#Influence of monotheistic religions

[in-sightpublishing]

Tor Arne Jørgensen on Women in Religious History

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/08/30 Tor Arne Jørgensen, 50, hails from Fevik, a small settlement near Grimstad in southern Norway. He is a dedicated teacher at the local secondary school, a devoted husband, and a proud father of two boys. From an early age, Tor Arne was driven by an insatiable thirst for…

[the-commonplace-book]

"Judeo-Christian" "Abrahamic religions"

S T O P

these are terms that are not used by the actual members of the religious communities you're referencing

[whencyclopedia]

Jezebel

Jezebel (d. c. 842 BCE) was the Phoenician Princess of Sidon who married Ahab, King of Israel (r. c. 871 - c. 852 BCE) according to the biblical books of I and II Kings, where she is portrayed unfavorably as a conniving harlot who corrupts Israel and flaunts the commandments of God.

Her story is only known through the Bible (though recent archaeological evidence has confirmed her historicity) where she is depicted as the evil antagonist of Elijah, the prophet of the god Yahweh. The contests between Jezebel and Elijah are related as a battle for the religious future of the people of Israel as Jezebel encourages the native Canaanite polytheism and Elijah fights for the monotheistic vision of a single, all-powerful male god.

In the end, Elijah wins this battle as Jezebel is assassinated by her own guards, thrown from a palace window to the street below where she is eaten by dogs. Her death, the biblical authors note, was prophesied earlier by Elijah and is shown to have come to pass precisely according to his words and, so, in accord with the will of Elijah's god.

Her name has become synonymous with the concept of the evil seductress owing to the interpretation of some of her actions (such as putting on make-up in order to, allegedly, seduce her adversary Jehu, who is anointed by Elijah's successor, Elisha, to destroy her) and calling a woman a “jezebel” is to label her as sexually promiscuous and lacking in morals.

Recent scholarship, however, has tried to reverse this association and Jezebel is increasingly recognized as a strong woman who refused to abide by what she saw as the oppressive nature of her husband's religious culture and tried to change it.

Jezebel's Changing Reputation

The story as given in I and II Kings presents Jezebel as an evil influence from the moment of her arrival in Israel who corrupts her husband, the court, and the people by trying to impose her “godless” beliefs on the Chosen People of the one true god. I Kings 16: 30-33 presents King Ahab as a wicked king seduced by the corrupting influence of his new wife and is an audience's introduction to the story:

Ahab, son of Omri, did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. He not only , but he also married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.

Traditionally, the story of Jezebel is one of a corrupting influence on a king who had already shown himself a poor representative of his kingdom's religious culture. The biblical account assumes a reader's knowledge that Jezebel, coming from Sidon, would have worshipped the god Baal and his consort Astarte along with many other deities and also assumes one would know that the polytheism of the Sidonians was comparable to that of the Canaanites prior to the rise of Israel and monotheism in their land. Since monotheism and the kingdom of Israel are presented in a positive light, Jezebel, Sidon, and Ahab are cast negatively.

It could be that the biblical narrative depicts events, more or less, accurately but this view is challenged by modern-day scholarship which increasingly leans toward a new interpretation of the clash between Jezebel and Elijah as demonstrating the conflict between polytheism and monotheism in the region during the 9th century BCE. In this interpretation, Jezebel is understood as a princess, the daughter of a king and priest, trying to maintain her cultural heritage in a foreign land against a religion she could not accept. The historian and biblical scholar Janet Howe Gaines comments:

For more than two thousand years, Jezebel has been saddled with a reputation as the bad girl of the Bible, the wickedest of women. This ancient queen has been denounced as a murderer, prostitute and enemy of God, and her name has been adopted for lingerie lines and World War II missiles alike. But just how depraved was Jezebel? In recent years, scholars have tried to reclaim the shadowy female figures whose tales are often only partially told in the Bible. (1)

Although she has been associated with seduction, depravity, and harlotry for centuries, a more accurate understanding of Jezebel emerges as one considers the possibility she was simply a woman who refused to submit to the religious beliefs and practices of her husband and his culture. The recent scholarship, which has led to a better understanding of the civilization of Phoenicia, the role of women, and the struggle of the adherents of the Hebrew god Yahweh for dominance over the older faith of the Canaanites, suggests a different, and more favorable, picture of Jezebel than the traditional understanding of her. The scholarly trend now is to consider the likely possibility she was a woman ahead of her time married into a culture whose religious class saw her as a formidable threat.

Continue reading...

[rosary-enthusiast]

I have a hot take today, about Christian/monotheist influences in Pagan spaces.

Unless you are strictly, & I mean strictly, a recreationist, you do not have to shun your own cultural influences in your practice. Religions have changed & adapted to one another for all of human history, & while we must be mindful of colonial effects on paganism, not all Christian or monotheistic influences are bad & harmful.

I live in the Deep South of the US. We do not have a culture of diverse religious practices, & I grew up with my idea of god exclusively being that of God with a capital G. it would be quite unnatural for me to force myself away from iconography & titles that I am familiar with in order to be strictly “historically accurate”, & it would not be a genuine reflection of my love for my practice. Just as Isis-Aphrodite, & Artemis of Ephesus, & Osiris-Dionysus, merged with foreign religious practices to form something equally as beautiful & valid, so too does Lord Apollo, & Lady Diana. Yes, these titles are reflective of specifically Christian influences, & European monarchy, but I am reflective of European immigrants, & Louisiana Catholics. If anything, this is just another epithet for a new era of beloved followers.

It’s ok not to use these titles, it’s ok to want to avoid outside influences in your religion, but consider why you think something like this is bad before casting judgement, & please reconsider the idea that Christian/abrahamic equals bad.

Anyway, go on & enjoy your spirituality. The gods have known many names, & I’m sure they won’t mind yours.

[tanadrin]

Revised version of "polytheism vs elaborateness" religion chart. I started with a list of around 150 religions, sects, denominations, philosophies, and spiritual tendencies, whittled down to 100 based on what I could find information on and what meaningful differences would actually show up in a chart like this. Dark blue is Christianity and Christian-derived tendencies; light blue is Judaism and Jewish-derived tendencies; green is Islam and Islam-influenced tendencies; purple is ancient Mediterranean polytheism and related schools of thought; red is Dharmic/Hindu-influenced schools of thought; tan is Chinese religion and philosophy; orange is new religious movements; black is other, unaffiliated religions and movements.

Obviously, "what is a religion" is a complicated topic. Some of the things on this chart might strike you more as philosophical schools (Carvaka, Stoicism), epistemological approaches (Unitarian Universalism), or different ways of slicing the same tradition. The scholarly definition of "religion" is sort of fundamentally circular, and that's not something I'm interested in trying to untangle for this entirely non-scientific exercise.

Religions etc. are scored on two axis: polytheism vs elaborateness of practice. Polytheism is a rank from zero to 11, thus:

0. Strict atheist and materialist, denying the possibility of both gods and the supernatural, e.g., Carvaka.

1. Atheist. Denies the existence of significant supernatural agents worthy of worship, but may not deny all supernatural (or psychic, paranormal, etc.) beings and phenomena (e.g., Mimamsa).

2. Agnostic. This religion makes no dogmatic claims about the existence of supernatural beings worthy of worship, and it may not matter for this religion if such beings exist (e.g., Unitarian Universalists). It does not preclude--and may actually incorporate--other supernatural, psychic, or paranormal phenomena (e.g., Scientology).

3. Deist. This religion acknowledges at least one god or Supreme Being, but rejects this being's active intervention in the world after its creation (e.g., Christian Deism). Deism is marked with a gray line on the chart, in case you want to distinguish religions that specifically care about all this God business from ones that don't.

4. Tawhid monotheist. This religion acknowledges only a single transcendent god above all other natural or supernatural beings, who is usually the creator of the universe and the ground of being, and is without parts, division, or internal distinction (e.g., Islam).

5. Formal monotheism. This religion acknowledges a single god, usually transcendent above all other natural or supernatural beings, but who may have aspects, hypostases, or distinct parts (e.g., Trinitarian Christianity). Pantheism may be considered a special case of formal monotheism that identifies the universe and its many discrete phenomena with a single god or divine force.

6. Dualism. This religion acknowledges a single god worthy of worship, alongside a second inferior, often malevolent being that nevertheless wields great power in or over the world (e.g., Zoroastrianism or Gnosticism).

7. Monolatrist. This religion or practice acknowledges the existence of many gods or divine beings worthy of worship, but focuses on, or happens to be devoted to only one of them (e.g., ancient mystery cults; pre-exilic Judaism).

8. Oligotheist. This religion worships a small group of divine beings, who may function for devotional or rhetorical purposes as a single entity (e.g., Mormonism, Smartism).

9. Monogenic polytheism/Henotheism. This religion worships many gods, which it sees as proceeding from or owing their existence to, a single underlying or overarching force or supreme god (e.g., many forms of Hinduism).

10. Heterogenic polytheism. This religion worships many gods, who have diverse origins and/or natures. Though the number of gods is in practical terms probably unlimited, gods are discrete entities or personalities, i.e., they are "countably infinite" (e.g., many polytheistic traditions).

11. Animism. This religion worships many gods which may or may not be discrete entities, and which may or may not be innumerable even in principle, i.e., they are "uncountably infinite" (e.g., many animist traditions).

What counts as a god is naturally a bit of a judgement call, as is exactly where a religion falls on this scale.

Elaborateness of practice is based on assigning one point per feature from the following list of features:

Uses vs forbids accompanied music in worship

Saints or intermediary beings accept prayers/devotion

Liturgical calendar with specific rituals or festivals

Practices monasticism

Venerates relics or holy objects

Clerics have special, elaborate clothing

Clerics have special qualificiations, e.g., must be celibate or must go through elaborate initiation/training

Elaborate sacred art or architecture used in places of worship

Sites of pilgrimage, or other form of cult centralization

Sophisticated religious hierarchy beyond the congregational level

Mandatory periods of fasting and/or complex dietary rules

Specific clothing requirements for laypeople

Specific body modifications either required or forbidden for laypeople

Liturgical language

Complex ritual purity rules

Performs sacrifice

Performs human sacrifice (or cannibalism)

Uses entheogens

Uses meditation or engages in mystical practice

Additionally, a point is taken away for austerity for each of the following features:

Forbids secular music outside worship

Claims sola scriptura tradition

Practices pacifism or ahimsa

Requires vegetarianism of all adherents

These scores are probably pretty inexact, since I am not a scholar of world religion.

