Rethinking Jews and Muslims: Quincentennial Reflections

Author(s): Ella Shohat

Source: Middle East Report, No. 178, 1492+500 (Sep. - Oct., 1992), pp. 25-29
Published by: Middle East Research and Information Project
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3012984
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Rethinking

Jews

&

Muslims

Quincentennial

Ella

Shohat

60?7"our
the war against
the
completed
Highness
X Moors," Columbus
to
wrote in a letter addressed
all
the
the Spanish
"after
chased
throne,
having
Jews...and
sent me to the said regions of India in order
to convert the people there to our Holy Faith."1 In 1492
the defeat of the Muslims and the expulsion of Jews from
with the conquest of the so-called New
Spain converged
in
World. The separate
commemorations
quincentenary
the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, however, have
seldom acknowledged
the linkage between these events.
and politically inspir?
Although intellectually
challenging
Columbus"
debates
ing, "goodbye
counter-quincentenary
have, for the most part, followed the same easy path of
these issues.
separating
The reasons can be partially located in the scholarly
inertia which compartmentalizes
historical
periods and
over?
geographical
regions into neat areas of expertise,
of histories,
looking the interconnectedness
geographies
and cultural identities.
But they are also traceable
to a
in
reluctance
circles
to
chart
co?
the
general
progressive
lonial dimensions
of contemporary
Euro-Israeli
discourse.
While the celebrations
of Columbus' "discovery" have pro?
voked lively opposition,
the Eurocentric
framing of the
"other 1492" has been little questioned.

From
Ella Shohat teachescinema and cultural studies at CUNY.She is the author
of Israeli Cinema:East/West and the Politics of Representation(Texas Uni?
versity Press, 1989) and coauthor of Unthinking Eurocentrism (Routledge,
forthcoming1993).
Middle East Report ? September-October

1992

Reconquista

to Conquista

The Spanish-Christian
war against Muslims
was politically,
and ideologically
economically
the arrival of Columbus' caravels in Espanola.

and Jews
linked to
Spain, tri25

in Colum?
umphant over the Muslims, risked investment
bus' schemes. His voyages were largely financed by wealth
confiscated
from Jews expelled during the Inquisition.2
Columbus'
fleet departed
from the relatively
unknown
seaport of Palos because the shipping lanes of Cadiz and
Seville were clogged with fleeing Jews. The Reconquista,
which began in the 11th century with the fall of Toledo
and continued until the fall of Granada in January 1492,
was a long process. Its policies of settling Christians
in
the newly (re)conquered
areas, as well as the gradual
institutionalization
of expulsions,
conversion and killings
of Muslims
and Jews in Christian
territories,
prepared
the grounds for subsequent
similar conquista
practices
across the Atlantic, as Columbus' letter suggests.
Under
the marital-political
union of Ferdinand
(Aragon) and
Isabella
victorious
Christian
(Castile),
Spain strength?
ened its sense of nationhood,
soon to be turned into an
Americans
and Afri?
empire as it subjugated
indigenous
cans. Discourses
about Muslims and Jews during Spain's
continental
crossed the Atlantic,
expansion
arming the
with a ready-made
conquistadors
ideology aimed at re?
gions of India but in fact applied first toward the indig?
enous inhabitants
of the accidentally
"discovered" conti?
nent. (India's turn came with the arrival of Vasco da
Gama in 1498 and the Portuguese
of Goa in
conquest
1510, and, of course, the complete British takeover in the
18th century.)
The campaigns
against Muslims and Jews, as well as
and witches,
an entire
made available
against heretics
of racism and sexism for "recycling" in the
apparatus
The Crusades, which helped in?
continents.
newly-raided
the Mediterranean
augurate
"Europe" by reconquering
area and making Europe aware of its geocultural
iden?
Christian
Eu?
tity, coincided with anti-Semitic
pogroms.
of the New World,
rope, on the verge of the conquest
in fears of diverse "agents of Satan"?women,
indulged
anti-Semitism
witches, heretics, Jews and Muslims?but
ideo?
formed an especially
integral part of the European
logical system then projected outward against Europe's
external others?the
indigenous
peoples of Africa and the
Americas.3 Although life in Spain before the expulsion
of
Jews and Muslims
was characterized
by a relatively
between the three religious civiliza?
peaceful coexistence
in
as an early exercise
tions, the Spanish
Inquisition,
sought to punish and expel,
European "self-purification,"
or forcibly convert, Muslims
and Jews. The indigenous
peoples of the Americas similarly were officially protected
from massacres
by the throne only once they converted
to Christianity.
then, prefigured colonialist rac?
European demonology,
ism. We can even discern a partial congruence
between
the phantasmatic
imagery projected onto the Jewish and
Muslim "enemy" and the Black African and indigenous
to various degrees as
American
"savage"?all
imagined
"blood drinkers,"
"sorcerers"
and "devils."
"cannibals,"
drew on
Writing about his voyages,
Amerigo Vespucci
the stock of Jewish and Muslim stereotypes
to character?
ize the savage, the infidel, the indigenous
man as sexual
26

