Rethinking Jews and Muslims: Quincentennial ReflectionsAuthor(s): Ella ShohatSource: Middle East Report, No. 178, 1492+500 (Sep. - Oct., 1992), pp. 25-29Published by: Middle East Research and Information ProjectStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3012984 .Accessed: 20/01/2011 20:26

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Rethinking Jews

&

Muslims

Quincentennial

Ella Shohat

Ella Shohat teaches cinema 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, forthcoming 1993).

Middle East Report ? September-October 1992

60?7"our Highness completed the war against the X Moors," Columbus wrote in a letter addressed to

the Spanish throne, "after having chased all the 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

Spain converged with the conquest of the so-called New World. The separate quincentenary commemorations in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, however, have seldom acknowledged the linkage between these events.

Although intellectually challenging and politically inspir? ing, "goodbye Columbus" counter-quincentenary debates

have, for the most part, followed the same easy path of

separating these issues. The reasons can be partially located in the scholarly

inertia which compartmentalizes historical periods and

geographical regions into neat areas of expertise, over?

looking the interconnectedness of histories, geographies and cultural identities. But they are also traceable to a

general reluctance in progressive circles to chart the co? 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 Reconquista to Conquista

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

25

umphant over the Muslims, risked investment in Colum? 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 (Castile), victorious Christian Spain strength? ened its sense of nationhood, soon to be turned into an

empire as it subjugated indigenous Americans and Afri? cans. Discourses about Muslims and Jews during Spain's continental expansion crossed the Atlantic, arming the

conquistadors with a ready-made 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 conquest of Goa in

1510, and, of course, the complete British takeover in the 18th century.)

The campaigns against Muslims and Jews, as well as

against heretics and witches, made available an entire

apparatus of racism and sexism for "recycling" in the

newly-raided continents. The Crusades, which helped in?

augurate "Europe" by reconquering the Mediterranean area and making Europe aware of its geocultural iden?

tity, coincided with anti-Semitic pogroms. Christian Eu?

rope, on the verge of the conquest of the New World, indulged in fears of diverse "agents of Satan"?women, witches, heretics, Jews and Muslims?but anti-Semitism formed an especially integral part of the European ideo?

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 peaceful coexistence between the three religious civiliza?

tions, the Spanish Inquisition, as an early exercise in

European "self-purification," sought to punish and expel, 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.

European demonology, then, prefigured colonialist rac? 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 American "savage"?all imagined to various degrees as "blood drinkers," "cannibals," "sorcerers" and "devils."

Writing about his voyages, Amerigo Vespucci drew on 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

Eurocentric historical discourse tends to paint a flat?

tering picture of Europe during the "Age of Discovery" while denigrating the newly colonized peoples. At the time of the onset of colonialism and conquest, Europe was a rather brutal and superstitious place, dominated

by a "demonological discourse" (Delumeau).6 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

feign allegiance to Christianity.

Eliding Muslims

In November 1991, the ceremonial opening for a confer? ence at the University of California at Los Angeles dedi? cated to the expulsion of Sephardic Jews included the

screening of the film El Santo Oficio {The Holy Office, 1973). Arturo Ripstein's film features the attempt by the

Holy See to spread the Inquisition into the New World. We see Sephardic Jewish Conversos (also referred to as Marannos) in Mexico obliged to practice Judaism in se? 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 are burned alive; others are burned after hanging. Al?

though the film focuses on the Conversos, it does not isolate their persecution from that of other religious and racial oppressions practiced by the conquistadores of the

Americas, the heirs of the reconquistas of Spain. Ripstein's remarkable film provoked strong emotions

at the screening, but its documentation of Sephardi-Jew? ish rituals practiced in tormenting secrecy, and its visual details of torture, rape and massacre were not received 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 discursive links of the Inquisition and the expulsion of Sephardi Jews to the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, to the devastation of African peoples, and also to the Christian persecution of Muslims in Spain. The elision of the Arab-Muslim part of the narrative is

especially striking. During the centuries-long Reconquista, not all Mus?

