What Did the Muslims Do for the Jews?
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ The following is taken from What did the Muslims do for the Jews? by Dr. David John Wasserstein, 24 th May 2012. Dr. David Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr. Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. This article is adapted from the Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Muhammad ( s.a.w. ) was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity, also in Christendom, through the medieval period into the modern world. By the fourth century, Christianity had become the domin...