omnivore
and the indigenous
woman as sexual object.4
"The chiefe God they worship," wrote Captain John Smith
in his Map of Virginia (1612), "is the Divell."5
historical
Eurocentric
tends to paint a flat?
discourse
tering picture of Europe during the "Age of Discovery"
At the
while denigrating
the newly colonized
peoples.
time of the onset of colonialism
and conquest,
Europe
was a rather brutal and superstitious
place, dominated
discourse" (Delumeau).6
by a "demonological
Church-spon?
sored brutalities
towards Jews and Muslims have to be
seen therefore on the same continuum
as the forced con?
versions of indigenous
peoples of the Americas who, like
the Jews and Muslims in Catholic Spain, were obliged to
to Christianity.
feign allegiance

Eliding

Muslims

In November
1991, the ceremonial
opening for a confer?
ence at the University
of California at Los Angeles dedi?
Jews included
the
cated to the expulsion
of Sephardic
of
film
El
the
Santo
screening
Oficio {The Holy Office,
1973). Arturo Ripstein's film features the attempt by the
into the New World.
Holy See to spread the Inquisition
We see Sephardic
Jewish Conversos (also referred to as
in se?
in Mexico obliged to practice Judaism
Marannos)
cret. At the film's finale, the Conversos,
along with her?
etics, witches and indigenous
infidels, are burned at the
stake for their lack of faith. Those who refused to convert
Al?
are burned alive; others are burned after hanging.
it
film
the
not
the
focuses
on
does
Conversos,
though
from that of other religious and
isolate their persecution
of the
racial oppressions
practiced by the conquistadores
of Spain.
the heirs of the reconquistas
Americas,
film provoked strong emotions
remarkable
Ripstein's
of Sephardi-Jew?
but its documentation
at the screening,
ish rituals practiced in tormenting
secrecy, and its visual
were not received
details of torture, rape and massacre
in the spirit of the linkages
I have charted here. The
audience consisted largely of American-Jewish
educators,
scholars and community
workers eager to consume the
narrative
of the singular
nature of the Jewish
experi?
ence. As a result, the conference
ignored the historical
and the expulsion
and discursive
links of the Inquisition
of Sephardi Jews to the genocide of the indigenous
peoples
of African peoples,
of the Americas,
to the devastation
of Muslims in Spain.
and also to the Christian persecution
is
The elision of the Arab-Muslim
part of the narrative
especially
striking.
not all Mus?
During the centuries-long
Reconquista,
lims and Jews withdrew
with the Muslim forces. Those
Muslims
who remained
after the change of rule were
known as Mudejars (deriving from the Arabic mudajjin,
of "tamed" or
to remain," with a suggestion
"permitted
Like those Jews who remained in Chris?
"domesticated.")
and eco?
tian Spain, after a certain period of tolerance,
to Christian
nomic and cultural contribution
Spain, they
The Inquisition,
which was institutionwere persecuted.
Middle East Report ? September-October