This chart is not scientific, it's just a goof based on that @apricops post.

Other fun dimensions along which to chart religions might be:

Orthodoxy vs orthopraxy

Authoritarianism/control of members. This would add some much needed distinctions to Christian sects in particular, and to the new religious movements.

Elaborateness of cosmological claims. Some religions (looking at you, Buddhism) really go hog-wild here.

Social egalitarianism. Even within the same framework/tradition/philosophy, some practices differ radically on how egalitarian they are.

[writingwithcolor]

Sri Lankan Fairies and Senegalese Goddesses: Mixing Mythology as a Mixed Creator

[Note: this archive ask was submitted before the Masterpost rules took effect in 2023. The ask has been abridged for clarity.]

@reydjarinkenobi asked:

Hi, I’m half Sri Lankan/half white Australian, second gen immigrant though my mum moved when she was a kid. My main character for my story is a mixed demigod/fae. [...] Her bio mum is essentially a Scottish/Sri Lankan fairy and her other bio mum (goddess) is a goddess of my own creation, Nettamaar, who’s name is derived from [...] Wolof words [...]. The community of mages that she presided over is from the South Eastern region of Senegal [...] In the beginning years of European imperialism, the goddess basically protected them through magic and by blessing a set of triplets effectively cutting them off from the outside world for a few centuries [...] I was unable to find a goddess that fit the story I wanted to tell [...] and also couldn’t find much information on the internet for local gods, which is why I have created my own. I know that the gods in Hinduism do sort of fit into [the story] but my Sri Lankan side is Christian and I don’t feel comfortable representing the Hindu gods in the way that I will be this goddess [...]. I wanted to know if any aspect of the community’s history is problematic as well as if I should continue looking further to try and find an African deity that matched my narrative needs? I was also worried that having a mixed main character who’s specifically half black would present problems as I can’t truly understand the black experience. I plan on getting mixed and black sensitivity readers once I finish my drafts [...] I do take jabs at white supremacy and imperialism and I I am planning to reflect my feelings of growing up not immersed in your own culture and feeling overwhelmed with what you don’t know when you get older [...]. I’m sorry for the long ask but I don’t really have anyone to talk to about writing and I’m quite worried about my story coming across as insensitive or problematic because of cultural history that I am not educated enough in.

Reconciliation Requires Research

First off: how close is this world’s history to our own, omitting the magic? If you’re aiming for it to be essentially parallel, I would keep in mind that Senegal was affected by the spread of Islam before the Europeans arrived, and most people there are Muslim, albeit with Wolof and other influences. 

About your Scottish/Sri Lankan fairy character: I’ll point you to this previous post on Magical humanoid worldbuilding, Desi fairies as well as this previous post on Characterization for South Asian-coded characters for some of our commentary on South Asian ‘fae’. Since she is also Scottish, the concept can tie back to the Celtic ideas of the fae.

However, reconciliation of both sides of her background can be tricky. Do you plan on including specific Sri Lankan mythos into her heritage? I would tread carefully with it, if you plan to do so. Not every polytheistic culture will have similar analogues that you can pull from.

To put it plainly, if you’re worried about not knowing enough of the cultural histories, seek out people who have those backgrounds and talk to them about it. Do your research thoroughly: find resources that come from those cultures and read carefully about the mythos that you plan to incorporate. Look for specificity when you reach out to sensitivity readers and try to find sources that go beyond a surface-level analysis of the cultures you’re looking to portray. 

~ Abhaya

I see you are drawing on Gaelic lore for your storytelling. Abhaya has given you good links to discussions we’ve had at WWC and the potential blindspots in assuming, relative to monotheistic religions like Christianity, that all polytheistic and pluralistic lore is similar to Gaelic folklore. Fae are one kind of folklore. There are many others. Consider:

Is it compatible? Are Fae compatible with the Senegalese folklore you are utilizing? 

Is it specific? What ethnic/religious groups in Senegal are you drawing from? 

Is it suitable? Are there more appropriate cultures for the type of lore you wish to create?

Remember, Senegalese is a national designation, not an ethnic one, and certainly not a designation that will inform you with respect to religious traditions. But more importantly:

...Research Requires Reconciliation

My question is why choose Senegal when your own heritage offers so much room for exploration? This isn’t to say I believe a half Sri-Lankan person shouldn’t utilize Senegalese folklore in their coding or vice-versa, but, to put it bluntly, you don’t seem very comfortable with your heritage. Religions can change, but not everything cultural changes when this happens. I think your relationship with your mother’s side’s culture offers valuable insight to how to tackle the above, and I’ll explain why.  

I myself am biracial and bicultural, and I had to know a lot about my own background before I was confident using other cultures in my writing. I had to understand my own identity—what elements from my background I wished to prioritize and what I wished to jettison. Only then was I able to think about how my work would resonate with a person from the relevant background, what to be mindful of, and where my blindspots would interfere. 

I echo Abhaya’s recommendation for much, much more research, but also include my own personal recommendation for greater self-exploration. I strongly believe the better one knows oneself, the better they can create. It is presumptuous for me to assume, but your ask’s phrasing, the outlined plot and its themes all convey a lack of confidence in your mixed identity that may interfere with confidence when researching and world-building. I’m not saying give up on this story, but if anxiety on respectful representation is a large barrier for you at the moment, this story may be a good candidate for a personal project to keep to yourself until you feel more ready.

(See similar asker concerns here: Running Commentary: What is “ok to do” in Mixed-Culture Supernatural Fiction, here: Representing Biracial Black South American Experiences and here: Am I fetishizing my Japanese character?)

- Marika.

Start More Freely with Easy Mode

Question: Why not make a complete high-fantasy universe, with no need of establishing clear real-world parallels in the text? It gives you plenty of leg room to incorporate pluralistic, multicultural mythos + folklore into the same story without excessive sweating about historically accurate worldbuilding.

It's not a *foolproof* method; even subtly coded multicultural fantasy societies like Avatar or the Grishaverse exhibit certain harmful tropes. I also don't know if you are aiming for low vs high fantasy, or the degree of your reliance on real world culture / religion / identity cues.

But don't you think it's far easier for this fantasy project to not have the additional burden of historical accuracy in the worldbuilding? Not only because I agree with Mod Marika that perhaps you seem hesitant about the identity aspect, but because your WIP idea can include themes of othering and cultural belonging (and yes, even jabs at supremacist institutions) in an original fantasy universe too. I don't think I would mind if I saw a couple of cultural markers of a Mughal Era India-inspired society without getting a full rundown of their agricultural practices, social conventions and tax systems, lol.

Mod Abhaya has provided a few good resources about what *not* to do when drawing heavily from cultural coding. With that at hand, I don't think your project should be a problem if you simply make it an alternate universe like Etheria (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power), Inys (The Priory of the Orange Tree) or Earthsea (the Earthsea series, Ursula K. Le Guin). Mind you, we can trace the analogues to each universe, but there is a lot of freedom to maneuver as you wish when incorporating identities in original fantasy. And of course, multiple sensitivity readers are a must! Wishing you the best for the project.

- Mod Mimi

[bi-numi-aliyani]

Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah!... No, actually, it's Yahweh,

A somewhat notable Deity considered by the ancient Israelite people their National God and first attested from the early 9th century BCE.¹

This c. 1518 painting by Raphael is based on a mystical vision of 𒀭Yahweh attributed to the prophet Ezekiel who belonged to a priestly lineage said to be descended from the legendary Joshua. Ezekiel was active during the time the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the early 6th century BCE. (Public domain)

𒀭Yahweh was also apparently worshipped among the Edomites, the Israelites' southern neighbors, based on a reference to “Yahweh of Teman” in an inscription on an early 8th century BCE jar discovered at the site of Kuntillet ʿAjrud in the Sinai with Teman being a major Edomite clan.¹ It's believed the ʿAjrud outpost was established by the northern Kingdom of Israel as the region fell into their domain after a botched invasion by the southern Kingdom of Judah. The two kingdoms were also under the influence of the Neo-Assyrian Empire at this time with contemporaneous Assyrian records noting both Judahite and northern Israelite representatives at the capital city of Kalkhu (known as Nimrud in modern times).²

Illustrations of the two vessels from Kuntillet ʿAjrud with translations. It's debated if the 𒀭Bes-type figures on Pithos A are meant to depict 𒀭Yahweh and His Consort 𒀭ʾAsheratah, but it should be noted the righthand figure does not actually have visible genitals as the outdated illustration here shows.³ (Source)

Although 𒀭Yahweh is primarily associated with monotheistic religion nowadays for obvious reasons, historical evidence indicates He was first worshipped in a polytheistic context as the Israelite culture distinguished itself from the Canaanite milieu it emerged from. This can even be seen within the Hebrew Bible; A wonderful example is found in the Book of Habakkuk in the form of an archaic Hebrew poem describing 𒀭Yahweh and His Company including the Plague-God 𒀭Resheph (His Name is usually mistranslated as “plague” in English Bibles) battling sea monsters. Another one of the most noted can be seen in the Book of Deuteronomy and indicates 𒀭Yahweh was probably worshipped as One of the Seventy (symbolically “many”) Sons of 𒀭ʾEl:

⁸ When ʿElyon apportioned the nations, when He divided humankind, He fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the Gods; ⁹ Yahweh's own portion was His people, Jacob His allotted share.

Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (adapted from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, 2021)

𒀭Yahweh very much fits the form of other Storm-Gods worshipped in cultures of the Syro-Palestinian region during the Iron Age. The other most famous example of such a Deity is the Levantine manifestation of 𒀭Baʿal Who is cast as 𒀭Yahweh's greatest Rival in the collection of texts within the Hebrew Bible known as the Deuteronomistic history, although the presence of 𒀭Baʿal's name at ʿAjrud would suggest this conflict is a later development. It's even been proposed 𒀭Yahweh was originally associated specifically with destructive elements of weather such as flash floods.⁴ Although there are some respectable academic claims of pre-Israelite attestations of 𒀭Yahweh from the Late Bronze Age, none of these are secure and all of them are very much contested.⁵ The scholar Christian Frevel also fascinatingly proposed in 2021 that 𒀭Yahweh was the tutelary Deity of the Omride clan which came to rule the northern Kingdom of Israel for over a century and established its capital of Samaria.¹

A modern artistic impression of a ritual performed by ancient Israelites at the Temple of 𒀭Yahweh in Jerusalem during the Iron Age. The dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem built by King Solomon (c. 1910) by William Hole. (Public domain)

The emergence of monotheism from traditional Israelite belief is an incredibly convoluted topic that I don't intend to get into the weeds of here. One of the most recognizable milestones therein, though, was the religious reforms of King Josiah of Judah shortly before our dear Ezekiel's time. This saw the absolute consolidation of religious authority in the Temple of 𒀭Yahweh at Jerusalem and even the forced closure of all other cultic sites in Judah. However, there's also direct evidence that 𒀭Yahweh continued to be worshipped among other Gods and Goddesses well after the monotheistic, Jerusalem-centric religion which came to be known as Judaism had entered its Second Temple Period.

Most notably a community of Israelites living on the island of Elephantine at ancient Egypt's southern frontier had a Pantheon in which 𒀭Yahweh was associated with the Goddess 𒀭ʿAnat and another God named 𒀭Bethel.⁶ They even had Priestesses of Yahweh and were apparently on good terms with Jerusalem as indicated by the Aramaic-language texts written in Egyptian Demotic script discovered at Elephantine. An analysis of the narrative of Aaron's Rod in the Book of Numbers has also led to the alluring proposition that worship of the famous 𒀭ʾAsherah as 𒀭Yahweh's Consort may have continued even within the Jerusalemite cult itself during this period.⁷

An altar of incense discovered at the site of ancient Taʿanakh. Although it's dated to the tenth century BCE, predating any secure attestations of 𒀭Yahweh, some researchers believe the top and second-to-bottom registers are intended to symbolize Him with 𒀭ʾAsheratah likewise on the alternating registers. (Source)

There's so many fascinating developments being made in archaeology and the study of history unraveling more about the ancient Israelites and the worship of 𒀭Yahweh before our very eyes. I honestly feel incredibly privileged to be alive just in time to witness such a thing. Although I haven't “worked with” 𒀭Yahweh myself within my primarily Canaanite Pagan practice, I'd be very interested to hear and discuss different perspectives on this fascinating ancient Deity and it'd make me very happy to see what some of you think. Shulmu 𒁲𒈬 and thank you so much for reading!

Another thing

Given what part of the world this all concerns, I feel I would be morally remiss to say nothing of the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people in their homeland and particularly in Gaza. I find this important because earlier today the so-called President of the United States Donald Trump expressed the US's intent to “take over” and ethnically cleanse Gaza at a public event alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, the so-called Prime Minister of Israel. In the face of such great evil, I feel obligated by simple virtue of being a human to state I wholeheartedly support the full liberation of Palestine and an end to the unjust and unlawful occupation with all it has wrought. Arab.org is a website which allows you to support Palestinians via a simple click of a button with no donation necessary along with providing further resources. Free Palestine 🇵🇸

References

Frevel, Christian. “When and from Where Did YHWH Emerge? Some Reflections on Early Yahwism in Israel and Judah.” Entangled Religions 12:2 (March 30, 2021). https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.8776.

Na’aman, Nadav. “Samaria and Judah in an Early 8th-Century Assyrian Wine List.” Tel Aviv 46:1 (January 2, 2019): pp. 12–20. https://www.academia.edu/43169801.

This was clarified by archaeologist Ze'ev Meshel in communication with Nir Hasson reporting for Haaretz, https://www.facebook.com/share/1JASsUsdcN.

Fleming, Daniel E. “Yahweh among the Baals: Israel and the Storm Gods.” Essay. In Mighty Baal: Essays in Honor of Mark S. Smith, edited by Stephen C. Russel and Esther J. Hamori, pp. 160–74. Harvard Semitic Studies 66. Leiden, Netherlands; Boston, Massachusetts, United States: Brill, 2020.

Pfeiffer, Henrik. “The Origin of YHWH and its Attestation.” Essay. In The Origins of Yahwism, edited by Markus Witte and Jürgen van Oorschot, pp. 115–44. Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift Für Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 484. Berlin, Germany; Boston, Massachusetts, United States: De Gruyter, 2017.

Cornell, Colin. “Judeans and Goddesses at Elephantine.” Ancient Near East Today 7:11 (November 2019). American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR). https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2019/11/Judeans-and-Goddesses-at-Elephantine.

Eichler, Raanan. “Aaron’s Flowering Staff: A Priestly Asherah?” TheTorah.com, 2019. https://www.thetorah.com/article/aarons-flowering-staff-a-priestly-asherah.

My interpretation of the Blessing of ʾAmaryaw inscribed on Pithos B from Kuntillet ʿAjrud (pictured)

Be in peace!

May you be blessed to 𒀭Yahweh of Teman and 𒀭ʾAsheratah;

May they bless you and keep you and be with you always.

Praises to 𒀭Yahweh of Teman and 𒀭ʾAsheratah!

All they beseech of one is to act with compassion,

And 𒀭Yahu will give them according to their heart.

May the days be long and satisfied in their good time

For the sake of 𒀭Yahweh of Teman and 𒀭ʾAsheratah,

As 𒀭Yahweh of Teman and 𒀭ʾAsheratah favor the kindhearted.

[aelenist--writng--process]

Religious Questions in your fantasy story

Let’s return to the questionnaire format. Here are some thoughts I consider when creating a religion.

1. What are the fundamental tenets of your religion?

These are essential. I’ve read many fantasy religions with detailed descriptions of temples, holy days, and rituals, but they often lack depth. What does this religion stand for? If a typical follower were asked to summarize their faith, would it be about sacred days and ornaments? Probably not, unless the faith is more respected during times of crisis than in daily life.

Often, fantasy religions default to models based on Christianity or Wicca—either focusing on forgiveness and love or on nature and agriculture. This doesn’t always make sense. For instance, a desert-dwelling people likely wouldn’t revere nature in the same way as a rural community would. Think about logical principles for your world. How do the inhabitants survive? Which gods do they believe are responsible for their well-being? What practical tasks could become religious rituals?

2. What are the relationships between the gods?

Many fantasy gods feel flat because they are created in isolation with stereotypical personalities. A goddess of fertility, for example, is often portrayed as calm and nurturing. What relationships do these gods have? Study mythologies to see how gods interacted. For instance, why was Apollo associated with poetry, medicine, and prophecy? These connections are complex and can enrich your narrative.

Even in a monotheistic setting, people will create stories about their gods. Explore how divine legends accumulate around a central figure.

3. How do gods interact with mortals?

In too many fantasy novels, gods interact in ways that bore the reader. The classic notion is that gods are so powerful they can solve everything with a wave of their hand, which leads authors to keep them distant. This is based on flawed assumptions about their power and influence.

Gods can be portrayed in various ways—distant, intrusive, or even indifferent. The key is consistency. If gods are distant, rituals and prayers should not yield visible results.

4. How does your religion handle apostasy, heresy, and non-believers?

Unless a religion is truly global, there will be issues with heresy. Historical conflicts show that religious wars can be brutal. Often, fantasy authors depict one religion as "good" and another as "evil," leading to cardboard characters and simplistic narratives. And where are the atheists and agnostics? Characters who don’t believe are rare in fantasy, yet many worlds should have them, raising questions about their silence or indifference.

Religion can be a deep source of conflict in fantasy if handled thoughtfully. Unfortunately, many authors simplify these complexities.

[athenaeum-of-the-herald]

would you be willing to expound a bit on how you see peoples monotheistic background influence their views of polytheism? I'd like to think that i've deconstructed my christian upbringing, but i'm always on the look out for ways i still need to heal and grow :)

Khaire, and gladly!

I'm planning to write a much longer post on the Christianization of modern hellenic polytheism, but for now I'll go over some cliff notes.

Shame, Guilt, and the Concept of Sin

I've seen MANY posts where people will be worried and afraid that they've somehow angered the gods in ways such as not being divinely good or "stepping out of line." This concept doesn't exist in hellenic polytheism, as the concept of sin isn't a part of it. While yes, there are ways to anger the gods, the only ways to do that is to step so far out of left field you might as well not even call yourself helpol if you do it.

Mythic Literalism

Many monotheistic religions require taking the holy book as sole fact with no nuance. Jesus walking on water, the immaculate conception, etc. However, in hellenic polytheism, it is to be understood that these myths are NOT to be taken as immediate fact and that there is angreat deal of cultural nuances and meanings behind them. One that comes to mind immediately is The Raping if Persephone. This story details a very real issue that was relevant in ancient Greece. Young women who's agency were taken and they were married off against their wills by their fathers. The story details a pained and sorrowful mother who stood up against the patriarchal hierarchy, and FORCED her daughter's father to accept her demands. And while she couldn't win the war (as ultimately her daughter remained in the marriage and away from her mother for a good portion of time), her winning the battle was enough to comfort many women and mothers in similar situations.

Understanding mythic literalism and the lack thereof is essential to hellenic polytheism, and is far less so if not at all prelevant in monotheistic religions. And many beginners come into hellenic polytheism with that same preconceived notion.

There's a lot more like research and worship and the lack thereof, the preconceived importance of titles, and prayers of generalities vs prayers of requests, but those are the little notes for now!

