³¾³¾²¹.ĢżAs the armies of conquest encountered communities of Jews, Christians, andĀ  Zoroastrians, the model of Muhammadā€™s accommodating behaviour extended the originalĀ  notion to incorporate all these recipients of Godā€™s revelation asĀ Ahl al-Dhimma,Ā “Ē°łĢż¶Ł³ó¾±³¾³¾¾±,ĢżĢżprotected peoples. There were fewer Christians in theĀ HijazĀ than Jews, so Christians areĀ  featured less prominently in the political history of the establishment of the MuslimĀ  community. Nevertheless, Muhammad had frequent contact with Christians from the southernĀ  areas of Najran and Ethiopia, disputing with them as he had with the Jews over matters ofĀ  religious belief and practice. The traditions surrounding the sending of the Muslims toĀ Ethiopia represent the ruler as seeing little difference between Islam and Christianity. TheĀ  ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²Ōic presentation of the life of Jesus and Christian belief shows that Muhammad and theĀ  early Muslims understood eastern Mediterranean Christian belief and practice, particularly ifĀ  one acknowledges the importance of the ā€œinfancyā€Ā GospelsĀ in Christian thought at the time.Ā  TheĀ ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²Ō, however, denies the deity of Christ.

The death of Muhammad and the subsequent expansion of Islam out of Arabia brought aboutĀ  a definitive break with the Jewish and Christian Arab communities, so that subsequentĀ  relations were built on Jewish and Christian interactions with Muslims who knew theĀ  Prophetā€™s actions only as idealized history. During the first Islamic century, the period of theĀ  most rapid expansion of Islam, social and religious structures were so fluid that it is hard toĀ  make generalisations. Jews and Christians were theoretically expelled from Arabia, or, atĀ  least, theĀ Hijaz, but later evidence shows that Jews and Christians remained for centuriesĀ  afterward. As late as the eighteenth century, for example, Jewish Bedouins roamed northĀ  western Arabia, and Christian Arabs were found in numerous settlements throughout Arabia.

The Early Centuries of Muslim History

The period of the first caliphs and the subsequent era of theĀ UmayyadsĀ was a time in whichĀ  Muslims, Jews, and Christians negotiated the new power arrangements. The parameters ofĀ Ā ¶Ł³ó¾±³¾³¾¾±Ģżstatus were developed, and both head and land taxes were paid to the Muslim caliphsĀ  through representatives and not individually. For the Jews, the Resh Geluta or Exilarch wasĀ  from the Rabbinic branch of Judaism, it became the dominant form, generally displacingĀ  other groups. Also, because Muslims expanded to include most of the worldā€™s Jews in theirĀ  polity, Rabbinic Judaism was able to develop its institutions within the context of the IslamicĀ Ā Umma. For the newly forming Islamic state, the loyalty of the Exilarch, and, by extension, theĀ  Jews, added legitimacy to Muslim claims to legitimate rule over its various non-MuslimĀ  populations. The interaction between Jews and Muslims thus produced profound effects onĀ  both Judaism and Islam.

Christians acted as physicians, architects, clerks, and advisors in the courts of the earlyĀ  caliphs. Greek and Coptic were the administrative languages for several centuries beforeĀ  Arabic became established enough to be the general medium of public discourse. Even theĀ  occasional uprisings against Muslim rule, as the Coptic uprisings of the early ninth centuryĀ  and the Jewish revolts against theĀ UmayyadsĀ a century earlier, were local, over specificĀ  grievances, and not anti-Islamic as such. In fact, the Jewish revolt against theĀ UmayyadsFirst major ruling Muslim dynasty that was based in Damascus (661-750).,Ā  driven, it seems, by messianic visions, was sympathetic to earlyĀ ShiaĀ views and attempts toĀ  overthrow the last UmayyadĀ caliphIn Arabic khalÄ«fa, the head of the Muslim community. See caliphate..