1992

alized as a tool of the state in 1478, did not pass over the
In 1499, mass burning of Islamic books and
Muslims.
took place, and in 1502 the Muslims
forced conversions
of Granada were given the choice of baptism or exile. In
1525-26, Muslims of other provinces were given the same
measures
taken
choice. Thereafter
the same Inquisitory
against the Jewish Conversos who were found to be se?
Judaism
were taken against Moriscos
cretly practicing
found to be practicing
(Moors converted to Christianity)
Islam. In 1566 there was a revival of anti-Muslim
legis?
lation, and between 1609 and 1614 came edicts of expul?
sion. As a result, about half a million are said to have
fled to North Africa, where they maintained,
as Sephardi
Jews did, certain aspects of their Spanishness.
These details are well documented.7
Yet they find little
echo in events such as those taking place under the aus?
Jewish
Committee?Sefarad
pices of the International
'92. The reasons cannot be simply attributed
to a literal?
ism?to
the fact that the 1492 edict of expulsion
was
addressed to the Jews. The elision of comparative
discus?
sion of the Muslim and Jewish situations
in Christian
Middle Eastern
Spain is rooted in present-day
politics.
The 1992 commemorations
reflect present-day
battles
over the representations
of history.
Subordinated
to a
Eurocentric
Zionist historiography,
lament
they
yet an?
other tragic episode in a homogenous,
static Jewish his?
tory of relentless
persecution.
The screening of El Santo Oficio at the Expulsion
con?
elicited such remarks as: "You
ference, not surprisingly,
think it's different today?" and "That's also what the Na?
zis did to us. If the Arabs could, that's what they'd do!"
Such comments
underline the commemorations'
role as a
Israeli nationalism
as the logi?
stage for demonstrating
cal answer to such horrific events as the Inquisition.
The
of
Jews
is
seen
as
foreshad?
Inquisition
Sephardi
merely
of Ashkenazi
Jews. In this para?
owing the Holocaust
digm, the traumas of Nazism are facilely projected onto
the experiences
of Jews in Muslim countries,
and onto
the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.8 Arabs of today are merely
one more "non-Jewish"
obstacle in the Jewish trajectory.
The uniqueness
and common victimization
of all Jews
at all times is a crucial underpinning
of official Israeli
Americans
and Af?
ideology. The genocides of indigenous
ricans are not a point of reference,
while the linked per?
secution in Iberia of Jews and Muslims,
Conversos
and
is rendered irrelevant.
This selective
Moriscos,
reading
of Jewish history hijacks the Jews of Islam from their
Judeo-Islamic
their
history and culture and subordinates
to that of the Ashkenazi-European
shtetl, pre?
experience
sented as a "universal" Jewish experience.
In the Zionist
a
of
Jewish
there
are no paral?
"proof
single
experience,
lels or overlappings
with other religious/ethnic
commu?
nities. All Jews are by definition
closer to each other
than to the cultures of which they have been part.
The Jews of Islam, and more specifically
Arab Jews,
this Eurocentric
Thus Zi?
problematize
representation.
onist historiography,
when it does refer to Islamic-Jew?
ish history, consists of a morbidly selective
"tracing the
Middle East Report ? September-October

1992

dots" from pogrom to pogrom. This picture of an ageless

and relentless
and humiliation
ignores the
oppression
fact that, on the whole, Jews of Islam?a
minority among
rela?
several other religious/ethnic
communities?lived
within Arab-Muslim
society.
tively comfortably
of the Jews of
My point is not to idealize the situation
Islam, but rather to suggest that, with a few exceptions,
have
the agendas of Zionist and anti-Zionist
historians
Islamic-Jewish
into
Christianeither subsumed
history
Jewish history or ignored the status of Jews in the con?
in Islamic societies.9 On the occa?
text of other minorities
sion of the quincentenary,
the Zionist perspective
privi?
with Christianity
over
Jewish relations
leges Sephardi
those with Arab-Islam,
Eurocentric
projecting
maps of
Jews (West) and Muslims (East). The only Muslim coun?
is Turkey, partly due to
try that receives some attention
in 1492 to
H's ordering his governors
Sultan Bayazid
Even here the emphasis
is
receive the Jews cordially.
than on the voyages of
less on Muslim-Jewish
relations
as opposed to Muslim
refuge, and on Turkish (national)
shelter.
Such a version plays down the fact
(religious)
there were well-estab?
that at the time of the expulsion
all over the Islamic
lished Jewish
Arab
communities
Middle East and North Africa.