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, "permitted to remain," with a suggestion of "tamed" or "domesticated.") Like those Jews who remained in Chris? tian Spain, after a certain period of tolerance, and eco? nomic and cultural contribution to Christian Spain, they were persecuted. The Inquisition, which was institution-

Middle East Report ? September-October 1992

alized as a tool of the state in 1478, did not pass over the Muslims. In 1499, mass burning of Islamic books and forced conversions took place, and in 1502 the Muslims of Granada were given the choice of baptism or exile. In

1525-26, Muslims of other provinces were given the same choice. Thereafter the same Inquisitory measures taken

against the Jewish Conversos who were found to be se?

cretly practicing Judaism were taken against Moriscos (Moors converted to Christianity) found to be practicing 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?

pices of the International Jewish Committee?Sefarad '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

Spain is rooted in present-day Middle Eastern politics. The 1992 commemorations reflect present-day battles over the representations of history. Subordinated to a Eurocentric Zionist historiography, they lament 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?

ference, not surprisingly, elicited such remarks as: "You 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

stage for demonstrating Israeli nationalism as the logi? cal answer to such horrific events as the Inquisition. The

Inquisition of Sephardi Jews is seen merely as foreshad?

owing the Holocaust of Ashkenazi Jews. In this para? 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

ideology. The genocides of indigenous Americans and Af? ricans are not a point of reference, while the linked per? secution in Iberia of Jews and Muslims, Conversos and

Moriscos, is rendered irrelevant. This selective reading of Jewish history hijacks the Jews of Islam from their Judeo-Islamic history and culture and subordinates their

experience to that of the Ashkenazi-European shtetl, pre? sented as a "universal" Jewish experience. In the Zionist

"proof of a single Jewish experience, there are no paral? 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, problematize this Eurocentric representation. Thus Zi? 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 oppression and humiliation ignores the fact that, on the whole, Jews of Islam?a minority among several other religious/ethnic communities?lived rela?

tively comfortably within Arab-Muslim society. My point is not to idealize the situation of the Jews of

Islam, but rather to suggest that, with a few exceptions, the agendas of Zionist and anti-Zionist historians have either subsumed Islamic-Jewish history into Christian- Jewish history or ignored the status of Jews in the con? text of other minorities in Islamic societies.9 On the occa? sion of the quincentenary, the Zionist perspective privi? leges Sephardi Jewish relations with Christianity over those with Arab-Islam, projecting Eurocentric maps of Jews (West) and Muslims (East). The only Muslim coun?

try that receives some attention is Turkey, partly due to Sultan Bayazid H's ordering his governors in 1492 to receive the Jews cordially. Even here the emphasis is less on Muslim-Jewish relations than on the voyages of

refuge, and on Turkish (national) as opposed to Muslim

(religious) shelter. Such a version plays down the fact that at the time of the expulsion there were well-estab? lished Jewish communities all over the Islamic Arab Middle East and North Africa.

Beyond Sephardi Exotica

The master narrative of universal Jewish victimization has been crucial for the Israeli "ingathering" of peoples from such diverse geographies, languages, cultures and

histories, as well as for the claim that the Jewish nation

27

faces a common historical enemy in Muslim Arabs. Asso?

ciating Arabs with Nazis (and in 1992 with the Inquisi? tors), projects a Jewish European nightmare onto the

structurally distinct political dynamics of the Middle East.

Sephardi Jews experienced an utterly different history within the Arab world than that which haunts the Euro?

pean memories of Ashkenazi Jews; the conflation of the Muslim-Arab with the archetypal European oppressors of Jews strategically understates Israel's colonial-settler

dispossession of Palestinian people. The simplistic equation of the histories of Ashkenazim

and Sephardim (in the broad sense now of including all Jews of the Middle East and North Africa) functions to assimilate Sephardim into Ashkenazi history. The dis? cussions of expulsion bring out the "wandering Jew" mo?

tif, though the Jews of the Middle East, for the most

part, had stable, "non-wandering" lives in the Islamic 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

Sephardim were uprooted, dispossessed and dislodged 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 they wished to be exchanged is

typical of other Third World histories.) Sephardim who 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 coun-

28

tries of their origins that most Middle Eastern Jews can? not travel.