I hope that answered your question a bit and safe travels! ♡

[hrizantemy]

Maybe a hot take, I'm not sure, but Illyria should've been a separate country.

I was thinking about the real life Illyrian culture, and doing some research on it. Based on what I found, I feel kind of mad that SJM missed the opportunity for what could've been a truly unique and beautiful culture, that pays homage to the real life Illyria, but plays a role in the plot and political structure of Prythian. The pieces are already there.

Historically, the Illyrian people were warriors, and powerful chieftains were able to unite various tribes into kingdoms. They were master shipbuilders, and seafarers. It was actually due to piracy on the Adriatic Sea, as well as trade conflicts and Illyria's growing power that tensions rose and eventually a war started with Rome.

Jumping back to the NC, we see on a map of Prythian that much of the NC's territory are mountains. I'm sure cultivating food for not just the people of Velaris, the Hewn City and any towns and villages scattered throughout would be difficult. meaning much of it should be imported.

If Illyria is a separate country, and takes inspiration from the real life Illyrian people, then having them be pirates and sailors, would add an extra layer of complexity to NC politics. Pirates near the NC could distrust trade, scare off potential allies as well as merchants who want to do business in the NC. Perhaps having them have good relations with the former HL of Summer would be interesting.

In the last ask, when discussing political structures of Prythian, you mentioned the intrigue behind Tarquin possibly having to balance power between himself and businesses/merchants in his court. Perhaps his predecessor could have done so with the help of pirates. A corrupt former HL of Summer, allying with pirates that are feared across Prythian, to keep businesses and merchants who want to garner influence in his court at bay. He could've been paying for certain families, businesses and merchants to be attacked by pirates, either to play hero or punish them. Plus, the Illyrian pirates would be able to fly, and are warriors, making them all the more deadly.

It would also be interesting to have them as free agents, so to speak. Making them as much of a threat to Hybern and the Continent as they are to Prythian. Throughout the series, having news come in of the Illyrians having inadvertently helped Prythian as much as they caused issues.

It could also be a reason that Rhysand is hated for his Illyrian blood. The High Fae find Illyrians synonymous with piracy and crime would affect his ability to rule, and, if done right, might actually have been good social commentary on racial profiling and stereotypes.

There's also Rhys' mother. Depending on if she was Illyrian royalty or lower born, it could add an interesting political dynamic between Night and Illyria.

Since Night is distrusted by other courts, trading and relations would be more difficult, even outside of pirates. So the marriage between his parents may have helped ease the strain. Illyrians are seafarers, so perhaps the NC might trade weapons and textiles, perhaps, for seafood. Not just fish, but the methods to cook all sorts of food from oysters to seaweed and eels.

Illyria could've also sent it's religion over when Rhys's mother married his father, leading to Illyrian temples in the Night Court. Temples that may be at odds with The Temple of the Mother, which appeared to be the only religions, or at least the most mainstream one, in Prythian before that. On top of that, The Temple of the Mother seems largely monotheistic, but Illyrias culture was polytheistic, so naturally, there would be more conflict. Perhaps, over time, the Illyrian temples may have garnered followers in Night too, which may affect their relations to other courts, who would be weary of this new religion.

Velaris, from what we see, is pretty much a modern town with magic replacing many things we use IRL, from fae lights instead of electricity to mind speaking instead of phones. Illyrians might come with Rhys' mother to the NC (including Azriel and Cassian's mothers), and some could still be traditionalists and struggle to fit into Velaris, so perhaps they'd have their own settlements, where they practice their cultures, while others would come and reside in the city, having an easier time adapting.

The murder of Rhys' mother might also have left a rift between the NC and Illyria, which could've caused growing internal tensions between the people living there, and tensions from the kingdom of Illyria. If the NC relies on Illyria for food imports, then that's a power that Illyria has over them. It might be an interesting, ongoing tension throughout the series, that eventually culminate.

There are so many thoughts about the potential of what Illyrian culture could've been in the series and the storylines that could've come from it. These thoughts are some of the less thought out versions of what I could come up with based on my research, but it's already better than the racist shit SJM wrote. The bar is practically in Hell, it's so low, I know.

Illyrian culture was influenced by both the Celts, and Greek, which would add another layer of intrigue to look into when creating it. The fact that she could've created something unique and beautiful but decided to take a sudden and inexplicable left turn towards lazy and racist instead sucks. I swear, this series' wasted potential is a tragedy.

This isn’t a hot take. It’s a correct one—and an important one. What you’ve outlined is not only a thoughtful critique of the squandered potential in ACOTAR, but a compelling and historically grounded framework for what Illyria should have been: a sovereign nation with political autonomy, cultural complexity, and power in its own right. Instead, SJM flattens Illyrians into a racist stereotype—barbaric, violent, primitive, and in need of civilizing—while denying them both political agency and cultural depth. 

I. 

Illyria as an Independent State

In canon, Illyrians are treated as a marginalized military caste rather than a people with their own sovereignty. Their “territory” exists within Night Court borders, but politically, they’re under Rhysand’s control and offered no true representation or agency. This is colonialism, plain and simple—Illyria functions like a subjugated territory used for its labor (warriors, soldiers) without investment in its development.

But if we reimagine Illyria as its own country—drawing from the real historical Illyrians who occupied the western Balkans and resisted Roman domination—you immediately introduce the possibility for geopolitical complexity. This version of Illyria would:

Maintain its own chieftains, or a tribal council system of rule—perhaps even a matrilineal structure, depending on how you want to build its gender dynamics.

Serve as a naval or piratical force in the magical world, perhaps both feared and relied upon.

Negotiate trade independently with other courts, especially the Summer Court, which would be natural given the maritime connection.

Pose a strategic threat—or ally—to Prythian and to the Continent.

In this framing, Rhysand’s Illyrian heritage becomes not just a personal source of trauma, but a political liability. It would make sense for other High Lords to treat him with suspicion—not just for his power, but because he represents a union of two uneasy nations. They wouldn’t just be prejudiced; they’d be calculating. That’s far more interesting than vague and inconsistent racism.

II. 

The Real Illyrians: A Lost Opportunity

The real Illyrians were not just warriors—they were a confederation of tribes, with a complex mix of customs, religious beliefs, and territorial identities. They had their own deities, their own writing system (though mostly lost to time), and a reputation for fierce resistance against Greek and Roman expansion.

Imagine an Illyrian king or warlord—perhaps Rhys’s maternal grandmother—who ruled over coastal islands and mountains, and struck fear into Summer Court ports. Imagine Rhys’s mother being exiled royalty, sent to the Night Court for political alliance, carrying with her the traditions of her homeland. Her murder, then, wouldn’t just be a personal tragedy—it would be a political act of war that left the nations teetering on the edge of collapse. And yet, no mention of this exists in canon.

This isn’t just missed potential. It’s a failure to respect the real-world legacy of a people who resisted conquest.

III. 

Religion and Cultural Conflict

As you point out, the Illyrians could have brought their polytheistic belief system into conflict with the dominant faith in Prythian—namely, the Temple of the Mother. In many colonial and imperial histories, religion becomes a central battleground. The colonizers suppress native faiths. The colonized preserve them in secret or syncretize them into resistance. In this version of the story:

Illyrian temples could be banned or torn down during the height of Night Court expansionism.

Rhysand’s mother could be seen as a “heretic” in Velaris for bringing foreign gods.

The surviving temples—perhaps high up in the mountains or hidden—would become sacred sites, guarded.

The clash between monotheism and polytheism could mirror real-world tensions, not in a preachy way, but as part of lived cultural reality.

This would make Velaris feel less like a static utopia and more like a city wrestling with modernity, immigration, religion, and tradition—something ACOTAR desperately lacks.

IV. 

Trade, Dependency, and Internal Tension

You made an excellent point: Night Court’s geography—mountains, snow, little arable land—would make it dependent on imports. Illyria, as a seafaring power, would hold enormous leverage. The political relationship could mirror that of feudal lords and maritime city-states: Illyria controls the ports, the Night Court controls the land. One needs warriors, the other needs goods.

Rhysand’s position becomes even more precarious here. His mother’s death could have destabilized a trade agreement. His own status as half-Illyrian could be used against him in negotiations. Illyrian uprisings might threaten war if he mistreats their people. Azriel and Cassian, both bastards from the mountains, might be walking tightropes—not just in personal identity, but as intermediaries between two nations.

The result? A far richer narrative about imperialism, identity, and power.

V. 

Cultural Representation and Literary Failure

Let’s be blunt. What ACOTAR does instead is deeply racist. The Illyrians are:

Brutal and backward, constantly threatening sexual violence.

In need of “saving” by High Fae who consider them less-than.

Represented almost entirely through Cassian and Azriel, who are repeatedly humiliated, insulted, and denied basic respect even in Velaris.

There’s no effort to explore their language, customs, food, music, or philosophy. No temples. No architecture. No leaders besides Devlon, a villain. No mythology. No humanity.

VI. 

Final Thoughts: What Could Have Been

Had SJM done this, Illyria would have been the most fascinating region in Prythian—a free nation caught between tradition and transformation, war and commerce, faith and survival. It would have made Rhysand a more layered ruler, a son of two worlds. It would have given Cassian and Azriel a community, not just trauma. It would have added new dimensions to the politics of the war with Hybern. And most importantly, it would have treated Illyrians as people, not props.