Beyond

Sephardi

Exotica

of universal
The master narrative
Jewish victimization
has been crucial for the Israeli "ingathering"
of peoples
from such diverse geographies,
cultures and
languages,
as well as for the claim that the Jewish nation
histories,
27

faces a common historical

enemy in Muslim Arabs. Asso?
with
in 1992 with the Inquisi?
Arabs
Nazis
(and
ciating
onto the
tors), projects a Jewish
European
nightmare
distinct political dynamics of the Middle East.
structurally
Jews experienced
an utterly different history
Sephardi
within the Arab world than that which haunts the Euro?
of Ashkenazi
of the
Jews; the conflation
pean memories
with the archetypal
Muslim-Arab
oppressors
European
of Jews strategically
understates
Israel's colonial-settler
of
Palestinian
dispossession
people.
The simplistic
equation of the histories of Ashkenazim
and Sephardim
all
(in the broad sense now of including
Jews of the Middle East and North Africa) functions
to
assimilate
into Ashkenazi
Sephardim
history. The dis?
cussions of expulsion bring out the "wandering
Jew" mo?
tif, though the Jews of the Middle East, for the most
lives in the Islamic
part, had stable, "non-wandering"
world. Sephardim
moved within the regions of Asia, Af?
rica and the Mediterranean
not because of persecution
but rather for commercial,
religious or scholarly purposes.
The major displacement
took place in recent years, when
were uprooted,
and dislodged
Sephardim
dispossessed
due to the collaboration
between Israel and Arab govern?
ments and Western
colonial powers, who termed their
solution for the "question of Palestine"
as a "population
exchange."10 (That no one asked either the Palestinians
or Arab Jews whether
is
they wished to be exchanged
other
Third
of
World
who
histories.)
typical
Sephardim
have been able to leave Israel, often in response to insti?
tutionalized
racism there, have dislocated themselves
yet
again, this time to the US, Canada, France, Britain or
Holland. Ironically,
today it is to the Muslim-Ar ab coun28

tries of their origins that most Middle Eastern Jews can?

not travel.
The
also
center
on the
events
quincentenary
of Sephardi
culture (largely on Ladino or
Spanishness
Judaeo-Espanol
language and music) while marginalizing
the fact that Jews in Iberia formed part of a larger JudeoIslamic culture of North Africa and the Middle East and
even the European Balkan area of the Ottoman Empire.
texts in philosophy,
poetry
linguistics,
Major Sephardi
and medicine were written in Arabic and reflect specific
as well as a strong sense of JudaeoMuslim influences
The Jews of Iberia had come there from
Arab identity.
the Middle East?some
others with
with the Romans,
the Muslims.
When they fled Spain, over 70 percent re?
turned to regions of the Ottoman Empire, while the rest
went to Western Europe and the Americas.
The commonalities
Jews and Muslims,
between
par?
ticularly the "Arabness" of Jews in Spain, North Africa
and the Middle East, is a thorny reminder of the Middle
Eastern character of the majority of Jews in Israel today.
Erasure of the Arab dimension
of Sephardim
is crucial
from a Zionist perspective,
since Israel has ended up in a
in which its "Orientals" had closer
situation
paradoxical
cultural
and historical
links to the presumed
enemy?
the "Arab"?than
to the Ashkenazi
Jews with whom they
were forcibly merged into nationhood.
The elision of Arab
Jews (or Jewish-Arabs),
and the narrow focus on Sephardi
history in relation to Christian
Spain, rejects an Arab
and Muslim context for Middle Eastern Jewish history
and identity, while unilaterally
Middle East?
subsuming
ern Jews into a pan-Jewish
historical
perspective.
The Zionist establishment,
since its early encounters
Middle East Report ? September-October

1992

with Palestinian
at?
Jews, has systematically
(Sephardi)
to eradicate
the "malignancies"
of those other
tempted
Jews?for
example,
by stigmatizing
Sephardi-Arabized
Asia
syntax and accents in Hebrew,
by marginalizing
and Africa and Islamic-Arab
and Jewish-Arab
histories
in school curricula,
and by rendering
culture
Sephardi
and political activities
invisible in the media.
The 1992 events pose a problematic
relation between
The past of Sephardim
is reduced to
past and present.
is displaced
while the present
into exotic
persecution,
traditions.
is now accepted
Sephardi-Oriental
identity
only in the form of folklore, adding spice to the EuroIsraeli culture. Insensitive
to questions
of self represen?
events
have
relied
on
tation,
quincentenary
typically
Ashkenazi
on
the
of
the
Jews
reli?
Islam, leaving
experts
gious and folkloric aspects, such as cuisine and music, to
"authentic" Sephardim.
In fact, Sephardi "folklore" con?
stitutes
an Israeli national
which exports (of?
industry,
ten expropriated)
ob?
goods (dresses, jewelry,
liturgical
jects) and ethnographic
photos, films and books about
the charming
of Sephardim
to Westerners
ea?
folkways
for
Jewish
The
occasion
of
the
exotica.
ger
quincentenary
has not prompted any rethinking
of this colonial ethno?
graphic model.
This appropriation
with politically
contrasts
and cul?
seen
turally critical Sephardi-Oriental
self-representation,
in the last decade in such movements
as East for Peace
and the Oriental Front in Israel, Perspectives
Judeo-Arabe
in Paris, and the World Organization
of Jews from Islamic
Countries in New York. It also contrasts with the spirit of
the meeting between Sephardi Jews and Palestinians
held