The first two Islamic centuries was a time of translating Christian and Jewish scripture intoĀ  Arabic, along with a vast body of commentary, particularly on biblical figures. ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²ŌicĀ ³Ł²¹“Ś²õ¾±°łĢżĢż(commentaries) became the repository of much Jewish and Christian tradition concerningĀ  such figures as Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Jesus, and others. The beginnings of IslamicĀ  theological speculation were stimulated by translations of Hellenistic thought from Aramaic,Ā  Coptic, Greek, and Syriac. One of the effects of this trend was to produce tension betweenĀ  those inclined toward greater cosmopolitanism of the intellectual and cultural heritage ofĀ  Hellenism and those who felt that Islamic society should be centered only on theĀ ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²ŌĀ and traditions from Muhammad, presaging the debates about the inclusion or exclusion of outsideĀ  ideas. The resulting balance between religious and scientific learning became such a part ofĀ  Islamic societies that even in periods of political fragmentation, Jews and Christians con tributed along with Muslims to the intellectual and cultural life of the Islamic communities.

The Medieval Period

In the western Islamic lands of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, Jews, Christians, andĀ  Muslims combined in a society that is often described by later historians with the adjectiveĀ  ā€œgolden.ā€ The areas of poetry, music, art, architecture, theology, exegesis, law, philosophy,Ā  medicine, pharmacology, and mysticism were shared among all the inhabitants of the IslamicĀ  courts and city-states at the same time that Muslim armies were locked in a losing struggleĀ  with the Christian armies of theĀ Reconquista. In the eastern Mediterranean, similar symbioticĀ  societies could be found. The universities ofĀ al-AzharĀ in Cairo and Cordoba in Spain, bothĀ  founded in the tenth century, followed the older model of theĀ Bayt al-HikmaĀ in Baghdad, asĀ  places of shared learning among scholars from the three traditions. Both the concept of theseĀ  types of institutions of learning, as well as the learning itself they produced, had profoundĀ  influence on European institutions of higher education and European scientific advancement.Ā  Within the intellectual circles of the Islamic world, Jews contributed and participated in thisĀ  civilization through contact with Muslim philosophers and theologians, just as Muslims hadĀ  from contact with Christians earlier. In the areas of commerce, world trade was dominated byĀ  trading associations made up of Muslims, Jews, and Christians from Islamic lands.

The twin attacks on the Islamic world in the Middle Ages by theĀ CrusadersĀ from the West andĀ  the Mongols from the East transformed Muslim attitudes toward theĀ Dhimmi, and also theĀ  attitudes of the Jews and Christians in Islamic lands toward their relations with Muslim polity.Ā  Many Islamic areas develop in accordance with an already existing tendency to organizeĀ  society along military lines. This becomes particularly true in areas where Turkic peoples takeĀ  over the leading governmental and military roles. Converted by Sunni merchants andĀ  organised as military brotherhoods imbued with the spirit of militaryĀ jihad, the Turks becameĀ  the defenders of the Islamic lands. In their vision of society, the influence of Christians, Jews,Ā  and non-Sunni Muslim groups was circumscribed and made more rigid, but it was notĀ  eliminated. Muslim religious scholars used depictions of Jews and Christians found in theĀ  foundation texts as cautionary models for Muslims, but actual communities of Jews andĀ  Christians were treated with strict adherence to legal precedent. TheĀ ¶Ł³ó¾±³¾³¾¾±Ģżhad to wearĀ  distinctive clothing and badges to indicate their position in society, as did Muslims, as part ofĀ  a general ā€œuniformā€ indicating rank and status. Certain occupations became common for JewsĀ  and Christians, such as tanning, which was regarded as imparting ritual impurity to Muslims,Ā  and it became less common in this period to find Jews and Christians in the highest ranks ofĀ  advisors to the rulers. Jews and Christians usually lived in separate quarters of cities, and,Ā  while they were inferior to Muslims in public and barred from riding horses or blocking theĀ  public way with religious processions, they lived autonomously with respect to theirĀ  communal affairs. This autonomy, while somewhat protective of individuals, was to prove toĀ  have long-term consequences. Some Christian communities, caught in the middle of theĀ  conflict during the Crusades, actively expressed their loyalty to Rome and Constantinople andĀ  looked to theĀ CrusadersĀ as protectors of their interests. This association began a process ofĀ  separation of some of these communities from the matrix of Muslim polity, and they becameĀ  viewed as foreign by Muslims and themselves.

When Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain in 1492 CE, the majority of Jews chose toĀ  move to Islamic lands, the area of the Ottoman Empire in particular. The Iberian Jews were soĀ  numerous, well educated, and prosperous, that Iberian Jewish culture often supplanted that of

the older Jewish communities, so that Sephardic became the general term for Jews living inĀ  Islamic lands. The trading and manufacturing skills and the capital of these immigrants to theĀ  Ottoman Empire provided much of the wealth for Ottoman expansion. Under theĀ Ottomans,Ā  Jewish and Christian communities achieved the greatest degree of autonomy. Through theĀ Ā ³¾¾±±ō±ō±š³ŁĢżsystem, each community was distinct and responsible directly to the Sultan. The mostĀ  famous intrusions into communal life occurred with the Ottoman institution of the JannisaryĀ  corps. Young Christian males were conscripted by the Ottoman military, trained as soldiers,Ā  converted to Islam, and placed in high positions in Ottoman administration. The processĀ  sometimes produced resentment among Christians, but some families actively sought to haveĀ  a member chosen because of the possibilities of favours and preferential treatment later whenĀ  the candidate assumed official duties.

The Modern Period

Napoleonā€™s invasion of Egypt in 1798 is generally regarded as the beginning of the modernĀ  period of the history of the Islamic Middle East and the beginnings of Western colonialismĀ  that was to encompass most of the Islamic lands in Asia and Africa. In reality, it signified theĀ  decline of Muslim polities against the economic and technological rise of Western Europe. ByĀ  the eighteenth century, most Muslims found themselves living in or dependent on one of theĀ  three great Muslim empires: the Ottoman, the Mughal, or the Safavid Empire. All threeĀ  empires were agrarian and relied on peasant labour for wealth, military strength, and productsĀ  for worldwide trade. As Western Europe underwent the technological transformation usuallyĀ  termed the Industrial Revolution, with the concomitant rise of capitalism, it also underwent aĀ  social and religious revolution that placed great value on the individual and stressedĀ  individual effort and initiative. This reorganisation produced societies generally freed fromĀ  family and clan constraints on labour allocation, rewards, and relations with governingĀ  powers such that the societies became more efficient in manufacturing and trading goods onĀ  the world market. In the worldwide competition, major areas of the Islamic world becameĀ  providers of raw or only partially manufactured goods for the industrialized West. When theĀ  West sold back the manufactured goods, which often drove superior local goods from theĀ  market, it also exposed the Muslim customers to the ideals of the reorganised, industrialisedĀ  society: individualised human rights, democracy, secularism and secular law, universal edu cation, science, nationalism, and the subordination of religion to the greater ideology of theĀ  nation-state. Western military and economic success proved attractive to many members ofĀ  the Islamic states who sought to adopt Western ways as a means of securing part of thisĀ  success.

In the Ottoman Empire, the British and French found Jews and Christians to be willing agentsĀ  for their commercial activities, and theĀ Ottomans, in turn, were pleased to employ theĀ ¶Ł³ó¾±³¾³¾¾±ĢżĀ for these purposes as well. Many Jews and Christians sought to secure the benefits of WesternĀ  societies for themselves and their offspring by asking for and getting Western protection,

passports, and, in some instances, citizenship. TheĀ ¶Ł³ó¾±³¾³¾¾±Ģżoften fell under the protection ofĀ  the foreign powers. The increasing identification of Jews and Christians with non-MuslimĀ  powers served only to isolate these non-Muslims from the rest of Islamic society. Even in places where there was not an indigenous Jewish or Christian population to be exploited f“Ē°łĢż economic gain, Western European powers arrived as colonialists with professedly ChristianĀ  institutions, expectations, and ideologies. The British were able to separate Egypt from theĀ  Ottoman Empire and establish a protectorate in 1882, as they were able to put India underĀ  direct British rule in 1857. The French colonized Algeria in 1830 and Tunisia in 1881. TheĀ  Dutch competed with the British for Southeast Asia, so that by the end of the nineteenthĀ  century, most Muslims were under Western political and legal influence. The secular legalĀ  systems devised in the West supplanted both Christian and Muslim customary and religiousĀ  law, seriously challenging or eliminating the category ofĀ ¶Ł³ó¾±³¾³¾¾±Ģżin those countries. TheĀ  result was often a complete separation of Jews and Christians as groups from a relationship inĀ  law with Muslims.