[vamphorica]

How do you think Mello reconciled his faith with the existence of Shinigamis who kill people to extend their own lifespan? Do you think he took he took that as evidence other beings like angels might exist or did he take that as a challenge to his faith? How did he fit them within his own belief system?

oh this is the question of all time, i love nothing more than talking about Mello's religious identity in contrast to well, everything in canon (as you can tell, i'm very popular at parties). i think it's such a shame people don't interrogate his potential faith when it adds another very complex layer to his character and how he behaves in the manga and anime. i will mention that i briefly touched on it here, but i wrote that post a while ago, and i'm happy to talk about it in more detail now.

purely from personal circumstances, i have known a lot of people who have been able to still reconcile their religious beliefs with things that are if not contradictory, certainly still go against some core principles of that belief. this is to be expected; humans are inherently hypocritical, and convenience will always have a massive influence on our opinions. hell, politically, there are many things i agree with, but don't put into practice. same applies for religion. there's catholics in my family who want me to read their tarot because they ardently believe in it as much as they do the trinity.

now the reason i bring this up isn't to get unnecessarily philosophical, but more so to say that i do not think that the existence of Shinigami would be enough to necessarily disrupt one's faith. they are absolutely gods in their own right, purely looking at this from the canon perspective, but they undoubtedly possess very human attitudes. compare Ryuk and Light for a moment – if you swapped them so that Ryuk was the human who picked up the Death Note and Light was the Shinigami haunting him, i personally think it matches the archetypes for their characters more fluently (which is why I love Death Note – if fucks with general literary expectations in many different ways). i don't want to get into an entire debate about whether God made Shinigami, especially because Shinigami are important Japanese deities and it is certainly not my place to suggest otherwise, but what is important to note with the interpretation of them in the context of Death Note is that they are flawed characters. if you follow a religion which claims that your God is perfect (which i think all Christian denominations typically accept), Sidoh, Ryuk and Rem would not be the kind of Gods you'd probably accept as an alternate reality to your strongly held convictions of who God is to you.

i do like the idea that Mello had to contend with his beliefs in some capacity, however. he is strangely calm about Sidoh's arrival (his freak out is relatively brief compared to L's, for example), and i am certain much of the information regarding the Death Note and how it works is difficult to really align with a monotheistic belief. however, i do also think being religious (or spiritual, at the very least) does sometimes give people an ability to interpret the inconceivable better than those who might try and explore things through a rational viewpoint. Mello could very well have had a crisis of faith, but i also think it would have given him more of an acceptance towards the supernatural. whether he saw the Shinigami as legitimate Gods or a product of a world in which one God creates everything, i think judging by the way he actually ends up scaring Sidoh, we can tell he is not threatened by their existence in quite the same manner as almost every other character in the series.

i think it is interesting that you bring up angels because i think that is a very apt comparison you could make in considering how Mello interprets Shinigami in accordance with his beliefs. divine creatures that are spiritually significant but don't necessarily contradict the ultimate importance of God. i do wonder if Mello would treat an angel in the same way as he does with Sidoh, but i guess that would be slightly dependent on several factors, haha.

what i like about headcanoning Mello as Catholic (despite not currently identifying with the religion myself) is that Mello is undeniably an underdog, a child who grows up being continually told that he is lesser, and as a direct result becomes involved in crime to prove himself worthy of a title that realistically, he was never going to have a chance to adopt. there's something about having a character so disadvantaged and also so unapologetically immoral being religious that is fascinating, because it not only begs the question as to how they reconcile their actions with their faith, but also how they hold onto that faith in spite of the horrors that they no doubt have witnessed and been involved in. Mello matures drastically after the Mafia base explosion, and another reason his death is so upsetting is because there's the potential for redemption that remains unexplored. a character such as Mello having faith creates a certain degree of appreciation that, despite the contradictory lifestyle, it is still an important aspect of his character. of course, if you still think he wears a rosary because it makes him look cunty or whatever, that's still a valid interpretation, but i do think discussing it seriously and considering the implications is more interesting, honestly.

anyway, another long post – i'll stop before i start quoting Bible verses in the anime boy analysis post. thank you for the ask! ♡

[in-sightpublishing]

Conversation with Tor Arne Jørgensen on Religion, History, Budding Authorship: 2019 Genius of the Year – Europe, World Genius Directory (12)

                      Publisher: In-Sight Publishing Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014 Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal Journal Founding: August 2, 2012 Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed Access: Electronic/Digital & Open…

[magickvibia]

PSA: Avoid Mythical Literalism.

This something I wrote a while ago, based on how I was seeing this as a prominent problem in online pagan communities.

We do not believe the myths, literally.

There is a notion from beginners or external people that the myths are to be believed as they were written. This is false.

Historically, the pagans did not believe in their myths literally, and nor do modern pagans.

The Mythic literalism is a product of the main monotheistic religions, who are usually thought to believe in their sacred texts as the word of god, and they are to be believed in everything written in there (ignoring how many times those texts were rewritten, translated, and manipulated to fit certain narratives throughout history).

Since the main monotheistic religions are still dominant in our society, some people can bring that mentality when they start to get into paganism. I know not all of them think their texts happened literally in their entirety, but it is important to them to believe that certain parts happened as written.

The myths are people's stories and interpretations of the gods, they can guide us on how to approach them, how they interact with us and each other, and how powerful they might be. But believing the myths literally brings a lot of problems, like:

- Contradictions, and they are a lot of contradictions among the myths.

- Reprehensible behavior from the gods under our current moral standards. If we are to believe the stories literally, Zeus would have no modern followers.

- World origin and creation contradictions among different cultures. Like, who created the world? Ra? Odin? Is the Sky the Skull of Ymir? or is the Sky being held by Atlas? Are we made of Iron, corn, or wood? That and many more questions that might lead to a headache if you interpret them literally.

- Mythical literalism creates a mindset where people are trying to prove the myths as real, ignoring the wisdom that those stories are supposed to tell.

In the case of the greek, many of their stories are told through Theater, it was important for them, the most notable stories of greek mythology are tragedies. However, those were like our movies today, the gods (played by humans) were actors in those plays, the public was aware that it was a creative endeavor.

Yes, some myths are based on real events, many times by looking at the stars, or things that might have happened, for example, Troy was discovered and seems like it had gone through a war. And remember, ancient societies had historians to study their own past or even more ancient societies.

Such is the case for songs and poems and other types of records. There's a little story about Thor fighting Jesus and winning, which, sounds like a heathen trying to scare away Christian missionaries (relatable tho).

Also remember, many myths were lost in time, because at the time, only a few selected privileged people were able to write and read, we don't really know exactly what those ancient cultures believed because of it. Some ancient texts were even destroyed by war and conquer. Also, some surviving myths have a Christian influence behind them, such as Ragnarök.

At the end, paganism is a more personal experience, if you wonder why someone might worship a deity that is seen in negative light, such as maybe Seth, Fenrir, Baal, etc, is one, because their stories are not who they are, and second, because there is a connection, some are called by those deities, and third, forth, twentieth other reasons the person might have.

Understanding the concept of mythic literalism and how not to fall into it has helped me get even more into paganism, coming from an atheistic background, and now I'm a norse pagan.

We like the myths, the stories, modern adaptations, songs, poems, etc, we love them in fact, I read from the Havamal over and over. When someone asks about a myth, I engage in the question, and don't do the "its a myth, is not real" because we know that and doesn't answer the question. I enjoyed mythology all my life and now I do it even more.

Thanks for reading.

[talonabraxas]

"Be motivated like the falcon, hunt gloriously." - Rumi

RA - Egyptian Falcon God Talon Abraxas

Ra (also given as Re) is the sun god of ancient Egypt. He is one of the oldest deities in the Egyptian pantheon and was later merged with others such as Horus, becoming Ra-Horakhty (the morning sun), Amun (as noonday sun), and Atum (the evening sun) associated with primal life-giving energy.

Ra is the Egyptian word for 'sun'. As a solar deity, Ra embodied the power of the sun but was also thought to be the sun itself, envisioned as the great god riding in his barge across the heavens throughout the day and descending into the underworld at sunset. As he made his way through the darkness beneath the earth, he was attacked nightly by the giant serpent Apophis (also known as Apep) who tried to prevent the sun from rising and so destroy all life on earth.

According to scholar Richard H. Wilkinson, Ra is "arguably Egypt’s most important deity" not only because of his association with the life-giving sun but also through his influence on the development of later gods. Amun, who would become so popular that his cult was almost monotheistic in devotion and the most powerful in ancient Egypt, developed from Ra and shares much of his mythology. Horus, who was associated with the living king, followed this same paradigm as Ra was known as “king and father of the king”. He was also associated with the creator god Atum and the two deities' names are used interchangeably in some versions of the creation myths.

Ra in the Heavens

Ra on the Earth

Ra in the Netherworld

Ra as Creator

Ra as King and Father of the King

This course of study is suggested for this deity more so than others because of the scope of his powers, the important part he played in Egyptian religion, and his long history. Worship of Ra was already established by the time of the Old Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2613-2181 BCE) and continued for almost 2,000 years until, like the other Egyptian gods, he was eclipsed by Christianity.

[persphones-hallow]

A lot of people that are in the Greek Hellenism religion tend to ask, “Can I worship x pantheon?” or “Can I worship x deity when worshipping x?” The answer is yes! Across millions of years since the rise of Hellenism, synchronization between deities, especially Kemetic (Egyptian gods).

When we look into ancient texts, especially spell work in the Greek magical papyri, there’s an influence of Judaism (not to be confused with Christianity.) There are multiple Kemetic deities referenced in spellwork, and this is a polytheistic religion, meaning believing in more than one deity.

A deity isn’t going to bash you or shun you because you worship another; this isn’t a monotheistic religion and shouldn’t be seen as such. Yes, you can worship one deity from the pantheon, but others should be noticed and treated with respect.

This goes with a deity that may have conflict with another in mythology. Mythology is stories — oral traditions passed down. No, Persephone and Queen Aphrodite will not be mad at you because they share an altar.

Mythology literalists really need to see about how cults worshiped the gods, not take things from mythology — a tale. Those are the same people that have harsh feelings about Christians and the god they worship.

You can worship deities outside of the Greek pantheon if you want to; there are no rules besides being a decent person in Hellenism.