LAWYERS

in Toledo, Spain, in 1989, where the participants

insisted
that peace would mean more than geographical
borders,
and would require dismantling
the artificial East/West cul?
?
tural borders between Israel and the Arab world.

Footnotes
1 Quotedin JeanComby,"1492:Le Chocdes Cultureset l'Evangelization
du Monde,"
DossiersdeI'episcopat
1990).
Francais,No.14(October
2 SeeCharlesDuff,TheTruthaboutColumbus
(NewYork:Random
House,1936).
3 SeeJeanDelumeau,
LaPeuren Occident
(Paris:Fayard,1978)andLePecheet la Peur
TheDevilandtheJews:TheMedi?
(Paris:Fayard,1983).SeealsoJoshuaTrachtenberg,
evalConception
Anti-Semitism
(NewYork:Harpers,
oftheJewanditsRelationtoModern
1943).JanPietersemakesthe moregeneralpointthatthe themeof civilization
against
barbarism
wasa carryover
fromGreekandRomanantiquity,whilethe themeof Chris?
of
Cru?
was
the
in
the
tianityagainstpagans
keynote European
expansionculminating
sades.TheChristian
wassubsequently
usedwith"civilization,"
as in
themeof"mission"
the missioncivilisatrice.
See Jar Pietersee,Empireand Emancipation
(London:
Pluto,
1990),p. 240.
4 See Jan Carew,Fulcrumsof Change:Originsof Racismin theAmericasand Other
AfricaWorldPress,1988).
Essays(Trenton:
5 CaptainJohnSmith,Mapof Virginia(1612),quotedin RoyHarveyPearce,Savagism
A Studyof theIndianandtheAmerican
andCivilization:
Mind(Berkeley:
Universityof
California
Press,1988).
6 As lateas the 16thcentury,MartinLutherexpressed
his strongbeliefthatthe Turks
werestruggling
werenot"fleshandbloodbeings"
butrather"an
againstwhichChristians
couldbe efficacious,
armyof devils"againstwhomonly"angels"
usinga God-is-on-oursiderhetoricsubsequently
invokedin diversecolonialandneocolonial
militaryvenues,
mostrecentlyduringthePersianGulfwar.
7 Seeforexample,W.Montgomery
WattandPierreCachia,A Historyof IslamicSpain
Press,1977);JamesT.Monroe,
(Edinburgh:
Edinburgh
Poetry
University
Hispano-Arabic
of
California
Press,1974).
University
(Berkeley:
8 FortheanalogiesbetweenNazisandArabsin Zionistdiscourse
seeEllaShohat,Israeli
Cinema:
East/WestandthePoliticsofRepresentation
ofTexasPress,
(Austin:University
and
Media's
28
"The
Social
1989)
War,"
Text, (Spring1991).
9 Forsuchcomplex
analysissee HanHalevi,A Historyof theJews:AncientandModern
ZedBooks,1987);andMaximeRodinson,
(London:
Cult,Ghetto,and State:ThePersis?
tenceoftheJewishQuestion
(London:
Al-Saqi,1983).
10 FormoreseeAbbasShiblak,TheLureofZion:TheCaseof theIraqiJew(London:
AlAshkenazi
Jews
Between
andSephardi
Saqi,1986);G.N.Giladi,Discordin Zion:Conflict
in Israel(London:
Ella
Shohat
in
from
and
Israel:
Zionism
1990);
Scorpion,
"Sephardim
the Standpoint
ofits JewishVictims,"
SocialText19/20(Fall1988).

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