The Jews of Islam

Bernard Lewis, Princeton University Press, 1987

This landmark book probes Muslims’ attitudes toward Jews and Judaism as a special case of their view of other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim societies. With authority, sympathy and wit, Bernard Lewis demolishes two competing stereotypes: the Islamophobic picture of the fanatical Muslim warrior, sword in one hand and Qur’ān in the other, and the overly romanticized depiction of Muslim societies as interfaith utopias. The book examines the relations of Islam and other religions; the formative and classical periods of the Judaeo-Islamic tradition in medieval Islam; the development of the Ottoman Empire; and its eventual demise in the twentieth century.