[dragoneyes613]

"Islam was the second religion to emanate from Judaism, but as its founder was not a Jew and as it was not originally a Jewish sect, Islam's encounter with Judaism was significantly less bitter than Christianity's. As Salo Baron notes: "It was, therefore, from the beginning, a struggle between strangers, rather than an internecine strife among brethren." Largely because of this factor, Jews in the Islamic world were rarely persecuted as violently as their brethren in the Christian world. S. D. Goitein, perhaps the twentieth century's leading historian of Jewish life in the Arab world, concludes: "when the known facts are weighed, I believe it correct to say that as a whole the position of the non-Muslims [Christians and Jews under medieval Islamic rule] was far better than that of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe."

Goitein's assessment is valid, but it tells us much more about the Jews' condition under Christians than about their treatment by Muslims. For while the Jews of the Muslim world may have rarely experienced the tortures, pogroms, and expulsions that typified Jewish life under medieval Christian rule, their life under Islam was usually a life of degradation and insecurity. At the whim of a Muslim leader, a synagogue would be destroyed, Jewish orphans would be forcibly converted to Islam, or Jews would be forced to pay even more excessive taxes than usual.

Like Christianity's, Islam's anti-Judaism is deeply rooted. Islam too was born from the womb of Judaism; it too was rejected by the Jews whose validation was sought; and it too suffered an identity crisis vis-a-vis Judaism.

When Islam was born in the seventh century, there was a substantial Jewish population in Medina, where the first Muslim community arose. The Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia were active advocates of their religion, to such an extent that several kings of Himyar, now Yemen, converted to Judaism. Contemporary inscriptions described Dhu Nuwas As'ar, the last Jewish king of Himyar, as a believer in one deity whom the king called Rahman, the Merciful One, as called in Judaism and later in Islam.

During his early years, Muhammad related well to the Jews of Arabia, and their religious practices and ideas deeply influenced him. As Goitein noted: "The intrinsic values of the belief in one God, the creator of the world, the God of Justice and mercy, before whom everyone high and low bears responsibility came to Muhammad, as he never ceased to emphasized, from Israel."

The profound influence of the Jews, their Bible, and their laws on Muhammad is clearly expressed in the Koran, the Muslim bible, and in Muhammad's early religious legislation. Indeed, Muhammad saw himself as another Moses. In the Koran, he writes of his message (Sura 46, verse 12), "Before it the book of Moses was revealed....This Book confirms it. It is revealed in the Arabic tongue." Moses is a dominant figure on the Koran, in which he is mentioned over one hundred times.The Jewish doctrine that most deeply influenced Muhammad was monotheism: "There is no God but God." Muhammad's monotheism was so attuned to the uncompromising nature of Judaism's monotheism that though he had also been influenced by Christian teachers, he rejected the Christian trinity and the divinity of Jesus as not monotheistic: "Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished" (5:71-73).

Jewish law also deeply influenced Muhammad. In the early days of Islam, Muslims prayed in the direction of the Jews' holy city, Jerusalem, and observed the most solemn Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Only later, when Muhammad reluctantly concluded that the Jews would not embrace him as their prophet and convert to Islam, did he substitute Mecca for Jerusalem, and the fast of Ramadan for Yom Kippur. Similarly, Muhammad based Muslim dietary laws upon Judaism's laws of Kashrut: "You are forbidden carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine; also any flesh...of animals sacrificed to idols." The five daily prayers of Islam are likewise modeled on the three daily services of the Jews.

Second in importance only to his adoption of the Jews' God was Muhammad's adoption of the Jews' founding father, Abraham, as Islam's founder. In Sura 2, verse 125, Muhammad writes how Abraham and his son Ishmael converted the Kaaba, the holy rock of Arabian paganism, into the holy shrine of Islam.

Believing himself to be the final and greatest prophet of Mosaic monotheism, and having adopted so much of Jewish thought and practice, Muhammad appealed to the Jews of Arabia to recognize his role and to adopt Islam as the culmination of Judaism. "Even Luther," the late renowned philosopher Walter Kaufmann wrote, "expected the Jews to be converted by his version of Christianity, although he placed faith in Christ at the center of his teaching and firmly believed in the trinity. If even Luther...could expect that, how much more Muhammad, whose early revelations were so much closer to Judaism?" Muhammad's deep desire for Jewish recognition reflected the similar needs of Jesus and his followers. No group could validate Muhammad's religious claims as could the Jews, nor could any so seriously threaten to undermine them.

The Jews rejected Muhammad's claims as they had Jesus', holding in both cases that what was true in their messages was not new, and that what was new was not true. Islam may have served as a religious advance for Arabian pagans, but for the Jews it was merely another offshoot of Judaism.

One major factor that rendered Muhammad's prophetic claims untenable to Jews was his ignorance of the Bible. In large part because Muhammad never read the Bible, but only heard Bible stories, his references to the Jews' holy text were often erroneous. In Sura 28:38, for instance, he had Pharaoh (from Exodus) ask Haman (of the Book of Esther) to erect the Tower of Babel (which appears at the beginning of Genesis).

Another obstacle to Jewish acceptance of Muhammad was the moral quality of some of his teachings. They did not strike the Jews, or the Arabian Christians, as equaling, let alone superceding, the prophetic teachings of Judaism or Christianity. In 33:50, for example, Muhammad exempts himself from his own law limiting a man to four wives, and in 4:34 he instructs men to beat disobedient wives. Walter Kaufmann notes that "there is much more like this, especially in the 33rd Sura," and that "it must have struck the Jews as being a far cry from Amos and Jeremiah, and the Christians as rendering absurd the prophet's claim that he was superseding Jesus."

Finally, Muhammad's suspension of many Torah Laws invalidated him in the Jews' eyes.

For these and other reasons, the Jews rejected Muhammad's prophetic claims and refused to become Muslims. This alone infuriated Muhammad. But it was even more infuriating that the Jews publicly noted the errors in Muhammad's biblical teachings and may have even ridiculed his claims to prophecy. Goitein concludes, "it is only natural that Muhammad could not tolerate as a neighbor a large monotheistic community which categorically denied his claim as a prophet, and probably also ridiculed his inevitable blunders."

As a result Muhammad turned against the Jews and their religion, and never forgave them for not becoming his followers. And just as early Christian hostility to the Jews was canonized in the New Testament, so Muhammad's angry reactions to the Jews were recorded in the Koran. these writings gave Muslims throughout history a seemingly divinely-sanctioned antipathy to the Jews.

In the Koran, Muhammad attacked the Jews and attempted to invalidate Judaism in several ways. First, and most significantly, he changed Abraham from a Jew to a Muslim: "Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian. [He] surrendered himself to Allah....Surely the men who are nearest to Abraham are those who follow him, this Prophet" (3:67-68).

Second, he condemned the Jews and delegitimized their law by advancing a thesis similar to Paul's, that the many Torah laws had been given to the Jews as punishment for their sins: "Because of their iniquity we forbade the Jews good things which were formerly allowed them" (4:160).

Third, Muhammad charged the Jews with falsifying their Bible by deliberately omitting prophecies of his coming. For example, in the Koran (2:129), Muhammad has Abraham mouth a prophecy of his (Muhammad's) coming. Muhammad charged that the Jews "extinguish the light of Allah" (9:32) by having removed such prophecies from their Bible.

Fourth, Muhammad asserted that Jews, like Christians, were not true monotheists, a charge he substantiated by claiming that the Jews believed the prophet Ezra to be the Son of God. "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah...Allah fights against them. How perverse are they." (9:30).

These anti-Jewish fabrications, articulated by Muhammad as reactions to the Jews' rejection of him, have ever since been regarded by Muslims as God's word. Though originally directed against specific Jews of a specific time, these statements often have been understood by succeeding generations as referring to all Jews at all times, and thus form the basis of Islamic antisemitism.

One common example is 2:61: "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully.j That was for their disobedience and transgression." This Koranic description of the Jews of seventh-century Arabia has often been cited by Muslims to describe Jews to this day. *

(* In a speech before his army officers on April 25, 1972, the late Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat cited this Koranic verse, and then added: "The most splendid thing our prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessing on him, did was to evict them [the Jews] from the entire Arabian peninsula...I pledge to you that we will celebrate on the next anniversary, God willing and on this place with God's help, not only the liberation of our land but also the defeat of the Israeli conceit and arrogance so that they must once again return to the condition decreed in our holy book: 'humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them'...We will not renounce this.")

Muhammad and the Koran thus laid the basis for subsequent antisemitism just as the early Christians had - and for basically the same reason: Jews remaining Jewish constituted a living refutation of Islamic beliefs. Thus, under Islam, just as under Christianity, Jew-hatred was ultimately Judaism-hatred. Any Jew who converted to Islam was accepted as an equal.

Christians under Muslim rule fared little better. Muslims and their laws generally dealt harshly with both Christians and Jews.

As long as Christian communities survived in the Muslim world, discriminatory legislation also applied to them as well. However, whereas Jewish communities often flourished as vibrant Jewish communities, Christian communities for the most part did not survive the intense Muslim hostility. Under the yoke of MUslim laws against Jews and Christians, hundreds of thousands of people in some of the oldest and strongest Christian communities in the world converted to Islam.

No fact better underscores the intensity of Muslim persecution of dhimmis (non-Muslim monotheists) than this disappearance of so many Christian communities under Islam. The fact that under similar conditions many Jewish communities flourished bears witness to the Jews' tenacious commitment to Judaism, not to Muslim benevolence toward them. This is often lost sight of when favorably comparing Muslim antisemitism with Christian antisemitism. Yet the conversion to Islam of nearly every pre-Islamic Christian community in the Muslim world (the Copts of Egypt constituting the most notable exception) eloquently testifies to what Jews had to endure in their long sojourn through the Muslim world.

The two guiding principles of Islam's treatment of Jews and Christians are that Islam dominates and is not dominated, and that Jews and Christians are to be subservient and degraded. Nonmonotheists were usually given the choice of conversion to Islam or death.