The quincentenary events also center on the

Spanishness of Sephardi culture (largely on Ladino or

Judaeo-Espanol language and music) while marginalizing the fact that Jews in Iberia formed part of a larger Judeo- Islamic culture of North Africa and the Middle East and even the European Balkan area of the Ottoman Empire. Major Sephardi texts in philosophy, linguistics, poetry and medicine were written in Arabic and reflect specific Muslim influences as well as a strong sense of Judaeo- Arab identity. The Jews of Iberia had come there from the Middle East?some with the Romans, others with 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 between Jews and Muslims, 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

paradoxical situation in which its "Orientals" had closer 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 subsuming Middle East? ern Jews into a pan-Jewish historical perspective.

The Zionist establishment, since its early encounters

Middle East Report ? September-October 1992

with Palestinian (Sephardi) Jews, has systematically at?

tempted to eradicate the "malignancies" of those other Jews?for example, by stigmatizing Sephardi-Arabized syntax and accents in Hebrew, by marginalizing Asia and Africa and Islamic-Arab and Jewish-Arab histories in school curricula, and by rendering Sephardi culture and political activities invisible in the media.

The 1992 events pose a problematic relation between

past and present. The past of Sephardim is reduced to

persecution, while the present is displaced into exotic traditions. Sephardi-Oriental identity is now accepted only in the form of folklore, adding spice to the Euro- Israeli culture. Insensitive to questions of self represen? tation, quincentenary events have relied typically on Ashkenazi experts on the Jews of Islam, leaving the reli?

gious and folkloric aspects, such as cuisine and music, to "authentic" Sephardim. In fact, Sephardi "folklore" con? stitutes an Israeli national industry, which exports (of? ten expropriated) goods (dresses, jewelry, liturgical ob?

jects) and ethnographic photos, films and books about the charming folkways of Sephardim to Westerners ea?

ger for Jewish exotica. The occasion of the quincentenary has not prompted any rethinking of this colonial ethno?

graphic model. This appropriation contrasts with politically and cul?

turally critical Sephardi-Oriental self-representation, seen 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

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 Quoted in Jean Comby, "1492: Le Choc des Cultures et l'Evangelization du Monde," Dossiers de I'episcopat Francais, No. 14 (October 1990). 2 See Charles Duff, The Truth about Columbus (New York: Random House, 1936). 3 See Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident (Paris: Fayard, 1978) and Le Peche et la Peur (Paris: Fayard, 1983). See also Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medi? eval Conception of the Jew and its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Harpers, 1943). Jan Pieterse makes the more general point that the theme of civilization against barbarism was a carryover from Greek and Roman antiquity, while the theme of Chris? tianity against pagans was the keynote of European expansion culminating in the Cru? sades. The Christian theme of "mission" was subsequently used with "civilization," as in the mission civilisatrice. See Jar Pietersee, Empire and Emancipation (London: Pluto, 1990), p. 240. 4 See Jan Carew, Fulcrums of Change: Origins of Racism in the Americas and Other Essays (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1988). 5 Captain John Smith, Map of Virginia (1612), quoted in Roy Harvey Pearce, Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 6 As late as the 16th century, Martin Luther expressed his strong belief that the Turks against which Christians were struggling were not "flesh and blood beings" but rather "an army of devils" against whom only "angels" could be efficacious, using a God-is-on-our- side rhetoric subsequently invoked in diverse colonial and neocolonial military venues, most recently during the Persian Gulf war. 7 See for example, W. Montgomery Watt and Pierre Cachia, A History of Islamic Spain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977); James T. Monroe, Hispano-Arabic Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). 8 For the analogies between Nazis and Arabs in Zionist discourse see Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East /West and the Politics of Representation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989) and "The Media's War," Social Text, 28 (Spring 1991). 9 For such complex analysis see Han Halevi, A History of the Jews: Ancient and Modern (London: Zed Books, 1987); and Maxime Rodinson, Cult, Ghetto, and State: The Persis? tence of the Jewish Question (London: Al-Saqi, 1983). 10 For more see Abbas Shiblak, The Lure of Zion: The Case of the Iraqi Jew (London: Al- Saqi, 1986); G.N. Giladi, Discord in Zion: Conflict Between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews in Israel (London: Scorpion, 1990); and Ella Shohat "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims," Social Text 19/20 (Fall 1988).

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