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, resulting in the creation ofĀ  a number of small nation-states, resulted in a further separation of non-Muslims fromĀ  Muslims. The ideology of nationalism reduced religion to the status as one of the componentsĀ  of a nation-state ideology. Education became Western, technological, and secular, furtherĀ  reducing religion to peripheral status. By the eve of World War II, most Islamic countriesĀ  were prepared to overthrow colonialism and establish nation-states. When this happened afterĀ  World War II, constitutions were modelled after such countries as Switzerland, the UnitedĀ  States, and France, usually guaranteeing freedom of religion but providing no particularĀ  safeguards for religious expression. Other religious and ethnic groups also desired nation states. Nominal Christian states were formed in the Balkans, and the state of Israel wasĀ  formed in the formerly British mandate territory of Palestine. The creation of the state ofĀ  Israel in 1948 became a central focal point for Muslim-Jewish relations, which had steadilyĀ  deteriorated since the end of World War I. The worsening conflicts in Palestine increasedĀ  Jewish-Muslim conflict in the Arab states, where Jews were seen as both foreign andĀ  instruments of Western colonial designs. Within twenty years after the formation of the stateĀ  of Israel, the majority of Jews living in Arab lands migrated to Israel, thus crystallizing theĀ  conflict in Palestine into a Jewish-Muslim conflict. Rulers in predominantly Muslim countriesĀ  no longer had a constituent Jewish population. Jews were an abstract and hostile other, andĀ  Judaism, now increasingly identified with Zionism by Jews and non-Jews alike, wasĀ  revalorized as the ever-present opposition to Muslims in Islamic history. This last notion,Ā  while having its roots in the foundation texts of Islam, was now abstracted in a way unlikeĀ  any time in the past, and Jewish-Muslim relations took a new direction.

A common thread among many Islamic intellectuals concerned with the role and direction ofĀ  Muslims in the postcolonial world is the role of the Jews in Islamic history. As mentionedĀ  above, the historical circumstances of a strong Jewish presence in theĀ HijazĀ duringĀ  Muhammadā€™s time and the opposition of most of the Jewish tribes to Muhammadā€™s missionĀ  embedded numerous seemingly anti-Jewish statements into the early literature. For a few, in aĀ  quest to use the Islamic historical past to explain the present, the negative accounts of JudaismĀ  and Christianity became abstracted so as to conflate the past with the present Arab-Israeli andĀ  East-West conflicts; for example, biblical descriptions of Jews rebelling against Godā€™sĀ  commands. Medinan Jewish opposition to the forming Muslim state and Israeli actionsĀ  against Palestinians were read together as an eternal Jewish character, a view sometimesĀ  informed by Western anti-Semitic literature. The Egyptian intellectual,Ā SayyidĀ Qutbā€™s articleĀ  ā€œOur Struggle with the Jews,ā€ is one example, as are the views expressed by leaders of theĀ  American Nation of Islam.

Other Muslim intellectuals read the same foundation texts with an emphasis on the specialĀ  relationship between God and People of the Book. While deploring the problems in Palestine,Ā  they separate the Arab-Israeli conflict from discussions about Jews and Christians. Some atĀ Ā al-AzharĀ in Egypt cite theĀ ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²ŌĀ andĀ ²õ³Ü²Ō²Ō²¹Ģżto support peace accords between Israel and theĀ  Palestinians, and Warith D. Muhammad, the son of Elijah Muhammad, in the United StatesĀ  has countered the anti-Jewish essentialist reading of the past with a ²Ļ³Ü°łā€™a²Ōic-based messageĀ  of mutual cooperation among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.