The Muslim legal code that prescribed the treatment of Jews and Christians, or dhimmis as they are both referred to in Islam, was the Pact of Umar, attributed to Muhammad's second successor, but assumed to date from about 720. Its key characteristic was the requirement that dhimmis always acknowledge their subservient position to Muslims. Jews and Christians had to pledge, for example, "We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it." The subservience that dhimmis were required to show publicly to Muslims is analogous to the behavior once expected of Blacks in the Jim Crow American South: "We shall show respect...and we shall rise from our seats when they [Muslims] wish to sit." They also had to pledge "not to mount saddles," since riding a horse, or, according to some Muslims, any animal, was considered incompatible with the low status of a dhimmi. The dhimmis also had to vow "We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims nor shall we raise our voices when following our dead."

Anti-dhimmi legislation did not end with the Pact of Umar. In the Koran, Muhammad had urged Muslims, "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture...and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (9:29). Accordingly, Muslim officials often insisted that when paying tribute, dhimmis must be "brought low," that is, humiliated.

An early Muslim regulation precisely prescribed how to humiliate Jews and Christians when they pay tribute: "The dhimmi, Christian or Jew, goes on a fixed day in person to the emir, appointed to receive the poll tax, who occupies a high throne-like seat. The dhimmi stands before him, offering the poll tax on his open palm. The emir takes it so that his hand is on top and the dhimmi's underneath. Then the emir gives him a blow on the neck, and a guard, standing upright before the emir, drives him roughly away The same procedure is followed with the second, third, and the following taxpayers. The public is admitted to enjoy this show." The public was not merely "admitted" to this humiliating spectacle, but as Baron observes, "Public participation was, indeed, essential for the purpose of demonstrating, according to the Shafi'ite school, the political superiority of Islam."

In the course of time Muslim rulers developed additional ways to humiliate dhimmis. Baron describes one of them: "Equally vexatious was the tax receipt, which in accordance with an old Babylonian custom, was sometimes stamped upon the neck of the 'unbelieving' taxpayer. This ancient mark of slavery...expressly prohibited in the Talmud under the sanction of the slave's forcible emancipation, occasionally reappeared here as a degrading stamp of 'infidelity.'"

These humiliating and painful procedures had a terrible effect on the Jews: "An Arab poet rightly spoke of entering the door with bent heads 'as if we were Jews.'"

Another law designed to humiliate dhimmis required them to wear different clothing. The purposes of this law were to enable Muslims to recognize Jews and Christians at all times, and to make them appear foolish. In 807, the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, legislated that Jews must wear a yellow belt and a tall conical cap. This Muslim decree provided the model for the yellow badge associated with the degradation of Jews in Christian Europe and most recently imposed by the Nazis.

A Jew living in Baghdad in the days of Al-Muqtadir (1075-96) described additional measures passed by the vizier, Abu Shuja, to humiliate Jews: "each Jew had to have a stamp of lead...hang from his neck, on which the word dhimmi was inscribed. On women he likewise imposed two distinguishing marks: the shoes worn by each woman had to be one red and one black. She also had to carry on her neck or attached to her shoe a small brass bell...And the Gentiles used to ridicule Jews, the mob and children often assaulting Jews in all the streets of Baghdad.

During the same century in Egypt, the Fatimid Caliph Hakim ordered Christians to wear a cross with arms two feet long, while Jews were ordered to wear around their necks balls weighing five pounds, to commemorate the calf's head that their ancestors had once worshiped.

These clothing regulations were not only enforced in the Middle Ages. Until their departure from Yemen in 1948, all Jews, men and women alike, were compelled to dress like beggars.

 In fact, Yemen offers us a unique opportunity to understand Muslim attitudes toward the Jews. For it was the one Muslim country with a non-Muslim minority (Jews) that was never ruled by a European power. It was therefore able to treat its Jews in the "purest" Muslim manner, uninfluenced by non-Muslim domination.

In 1679, Jews in most of Yemen were expelled from their cities and villages. When allowed to come back a year later, they were not allowed to return to their homes, but were forced to settle in Jewish settlements outside of the cities. During their expulsion the synagogue of San'a, the capital, was converted into a mosque, which still exists under the name Masjid al-Jala (the Mosque of the Expulsion).

Among the many indignities to which the Jews of Yemen were constantly subjected was the throwing of stones at them by Muslim children, a practice that was religiously sanctioned. When Turkish officials (the Turks occupied Yemen in 1872) asked an assembly of Muslim leaders to see that this practice be stopped, an elderly Muslim scholar responded that throwing rocks at Jews was an Ada, an old religious custom, and thus it was unlawful to forbid it.

The greatest recurrent suffering that Yemenite Jews experienced was th e forced conversion to Islam of Jewish children whose fathers had died. This was practiced until the Jews fled Yemen in 1948, and was also based upon Islamic doctrine. Muhammad was believed to have said, "Everyone is born in a state of natural religion [Islam]. It is only his parents who make a Jew or Christian out of him." Accordingly, a person should grow up in the "natural religion" of Islam.

When a Jewish father died, there was often a "race" between Jewish communal leaders who sought to place the man's children with Jewish parents and the Muslim authorities who wanted to convert the children to Islam and place them in Muslim homes (in the Yemenite Islamic culture it would appear that the surviving mother was regarded as irrelevant). The Jews often lost. Goitein reports that "many families arrived in Israel with one or more of their children lost to them, and I have heard of some widows who have been bereaved in this way of all their offspring."

Yet as persecuted as the Yemenite Jews were, they were also denied the right to leave the country.

By the nineteenth century, the Jews' situation under Islam went from degradation to being recurrent victims of violence - as these examples from Jewish life in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine illustrate.

Egypt

In his authoritative book, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyyptisns, Edward Lane wrote that, at the time of his study (1833-35), the Jews were living "under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish Empire." He added, however, that the Jews "are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general." Lane explained: "Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering idsrespectful words against the Kuran (sic] or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

That this was the Jewish situation in Egypt, "a less oppressive government" than elsewhere in the Muslim Arab world, tells us a great deal about Muslim antisemitism in the nineteenth century - prior to the Zionist movement.

Syria

In 1840, some French Catholics introduced the blood libel into the Arab world. After a Capuchin monk in Damascus vanished, Ratti-Mention, the local French consul, told police authorities that the Jews probably had murdered him to procure his blood for a religious ritual. Several Damascus Jews were then arrested, and under torture, oneo f them "confessed" that leaders of the Jewish community had planned the monk's murder. Many other Jews were then arrested, and under torture more such confessions were obtained. French officials pressured Syria'sruler, Muhammad Ali, to try the arrested men, and it was only after an international protest organized by Jewish communities throughout the world that the Jews who survived their tortures were released.

The blood libel immediately became popular among Muslims, who attacked Jews as drinkers of Muslim blood in Aleppo, Syria, in 1853, Damascus again, in 1848 and 1890, Cairo in 1844 and 1901-2, and Alexandria in 1870 and 1881.

The blood libel played a decisive role in unsettling the lives of nineteenth-century Syrian Jews, and since then it has been repeatedly utilized in Arab anti-Jewish writings.

Palestine

Jews have lived continuously as a community in Palestine since approximately 1200 BCE. The only independent states ever to exist in Palestine have been Jewish. After the destruction of the second Jewish state in 70 CE and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, Jews always maintained a presence in Palestine, awaiting the reestablishment of the Jewish state. But these Jews often had to live under degrading conditions.

In nineteenth-century Palestine, which was under Ottoman Muslim rule, Jews had to walk past Muslims on their left, as the left is identified with Satan, and they always had to yield the right of way to a Muslim, by "stepping into the street and letting him pass." Failure to abide by these degrading customs often provoked a violent response.

In Palestine as elsewhere, Jews had to avoid anything that could remind Arabs of Judaism; therefore, synagogues could be located only in hidden, remote areas, and Jews could pray only in muted voices. In addition, despite the widespread poverty among Palestinian Jews, they had to pay a host of special protection taxes (in actuality, a form of extortion). For example, Jews paid one hundred pounds a year to the Muslim villagers of Siloam (just outside Jerusalem) not to disturb the graves at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and fifty pounds a year to the Ta'amra Arabs not to deface the Tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem. They also had to pay ten pounds annually to Sheik Abu Gosh to to molest Jewish travelers on the road to Jerusalem, even though the Turkish authorities were already paying him to maintain order on that road.

These anti-Jewish laws, taxes, and practices had a rather intimidating effect on the Jews. The British consul James Finn, who lived in Jerusalem in the 1850s, described in his book Stirring Times how "Arab merchants would dump their unsold wares on their Jewish neighbors and bill them, safe in the knowledge that the Jews so feared them that they would not dare return the items or deny their purchase."

Muslim antisemitism continued to be brutally expressed through the twentieth century. Albert Memmi, the noted French-Jewish novelist, who grew up in North Africa, cites a few examples:

"In Morocco in 1907, a huge massacre of Jews took place in Casablanca, along with the usual embellishments - rape, women carried away into the mountains, hundreds of homes and shops burned, etc....In 1912 a big massacre in Fez...In Algeria in 1934, massacre in Constantine, twenty-four people killed, dozens and dozens of others seriously wounded....In Aden in 1946...over one hundred people dead and seventy-six wounded, and two-thirds of the stores sacked and burned....In June, 1941, in Iraq, six hundred people killed, one thousand seriously wounded, looting, rapes, arson, one thousand houses destroyed, six hundred stores looted....[In Libya]: November 4th and 5th, 1945, massacre in Tripoli; November 6th and 7th in Zanzour, Zaouia, Foussaber, Ziltain, etc: girls and women raped in front of their families, the stomachs of pregnant women slashed open, the infants ripped out of them, children smashed with crowbars....All this can be found in the newspapers of the time, including the local Arab papers."

Memmi summarizes the Jewish status under Islam in the twentieth century: "Roughly speaking and in the best of cases, the Jew is protected like a dog which is part of man's property, but if he raises his head or acts like a man, then he must be beaten so that he will always remember his status."

It is the Jews' refusal to accept an unequal, inferior status that lies at the heart of the Arab-Muslim hatred for Israel. (It is this, not the Palestinian refugee issue, that has been the basis of Muslim antisemitism. Without minimizing the personal difficulties of the Palestinians, as Memmi notes [on page 35 of his book Jews and Arabs]: "The Palestinian Arabs' misfortune is having been moved about thirty miles within one vast Arab nation.") As Yehoshafat Harkabi, a leading scholar of the Arab world's attitude toward Israel, put it: "The existence of the Jews was not a provocation to Islam...as long as Jews were subordinate or degraded. But a Jewish state is incompatible with the view of Jews as humiliated or wretched." The call for a Palestinian Arab state in place of Israel is for a state in which once again 'Islam dominates and is not dominated."

This hatred of Jewish nationalism was so intense that during World War II, most Arab leaders were pro-Nazi. Among them was the head of the Muslims in Palestine, the mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini (who in 1929 had helped organize the large-scale murders of the ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews of Hebron).

An ardent supporter of Hitler, the mufti spent much of the war in Nazi Germany; on November 2, 1943, at a time when the Nazis were murdering thousands of Jews daily, the mufti declared in a speech: "The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other peoples are animals...[makes them] in capable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals....The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews."

Though many Arab nations formally declared war against Germany in 1945, when German defeat was imminent, in order to be eligible for entry into the United Nations, extensive Arab sympathy with the Nazis continued even after Germany's surrender. The Egyptians and Syrians long welcomed Nazis to their countries, offering them the opportunity to further implement the "Final Solution," by assisting in their efforts to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish community living there.

Among many Arabs the Holocaust has come to be regarded with nostalgia. On August 17, 1956, the French newspaper Le Mongde quoted the government-controlled Damascus daily Al-Manar as observing, "One should not forget that, in contrast to Europe, Hitler occupied an honored place in the Arab world....[Journalists} are mistaken if they think that by calling Nasser Hitler, they are hurting us. On the contrary, his name makes us proud. Long live Hitler, the Nazi who struck at the heart of our enemies. Long live the Hitler [i.e., Nasser] of the Arab world."

On June 9, 1960, after Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who had supervised the murder of six million Jews, the Beirut daily Al-Anwar carried a cartoon depicting Eichmann speaking with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Said Ben-Gurion: "You deserve the death penalty because you killed six million Jews." Responded Eichmann: "There are many who say I deserve the death penalty because I didn't manage to kill the rest."

On April 24, 1961, the Jordanian English-language daily Jerusalem Times published an "Open Letter to Eichmann," which concluded, "But be brave, Eichmann, find solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood." At the UN sponsored "Conference Against Racism" in September 2001, an Arab pamphlet displayed at the Durban Exhibition Center featured a picture of Adolf Hitler with the caption, "If I had won the war there would be no...Palestinian blood lost."

Arab Jew-hatred also has brought about the resurrection of the blood libel. In 1962, the Egyptian Ministry of Education reissued Talmudic Sacrifices by Habib Faris, a book originally published in Cairo in 1890. The editor notes in his introduction that the book constitutes "an explicit documentation of indictment, based upon clear-cut evidence that the Jewish people permitted the shedding of blood as a religious duty enjoined in the Talmud."

On April 24, 1970, Fatah radio, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, broadcast, "Reports from the captured homeland tell that the Zionist enemy has begun to kidnap small children from the streets. Afterwards the occupying forces take the blood of the children and throw away their empty bodies. The inhabitants of Gaza have seen this with their own eyes."

Even more disturbing, the blood libel accusations have been made by the most prominent figures within the Arab world. In November 1973, the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia said that it was necessary to understand the Jewish religious obligation to obtain non-Jewish blood in order to comprehend the crimes of Zionism. A decade later, in 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission Conference on religious tolerance, Marouf al-Dawalibi, told the commission, "The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity." In The Matzah of Zion, a book that has remained in print since its publication in 1983, Mustafa Tlas, the Syrian Defense Minister since 1972, wrote, "The Jew can kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist bread." A 2000 article about Tlas's book in Al-Ahram, Egypt's largest, and government-controlled, newspaper, reported, "The Bestial drive to knead Passover matzahs with the blood of non-Jews is [confirmed] in the records of the Palestinian police where there are many recorded cases of the bodies of Arab children who had disappeared without being found, torn to pieces, without a single drop of blood. The most reasonable explanation is that the blood was taken to be used in matzahs to be devoured during Passover." As one American journalist commented: "If this is 'the most reasonable explanation," can you imagine an unreasonable one?" The Al-Ahram article went on to report that an Egyptian movie company is planning to shoot a multimillion dollar film version of The Matzah of Zion, which will retell, as truth, the story of the Damascus blood libel.

And still the blood libel goes on. A 2001 cartoon in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustour depicts an Israeli soldier presenting his mother with a Mother's Day gift of a bottle containing the blood of a Palestinian child. At about the same time (November 2001), Abu Dhabi Television depicted a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon preparing to drink a cup of blood taken from a Palestinian. A March 10, 2002, article in Saudi Arabia's Al-Riyadh, the government-controlled newspaper, by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University, creates a new twist to this ancient libel, claiming that Jews use blood for Purim pastry and not just for Passover matzo: "Let us now examine how the victims' blood is spilled. For this, a needle-studded barrel is used; this is a kind of barrel, about the size of the human body, with extremely sharp needles set in it on all sides. [These needles] pierce the victim's body, from the moment he is placed in the barrel. These needles do the job, and the victim's blood drips from him very slowly. Thus, the victim suffers dreadful torment - torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight as they carefully monitor every detail of the blood-shedding with pleasure and love that are difficult to comprehend."

Arab Muslims have also reached back to classical themes of Islamic antisemitism to attack the Jews and Israel. Many Arab speakers and publications echo Muhammad's charge in the Koran (5:82) that the Jews are the greatest enemies of humankind. For example, an Egyptian textbook, published in 1966 for use in teachers' seminars, taught that Jews (not only Israelis) are the "monsters of mankind [and] a nation of beasts."

Perhaps the favorite antisemitic publication in the Arab world for over fifty years has been The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.. In an interview with the editor of the Indian magazine Blitz, on October 4, 1958, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt praised the Protocols: "I wonder if you have read a book called 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.' It is very important that you should read it. I will give you an English copy. It proves clearly, to quote from the Protocols, that 'three hundred Zionists, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continents and they elect their successors from their entourage."

The late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia gave copies of the Protocols to the guests of his regime. When he presented the Protocols, along with an anthology of antisemitic writings, to French journalists who accompanied French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert on his visit to Saudi Arabia in January 1974, "Saudi officials noted that these were the king's favorite books."

Article 32 of the 1988 Palestinian Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) Covenant claims that the Zionist "scheme" foe takeover of the Arab world "has been laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there." Hamas literature repeatedly accuses Jews of controlling the world's wealth and its most important media, and using them to promote Jewish and Zionist interests, even of having established the League of Nations in the 1920s "in order to rule the world."

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority (and therefore supposedly less extreme than Hamas), regularly contains references to the Protocols. Thus, even during the height of the Oslo peace process the paper published the following: "It is important to conduct the conflict according to the foundations which both are leaning on...particularly the Jews...such as the Torah, the Talmud, and the Protocols...This conflict resembles the conflict between men and Satan." At about the same time in Egypt, Al-Ahram, the country's largest newspaper, reported, "A compilation of the investigative' work of four reporters on Jewish control of the world states that Jews have become the political decision-makers and control the media in most capitals of the world (Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, Athens, Ankara)." As the journalist Andrew Sullivan comments, "It is worth noting that every word Al Ahram prints is vetted and approved by the Egyptian government, a regime to which the United States - i.e., you and I - contributed $2 billion a year."

It is perhaps no surprise that, as of 2002, over sixty editions of the Protocols are being sold throughout the Arab world, and this libelous "warrant for genocide" is probably more widely distributed today than at any other time in its history. In 2002, the New York Times, in a front-page story, reported that a major Egyptian television station was about  to launch a forty-one-episode TV series based on the Protocols (complete with Jewish villains dressed in black hats, side curls, and beards) to run before and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic world today has combined antisemitic motifs from Nazism and medieval Christendom, as well as from its own tradition. This potent combination has made the Arabs the major source of antisemitic publications in the world today. And as in other forms of antisemitism, in the words of Yehoshafat Harkabi, "the evil in the Jews is ascribed not to race or blood, but to their spiritual character and religion." Thus, when Pakistani Islamic terrorists kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002, they forced Pearl to say, "I am a Jew," (and videotaped him doing so) before slitting his throat.

Only through an understanding of the deep theological roots of Muslim antisemitism and an awareness of its continuous history can present-day Muslim hatred of Israel be understood. Only then does one recognize how false are the claims of Israel's enemies that prior to Zionism, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony and that neither Islam nor Muslims have ever harbored Jew-hatred. The creation of the Jewish state in no way created Muslim Jew-hatred; it merely intensified it and gave it a new focus.

So long as the Jews acknowledged their inferior status among Muslims, they were humiliated but allowed to exist. But once the Jews decided to reject their inferior status, to become sovereign after centuries of servitude, and worst of all, to now govern some Muslims in a land where the Jews had so long been governed, their existence was no longer tolerable. Hence the passionate Arab Muslim hatred of Israel and Zionism, a hatred that entirely transcends political antagonisms. Hence the widespread Muslim call not merely for a military defeat of Israel, but for its annihilation.

As so often in Jewish history, it is the Jewish nation's existence that arouses hatred and needs to be ended. Despite peace treaties between Israel and Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), for most Muslims the source of their hatred remains the Jewish sate's existence, not its policies, nor even its borders.

The Muslim and Arab claim that the issue is anti-Zionism rather than antisemitism really means that so long as the Jews adhere to their dhimmi status in Arab Muslim nations, their existence as individuals is acceptable. But for a Jew to aspire to equality among Muslims, for a Jew to aspire to a status higher than "humiliation and wretchedness," is to aspire too high."

- Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, chapter nine